Pages of my 1945 Diary
of my incarceration into a German Prison Camp
during WW2 1944-45.
It is now 28956 days ago that I started writing in this little old diary of mine.
Yes, that is now 79 years and 3 months and 11 days ago.
22 Sunday. Get better. (That is what is written)
NB. What was not written down.
When we were admitted I was in a very bad shape. I remember that after a bath, a complete shaved of any hair and a de-lousing session I was placed into a bed under a window where I fell promptly asleep. When I finally woke up it was about a week later. I vaguely remember that at one time there were people around my bed praying and that there were burning candles near my bed. I also vaguely remember that a priest was touching my forehead. I woke up laying under the bed. The reason for that was that during my coma, the artillery fire and impacts were very, very close to the hospital resulting in the windows being blown out and all the glass and debris finishing up in my bed. The janitor so we were told later, who did the bathing and shaving etc., took at one time the wife of the hospital doctor over the road to where they lived and got an arm blown off. The poor guy, a Polish citizen, was previously in that hospital because a leg was blown off.
24 Tuesday. Feeling a bit better. We received Red Cross parcels (I can not remember, were we already liberated?) I can remember that through a feverish haze I overheard some people, who came to visit the other patients, talking about me and saying "He is dead". That is when I really tried to come back to life!
28 Saturday. I am now a few weeks with ?? in a hospital. It is good, but I would very much like to go back home. They tell me that Holland is under water, also near Rotterdam.
