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.
14 Sunday. We also have to work on Sundays. At lunch time and at night we received some soup.
There also Italians and Russians in the lager.
15 Monday. After 1 hour at work I reported myself sick. Received bread and soup.
I reported myself sick, however I am not really sick.
16 Tuesday. Still reported as being sick. Bread and soup.
17 Wednesday. Back to work. Bread soup and some sausage.
Approx. 40 men escaped from this lager.
18 Thursday. Willem (someone in the same room with me in this lager) talked about trying to escape from this lager. Reported sick for the afternoon and completed our planning for the escape. At night Willem, myself and another person (can't remember who) crawl through a small hole in the barbed wire perimeter and later during the night we took a tram to (what we thought a place on the Dutch border) Bochum.
NB. We might have had a mix-up here, there were other placed with a name starting with Boch... .
19 Friday. Walking in deep snow and rubble from the bombardments through a town and we decided that because of it getting very dark to sleep in an underground air-raid shelter until 8am the following morning.
We arrange somehow to get some bread and coffee.
NB. Amazingly, during this time we were not confronted with any problems!
20 Saturday. We brazenly buy tickets and take a train that will take us to Bocholt (the correct Boch...!!) on the Dutch border. We arrived there at 7:30pm (the journey took much longer than we had planned because of the chaos caused by bombing of the railway) in the dark. A lady from the station inquired what we were doing there gave us some coffee. We told here a story about getting separated from our guards because of the confusion during the bombings but that we were waiting to be escorted back to the Netherlands. She told us that she would arrange for us to sleep somewhere.
Memo.
She came back with some men in uniform and with shields on their chests (NVS???) and they took us to some sort of a camp where we got some food and beds to sleep in. However, in the morning we were thrown in the back of a lorry and taken to a heavy guarded camp with about 100 inmates.
