Vladislav Rejsa

“Our camp was liberated by a Red tank army under Rybalko on 23 April 1945. The unit that liberated us, well, the way it is on the front, they were lacking numbers. So they took us young boys into the army. It was voluntary, so about eighty of us went. They gave us uniforms, four days of training, they showed us how to use a sub-machine gun and a grenade, and they put us in with the tank brigade as paratroopers [sic].”

“When we were still in Potsdam, in the camp, in forty-two, the massive air raids started from the West. They flew over Potsdam, over our camp, to Berlin. They bombed Berlin. We always watched. And then at the end, about a month before the Ruskies were to come, they bombed Potsdam. They blew the camp to smithereens, there were bombs everywhere, unexploded ones - many did explode, but many didn’t. But we survived. They chucked them all around, mostly into the woods because the camp was by the forest. Their mission was to destroy the industry, the train station in Potsdam. Well, the whole place was in ruins.”