"Landsberg,
29.04.1945
This morning my wife and I tried to get into the train
station. We were refused entry by an American guard. As we were leaving the
station, an American patrolman arrested me and led me to a truck near the Lech
Bridge and loaded me onto it. There were already 10 – 12 men on it. More men
followed, then the truck, with American soldiers in the back, drove off. We
didn't know where we were going. The truck drove towards Kaufering, on to
Hurlach, then turned left into the concentration camp where the Jews had
previously been housed. We all thought we would be the prisoners now. But
things turned out differently. There were already men at work digging a large
pit in the camp. We new arrivals now had to collect the dead Jews in the camp.
When the dead Jews in the camp had been placed in the pits – another one had
been dug in the meantime – with the Jews already lying there (there were very
many), we were led to the pit near the Kaufering-Hurlach railroad embankment. A
large number of dead Jews were lying there. They were supposed to have been
killed by German airmen. A desolate picture and the strong smell of corpses.
The Jews were also carried to the collection point near the pits. Two men
always had to carry a corpse, at first without any makeshift means. Once, when
I came to the pit with my helper, I heard the supervisor in charge of the
graves shout: 'We learned that from the Germans!' He
was absolutely right. In the afternoon we changed jobs. I came to the graves in
the second pit. Soon about 100 farmers from the surrounding area appeared and
had to stand in front of the dead Jews. A high American officer – it may have
been a high official of the American administration – appeared and gave a
speech in American; an American soldier standing next to him translated
sentence by sentence into German: We have sent you here as representatives of
the surrounding villages so that you can see how the Germans have raged here.
Take note of this and pass on what you have seen and heard to your relatives
and friends what the Germans have done here. We want a peace in which Germany
may rise again. The farmers took note of this. During the speech, the peasants
repeatedly shouted 'Pooh!' at the Nazi government during the informative
explanations. Finally, the camp leader who was in charge of the camp was
presented. Then the farmers were shown the Jews’ accommodation so that they
could see the appalling conditions in which the Jews were housed during their
six years of suffering.
We then continued digging until about 4 o’clock in the
afternoon. Before being transported to Landsberg by truck, we were instructed
about the precautions to be taken because of the danger of epidemics. At about
6 o’clock in the evening I arrived at my daughter’s apartment, completely
exhausted by what I had seen and heard and by the extraordinarily hard work.
That was just one day of the gruesome events, the Jews had
been doing this for almost 6 years with a completely inadequate diet and the
worst possible housing.
Joseph Hackelsperger"
Translated and reproduced with the kind permission of
"Themenhefte Landsberger Zeitgeschichte", Heft 2: Todesmarsch und
Befreiung – Landsberg im April 1945: Das Ende des Holocaust in Bayern
Joseph Hackelsperger was a senior railroad clerk at the
station in Landsberg am Lech. He was one of the honorary leaders of the
Landsberg Red Cross. His experiences on April 29, 1945, gave him a terrible
shock and he died in 1946 at the age of 59. A few weeks after the liberation,
surviving concentration camp prisoners and gave him food, as he had often given
them bread and other things that were important to them during track construction
work under dangerous circumstances. This letter was left to the Citizens
Association Landsberg by Mr. Hackelsperger’s daughter.
