Mirjam Finkelstein (aged 11) spent 13 months in Bergen-Belsen camp with her mother & two sisters:

By January 1945 there were rumours. People got quite excited. There was a wooden table, we had to walk past the camp doctor. He decided who would go to wherever we were going. I don’t think anybody really knew.

My mother managed—I don’t know how—to walk upright past him, & we were chosen to go on this transport. Immediately then & there we were taken to the railway tracks nearby.

There was a bathhouse. We were told to strip & have a shower. I wasn't afraid but the adults must have been terrified that this wasn't water coming, you know. But indeed it was water. We were told to get out & get dressed, & we were sat on the embankment & were given something to eat. This I remember you see: given something to eat.

Then the train arrived, an ordinary train. To me this journey lasted about two weeks but it was only a few days.

We stopped a lot because of bombardments. My mother was lying on the bench. It kept stopping at various concentration camps. We were told it was an exchange.

I think we knew we were going to Switzerland. Very cold & snowy outside. Eventually we were told to get off the train. My sister said ‘Look we…’—to an SS officer with his high boots who came through in the morning. Ruth said: ‘We can’t get out; we can’t carry my mother out’. He said:‘OK. Stay.’

Eventually we reached St Gallen & were put onto a Swiss train. I suppose we were exchanged, for German prisoners of war who were in America. We crossed the border & they took my mother to hospital. She died within hours; she died that night in Kreuzlingen.

She, I think, knew she’d taken us out. She’d got us free—& let go. She was very, very weak. She died & she’s buried there.

We were taken up on top of a mountainside & they put us up in a sort of barn where cows were normally kept, but it was very clean & there was fresh straw. We were then told that my mother had died.

My eldest sister was allowed to go to the funeral. An officer with a rifle took her under guard to Kreuzlingen to a Jewish family. She had a bath & a meal at the table. They went to the funeral there.

I’ve been to visit a few times. My sister came back & took care of us. I don’t think it hit us completely what happened. People cabled my father. Then the Swiss handed us over to the Americans & we were put onto a train with American soldiers.

The Americans by then had liberated France. We went down the Rhone-Saone valley, littered with tanks & military vehicles, a lot of battles. We were taken to Marseilles, a pitiful remnant. A few people died when they arrived, like my mother did.

There were only about 60 of us. We would have gone anywhere they took us. We were put on to an Italian warship in the harbour, with the idea that we would be taken to Philippeville in Algeria to a United Nations refugee camp for people who didn’t have proper passports.

My father cabled & pulled every string. He managed to get permission to have us shipped to America. So we were at the very last moment taken off this Italian warship & put on the Gripsholm, a Swedish Red Cross ship taking wounded American soldiers back home.

Oh my, those soldiers were in a terrible state. The injuries of these poor young men, it was really quite appalling.

The journey to New York took quite a long time, about two weeks. It was still wartime, we took a very southerly route to avoid submarines & mines. We came into the harbour there to the Statue of Liberty.

We were interviewed & interrogated & put onto Ellis Island for a few nights. A prison basically. Then we were taken into New York to an immigration office, and there down the corridor came my father! It was quite amazing. We were asked to swear the Oath of Allegiance & were handed over to him!

And came into brightly lit…I mean America was at war but it was brightly lit because the bombers couldn’t reach that far. My father took us to the cafeteria of his hotel. You know, it was as if we’d landed on the moon. Quite, quite extraordinary.

But children take these things in their stride. In a way, adults do as well. My sister Ruth for a long time afterwards used to take food up into…by her bedside table. I suppose she felt, you know, any moment now it’ll disappear again. Long time that she did that.

Mirjam Finkelstein

Memories

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