Readers Remember

I and some 30 other inmates of the Nazi death camp Dachau were lying on the floor of a small barracks.

We had arrived there two days earlier from Buchenwald, after a grueling three-week trip in railway boxcars and without food. Many inmates did not survive that trip, and those who did looked like skeletons covered with skin.

That Sunday, early in the morning, we began to hear artillery shots and fighter planes flying over the camp. I was curious to know what was happening, but I was too weak to lift myself up and look through the window.

Then an inmate entered our barracks and announced, “We have been liberated! American tanks are at the gate!”

It was difficult to believe after living five years through Nazi atrocities and brutalities. I was only 17.

The U.S. Army medical personnel set up a hospital for the sick survivors. They saved many lives, including my own. I was tenderly handled--a mental shock, because for the first time in the past five years, it appeared that humanity cared about what happened to me.

One of the U.S. Army medics said to me, “You are very lucky, the war for you is over. We still have to fight a terrible war in the Pacific.” That was the first time that I heard about the Pacific war. The young soldier was tired of the man-made hell on Earth and wanted to go back home to his family and friends. I also wanted to go home to my family and friends, but I had no home and family to go back to.

LEO BACH

Las Flores

In 200 words or less, send us your memories of the 20th century. Write to Century, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or e-mail century@latimes.com. Letters may be edited for space.