[music]
>>Student: How was their liberation processing and how did you eventually get home and survive those days?
>>Mrs. Weiss: When the Russian army finally caught up with where we were
near Hamburg, um, they, that particular unit they came into the camp. First we saw the
guard tower empty and we realized something happened that the guards were
gone. And, and we waited to see if that was for real. And then a couple of days
later some Russian soldiers arrived and they took a look at us and they left. And
we never saw them again. And so we were left there without any medical help and
any transportation and any food. We were left in very desperate conditions. Some
of the women drifted out into the nearest town and found there abandoned
homes because the German civilian population fled when the Russian army
approached. And so there were a lot of empty homes and some of us would just
leave the camp and get into an empty house and just wait a few days, rest up
you know. There was nothing to eat. there was nothing, there wasn't nothing, you
know, no medical supply or anything. We found a hospital in the town and some of
us entered the hospital just to rest.
>>Narrator: It took some time for Irene and her fellow
survivors to trust that they had, in fact, been liberated, that they were to go free.
Every freedom had been taken from them in the world that they had come from
even the freedom to have a family and to be a child.
>>Mrs. Weiss: From my immediate family of eight only Serena, my older sister, and I survived.
All 13 of my young cousins perished along with their mothers. When I saw
children in the town after the war, I stopped and stared at them. I had not
seen children in almost a year and a half. Children were condemned to death in
the world I had just come.
>>Student: After the liberation, how did you get your life
back to essentially [inaudible]
>>Mrs. Weiss: After a few days, we would say well we have to get moving
towards home. And we would actually walk on the highway and hitchhike, and things
like that. And took us months to get to where we finally ended up in Prague,
Czechoslovakia. We were not going to go back to our homes because we'd never
wanted to go back to the place where people hated us and through us out. And
so what to do next? Where to go? And so we stayed in this place for a couple of
years trying to reestablish our identity. We had no identification papers or birth
certificates and anything else. Identification papers had to be
reconstructed through witnesses. And, and then we apply to come to this country
and that wasn't simple. There was a quota on how many they allowed in.
The bigger problem set in after we were liberated. And yes you survived and yes you look
around and everybody is dead, and that, and you have no place to go. And your
your position in in the world has changed enormously. You're not, you know,
it's very complicated especially for people older than me, you know. How to
pick up the pieces and were to begin and you, you leave your continent
everybody wanted to leave Europe.And the problems are not over. And you suddenly
have new problems. You can't even deal with the old traumas
because now you have to, new languages, new jobs, new. You have no money, you have
you have no status. Whoever you were before you're not, you're an immigrant.
You don't, you know all kinds of difficulties.