Mindu Hornick

"They bombed our train again and I remember looking out. The roof of our carriage had gone. My sister was holding ma hand tightly, pulling me out of the carriage and all around us were dead bodies - our carriage was particularly badly hit - dragging me out and feeling if I was still alive because she saw all those dead bodies. We started with 500 people, but as we foud out afterwards, we remained 340. Anyway, they took us out of the trains, still insisted we form a rows of five and started marching us. Then we realised we were in the direction of Lübeck. But by that time the dusk fell and we reached small village harbour, small town called Plön. We had many sick and wounded girls, we were shocked and we haven’t eaten for two or three days. They tried to get us on to some boats, they were going to hand us over to Red Cross. But they were still following Himmler’s orders, we discovered afterwards they were supposed to drown us or shoot us. It was difficult for them as the Allies were on their tail and also as there was a big residential area so they could not suddenly kill off 350 people. They sat us on this embankment and we refused to move. They were shooting guns in the air. We were very frightened because the war was still going on. We could hear bomb explosions, we could hear shootings, we could hear plains flying. The dusk fell and our Lagerführer, the head of the camp in Lübberstedt, suddenly appeared. We didn’t see him anywhere on the train, he must have been in a private car. He stood in front of us as we were sitting there half dead on this embankment, put his hand on his heart and said: ‘I have been to you like a father, we are going into captivity and you are free.' With that he took his hat off and put it on the embankment."