5.+Liberation

Liberation As the Russians neared Auschwitz,liquidation began, and large groups of prisoners were forced to walk all night. Solomon left the camp on January 18, 1945, and nine days later the camp itself was liberated. Solomon however, was already gone and was forced to go through another 5 months of terror. Riding for two days by train Solomon was taken to Gross-Rosen. It was here that he was forced into a shed along with 2,000 men, with only a slice of bread in the evening along with a cup of watered down coffee. When he initially entered the camp, he was separated from one of his closest companions. Solomon had met a rabbi from Sosnoweic when they had all been forced to leave Auschwitz. Solomon helped the Rabbi survive by sheltering him in the tailor barrack and some fellow prisoners would hide him during roll call in the morning, and then help him leave in the evening. Radasky connected to his parents through the Rabbi, because sometimes in the morning he would come and say Kaddish for his parents; a prayer that is said 3 times a day for 11 months after the passing of a parent. For months he remained there, until he was taken to Dachau only to leave a short while after another selection, on April 26, 1945.

From then until May 1st, the day of his liberation, Radasky was squeezed onto a cattle car with many others and only came to a stop at times to go through another selection and receive more abuse from the Nazi soldiers. Liberation drew closer as bombs began to fall around the trains and onto the nearby train station. It was at 4 am in the morning however that Solomon received true freedom from the oncoming American soldiers. With their German captors arrested, and the American soldiers providing him with food, Solomon for the first time in two years was free. Few survived, as their were bodies everyone piling up in the cattle cars as well as on the ground.



Liberators would set up displaced persons camps for the now free prisoners, in order to help them regain their health and recover from the weak state they were in. Radasky himself went to a camp in Feldafing and received food and clothes from the soldiers. Radasky's stomach having shrunken from the lack of food provided by the Nazis, had to eat only toast and sugar water for two weeks when he came to Feldafing. He recalls spending weeks in the displaced persons camp walking around in just pajamas with no shoes. Feldafing was the first all Jewish displaced persons camp, and acted as a key meeting place for family to find each other, and discover what had happened to their loved ones.

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