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Kasriel K. Eilender, M.D.

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THE BARBER OF GOERLITZ - A MEMOIR

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Chapter Eleven

“Stay at attention 

and sing the 

 Hatikva.”

He then gave the 

order to disband as

free   

people!  

On the 8th of May, 1945 the SS and the guards left, as well as the SS Commandant Captain Ubrich and his aides. As he left, he said good-bye to the camp elder Baruch Meister. Naturally, the promise was kept and the tailors did a good job. 

We had our usual daily lineup on the Appelplatz and Meister said, “Stay at attention and sing the Hatikva,” (the Jewish national anthem of hope). Following this, he gave the order  to disband as free people.

As I left, at the gate stood two young German army soldiers, who said to me: “Do not worry, we are the rear guard and we are leaving.” And they left.

I was freed near a very charming German town by the name of Reichenbach. It took some courage for many of the inmates still in their prisoner’s attire to go to town. While some ventured to town, four Russian soldiers, very young with submachine guns came through the gate and since I spoke Russian, I asked them: “What are you looking for here? It is a concentration camp.” 

They were from Kamentz-Podolsk, Western Ukraine. I was told they belonged to a punitive battalion and they were hungry. After hearing this I did not want to discuss anything anymore, I took them to the SS kitchen where pots with food were still on the stove. We sat down, and we ate. I did not eat too much, because I knew that if one is starved for such a prolonged time, the stomach shrinks. 

A number of my co-prisoners overate and died later. We learned later that this happened in many other camps. 

After these four soldiers left, a Soviet major came, driving in with a civilian passenger, wearing a big cross on his chest, which surprised me, and holding a rifle in his hand. The major’s name was Denisenko. 

After he spoke to me, recognizing my fluent Russian, he announced that I would be the chief of police. I declined the offer saying I was too weak and fatigued. The truth was I was too hungry to be a police chief. He left. Maybe two or three hours later, a Russian captain came in by the name of Konovalov. He apparently was an official person from the staff of the Soviet commandant of the city garrison.

At this point I was holding a chicken which one of my roommates brought me from the city. The chicken was already killed, and I was contemplating what to do with it, when the captain asked, “Who speaks Russian here?” I stepped forward. 

He asked me to interpret what he was about to say. He put me on a chair and I put the chicken under it, not knowing anyhow what to do with it. He said that they liberated us from this horrible system, and now we were free people. We could do whatever we wished, and go anyplace we chose. I thanked the captain for the liberation and for saving our lives. I took him on a tour of our camp, and naturally I showed him the sickbay where the sick prisoners were lying mostly on the floor, covered by ulcers, malnourished and dying mostly of hunger and beatings, as well as infections.

The captain was very shocked and very upset by the sight. Most of the prisoners threw away prisoner’s garb, the notorious striped uniform, and wore old kind of civilian clothing. After a while he left.  Following this I also ventured to the nearby city of Reichenbach and, on the way, I spotted on the road two dead prisoners in striped clothing. This upset me, because the Germans already had been gone for two days. Later, I found out that Russian soldiers did not understand them, had never seen this kind of uniform and they just killed them. Possibly, I speculated, members of a punitive unit did it.

In the city, I had seen a lot of abandoned German weapons. I met several Russian officers; one of them spoke to me in Yiddish and this moved me very much. I returned to the camp, since at this moment there was no place to go.

The next morning, a Soviet staff car arrived. Two officers got out, one of them a colonel by the name of Soloncev who was from Leningrad. With him was a first lieutenant and both of them were Jewish. When they saw the entire setup of the camp and the former inmates, the junior officer started to cry. 

I briefed them about all the events that had happened to us. He immediately took me to his headquarters.

Soloncev was a very important staff officer of the 21st Soviet army who came from Stalingrad to lower Silesia. He was a liaison between the headquarters of this army and the Russian units. I was given a bath, a haircut, a shave, nice clean underwear and a suit. It didn’t fit me too well; however, it looked rather ordinary. Soloncev kind of adopted me. He took me in his Mercedes driven by his staff sergeant, whom he allegedly saved in a battle. He drove all over the region where he had to deal with matters of importance regarding the civilian population. I was a translator and I also took notes.

According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia data, the surviving prisoners of this region where I was, fared much better then prisoners in other locations. In my camp, Langenbielau, all 1,400 inmates were liberated as survivors. After the liberation of these satellite camps, a Jewish committee had been formed to take care of the survivors, many of whom were sick. A large number of former Grossrosen prisoners were gathered in Dzierzanow (in German Reichenbach). 

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