The Germans Disappear

At the final stage, when we were granted permission to transport Scandinavians from the Neuengamme concentration camp up to Denmark for onward transport by train to Sweden, and also to pick up non-Scandinavians, mostly women, from other camps in Germany, our transport capacity was insufficient. Danish buses and other vehicles—also painted white and marked with red crosses, driven by Danish drivers—were then brought in to reinforce the capacity.

When we returned “home” to Friedrichsruh for a short visit after one of these trips, long rows of Danish buses lined our parking loops in the forest, more or less shot up and damaged. They had been attacked by night-fighter planes the night before. Several Danish drivers had been injured, but I don’t think anyone had been killed. One could not help but think that we ourselves had several times spent the night there, lying on the relatively comfortable stretchers in the buses.

Another interesting phenomenon was observing how the German personnel changed as the end of the war approached and the outcome had become completely clear, even to the most loyal. The Gestapo men, who at the beginning had been harsh and cold and followed their rules perfectly, now increasingly thought only of their own comfort. By then, it was mostly about getting food and cigarettes, and gradually they disappeared one by one without a trace.

When we had stopped to rest or make a pause somewhere, they were gone, and we had to continue without them. We assumed that we had then been near their homes or home regions, and that they wanted to disappear into the chaos. The same applied to the armed soldiers who rode along in the buses—sometimes from the Waffen-SS, with the skull emblem on their uniforms, and sometimes more ordinary soldiers from the Wehrmacht.

The last one I had in my bus mentioned that he was from the countryside somewhere in northern Germany. He was in his thirties and made it clear that he had no sympathies for the Nazis. He rode along on several trips, and when we stopped, he dutifully carried his rifle, but when we were inside the bus, he placed it in a compartment behind the driver where we kept the bus’s blackout panels.

Once, when we had made a short stop somewhere in northern Germany, he disappeared and never returned, but his rifle remained in the bus.