Family’s Freedom from a Concentration Camp
Chapter 16: The Road Home
APRIL 23, 1945–JUNE 15, 1945
Karl wrote in his memoir, “Like a swarm of grasshoppers, the Jews flooded [off of the train] onto the road and fell upon the village of Tröbitz, a few hundred yards away....Everything was stormed—bakeries, food stores, shoe stores, private houses. No cellar, no stable, no barn was spared. Like madmen, they all lay on the street and stuffed themselves with immense amounts of food, hoping to make up for all they had missed for years in just one hour. The cows were dragged out of the stables, goats and rabbits killed, chickens had their necks wrung right then and there.”
In April 1945, most of Tröbitz’s men and teenage boys were away fighting for Nazi Germany, some likely killed or taken prisoner in Germany’s war for an Aryan empire. With a pre-war population of about seven hundred, the small rural village was now inhabited mostly by women, children, and the elderly, some of whom had taken refuge there after fleeing from the advancing Soviets. The Red Army had taken control of Tröbitz just hours before the train from Bergen-Belsen was blocked by the bombed bridge; Soviet vehicles, including tanks, occupied the streets. Nearby towns had hung white sheets in their windows and on their rooftops, announcing their surrender. Because the residents of Tröbitz had not surrendered, the Soviets occupied the almost deserted town.
Prepared for possible village resistance, Soviet soldiers helped the Jews to break open the doors of homes, barns, rabbit hutches, and chicken coops. One soldier took an egg from his pocket and handed it to a survivor, the mother of memoirist Francine Christophe.
Ilse explained, “I cannot even say that they were laughing or smiling or hurrays . . . from all the people who jumped out of the train. I think we just were all too weak, too worn out to enjoy the first few moments. And everyone only had one thought. Food!... Since I could not leave my children alone, my husband took a partner, a young Hungarian woman, and they went together to hunt for food for us.... It was very difficult...my husband still was extremely weak, my children hardly could walk, and I was wracked with about 102 temperature.”
Karl was concerned about Ilse’s fever, but she had brushed off his worries, as if typhus were a minor annoyance. She may have repeated the words she had spoken, whispered, or thought so often in the camp, “Wenn schon, denn schon.” The family knew that she was suffering, understood that she would never give up. She chose to remain on the train, keeping the twins safely out of harm’s way and avoiding the mad race to town.
Gradually, the prisoners returned, laden with all the food they could carry. Karl dragged a dog cart, typically used for chores, or for children’s entertainment: “I, too, arrived...with all the splendors we had dreamed of in our hunger fantasies, back at our car. Ilse...was again, by force of habit, lying on her stomach in front of the car, puffing into a fire to bring potatoes to a boil.”
The reality of freedom had not fully registered with the Bergen-Belsen survivors. The train that had brought them to this place was no longer their jail or home base. The SS guards were themselves prisoners of the Soviets. Stefan quietly reported to Karl, “Pappi, we don’t have to be afraid that they would catch us. I watched the Russians take away our SS guards.”
As Karl explained in his memoir, “Despite the fact that we were free, nobody believed that it really was so. The imprisonment of many years had completely crippled the people’s minds. Thus, all of us, loaded down with our loot went back to the empty train, never realizing that we had no more business there at all.”
While Karl was in Tröbitz, two Soviet soldiers had been watching Ilse lie on her stomach and blow into the small fire. They used hand signals to make her realize she did not need to do that anymore. The soldiers had been through every building in the town, scouring for possible resistance. They explained that this farming village held enough food for everyone.
Marion and Stefan greeted their new situation with the innocence and spontaneity of childhood. These “model” children, who for two weeks on the train had remained silent and unobtrusive, whooped with joy upon spying Karl’s wagon, then “hopped, danced, and jumped” with delight, ready to eat. Karl’s eyes filled with tears at their burst of childish energy. They announced to him that their mother “had promised by way of celebration that they would be allowed to eat the potatoes without the peel” that day, but their eyes were on the treasures their father had brought.
Together the four Hesses unloaded the wagon into a corner of the car, already piled so densely with others’ scavenged food there was hardly room for more. Out from the wagon came “a beautifully assorted load, things to put on bread in all variations from marmalade and cheese to pickled liverwurst, jars of vegetables, meat, poultry and fruit, and enormous quantities of each, bags of sugar, flour, oatmeal and barley, a few pounds of butter and fat and the most wonderful spices.” Some of the Jews in the car had already eaten too much, too quickly, and were “doubled up with painful cramps.” As Steven told me, Karl and Ilse were more prudent: “Our parents were very careful about limiting food intake at first, for them and for us. Some starved survivors ate voraciously, got sick, and died.”
For the first time in five years, the Hesses now had some control over their lives, and for the first time in five years, they felt able to share with others.
Faris Cassell, a journalist and writer, lives with her husband in Eugene, Oregon. She earned a B.A. in history from Mount Holyoke College and an M.S. in journalism from the University of Oregon. Her first book, The Unanswered Letter, was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award in 2021.
