Everyone knows about the Holocaust.� We know that millions of Jews died, and the vulgarities that happened in concentration camps such as Auschwitz or Buchenwald.� But do we know what it was really like?� In this document, I will try to show you what survivors remember from the camps��.

The famous radio reporter Edward R. Murrow, of CBS, went to Buchenwald concentration camp after its liberation.

He asked to see some of the camp�s barracks.� The particular barrack that he visited was occupied by Czechs.� They tried to lift him onto their shoulders, but were too weak.� The building that these barracks were in had, at one time, held eighty horses.� The number of people, five to a bunk, equaled 1,200 in that one building.� He could not describe the stink, and saw a man die of starvation, but would not describe it.

They showed him the camp�s children.� There were hundreds.� One showed Edward the number on his arms: B-6030.� He stated that the hospitals were full, and that 200 had died the day before.

He saw five hundred bodies in the courtyard, and was told that around 40,000 had been murdered at the camp.

He later said,� I pray you to believe what I have said��. For most of it, I have no words.� If I have offended you with this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I�m not in the least sorry���

With General Patton�s Third Army, there was a first sergeant named Abel Schwartz, who was among the first soldiers to enter and liberate Buchenwald. He remembers that there were barracks full of starve, pitiful prisoners, skin and bones, too weak to move.� At the sight of the bodies, he thought he was tough, but he just shed his weapons and cried.

In 1945, there was another American soldier fighting to liberate camps whose name was Arthur Federman.� A few days after liberation, he entered Dachau concentration camp.� He said that, when he and his fellow soldiers arrived, most became nauseous and threw up at the sight of the bodies.

Cecilia Bernstein recalls,� Italian workers gave us food.� It was meatballs and spaghetti.� We were starved.� The girls around me ate so much.� But their stomachs could not take all the food.� Many of them died from eating.�� Some were lucky to find a few loved ones alive when they got home, but most weren�t so lucky at all.

Today, some survivors have several deadbolts on their doors for fear that the Nazis will retake them.� Some get very ill if they hear spoken German.� And some can�t stand in lines, look at trains, or look at smokestacks.� But, some others are either famous or millionaires.

Walter F. was born eighty-three years ago in 1920, in Wiesbaden, Germany, near Frankfurt.� His father was a family physician.� He grew up in Wiesbaden, he went to school to become a doctor himself, but dropped out after six years to get a job.� He worked at a Jewish factory until Kristallnacht, when Walter, and 30,000 others, went to camps.� He was supposed to have a bar mitzvah after he turned thirteen, but was forced to have it the next year because of the Nazis.

Walter slept through Kristallnacht and went to work the next morning.� An old factory worker told him what had happened.� He wanted to go and see what happened to his family, but decided to finish working.� While working, Walter got a call from his mother saying that his father was arrested.

Walter went back to Wiesbaden to see his mother, and, at bout two o�clock, an officer came to the door, and placed him under arrest.

Walter packed his things and the officer took him to the station and put him in a cell with his father.� In the morning, they took them and the others outside and asked them if they were healthy.� If they said yes, like Walter, they put the Jews on a bus to Frankfurt, with a Gestapo officer and a big gun, of course.� When they arrived, there were thousands of people screaming,� Kill the Jews, tear �em apart!!�� They put them on a train to Weimar, which scared them because they knew that that was where Buchenwald was located.

The train was no particular hardship, and the officer told them if they got out of line, they would be shot.� They arrived and were taken to the camp in trucks.���

There were thousands milling about, not knowing where to go or what to do.� All over the place were searchlights, machine guns, and barbed wire everywhere.� Walter was almost immediately separated from his father, and all night, they were recorded, registered, and screamed at.

The barracks had �shelves�, and they lived in those shelves.� He could spend days describing the goings on at Buchenwald, but it wasn�t pretty.

Many people who had visas left very quickly, and people who fought in WWI also left.� That was probably why Walter�s father left after two weeks.� There was working waist deep in mud, sometimes getting food, and sometimes not.

Things went along until there were 200 left out of 10,000, the rest had mostly gone away.� He (Walter) lived in the clothes he was arrested in for three months, no showering or washing.� One day, they were showered and shaved because they had lice.� They were given striped uniforms

Some survivors like Elie Wiesel, pictured above, have become very famous in their efforts to educate people about the Holocaust.

and a star,which meant they were Jews, and were sent to work, and left alone.� When alone, they told stories and played games.� Once, an SS officer came and played games with them, but then the other officers made the Jews work.

Two days before the camp was put under quarantine, a release order was sent to let him out.� But his parents could not get him a ticket to Shanghai because the Gestapo wanted to see a visa.� He got a visa to go to England, but, a few days earlier, the camp was put under quarantine.� Typhoid fever broke out, and prisoners got shots once a week for three weeks.� He later found out that they were doing germ warfare experiments on Jews, and one of the experiments jumped.� That was the cause of the quarantine.� On April 12, 1939, the quarantine was lifted, and Walter left Buchenwald.� Before they left, an SS officer told them that they didn�t remember anything that happened, and that they had done nothing wrong to them.� He said that if they told anyone, they would hunt them down and kill them.� It took all day to process them and get them on trains.� They had to go through the back door of the station because they looked so gruesome.� They were deloused and shaved again.� They could only ride in third class.

The railroad officer was kind and said that if he told them they could ride in first class, they could.� Later, people showed up with tons of food for them and they ate like dogs.� Walter rode a first class train back to Wiesbaden, where he went home, and his parents were all packed and ready to go.

So, now, at the conclusion of these stories, I hope you know a little bit more about the horrors of the concentration/death camps.� Hopefully, we can prevent anything like that from ever happening again.