Eyewitness Testimony Camille Buyck

“Tobacco saved my life in Kahla.” Camille Buyck After visiting Andre Cools this morning in Wingene, I went in the afternoon to Camille Buyck in Tielt. It is not the first time that Camille talks about his time in Kahla; some time ago he also did so for a school project of a neighbor’s boy. “When I was 18, I received a summons for forced labor in Germany, heading towards Kiel.” “I had a friend who was two years younger than me and who voluntarily worked in France. He had scabies when he came back. I spent a lot of time with him, stayed overnight, and caught scabies from him.” “The doctor who conducted the medical checks for the labor service gave me a cream and, more importantly, a one-month delay. One month later, I was supposed to come back. I knew my scabies had healed, but before I went into the doctor’s office, I scratched myself until I was blood red. And again, my departure was postponed for another month.” “Almost a month later, a few days before my departure, I went underground. For two years I hid. During the day I mostly worked for farmers and at night I stayed here and there with a family. Every Saturday I went home to wash my clothes.” “On August 4, 1944, I was working for a farmer; we had to harvest wheat. We also had to harvest in a field near the road. At first, I said I didn’t want to do it because of the risk, but the farmer convinced me to do it. I should not have done it.” “A German and a fascist came across the street. They asked for my name. My name is Buyck, but I told them it was Biebuyck. Of course, they could not find any Biebuyck on their list. The German wanted to leave it at that and let me go, but the fascist disagreed.” “They took me to Tielt; the next day to the commandant’s office and then on to Roeselaere, where I stayed for eight days.” “Tobacco saved my life.” “My family brought me a suitcase with clothes and twelve kilos of tobacco. The tobacco was a mixture of real tobacco and dried, crushed leaves. The tobacco made the difference for me; I could get extra food in Germany for it.” “From Roeselaere we were taken to Etterbeek, where we boarded a train. However, our train had an accident in Schaarbeek.” “In the area around Leuven, three men ran away; two of them escaped and one was caught. The latter fled again in Kahla. About two months later the Germans brought him back. The Nazis had the chance to catch him when he tried to cross the Rhine in a container. He lived for a while in Buchenwald, then they brought him back to camp E. It did not look very good; pieces of flesh had been cut out of his legs.” “Via Weimar – where we stood still for a few hours – we arrived in Kahla at noon.” “It was August 12, 1944.” “We had to march in the heat with our luggage to camp E. Upon our arrival, a German gave a speech. He began to summarize what was forbidden in the camp. In the end, pretty much everything was forbidden; any violation of the rules would be punished by death.” Camille worked there in many different places. “I did all kinds of work; some of it only for a few days.” “For some time I had to build walls together with the Russians.” “I also helped build another camp on the other side of the Saale. We had to get up at 4 a.m. After a two-hour march we arrived at our workplace; every day we crossed the bridge over the Saale twice. At noon we could rest a little (a quarter of an hour), but we did not get any food. Around 6 p.m. we finished our work for the day.” “If the guard thought our work was not done properly, he tore a piece off our food ration card, which meant we only got half the food.” “Around New Year’s Day they handed me over for a while to camp 7. There I also did various jobs.” “For about three nights I had to drill holes on the top of the Walpersberg and also worked one day on the runway.” Camille Buyck “Tobacco saved my life.” “In camp 7 I lost my last 50 grams of Grasrun tobacco. With these 50 grams I bought a sack of potatoes from the supplier who brought food to camp E. Another man and I hid the sack in our barrack. One night the potatoes disappeared. It seemed that the Germans had found them and we had to go to the camp leader. We told him that we had bought them with tobacco, but at first he did not believe me. We were afraid of the punishment. Finally he believed us. We could go, but never saw our potatoes again. We also had to warn him when this supplier came back to the camp. From experience, we prisoners did not do such things; the others were volunteers. Whom would they have believed more?” Tobacco was like gold in Kahla. “After my first six months in Kahla, I still had not lost any weight. I bought the rations of the Russians with tobacco. I don’t know what these people lived on, because for a small piece of tobacco they gave away all their food.” “But in the last three months I had no more tobacco. So I could not get extra food. Those three months were very hard for me and I lost a lot of weight; we only got 150 grams of bread a day.” Camille weighed about 70 kilos when he left Germany. One month after his liberation he weighed 49 kilos. “In Kahla there was an enormous lice infestation, which got worse in the last months. When I put down my scarf, it moved because of the lice.”"One Sunday morning, the entire Camp E was deloused. We had to walk to the Russian camp and take the clothes we still had in our possession with us. In this camp, we first had to wash ourselves, then we received a creolin treatment. It was a painful experience. The clothes were put into an oven and when they came out again, they were thrown onto a pile from which everyone had to find their own things." As the war dragged on longer and longer, the living conditions in Kahla worsened every day. At first, the forced laborers still had a minimum of freedom, but that quickly ended. The food rations that were distributed became smaller and smaller, and they ran out of the tobacco they had brought from home. When it came to health care, the camp was infested with lice, more and more people became sick and were left to die, and the work pressure increased. "Especially in the last three months, many died in Camp E: sometimes more than 25 a day." "The bodies were picked up every day by trucks and, according to rumors, were buried in mass graves or also in the forests." Camille Buyck "Tobacco saved my life." The end was near... "On April 14, we were liberated by the Americans." "Around April 11, everyone had to leave the camp. We marched in columns. It was dark and not a single light was on. We saw the chance to escape and spent the night in a canal." "The next day we went in the direction of the gunfire; we walked all day and in the evening we arrived at a hut filled with straw, where we lay down to sleep." "That night there was a huge battle. In daylight, we saw many people on the street and we went down to see what was happening. The American army had overwhelmed the village. They gave us something to eat." "The six of us walked for three days; on the second day we learned that there was a collection point in Erfurt, in the barracks which we reached on the third day. We were divided there into groups of 30 men each." "A few days later, they told us that those who had been in Camp E could go home earlier. However, we saw the French forced laborers go ahead of us." "Then it was our turn; we marched in columns with 110 trucks that took us to Koblenz, where we crossed the Rhine and were taken by cattle car to Verviers, where we received tickets to Brussels." "Upon arrival in Brussels, I saw a sign saying 'Help repatriate.' I went down there and someone took me home from Roeselaere with his truck." "On May 13, 1945, I finally arrived home, in Tielt." One month after liberation, Camille weighed 49 kilos. He stayed at home for another four to five months before he could go back to work and resume his life. Camille Buyck