Eyewitness Testimony Andre Cools

Andre Cools On a sunny day in July, I arrive at Andre Cools' place in Wingene around 9 o'clock. Although he still has a lot of work to do on his land, he takes time for me. Andre thinks it is high time that some testimonies about the workers' camps in Kahla are written down; the thousands of dead should not be forgotten. "I had lived underground for more than 18 months. I was also required to do forced labor in Germany. However, I did not go to Germany. During those 18 months, I slept everywhere but at home." "Until August 6. I still remember very well; it was the night from Saturday to Sunday. I came home around 10:30 p.m. (to Eegern, near Tielt); by 11:30 p.m. the whole place was surrounded and I was arrested. At that time, a fascist lived in our neighborhood, and I am quite sure he betrayed me." After the war, Andre heard that the man was dead. We would say it was God's punishment. "They took me to the prison in Tielt. From there, they transported me the following Thursday to Roeselaere, where I tried to escape. A woman and her daughter, who had lived in our neighborhood, visited me and brought some women's clothes. It was planned that I would flee in those clothes, but someone raised the alarm, so it was very difficult to escape." "Besides the clothes, they also brought me 14 kilograms of tobacco and a shoebox filled with cigarillos. That saved my life in Kahla." "I stayed in Roeselaere from August 9 to 11." In Belgium, a German guard told the prisoners that they would be taken to the surroundings of Weimar, to the Thuringian Forest, and that it was very beautiful there. However, I did not notice any of that, said Andre. "At the beginning of April, I saw them bring 27 dead men into the death barrack." "During this work, we had a German overseer who started hitting people without reason; the Russians were beaten the most. Once he tried to hit me, but he missed and injured himself on his truck, which was carrying hard rock. I feared retaliation; we had to get rid of this guard. A little later, the scaffolding supporting the tunnels had to be removed. I had armed myself with a heavy pickaxe, and during an 'accident,' it fell from my hand just as the guard was passing by. The pickaxe hit his shoulder. We never saw him again, and he did not harm me because I still had all my tools. I considered myself lucky." "What we experienced in Kahla was almost unbelievable." "I had 14 kilos of tobacco and a box full of cigarillos. They saved me, and yet I weighed only 46 kilograms at liberation, 51 upon my return." When he left for Kahla, Andre weighed 74 kilograms. Despite the tobacco he could trade for bread, he lost 28 kilos in just eight months. Andre is 1.73 m tall. "If you had to live on your ration, you were lost. We only got one liter of watery soup and 150 grams of bread per day." "In the factory, I tried to trade tobacco for bread. At that moment, a truck came to deliver concrete. You had to make your request. I was smoking a pipe; so I crawled into the driver's cabin and lit the pipe so that he could smell the tobacco. And yes, he smoked too but had no tobacco with him. So I could once again trade tobacco for bread. He gave me a whole loaf." "In our room in the barrack, I shared the food. It is not right that one person has food while others starve. Once I was able to get some bread cards for civilians, with which I got bread in the village. On the way back, I saw the police approaching. I fled into the bushes; at that moment, I was already in the forest behind Camp E. There I slipped, fell, and landed behind the barrack where I slept. Just as I wanted to enter the barrack, I noticed the guards were making their rounds. I found shelter on the roof of the barrack, on the side of the forest. My comrades said I had the night shift. Everyone was glad it was over, and our room could eat bread and sausages." The longer we were there, the more deaths there were to mourn. The harsh winter months, lack of food and hygiene, long working days, and mistreatment were the main reasons. "Someone who got typhus was dead in five days. You could see how a strong fellow became nothing." Andre Cools "At the beginning of April, I saw them bring 27 dead men into the death barrack." "One morning, we experienced that four of our roommates did not get up anymore;... they were dead." "At the beginning of April, I did not go to the factory for a day. I was not sick, and since I still had bread, I did not need my daily food ration. But an SKK man came to check what I was still doing here. I was able to bribe him with tobacco. That day, I saw them bring 27 dead men into the death barrack. At night, they came to take in 32 dead. At that time, the rumor went around that they brought the dead to Leubengrund near Kahla. It was not certain; we never heard anything about it again." "There was also a lice epidemic. If you wanted to get rid of the lice in your clothes, you had to roll on the ground and then wash; it was a good method. Then you were master over them for a short time. But no one was allowed to notice, otherwise the things were stolen from the ground." Gradually, liberation approached. "Around April 12, we had to line up in the kitchen at night between eight and nine o'clock by order. We received bread from four people. With seven people, we managed to get eight loaves. Through three people we did not know, we lined up as number four and left with the bread. From that moment on, everyone was on their own." "The Germans drove us out of the camp. The rumor went around that they would take us to the front. I myself and some others fled from the column and went back to Camp E. The SS officer who had brought me to the carpenters told us to go to Camp 3." "So we went there and stayed there one or two days before we were liberated." "Without escort, we walked on foot to Weimar. On our way, we only had to ask farmers and civilians for food." "In Weimar, we reached the Gustloff factories; we stayed there one night." "In Weimar, they loaded us onto trucks and took us to the former SS barracks in Erfurt. There I found shelter for 19 days in Block 4. We slept on the bare floor, but the food was very good.""19 days later they loaded us onto trucks again and took us to Koblenz." Andre Cools "At the beginning of April, I saw them bring 27 dead men into the death barracks." "We stayed there for three days; then they transported us to the Rhine, which we crossed by boat. We traveled by train, in cattle cars, to Verviers. The cattle cars in which we were transported were still soiled with sheep dung. We had to clean it first, then we put in a piece of cardboard so we wouldn't sit directly in the dirt. We traveled for a day and a night." "Via Erstahl we arrived in Verviers. In Verviers, everyone was checked. We got our passports back, which had been taken from us at the time of arrest." "We stayed two days in a guesthouse in Verviers; the food was excellent." "From there we went to the train station in Liège. Via Landen and Brussels, we reached Ghent." "In Ghent, a car took me home; on May 12, I was finally back home." Andre cannot forget the time in Kahla. He has participated in 16 memorial ceremonies so far. Andre Cools "In Kahla, we were all condemned to a time of misery, hard work, hardship, and ultimately—for many of us—death." Frans De Geyndt I also visited Frans De Geyndt at his home. In the postwar period, as a former prisoner of Camp E, he worked to gain recognition for all former prisoners of Camp E. He succeeded. His file was the basis on which many former prisoners were recognized as such. Here too, I was warmly received. To facilitate my work, he had already written down his entire story about his arrest and liberation. With his consent, I am fortunately able to include his testimony in writing in my book. "Belonging to the class of '24, I fell under the law of April 27, 1944, which stated that all men born between 1920 and 1924 were forced to perform voluntary labor for the Germans, either in Belgium or in Germany." "In all newspapers, the notice appeared with the final deadline by which everyone had to report to the employment office. For me, that meant I had to go to Brussels, Naamsestraat." "From the moment I read this article, I decided not to work for the enemy in the slightest." "A few days after the deadline passed, the employment office sent me a letter instructing me to perform forced labor in Belgium and that I had to report within 48 hours to undergo some medical tests." "Since I did not trust any of this, I decided not to go there to work for the enemy; I had to hide. Raids were carried out one after another, and I was able to escape several times. Therefore, I decided to go live with my grandparents in Jette." "On August 2, 1944, I rode with my father by bicycle from Ternat to Jette. We reached the intersection of Gentse Steenweg and Keizer Karel Street in Saint Agatha Berchem, where the road was blocked by two men." "In Kahla, we were all condemned to a time of misery, hard work, hardship, and ultimately—for many of us—death." "'Stop, German police,' they shouted. They asked me for my papers. I gave them my ID, which they took away. In an angry tone, one of them told me that I could now reconsider my stubbornness in Germany. At that moment, I was not really aware of what was happening. I did not take them seriously until one of them pulled me off the bike and threw it to the roadside, while the other took my hands and led me to the car parked a little further away, as if I were the worst criminal. The second person followed us, his pistol aimed at my back." "In the car, I had to sit between two Gestapo agents. Along the entire way through Saint Agatha Berchem, they tormented me and laughed at me. They spoke German to me, but I did not answer, and one of those who arrested me said that I probably spoke English better than German. He thought I might be a member of the resistance." "First, we arrived at Naamsestraat in Brussels, where I had to face a tribunal. They ordered me to empty my pockets and put everything on the table. One of the things I took out of my pocket was an English text that was in my coat pocket. It was a note from my last school test, which I had taken at the end of June. When they saw this text—which I probably did not understand a word of—they assumed I was an English spy and told me that as punishment I would be sent to Germany to work there." "After the interrogation, they sent me to the police barracks across the street de la Couronne in Etterbeek, where they locked me up with other young men. From August 2 to 8, I spent time in great uncertainty; the food we received was very bad, and we slept on straw in a barn." "On the afternoon of August 8, 1944, under the supervision of German soldiers, we had to go to the station in Etterbeek, where a train was waiting to take us to an unknown destination in Germany." "On the platform, the Red Cross gave each of us a food package. German soldiers sat in every car. At the front and rear of the train, machine guns were mounted to prevent escapes. More than once, young men who tried to flee were shot." "Thus, the first convoy set off, and we arrived in a small town called Kahla." "After walking a few kilometers, we reached a large meadow near the village of Eichenberg, close to a forest. Most nights we had to sleep outside because there were not enough barracks. As soon as they were finished, we were divided into groups to work for various companies, where we were obliged to build the largest German underground weapons factory. That was the beginning of a long time full of misery, hard work, hardship, and ultimately—for many of us—death." Franz De Geyndt "In Kahla, we were all condemned to a time of misery, hard work, hardship, and ultimately—for many of us—death." In this text, Frans mentioned that the terrible time in Kahla is known and writes about it; he does not go into too much detail. During my visit, he told me some important things that I especially want to highlight. "I worked as a carpenter and as an employee of a floor layer. I only worked at two different places.""When we were divided into different shifts, I was assigned to build a railway line from Orlamünde to the Walpersberg mountain. First, we had to do some earthworks, and then we had to lay tracks, break stones and pickaxes..." "During the earthworks, we had to load the waste onto 20 wagons of a small train. Always two men per wagon; I paired up with a young man from West Flanders. After two days, the blood ran from my hands. We had to work at a murderous speed while German soldiers shouted at us: 'Come on, man, work! Faster, faster!'" "When one of the wagons was filled, all had to be full, the train could take them away." "The boy I worked with always shouted at me to work faster. I told him that I really wanted to, but I couldn't go faster. I had just come from school and was not used to such hard work." "The boy noticed that I had tobacco and promised to work a little harder if I gave him some tobacco. So I gave him some. Well, this boy worked himself to death here; he made it until December." "The work on the tracks was horrible. It was 20 degrees Celsius below zero and the rails froze to our hands." "From November until the evacuation of the camp, I worked in the bunkers. Together with many other men, I worked on a large concrete machine; it was piecework. For twelve hours straight, we had to pass concrete bags from one to another; all this was under the supervision of German guards." "The food we got in Kahla was not sufficient: one liter of water soup and 200 grams of bread per day. People died like flies." "Fortunately, I had a well-filled bag from home: two boxes, each containing 50 packs of cigarettes and some packs of tobacco. I also had two kilograms of sugar." "The tobacco saved my life in Kahla. I traded most of it with German soldiers for bread. The little extra food saved my life." Franz De Geyndt "In Kahla, we were all condemned to a time of misery, hard work, hardship, and ultimately—for many of us—death." "With the sugar, I saved another person's life. Around December, I had barely touched my sugar and tried to keep it as long as possible. The living conditions in Kahla were very bad, and I thought that the situation would not improve the longer the war lasted." "Around this time, a comrade who slept in the same barrack as I did began to spit blood, which increasingly weakened him. Piece by piece, I gave him the two kilograms of sugar, which restored his strength." Frans also knew someone else who survived in Camp 0. "I know that the boy was sent to Camp 0; I heard nothing from him for a long time. When I came back home, his family came to ask if I knew whether he was still alive. At that moment, I did not dare to say where he had gone; I only told them that he was alive when I last saw him, but we had lost contact. I feared that the boy was dead. A few weeks after my return, he also came home. There was not a spot on his body that had not been injured by dog bites." Gradually, liberation was announced. "At that time, on April 7, 1945, a column to which my friend and I belonged left Camp E." "After walking a few kilometers, we managed to escape our leaders. We let ourselves roll down a hill and pretended to be dead until the column passed us by. We hid in the forest all night. In the morning, we saw small groups of people walking along here." "The next day and the following days, the area was the target of heavy air raids. Allied planes shot at everything that moved. We were terrified to death and begged for shelter at a nearby farm. They thought we were criminals and forbade us from entering any of the houses on the premises. After begging and urging, we were allowed to stay outside the farm in an open building, but at our own risk. They hoped the police would arrest us soon." "We stayed there in great uncertainty and amid the cruelties of war for four days and nights. The farmer's wife or his daughter secretly provided us with turnips so that we would not die of malnutrition." "On April 14, 1945, the first American tanks appeared on the road. That meant the end of our misery." Franz De Geyndt "In Kahla, we were all condemned to a time of misery, hard work, hardship, and ultimately—for many of us—death." "When we saw our liberators, we were overwhelmed with hope and joy. We left our hiding place and ran to the American soldiers and told them what had happened to us." "They gave us bread and other tasty things, but they no longer had time to look after us." "Our interest was to return home as quickly as possible. But how were we to do that? We started to walk." "After three days, we reached a town called Weimar, which was 30 kilometers away from Kahla." "From there, army vehicles took us to the SS barracks in Erfurt. All Belgians who had wandered around in the last days were gathered here and awaited their return to their homeland. Piece by piece, army vehicles came to pick up the former prisoners." "After three weeks, it was our turn. An army plane took us to Verviers, where we were deloused. From there, we were taken by train to North Brussels, where I arrived on May 12, 1945." Franz De Geyndt "If you had to survive on your food ration, you were dead in advance." Karel Hermans On Thursday, August 3, 2000, I arrived at the Hermans' around 1:30 p.m. Charles and Anna received me very kindly. Both suffered terribly from Charles's imprisonment in Kahla: Anna had to do without her husband for nine months. "On the night of August 4 to 5, 1944, I was captured by two Belgian SS men. Until then, I had been in hiding since September 1942 because I had been drafted to perform forced labor in Germany. I did not comply. Between September 1942 and August 1944, I had worked at my parents' and slept at my brother's." "On that particular night, I was sleeping in the house of my wife's parents."Charles and Anna were already married in those days. On the night of August 4th to 5th, Charles was sleeping in the house of his wife's parents. He thought he would be safe there. But the Germans had surrounded the entire block and tore open the side windows. The door was opened. Charles still managed to flee into the barn and hide behind straw. The day before, they had brought in hay and the floor was covered with straw. His father-in-law made a lot of noise to lure the Germans out of the barn, but it was no use. They found Charles lying under the straw and arrested him. "I was taken by bicycle to a truck waiting at the train station in Vlimmeren." "They took me and some others to Turnhout and locked us in an office in the courthouse." "After a few days in Turnhout, we were taken by train to Vandiepenbeekstraat in Antwerp. There were four prisoners, chained in pairs. Through the Resistance, we were informed that the conductor would slow the train at a certain point so we could jump off and escape. But it never came to that. And I don't know how we could have run away: we were chained." Anna remembers the train ride as if it were yesterday. She had been informed that her husband would be taken by train to Antwerp and she was also on the train. "I stayed in Antwerp until August 11. Anna visited me there and brought a suitcase with bread, tobacco, and things." "From Antwerp, a train took us to Etterbeek. While maneuvering in Schaerbeek, the train had an accident. Three wagons were damaged and some people injured. They uncoupled the damaged wagon, then we continued our journey." "During the entire trip to Kahla, we got nothing to eat. We only had the bread we had brought from home." "From the train station in Kahla, we had to walk to the camp and carry our suitcases." When Charles arrived, Camp E was still under construction. The kitchen, the camp leader's barracks, and some of the barracks were already finished. The rest still had to be built. "Upon our arrival, we got food for the first time. But none of the newcomers ate it. In our opinion, it wasn't even fit for pig feed. We gave it to those who had been in the camp longer. They pounced on it like lions and suddenly some things became clear to us." "At first, we received food cards for two weeks. The Germans quickly invalidated them because no one felt like going to work. We got soup and a piece of bread. At the beginning, it was a good piece of bread, but the longer the war lasted, the less we got. Eventually, we were left with only lousy 150 grams of bread." Charles worked in various places. "Until Christmas, I helped build the Russian camp. I had to dismantle the rails when a tunnel was being dug. We were there under the supervision of a very brutal guard. Once he hit me with his club. He said we were working too slowly and saw this as sabotage." The forced laborers had to fill the so-called Berliners (small carts) that transported rock up and down the tunnels... When a tunnel was dug, the rails were dismantled and reinstalled at another tunnel to be built. Karel Hermans "If you had to survive on your food ration, you were already dead in advance." "After that, I was assigned elsewhere for a short time: on the other side of the mountain. I had to haul concrete, sand, and gravel for construction. As soon as the work was finished, they sent us back to the rails, back to that inhuman overseer. We definitely did not want to go back there. We claimed we couldn't find that overseer anymore and so I ended up digging tunnels." Much depended on the guard post. Sometimes you had a humane overseer, but mostly they shouted and cursed like hell. "The work was very hard. I told a German guard that I couldn't manage the work because the food was insufficient. He claimed I got as much as he did, but after a while, he changed his mind. Eventually, he apparently understood and I no longer had to dig tunnels. We had to fill the small carts, which were then pulled out of the tunnel by a small machine." "We worked seven days a week, day or night shifts, the Walpersberg was lit. When planes approached, the lights were dimmed and only the tunnels themselves were still illuminated." The food was completely inadequate. "As the war dragged on, the food rations became smaller and smaller. If you had to survive on what you got, you would have been a dead man in advance. Bit by bit, the supplies from home also decreased. I only had some dry white beans left, which we cooked on the small fire we had in the barracks." Although there was a small fireplace in the barracks, this did not mean there was also something to make fire with. Everyone tried to collect some pieces of wood. At the time Charles worked in the Russian camp, there was not even enough wood left to build the other three barracks. It must have disappeared in many fireplaces and warmed many freezing souls in the cold harsh winter time. "With the farmers, we traded tobacco and shoe polish for food. Whenever we went to work, we tried to leave the column. Most of these groups were insufficiently guarded. Then we went to trade or beg at the farmers. If you ran into a field gendarme, you could get serious trouble. You couldn't talk your way out with the excuse that you worked the night shift. In most cases, you were sent back to the camp. As soon as the overseers were gone, we started running." "After Christmas, many of our comrades died. The food and cigarettes we had from home were used up and so most of us had nothing left to trade. The bodies were collected and taken away by truck. We never heard from them again." Karel Hermans "If you had to survive on your food ration, you were already dead in advance." "The rooms of a barrack were each equipped with twelve bunk beds on which lay a straw sack. The straw was never renewed." "Once we were also deloused. We had to go to a barrack in front of the Russian camp where we could wash, then we were treated with creolin. Only for about a day were we free of lice. It didn't help longer because the whole camp was full of vermin."“The toilets were in a separate barrack and consisted of holes in the floor, but the excrement was everywhere in the camp. If you had the night shift, you were lucky, because during the day we had to clean up the excrement. If you couldn’t find tools for it, you had to use your bare hands.” “At the beginning, we washed our hands in the stream because there was running water. Later, the camp was equipped with small taps. We also had our laundry done by people from Orlamünde for a fee. Someone smuggled our laundry and some soap from home out of the camp to have it washed there.” Gradually, the end of the war approached. “On the evening of April 12, everyone had to leave the camp. Some others and I stayed in the barrack. At midnight, we were discovered during an attack. We could choose: either leave or a bullet between the eyes.” “So we left the camp and spent two nights in the forest. German soldiers who were retreating gave us some bread.” “In the morning, we saw the first American troops coming. We ran towards them, but they sent us back to Camp E, where we stayed another day. Eventually, they came and picked us up with their trucks.” “We were taken to some kind of center where they brought everyone. I don’t remember where it was. They deloused us there and gave us food. The food made me sick: after nine months, practically without food and almost starving, the first proper meal you get is too fatty and too rich.” “Those who had been in a penal camp could leave the center first. They took us to Koblenz, where a provisional bridge over the Rhine was built. We left Koblenz by train to Namur, where they destroyed the Belgian money we still had because various notes were no longer valid.” Karel H “If you had to survive on your food ration, you were already dead in advance.” “From Namur, we took the train to Brussels South. Since the south-north connection did not yet exist in those days, we had to take a tram or walk towards Brussels North Station.” “Since the tram was already packed to the roof, some of my buddies and I decided to walk. We walked along a large boulevard when a lady called us into her house. We entered the house of a lawyer. In our dirty clothes, we had to come in and stay for lunch. The lawyer called the station and asked when the next train would leave and drove us to the station in his car. Via Antwerp, I traveled to Vlimmeren; many people were waiting for me there.” Anna had quickly been informed that Charles was back because he had been seen somewhere. But there were repeated false alarms. Until April 22, 1945. At first glance, he seemed to be in decent condition for Anna. But he wore a thick wool hat and a thick coat. Only when he took off his things did she see how terribly thin he was. Charles was 1.83 m tall but weighed only 60 kilos. “In Kahla, I was lucky not to become seriously ill because that could have meant my death. At home, I got sick from the food; I had a serious gastrointestinal catarrh.” “Fourteen days after my return home, my doctor told me that something had to change, otherwise I would die. I was a wreck and very weak.” Like many others, Charles still thinks about the terrible time in Kahla. He can never forget it. Since 1986, he and his wife have participated in the annual memorial trip to Kahla.