Surviving the Holocaust: The Testimony of Walter Brauner
Introduction: Walter Brauner
The story of Walter Brauner, born in 1922 in Brno, Moravia, offers a poignant and deeply human lens through which one can examine the broader currents of 20th-century history. This story map explores his life, highlighting the importance of individual perspectives for understanding historical events. We aim to illuminate how his life was entangled with and shaped by the various systems he found himself in – from the Jewish community in Brno, to the oppressive mechanisms in the Minsk ghetto and the brutal realities in several concentration camps, and finally to the numerous post-war migrations that shaped his later life.
This story map was created as part of a joint course at the University of Regensburg and Charles University in Prague, taught by Prof. Dr. Kateřina Králová, Dr. Jacqueline Nießer, and Ph.Dr. Karin Roginer Hofmeister. The course was financially supported by the Bayerisch-Tschechische Hochschulagentur (BTHA, Bavarian Czech Agency for University Cooperation), Zentrum Erinnerungskultur (Center for Commemorative Culture) and the Claims Conference. The course explored the dual narratives of collective guilt and victimhood related to World War II in Czech-German contexts. The methodology for creating this story map is rooted in oral history; our primary source of information is an interview with Walter Brauner from January 16, 1996, conducted by Betty Levinson in Valley Village, California (USA), which can be found in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and consists of 5 tapes.
Contemporary witnesses can provide an exceptional view on historical events – but they should not be understood as unaltered living history. New life experiences and personal biases will influence the way a witness tells their story; especially, when they, like Walter Brauner, look back over 50 years into the past. When working with contemporary witness interviews, this issue should be acknowledged. One important task of an oral historian is to contextualize the witness’s story with research findings. Combined, the two sources offer a powerful personal account of historical events.
Carlos Bueno Herranz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid/University of Regensburg), Magda Mazurek (University of Regensburg), Kira Rettinger (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich/Charles University, Prague), Davina Sienkiewicz (Wheaton College/University of Regensburg), July 2024.
Fig. 1: Title page: Walter Brauner in 1946.
Fig. 2: Walter Brauner during his interview, January 16, 1996.
1922–1941: Walter Brauner's Early Life in Brno
Family & Childhood
Walter Brauner's family life was fraught with instability. His mother, Berta Hermanová, separated from his father, Julius Bräuner, a shoemaker and compulsive gambler, when Brauner was just three years old. Berta remarried a Christian, but her new husband was an alcoholic with inconsistent employment, contributing to the family's financial and emotional strain. His frequent drunkenness led to bouts of cruelty, often leaving Berta to chase after him for money. Amidst this tumultuous environment, Brauner’s mother struggled to provide for her family, working tirelessly to make ends meet. Brauner had two full siblings, an older brother, Ernst (born in 1920), and a younger sister, Gertrude (born in 1924), as well as two half-sisters, Erica (born in 1926) and Gusti (born in 1928), from his mother's second marriage. The household was cramped and impoverished, with the family living in a small rented flat with only basic amenities. Brauner’s childhood was far from idyllic. He often recalled having nothing, struggling with poverty, and dealing with the absence of a stable father figure.
Fig. 3: Walter Brauner (right) with his mother, brother Ernst and sister Gertrude in 1924.
Education & Work Life
Brauner’s education began in regular Czech public schools. Then he spent a year at the Jewish Gymnasium. However, the financial needs of his family forced him to leave school early. At around 14, he began to work in a textile store, where he learned the trade and attended trade school twice a week. Brauner was a vital support to his mother, as he handed over most of his earnings to help sustain the family. Later, he worked in a movie house as a projectionist which was more appealing to him. His mechanical inclination found a perfect outlet in this role, and he enjoyed the technical aspects of running the film projector. However, his employment there was short-lived due to the Nazi occupation in 1939, which barred Jews from working in public spaces.
The Jewish Religious Community (JRC) in Brno
The Jewish Religious Community in Brno played a crucial role in Brauner’s childhood. In 1921, one year before Brauner was born, the Jewish population was 10,866; by 1938, the year before the German occupation, 12,000 Jews lived in Brno. In the following years, keeping accurate statistics was impossible due to the numerous migrations of the Jewish population in Europe. According Brauner's memories, the Jewish Religious Community organized celebrations for holidays like Hanukkah and provided essential support, including clothing and a daily soup kitchen. Brauner himself probably visited either the public kitchen on Ponávka Street 2 or the Old age home on Mlýnská Street 27, which also served as a kitchen for the poor. The community also provided educational opportunities. At the time, it was a unified Jewish School on the Hybešova Street 43, founded in 1919, which comprised 5 forms of primary school and 8 forms of ‘Reformed Real Gymnasium’. Brauner states that he attended a Jewish kindergarden and spent a year at the Jewish Gymnasium. But his involvement in the Jewish community extended beyond education. It provided him essential support and a sense of belonging. He was a member of several Jewish youth organizations, including Czechoslovak nationwide sports club Makkabi formed in 1919 in Brno and HeHalutz, an umbrella organization of the pioneering Zionist youth movement, organizing vocational training in agriculture. These places offered a place for Jewish youth to gather, share experiences, and foster a strong sense of identity. In early 1939, Brauner participated in Hakhshara, a program designed to prepare young Jews in agriculture, horticulture, practical trades and home economics as a prerequisite for immigration to the British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. This training was part of the Zionist movement's efforts to establish kibbutzim in Israel. His time in Hakhshara was a mix of hope and disappointment, as his dream of emigrating to Palestine was thwarted by failed paperwork. He remained in Brno while others made their way.
Map: Jewish institutions in Brno before the German occupation; click the marked points for information.
Brauner’s memories of the Jewish community in Brno were very positive. Despite the hardships at home, the sense of camaraderie and mutual support within the community provided a refuge from the external hostilities. His Jewish friends and the activities organized by the community were vital in shaping his identity and providing him with a semblance of normalcy amidst the growing turmoil.
“Because I belong to the Jewish Community all the time (...), we had our place to go (...) for the afternoons, after school. So I was never lonely, because I was with my friends together always.”
His early encounters with antisemitism were relatively mild but indicative of the growing hostility Jews faced. At school, he dealt with taunts from non-Jewish classmates, particularly silly farmer’s boys, but he responded with a fighter's spirit and beat them up. This resilience was partly nurtured by his involvement in the Jewish community and youth organizations, which instilled a sense of belonging and self-worth:
“Because I was always belonging to the Jewish group, so I had a feeling that I was not a piece of trash like they thought.”
Nazi Occupation of Brno
The occupation of Brno by the Nazis occurred on 15th of March 1939 as part of the broader German occupation of Czechoslovakia, establishing the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Shortly after, the Great Synagogue, a symbol of Jewish life in Brno, was burned down by the Nazis with the help of Czech fascists in the night of March 16 to 17, 1939. Later on, Jews were systematically deprived of all civil rights. Brauner’s description of this period is one of profound change and escalating danger. The German occupation transformed everyday life in Brno into a series of restrictions and threats. By 1940, Jews were forced to wear yellow stars, couldn’t shop or walk on the sideway at the same time as Christians and were subjected to increasing public humiliations. Brauner also remembers violence committed by Volksdeutschen, local ethnic Germans. They had become emboldened by the propaganda spread through newspapers like Der Stürmer, a German weekly affiliated with the NSDAP. In November 1941, the persecution of Jews in Brno culminated in deportations to ghettos and concentration camps.
Fig. 4: Hitler in Brno, 1940.
For Walter Brauner, the occupation led to his first experience with forced labor: He was sent to a vocational training camp in Česká Lípa (located in the German-annexed Sudetenland). From early to late 1940, he had to work hard on the fields. Despite the harsh conditions, the work provided food, shelter, structured work and basic provisions – for Brauner, it even served as a temporary escape from the difficult environment at home:
“I didn’t consider it as a hardship. I consider it as a vacation, as a place (...) to get away from my home. It couldn’t be anything better for me. Because I had a hard time at home. We were very poor. So there, I had enough food and everything was right.”
November 1941: Deportation from Brno
1941–42: Decision for large scale deportation
In June 1941, after NS-Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the persecution of Jews reached a phase of new intensity. In mid-August, SS and police units initiated the systematic mass murder of Jews in the newly occupied territories, and in the early 1942 the “Wannsee-Konferenz” was organized, where the “final solution for the question of European Jews” – in other words, the genocide – was coordinated all over Europe. Already before the conference, the Gestapo had been preparing the deportation of Jews. From early November on, per transport 1,000 individuals were gathered in “Sammelplätzen” (“assembly points”) and then brought to ghettos in the East by train; the first destinations were Riga and Minsk. Between November 8, 1941 and January 25, 1942, 30,000 Jews from the Ostmark (formerly Austria) and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were gathered in Vienna and Prague and deported.
Map: House of the Wannsee Conference near Berlin.
Fig. 5: Letter by Hermann Göring to Reinhard Heydrich from July, 1941, concerning the "final solution" of the Jewish question.
Deportations from Brno
This included deportations from Brno. In total, 10,067 people were transported to ghettos, 820 of which were children. Most of these transports went to Terezín/Theresienstadt; only the first deportation under the letter “F” on November 16, 1941 brought 1,000 Jews to the ghetto in Minsk. Walter Brauner was one of these people.
The deportation in Walter Brauner's memories
He remembers how the Germans knocked on the door in the middle of the night, how he was told to pack a small suitcase with necessities for a week – and how only one of his sisters, Gertrude, came with him. His mother, married to a Christian, his grandmother and his half-sisters stayed behind in his childhood home. Walter and Gertrude Brauner were brought by streetcar to the assembly in a school that had been confiscated prior. During the following night, the group was taken to the station and taken away in wagons.
“But these were not cattle wagons. These were the regular. So it was not – didn’t look so bad, you know? You didn’t know what’s going on.”
Two days later, the train stopped. Brauner and his companions did not know where. He vividly remembers seeing the sign “Arbeit macht frei” – which is why Brauner believed that they passed by the concentration camp Auschwitz (he thought it to be “Birkenau,” which would mean the camp Auschwitz II, but actually the gate with this inscription can be found in the main camp, Auschwitz I). Looking at the deportation routes from 1942 to 1944, where Auschwitz played an important role as a transit stop, it does not seem unlikely that Walter Brauner’s deportation train stopped here for one day. Then, they were moved again – until they arrived in Minsk.
Map: Walter Brauner's deportation route according to his testimony.
1941–43: Ghetto Minsk
Ghettos in Eastern Europe
With the occupation of Poland and parts of the Soviet Union, the German forces established ghettos all over Eastern Europe with the purpose of concentrating the Jewish population in one place. When the decision for the big scale deportation of Jews from the West to the East was made, the ghettos in Minsk, Riga and Litzmannstadt (Łódź) were “prepared” for their arrival – the Germans made space for them by murdering the local Jews that had been brought there. In Minsk, the SS murdered 7,000 Jews on November 7, and another 5,000 on November 20, 1941. Following his description, Walter Brauner must have arrived in Minsk only a few days later; it had been around a week since he left Brno on November 16. In hindsight, even considering that he was yet to go through several concentration camps in Poland and Germany, he recalls the two years he spent in the ghetto as the most dreadful:
"That was the worst time of my life. Every day they were so cruel, brutal. Not only that you had to work, but you’d get beaten. And you – you never knew when you get shot and you never knew when you – you know, it was just a terrible, terrible life that you have nothing to say about your life. Not one minute of your life is worth nothing. So to them, it didn’t make a difference."
Fig. 6: Ghettos in occupied Europe, 1939–1944.
Cruelty & Mass Murder
When Brauner talks of cruelties committed by the guards, they were not only of German origin, but also Ukrainian, Lithuanian or Belarusian – “all the people who […] like to beat up the Jews, so they volunteered to beat us and killed us, murdered us” (Tape 2, 4:00–4:09). He also remembers personally being beaten together with his cousin by an Austrian member of the SS, Obersturmführer Schmiedel, for lighting a fire for freezing older people. Schmiedel was also notorious for just randomly shooting Jews while walking through the ghetto. When Brauner lived in the ghetto, he also faced evidence of the mass extermination. He only found out later that the closed wagons he saw and wondered about, as they were normally open, were used to murder Jews with exhaustion gas. When sorting through luggage that had been brought to Minsk from elsewhere, he asked himself – where are all these people from other places, like Belgium and France? He could not know that they had already been sent to extermination camps in Poland and had probably been murdered. Many times, the ghetto was closed while he was on a Kommando (working brigade) for so-called Aktionen, when the SS would liquidate the weaker population that had been left behind. In one of these Aktionen, Brauner lost most of his remaining family. Due to living close to the Jewish cemetery, he also witnessed what happened to the children of the ghetto:
"I saw it over and over. They took the children and the marched them five, five. And they gave them each one a lollipop, a candy something, and sing. And they marched them right out to the cemetery and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They murdered everything, everybody. They didn’t have any use for children."
Terrible Living Conditions & Illnesses
Due to the horrible living conditions, the lack of clothes and food, the cold and poor hygiene, illnesses were always present in the ghetto – but medicine was not. Whether one survived was determined by their bodies own strength or the circumstances, as the SS killed many of the Jews that were too weak. One of these many was Walter Brauner’s sister, Trude.
I had typhoid. And I had pneumonia, pleurosis. I survived. My sister couldn’t. […] They put her – they threw her out of the window when they cleaned up. [...] They threw Trudi out of the window. Alive!
Fig. 7: Map of the Minsk ghetto; as Brauner mentions living close to the Jewish cemetery, he probably lived around Kolektornaya St.; his sister Gertrude was murdered in the Jewish Hospital (JH) a few blocks up.
Forced Labor
Having to do hard labor in horrible conditions was Brauner’s main occupation in the ghetto. The Jews that were able to work had to stand in line on the Appellplatz and were picked to go on Kommandos (work brigades) outside and inside of the ghetto. Brauner dealt with many different kinds of work, like cleaning up debris left by bombings, cleaning up snow from rails or taking care of dead bodies. With the ice-cold climate in winter, the work was especially difficult, as there was no protective clothing provided – all the inhabitants of the ghetto could possibly find were the clothes of people that died, which were infected with lice. Brauner remembers how crucial it was to be lucky enough to be assigned to the right work group – for example when he spent a few weeks working in the opera house that provided protection from the cold. By daring to take the initiative of suggesting to an SS man that he could watch the geese around the ghetto, Brauner also managed to spend a summer without having to do harder work, with the advantage of being able to steal bread intended for the animals, which was much better than the food provided to the Jews.
Fig. 8: Jews clearing snow in the Minsk station, February 1942.
1943–44: Concentration Camps in Poland
Lublin
Following the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto in the fall of 1943, “after the summer close” (Tape 2, 28:14–28:16), as he puts it, Walter Brauner was transported from Minsk on a cattle train with an estimated one hundred other interned men. The prisoners were not informed of where they were going, and packed in “like sardines" (Tape 3, 9:31–9:33). There was no room for anyone to sit or lie down. Over the course of the seven day train ride, Brauner estimates 20 to 30 people died. When a prisoner would pass away, the others would move the bodies to the periphery of the car, stacking them up to make space for those remaining to eventually be able to sit or lie down. When it rained, people would fight “like cats and dogs” (Tape 3, 3:47–3:48) to get to the rainwater that would leak into the car. After seven grueling days in the train car, they arrived at the concentration and extermination camp Lublin-Majdanek in Poland. Construction of Majdanek began in the fall of 1941, and over the course of its three years as a camp over 130,000 people were imprisoned there, 80,000 of whom were murdered or died due to the abysmal living conditions. The population of the camp consisted of prisoners from 30 countries, primarily Poland.
Fig. 12: Jews being loaded onto cattle wagons in a transit point in Warsaw; Brauner's transport must have been similar.
Weakened by the starvation and inhumane conditions, the prisoners fell out of the car once the doors were opened. To increase their cruelty and inhumane treatment, the SS officers would stop the transports above hills or on higher ground, so the prisoners would fall further down, and Brauner recounts rolling down a hill once he fell out of the transport. Any prisoners who were strong enough to move were marched two kilometers to the concentration camp, surrounded by electrified barbed wire; they were arranged into rows of five and volunteers with special skill sets were pulled out of the line. Brauner’s previous experience as a projectionist gave him the knowledge necessary to step forward as a mechanist, a valuable expertise for the Nazis. Those who came forward for office jobs, or the “easy jobs” (Tape 3, 6:27), as Brauner puts it, were immediately sent to the gas chambers, while those who the Nazis found useful were taken to the showers. Brauner's arrival in Lublin marked his first time in a concentration camp (Konzentrationslager). After moving through the showers, he was given a striped uniform. He also mentions that it was there that he first saw people being demarcated using a system of stars and triangles:
“In Minsk we didn’t have it, you know, we had our own, whatever we wore from home. I never saw that before, not in the ghetto. In Lublin was the first time we got our striped uniform… And we got a Jewish, you know a yellow [star], because there were different ones in the camp later, you know.”
Fig. 13: Table with colored marks for inmates in concentration camps.
Budzyn
After moving through the showers and being uniformed in Lublin, Brauner was put back on a transport, this time for only two days, to Budzyn, where a labor camp had already been created in the summer of 1942. When Brauner arrived there in the fall of 1943, 3,000 prisoners were living within the camp; on October 22, Budzyn was officially declared a concentration camp.
In Budzyn, the prisoners were forced to sleep in former horse stables. The beds were stacked four high with two prisoners sleeping head to toe. A thin layer of bug-infested straw served as the only padding between them and the wooden boards of the bunks. Every morning, the prisoners were given access to a washroom which had only cold water, before going to the kitchen barracks where they were given hot water with chicory in place of coffee and a small serving of bread. Occasionally, they were given milk to mix into their drinks or a small bit of jam for their bread. After their measly breakfast, Brauner and the other prisoners were marched two to three miles to a factory where Brauner was taught to work on the wings of Heinkel planes, also called the night bomber. Work in the factory was grueling, with prisoners being forced to work from seven in the morning with little to no breaks. When prisoners were granted permission to go to the latrine, they would be timed, and when the monitoring officers deemed a prisoner had taken too long, they would be targeted with a water hose. If a worker broke or damaged a tool, the supervising officers would use whips, with a standard punishment of 25 lashes. Still, despite the constant abuse and inhumane conditions he faced, Brauner says he knew he was “safe” as long as he could work, because the Nazis needed the labor.
Fig. 14: Plane Heinkel He 111, Belgium/France 1940.
According to Brauner, the SS officers did only the highest levels of monitoring in the camp, otherwise the majority of the monitoring and enforcement was outsourced to guards from Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and other neighboring countries. Brauner spoke Czech, German, and Russian, and his ability to understand and communicate in so many languages gave him the advantage of being able to understand where the guards were coming from. In the evening, prisoners were given small amounts of soup, but as they stood waiting in the kitchen barracks, the supervising officers would randomly shoot into the line, murdering prisoners seemingly purely for their own enjoyment. At night, the barracks would be locked and a vat was placed in the middle of the barracks for prisoners who needed to use the bathroom. Brauner recounts how one night, as he was leaving the latrine vat to return to his bunk, the supervising officers opened the doors to the barrack and began randomly shooting the prisoners still standing there. Some fell into the vat of excrement after being shot, drowning in their own waste. Others who had been shot died throughout the night, suffering prolonged and painful deaths. For Brauner, these experiences led to him holding a special hatred for the Ukrainians who guarded the camp, saying that what they did was far worse than what he ever witnessed from the SS officers. On Sundays, prisoners were not brought to the factories, but were instead forced to clean the barracks and latrines, resulting in a grueling schedule of forced labor seven days a week with far too little sustenance.
In Budzyn, Brauner had his first experience with Jews who had held onto their religion despite enduring torture and dehumanization at the hands of the Nazis. Some had managed to keep religious items with them which they guarded closely, and many even attempted to continue following their religious practices including fasting on Yom Kippur. Brauner describes his shock and confusion at this, given that they were already being starved, and emphasizes he viewed efforts to survive far more important than following religious practices:
“They’re crazy. They’re dying and they believe in God. What is there to believe in? You will be gone tomorrow, you try that you survive today.”
Mielec
At the end of 1943, Brauner was transported again from Budzyn to Mielec, where he was then put to work on another section of the Heinkel. Before the war, the town of Mielec had a Jewish population of approximately 3,500, accounting for nearly half of the town’s population. On September 8, 1939, the German forces occupied Mielec, immediately seizing Jews for forced labor. Few records from the concentration and labor camp there remain, as it was relatively small and only existed for a short time, with contradictory information about the founding and eventual liquidation of the camp. Records show a camp was most likely officially established in March of 1942, and it is estimated that between 800 and 2,000 prisoners were held there at a time.
In Mielec, Polish civilians were employed alongside the interned people which meant they were given marginally better living and working conditions. The bunks in the barracks were not stacked as high, which Brauner specifically recalls as a good thing because the prisoners were so weakened they were unable to climb to the higher beds any longer. Every interned person was shaved from head to toe which controlled the spread of lice and bed bugs, leading to more sanitary living conditions. The food in the barracks also improved and the prisoners were now served real coffee in the mornings, along with a higher ration of bread. For lunch and dinner, they were again served soup, but this time it was slightly thicker and more filling. To distinguish them from the civilians, all interned people were tattooed with a large “KL,” standing for "Konzentrationslager."
Fig. 15: Walter Brauner shows his tattoo, 1996.
Brauner's time in Mielec was shorter than his time in Budzyn, only around 6–8 months, and in 1944, he was moved again, this time Wieliczka. According to official records, Brauner was most likely transported on July 22, 1944. The allies were gaining ground and Brauner believed “the Germans smell it was coming to an end” (Tape 3, 25:14–25:17). The torture from the Nazis would ease the closer they felt to defeat. Brauner speculated they did this to try and reduce the evidence of guilt that could be found against them.
Wieliczka
Wieliczka had been the location of a Jewish ghetto for most of the war, and a camp was only established there around March of 1944. 1,700 prisoners were brought to the site to carry out forced labor. Brauner was there only for 3–4 months, where he worked underground in a salt mine. During this time he never saw the sun. The mines were incredibly damp and prisoners were not given a change of clothes. These living conditions caused Brauner to have extreme flare ups of rheumatoid arthritis; he recounts barely being able to move. At the end of his time in Wieliczka, due to the advancement of the Russians Brauner was transported out of Poland to Flossenbürg, near the Western border of the German territory.
Map: Brauner's way through the concentration camp system, 1943–45.
1944–45: Flossenbürg
Concentration Camp Flossenbürg
The concentration camp in Flossenbürg had already been established in 1938; unlike in the camps in Poland, the men imprisoned were mostly persecuted for political reasons or because they were not deemed part of a 'healthy' German society. Only in 1940, the first Jewish inmate was registered. In the last two years of the war, more and more Jewish prisoners were brought from camps that were dissolved in the East; on February 28, 1945, there were 14,824 men held captive in Flossenbürg - one of them was Walter Brauner. His journey to Flossenbürg was challenging; once more, he was transported in a cattle train with no facilities such as toilets or windows. This time, he could observe German civilians looking at the train and wondering about the prisoners, but they did not show any willingness to help them:
"[W]e passed through different German towns. And I remember, we stopped at some of the stations, railroad stations, even though it was on the third or the fourth section, you know, the platforms. There were lots of German people, civilians, getting off other trains, civilians and the other trains, and that – and the only what they could see from us, of course, was only sticking out the hand or sticking out the head. [...] So I knew at that time – and the Germans saw us. And they pointed, and they made fingers, and this, who is this? In a way, because I understood German, said well, what is this? What is this? So I don't know. I had a feeling that lots of the German civilians there in the towns and that, they didn't even know what's going – what's happening. Why the cattle wagons? Why are there people in there? But, you know, nobody did anything about it. Because, should they? No, it was not their business."
Upon arrival at Flossenbürg, the prisoners had to walk up a hill to reach the camp. Brauner described the conditions there as better compared to previous camps; there were only 3 bunk beds that were separated by a couple of feet. The prisoners were also provided with straw mattresses and thus did not have to sleep directly on the boards. Accoring to Brauner it was “nice and clean, was really kind of a German order” (Tape 4, 3:17–3:21), much nicer than in Poland. In Flossenbürg, Brauner for the first time met civilian, non-Jewish prisoners from Germany and other countries, wearing different triangles to show their classification, such as "Bibelforscher" – a term used for Jehovah’s witnesses – but also well known people like politicians.
Fig. 16: Flossenbürg Camp, 1945–46.
Forced labor in Flossenbürg
According to Brauner's memory, prisoners were not subjected to physical beatings inside the camp, only when carrying out forced labor outside. The hardest part of life in Flossenbürg was being forced to incessantly work in the stone quarry. In contrast to the conditions of the camp, the quarry was a site of profound horror: Failure to work resulted in death, and the insufficient food rations frequently led to fatalities due to overwork and starvation.
"And this stone quarry was hell. Like, we had it nice inside, but God forbid, when we went out and worked."
Fearing for his life, Brauner used his previously gained knowledge and asked for a position as a mechanic working for Messerschmitt – an arms company that had relocated part of their production to Flossenbürg in early 1943 – where the conditions were less harsh than in the quarry. At the end of the war, around 5,000 prisoners were working for Messerschmitt. Due to his experience with working for Heinke in Poland, Brauner was transferred there after only two days. There he worked on the engines of Messerschmitt planes. For a short amount of time, he was transferred with a small group to a subcamp to work in a bauxite mine. Here, the absence of SS guards resulted in relatively better treatment by their guards, mainly employees of the Organisation Todt, a civil and military engineering organisation, and army reservists. Shortly after, they were returned to Flossenbürg. The day when they were sent back, he and some of his friends attempted to hide under a bunk in order to escape, but he was discovered after the counting. Fortunately, he faced no repercussions.
Fig. 17: Prisoners working in the stone quarry in Flossenbürg .
Fig. 18: Concentration camp prisoners working in a Messerschmitt factory, probably late 1943, location unknown.
Death March & Escape
After his return to Flossenbürg, he was then forced to endure a death march. The evacuation of Flossenbürg started in the beginning of April; around 40,000 people were transported out of Flossenbürg and its subcamps to hide evidence of the cruel system of extermination and concentration camps. Initially, Brauner and his fellow inmates were put on a cattle train, but the journey was consistently interrupted by Allied air attacks. The prisoners removed their uniforms and raised them – as it was a cattle train, there was no window and no roof – to signal to the pilots that they were prisoners, and after that, they mostly shot at the engine of the train and avoided hitting the wagons. Still, some of the prisoners were hit when they did not get off the train quickly enough to hide. After three days, the SS forced them to continue their journey by foot; their destination was the concentration camp in Mauthausen in Austria. Basically no food was provided, Brauner remembered having one potato, and SS officers would shoot those unable to keep pace. First, they were walking at daytime, later only during nighttime.
"So we started to walk. And we walked. And we walked, days. And the German public saw us. And the German public didn't do nothing."
Seizing an opportunity, he asked an army reservist – they were not as cruel as the SS – to allow him to go behind a tree to relieve himself, and managed to run away through the forest and to hide in a barn after a few hours. Walter Brauner remembered that his escape must have around April 18 or 19, 1945, a date he remembers precisely because it was two days before Hitler's birthday which was openly celebrated. When he saw American tanks passing by, Brauner came out of hiding and encountered a farmer who provided him potato soup. He then approached the US forces and explained his situation and the horrors he survived. Here he met Staff Sergeant Jack Giacomo, who ordered the soldiers to give him food. Brauner himself offered to join the forces and help in the kitchen, and as he could speak 5 languages, he was able to work as an interpreter to talk to prisoners of war. He stayed with them until the end of the war. When the unit he had joined left for the US to be sent to Japan, where the war was still going on, they offered him to come with them, but he remained in Europe to see if he had any familiy left in Czechoslovakia. He crossed the border and arrived in Pilsen, where he was also able to work for US troops as interpreter.
Fig. 19: Flossenbürg concentration camp liberated by the US Army, April 23, 1945.
Life After the Holocaust
The end of the war did not mean the end of Walter Brauner's journeys. For almost 20 years, he and his family moved from place to place, from continent to continent, only finding their new home in 1964 – in Los Angeles, USA. Many of the moves were influenced by his bad health that had been the consequence of years of hard labor and horrible living conditions.
Map: Stations of Walter Brauner's life after his liberation; click the locations for more information, double click to zoom.
Fig. 20: The Brauner family in 1992; in the front: Walter Brauner, grandson Jacob Brauner, wife Lea Brauner; in the back: their son Bernhard Brauner, granddaughter Jessica Brauner, Faige Silberblatt (mother of Miriam), daughter-in-law Miriam Brauner.
We want to end this exporation of a very eventful and insightful life by letting Walter Brauner have the last word. When asked about the future based on his experiences 32 years later, in 1996, he did not have an immediate answer. But after a moment of thought, he answered as follows:
"I don't exist anymore. I just am living. But I'm enjoying what I'm doing, I'm enjoying. I don't want to have any companies. I don't want to have anything to do with people. [...] I want to live in peace. [...] Did anything change since 1945? No. Did anything change when my mother told me, a long time ago, and my grandmother, since 1918, from the First World War? No. You know why not? You don't have to be very smart. People are people. People do not change. If people would be animals, you could get along better with them, because you can expect from an animal what an animal does. It will never violently rob you, subdue you, take away from you, break your heart."
