Reserve your Visit
Online Store
Support Us
1945, Evacuation of Prisoners, Wobbelin, Germany
Yad Vashem Archives, 217/11
From the Testimony of Antonia Rosenbaum:
“One day an American officer came and said: “We very much want to continue to help you but we cannot. The war isn’t over yet, and you have to go home. The moment that he said “home”, it was as though everything came crashing in on me. What is “home”? Where is “home”? Where do I have a home? Who will I go home to? I started to yell: “I don't have a home! I’m not going home” So he told me: “I can’t keep you here.”
I suddenly woke up. For years you are weak, fighting day-to-day, afraid. You don’t have to time to think about normal things – that was so distant. All of a sudden you start to breath, to eat, to recover, and then you wake up an realize what a tragedy [has occurred]. There’s no home, nothing.”(Yad Vashem Archives, 0.33/26427)
In the photograph, a U.S. soldier is evacuating a prisoner from the camp, half supporting him and half dragging. The prisoner is kneeling on the ground, crying, finding difficulty in leaving the camp. Despite the intense desire the prisoners had to return to being free human beings, many feared the moment of evacuation, and even objected to their evacuation. How does Antonia explain the resistance of some liberated prisoners to being evacuated? What is the difficulty she describes?