Living Dead

At a muster in Friedrichsruh with all personnel present, we were briefed on the prisoner transport by the detachment commander, Colonel Björck. We were to start that very evening. The Germans wanted the transports to take place at night, and we understood that this was to ensure as few people as possible would see what was happening. This would become among the most horrific memories we would carry home.

As evening approached, we set out for Neuengamme. Two or three buses at a time were allowed to enter the camp. There, the prisoners were lined up, ready for transport. What we saw was horrific, almost unreal. This was long before anyone had seen the newsreels and photographs taken by the Allies when they liberated the most dreadful concentration camps.

It was no exaggeration to speak of walking skeletons with knobby arms, legs, and hands. Their faces were sunken, with eyes either extinguished or shining with a bestial terror, recessed in their sockets and framed by dark circles. Their clothing consisted of dirty rags—striped prisoner uniforms with a white cross painted on the back. Half sleeves or pant legs were missing, sometimes one or both entirely. Some were barefoot, wore a single sock, or had a shoe on only one foot—one long sock and one short.

Most of them wore the previously mentioned sole-shaped wooden planks fastened with a saddle-girth strap on their feet. Many had festering wounds and boils. I saw some with twisted arms and hands, as if they had been broken and allowed to heal without support. They had no luggage or personal belongings, though a few carried an old empty tin can, used for drinking when possible. They climbed onto the buses through the rear doors and were packed onto the long benches—some managed on their own, others helped each other or were assisted by us. The doors were closed, and inside were 30–35 prisoners, along with two rifle-armed German soldiers, one at each door.

Each bus carried a Gestapo man and two drivers. The windows were fitted with blackout panels. The stench was intense—prisoners and their tattered clothes had likely not been cleaned for a long time, and many suffered from severe diarrhea. Since the trips were relatively short, there were no meal breaks, nor did we have gift packages to distribute. We did, however, give out crispbread, which caused chaos in several ways. Driven by hunger, the prisoners thought only of themselves, without regard for others.

When the prisoners saw food being distributed, they all tried to push forward with outstretched hands, eyes almost wild with desperation. The soldiers tried in every way to maintain order using their rifle butts, and we drivers had to roar and physically intervene to prevent the soldiers from beating the prisoners.

In one of the other buses, a prisoner was still beaten to death with a rifle. In the buses’ water canisters, we dissolved chloramine tablets to reduce the risk of spreading disease. This made the water bitter and very unpleasant to drink, though the bitterness disappeared when boiled—a precaution we always took when using it ourselves. The prisoners, using their tin cans to drink the water with the crispbread, reacted quickly and violently due to their weakened stomachs, forcing us to stop frequently for them to relieve themselves.

Many were so weak that they could not rise after sitting in long rows along the roadside. They had to be helped up by the less weak or by us Swedes. Some fell into their own excrement, and naturally the stench in the buses worsened. But everything comes to an end. We finally arrived at the camps that were to receive the prisoners, near Hannover and Braunschweig. It was still dark. The prisoners were taken in by people who themselves seemed like prisoners but were in better condition—often criminal inmates were put in charge of others. They yelled and screamed at our poor captives, some of whom were lying on the floor under the benches and had difficulty getting out on their own.

When everyone who was still alive in my bus had managed to get out, two remained. They had died, either from weakness or being trampled to death. It was the same in several of the other buses. The recipients came and dragged them out, pulling at arms and legs. They were thrown into a pile beside the living, who were lined up in rows to stagger toward their barracks. By human standards, probably very few left the camp alive.