The American armed forces entered the villages around Bad Kreuznach and the town itself at March 1945. With this day the war ended for us village people. But what will happen to the scattered soldiers behind the front? I still see the three field gray figures, unarmed, with raised arms under a tree near the main street. A Yank car stopped, two armed soldiers jumped out, their pistols pointed on the three, however, they didn't shoot but told them to enter the car and then they drove away. Where to? Not far from that place, in Bretzenheim area, they already formed a camp for the captured German soldiers .The population knew about the camp very soon. I also had a brother "in the field", like we called the camp that time, and my mother, my sister with her little child and me were worried about him. So I walked to the POW camp at Bretzenheim.
One could easily reach the camp over tracks across the fields even I wasn't the only one which liked to go there. We were very surprised, trusted hardly our eyes, that within a few days hundreds of prisoners stood behind barbed wire. Separate from the men stood even young girls. They were armed forces helpers.
At the gate of the camp stood the American soldiers in casual posture. The Yanks, like we called them, had conversations with us, the "relatives". Some were also willing to pass the food we brought for the prisoners. I asked one of the Yanks whether there would already be lists of the captured German soldiers. He said that I could go with him to the officer tent, he would ask there. We passed the open gate, the captured girls at the left side, I heard that a Yank said to my leader: "do you have a captured girl for the camp?" I was very frightened but my leader said: "No, no"! Then he went into the officer tent, came back and said that there wouldn't be any lists of the prisoners yet.
For approximately one week it was possible to come to the two gates, that one in the south and in the north, to bring food to our soldiers forwarded by kind Yanks; then the gates were closed and it was not allowed to come into the proximity of the gates or the barbed wire any more. This was registered by the population with deep regret because we knew about the need of our soldiers which sat day and night on the free field without any protection against the weather (March, April), starved, sank in the mud, died by epidemics.
However, it was possible for some soldiers to smuggle out a piece of paper with their name on it; if he was a local one, the relatives tried all they can to provide him with food. One day a woman out of our neighborhood showed me a piece of paper written by her husband from camp Bretzenheim and asked me, with tears in her eyes, to bring him a bag of food she prepared. She not even noticed my argument, that it was no longer possible to approach a gate or the barbed wire and the objections of my mother. She cried, that she has eight children, the smallest one year old (we knew it), therefore she could not leave the children. She put down the bag with food and said that she would send me along with her twelve-year-old daughter and since I would have knowledge of English we would find a way to give it to her husband. She left; she didn't had any idea about the conditions inside the camp and at the surrounding. In the meantime thousands were captured and eked out a wretched existence there. How should I find her husband?
In the night I thought for a long time how to approach the camp. The main entrance at the Bretzenheimer street in the south was too dangerous. In the north the camp was close to a village called Winzenheim; we could try it from that point only. The girl came early in the morning and we drove with bicycles to Winzenheim, put them down and went to the secondary road, the boundary between village and camp. On the other side of the street potato and beet fields led to the barbed wire.
In each field was one watch-tower occupied by a guard. Only at this point we could dare it. We walked slowly and silently through a row of beets and approached the next watch-tower. The guard didn't notice us, I think he was asleep. We almost were under the tower when a warning shot was fired. He waked up and saw us standing under his post. I immediately talked to him, pointed at the girl and told him that the girl's father would be in the camp and we would like to bring him food. He blinked sleepily, stretched out and nodded at us. Then he saw that the prisoners stood all together and waited themselves at the inner barbed wire. Scared we looked into the face of the guard and because he said nothing and didn't send us away, I got courageous and called the name of the prisoner searched by us. No answer.
I called once again, beseeching the Yank with my eyes. Again no answer. Then we opened the bag and as fast as we could we threw the bread into the camp. The men caught the breads, thank God there wasn't any scuffle. While running back to the street we shouted "Thank you very much!" to the Yank. We ran as fast as we could and we heard shots but perhaps which wasn't meant for us. We had to cross the trench and a little embankment to the street to be save. But the girl slipped on the embankment, lay below and yelled. I must give me an effort to go back down again, passing the signpost "at death penalty ...", put my hand on the girl's mouth and moved up. Behind the first houses we sat down on the stairs and tried to have a rest.
We couldn't overcome our trembling for a long time.
When we arrived at home the mother of the girl got greeted us anxious and was happy when she saw the empty bag. When we told her the adventure she realized, that we could not act differently. We couldn't make another try. She received no more pieces of paper from the camp either. Her husband survived the captivity in this camp like in further camps, also a labor camp, and got home 1947.
