"Soldiers kept coming. They were not only Russians but from other Allied units as well. There were Americans and Polish soldiers. The sick and the recuperating people were given titbits the likes of which had not been seen for the last five years: chocolates, biscuits, cheese, white bread and many other delights. This warmth, more than anything else around us, inspired the growth of energy and desires. Even fruit, unseen all the war years, was seen among the staff and visitors. I didn't have anybody at any time, to whom I could talk, such as a friend, acquaintance, or even a person from any of the places that I had been incarcerated in. However, there were friendly people around me. Language didn't seem to be a barrier. Somehow, we each knew some of the languages of the people around us. Even when we spoke in a very badly structured, ungrammatical way, we were nevertheless able to communicate with one another. The period of coming back to life had begun."

View of the abandoned train in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland that was on the way to Germany loaded with the personal effects of Auschwitz victims. Some of the freight lays scattered and partially buried in the snow outside the train in February, 1945.   Photo credits: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

"Harry Spiro, a survivor of the death march from Rehmsdorf, who was also liberated in Theresienstadt, recalled how the Russian soldiers told him that he and his fellow survivors had 'twenty-four hours to do whatever we wanted, even kill Germans. I don't think any of us actually did that. I'm not sure why. We were too busy looking for food, and relieved to have survived, but I also don't think it is in our nature to do that.' At that time, Harry Spiro reflected: 'I don't remember having any plans and I certainly didn't feel elated at having survived, since all my family were dead'."

Minia Munter had survived ten days in a death train before reaching Theresienstadt from a slave labour camp at Oderan, near Chemnitz. Shortly after liberation, she recalled: 'As we were lining up for the daily soup, after a couple of spoonfuls, I collapsed, bleeding terribly from my lungs. No one thought I could survive. I was put in a wooden bunk and given lumps of salt and calcium, which looked like lumps of chalk. I wasn't sent to the hospital because there were no beds available."

"Monick Goldberg, who was liberated in Therienstadt three days after his seventeenth birthday, was a survivor of the slave labour camps of Pionki, Buna and Krainkel. He recalled how, two days after liberation, 'two other boys and myself managed to get out from the Hamburger barrack into other parts of Theresienstadt. People were dancing in the street. I don't remember having any feelings of elation. I just felt I had to get away from there. We took to the road and it was a sight to behold. There were abandoned wagons and trucks all over the countryside. It was as if a tornado had swept through. There were people on the move. There were dead horses and some dead Germans. We rummaged through the abandoned caravans looking for food and some decent clothing. We found cigarettes, which were as good as money."
"We arrived in Prague after hitching rides with the Russians. I cannot find words adequate to praise the Czech people of Prague. We went to a hotel hoping to find a place to stay, prepared to pay with the cigarettes. They wouldn't hear of it. We sold some cigarettes for currency to be able to pay our way around. But wherever we went, to a restaurant, or to the cinema, or a concert, they refused our money. All they said was "Z Koncentraku" ("From a concentration camp") and refused to accept any payment. A family invited me into their home. I met a man who was from Libochevice and he invited me to come there to stay with his family."

"Kopel Kandelcukier returned from Theresienstadt, where he too had been liberated, to his home town of Bialobrzegi. With him were a few other survivors fro the town. 'We went back to Poland just in case there were any survivors from our families. The Poles were very hostile to us, and I was glad to get back to the safety of Theresienstadt."

"Roman Halter reached Chodecz, which he had last seen five years earlier, at the time when his parents had been deported to their deaths at Chelmno, and he had been sent to the Lodz ghetto. On reaching his town he went straight to his former home, in which a Polish family were living. 'I had the feeling they were going to kill me', he later recalled. 'They didn't want to give up part of the house'. Leaving Chodecz, he made his way from Poland to Czechoslovakia, and then, about seven weeks later, 'I travelled -- mostly on the tops of trains -- from Czechoslovakia back to the family Fuchs [farm], together with gifts of soap, coffee, sugar, and smoked meat, the profits from my black-market transactions. I thought I would surprise them with this gift of a few items of appreciation and thanks for having taken me in and hidden me during March and April 1945."
"Roman Halter's generous impulse was to come up against yet another harsh reality of the war years. 'When I arrived', he later wrote, 'I found Mrs. Fuchs all in black. Her face had aged by years in those few weeks since my departure from them. She screamed when she saw me and refused to speak. Her neighbour told me that a few days after I had left, the Nazis in the village had found out that the Fuchses had sheltered Jews in their home. They then went to the house and took out Mr. Fuchs, Szwajcer and Sztajer [two Jews sheltered]. Mr. Fuchs and Szwajcer were shot. Sztajer managed to talk himself out of it. Mrs. Fuchs dragged her husband's body back to the garden and buried him under a walnut tree. When I heard this, I left the provisions I had brought for Mrs. Fuchs with a neighbour and returned immediately to Czechoslovakia."

"Harry Balsam was nearly sixteen. 'About four weeks after the war', he recalled, 'my friend Pomeranc and I decided to go back to Poland to look for some living relatives, and at the same time to find the treasure that I had hidden when I was in Plaszow camp. At about seven o'clock my friend Pomeranc and I went to the station, because we heard that the trains were getting packed with survivors wanting to return to Poland. While at the other station we met some Jews who had just returned from Poland. We told them that we were waiting to go back home. They said that we must be mad to want to go back as they were still killing Jews in Poland We could not believe it and asked who was killing the Jews now, They told us the Poles were doing what the Germans could not manage, and that they had been lucky to come out alive from Poland. We got frightened. We were only fifteen years old at the time. So we returned to Theresienstadt and warned the other boys not to go back because it was dangerous in Poland."

The Boys -- Triumph Over Adversity -- The Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors : Martin Gilbert