On the Buses

The journey was to continue, if possible without overnight stops, all the way to Neuengamme near Hamburg. We didn’t have enough tents even for our passengers. Only short stops were planned for personal needs, refueling the vehicles, and feeding the staff.

Our passengers had received gift packages. Our buses were far from comfortable long-distance coaches. As I mentioned earlier, they were army medical transport buses—rather short and therefore suitable for our sometimes difficult roads. Along each side there was a fixed, hard-padded bench, and in the middle a loose wooden bench. The driver sat on the right-hand side and was the only one with a chair with a backrest, which was also the only comfortable seat.

At the very front on the left-hand side was a hard-padded bench about one and a half meters long. Here the off-duty driver and the Gestapo man would sit. When the off-duty driver needed to sleep and rest for the next driving shift, the Gestapo man had to move over to the engine hood or somewhere else. At the front, behind the engine hood, there was always a 50-liter milk can filled with water for the crew’s and passengers’ needs. Around 30 passengers had reasonably adequate space to sit, but often we carried more.

As mentioned, the journeys were far from comfortable, but concentration camps were not exactly known for comfort either. Faced with the prospect of surviving at all, the passengers could endure quite a lot—and besides, they had no other choice. On occasions when the buses’ capacity was insufficient, some even had to travel long distances on covered truck beds.