Kurt Schmidt

“And from there I went to Ostrava, I worked at the foundry there and then three months later I went to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. And there I could see the huge ovens, where they had burnt the Jews and others. So nobody needs to tell me about that! In Germany we now have Neo-Nazis, who claim it was all a lie. Nobody has to tell me anything, I saw it with my own two eyes. Some of us went to the concentration camp in Osvětim, Auschwitz. It was an economically important place. You see, during the war the Russian pioneers had extended the Russian wide-gauge railway all the way there. And we had to load up ores and metals arriving from Russia and intended for Czechoslovakia. From Russian railway cars to Czech ones. That was our task.”

“What was it like there? They used to be quarters for military units, lying there were the inhabitants who had been driven out of their homes and placed there. And right at the front, right next to the guards there were two buildings separated with barbed wire and that’s where the whipping took place. For example what happened was they took me there and then six partisans started laying into me. I’m not sure if you know what a nagaika is. A nagaika is a whip, and into the whip, into the leather straps bits of metal are entwined. So when they hit you with it, it rips straight through the skin. And so they wanted to know something, whether I tried to force any Czechs to join the Hitler Youth. And I asked them what were they thinking, I was eleven or twelve years old at the time, I wouldn’t have had the chance to do anything like that you see. They didn’t care, they just started beating me. Then I of course I passed out and they poured one or two buckets over me and started beating me again. And when I fell unconscious again, they lifted me up off the table, threw me in the corner and I just lay there.”

“Those are punches from the commander of the camp in Opavská Street. He was a known tormentor, beater, killer. Everything they were allowed to do to the Germans, he did to me. Should I describe one of those atrocities to you? He found out my uncle had also been admitted to the camp. And so he had the following great idea. He set me and my uncle up against each other. On the open ground, what used to be the roll-call spot for the tank regiment. And there he commanded us to sing “Deutschlandlied” the German anthem. As soon as we had started, then him and several other partisans leapt at us a beat us up. But we had to keep singing while slapping each other. And because I was reluctant to hit my uncle, he had to do it. First of all he beat me to the ground. Back then he damaged my eardrum, as was later discovered by doctors in Germany.”

“It was on the night of 31 January to 1 February 1945, but it might’ve also been a day or two later. That night about three thousand concentration camp people from Auschwitz. They drove them through the town, at night. But one of my friends saw it and told me how impoverished the people looked. And then outside in Weisskirch (Bílý Kostel, now Kostelec), a suburb of Krnov, they stopped for a while. Some of them tried to run away, but they were immediately shot. The whole group then carried on, to Rehwiess, that’s where most of them are buried, that’s where they died. They did it on purpose while the people were asleep, so nobody would see them driving the poor wretches through town. But I heard about it the next day and I have to admit that made us even more afraid. We said to ourselves: Something similar could happen to us.”

“Where was I? On the square, here. I experienced it all from my dad’s shoulders. On 7 October at eight in the morning the German Wehrmacht marched right in here. And at ten o’clock Hitler was here and he spoke from the town hall balcony. The whole square was full of people. It was full. I couldn’t find any place to stand, so my dad held me piggy-back. Then we went up to Cvilín and it was closed up. My dad managed to slip through somehow, our house was up there after all. And then Hitler drove up to Cvilín. They showed him the beautiful view from there, what you also saw today sitting on the terrace, the whole mountain range, Hrubý Jeseník. They showed it to him. And I was supposed to give him a bouquet. But I was very shy back then and was way too scared to go there. Which is why I’m still alive. In many cases it happened, in Olberstdorf, meaning Albrechtice, there was a small girl there who handed Hitler some flowers. The Czechs later shot her.”