They were shooting people two meters away from me

The town Schönheide was the first stop on the death march from the Lengenfeld concentration camp that set out on April 13, 1945. The inmates slept under the open sky on a field the temperature being a few degrees below zero. František Wretzl remembers that a commando of inmates from Zwickau joined the death march which was about a thousand inmates strong. The chiefs of the commandos were according to Mr. Wretzl bestial murderers. “The wake-up call was still in the morning twilight and those inmates who were unable to get up because of illness or fatigue were shot dead. It was about thirty prisoners. Outside the town of Schönheide the road turns toward our borders. When we entered the forest, the commander of the Zwickau commando gave to order to shoot more sick and exhausted inmates. Such killings became daily routine then until the end of the march. Since my boyhood, I had a tendency to faint when looking at blood. So when the murders were taking place in my immediate vicinity - often no more than two meters away from me - everything went black before my eyes and my stomach got stuffed in my throat. At that moment I said to myself that if I allowed myself the luxury of fainting, it would be the very last thing I’d do in my life. I began to breathe deeply, I clenched my fists and dug my nails into his palms. I simply stood the ground and then I got used to.”