….The camp guard who came to open the gate said: “You are free and you can leave.”

All the guards with the dogs that used to stand in every corner had disappeared.  It was all gone, as though it had never been.  It was one of the miracles!  The Russians entered, and we were in such a condition that no one moved, no one went out.  We did not laugh, we were not happy, we were apathetic-and the Russians came.  A general came in, he was Jewish.  He told us that he was delighted, as this was the first camp in which he had found people still alive.  He started to cry; but we didn’t.  He wept, and we didn’t.

Testimony of Bela Braver, born in Poland, 1913, deported to Auschwitz and liberated at Lichtewerden, Czechoslovakia, by the Red Army

The Anguish of Liberation, Testimonies from 1945, eds. Yehudit Kleiman and Nina Springer-Aharoni