Ewald Seifert

“We were then in the Niklasdorf, in a camp, I do not know exactly how long for, I think around seven or eight days and that was the 'Muna' – an ammunition factory from Hitler's times. We were quartered in the barracks. The Muna was locked, so that no one could not get in the central area. In our outer area there was a railway track built and there was always a train with cattle wagons. In each wagon always 30 persons had to be placed, then the door was closed, the next in the other wagon, families were torn apart and the train always had 40 wagons of 30 persons each, plus guards with guns. Then we were carried away by two locomotives, because it went over the mountains, in direction to Prague. We stayed for three nights and three days traveling by the train, but were standing a few hours before Prague, in a boiling heat. We had no way to go to the toilet, as I said; there were no curtains or anything else. A little girl, which was also there, she was four years old and had a small tin bucket for playing in the sand, which all the thirty people used and everyone else watched. So there was really no privacy, neither for women, and there were mainly women and children, no men in there as they were at war.”

"One night, it was already half past twelve, at the beginning or middle of December, there was knocking outside at our door. My mother, who was always fearless, she didn’t fear anything at all. She went out, opened the door, and there was an unknown man and said he needed a night's rest. That was my father. Ha was in France during war, got to American captivity in Normandy, up there where English and Americans were. He said the sky was black with loads of parachutes, so many came. He was at a PaK (anti-tank gun); out of fourteen men at the gun only three were left, the others were already dead. They took the three with them and sent them on a German freighter to America. And on their way they were still fired on by American or English airplanes, because it was a German freighter. There were six thousand men onboard. And then they had to work in American farms for eight months. Then they were driven over again on a ship, released in the Rhineland. My father did not know where they were. He knew that were were no longer in the old country land, but where we were, he did not know. We did not know whether he was still alive or where he was. Then in December he went to Steinach, which was a railway junction between Würzburg and Nuremberg or Treuchtlingen. Until then he was either driven or crossing the fields to Ohrnbach by night. It was a large place, he could not ask anyone where we lived, and yet he found us in the middle of the night."