We were so exhausted by February that even dragging ourselves around in the plant was painful. Family or friends wouldn't ever enter into our thoughts anymore. Our overriding concern at all times was how we could scrape together a little food, such as potato peels. The other slave laborers in our section, especially the French, kept telling us that it would only be a matter of weeks for the British to reach us. The weeks did pass, very painfully, without the British liberating us. There were Serbs, Czecks and Russians in the plant too, in addition to the French and our contingent from Hungary. We talked only secretly, for the female SS troopers who patrolled the area would've sheared off our hair first, then shot us instantly, had they been able to catch us.
 

There was hardly any food left anywhere by March. We couldn't be made to work hard any longer and stayed in our section of the facility around the clock, not caring about the rules and regulations anymore. We slept on the benches and worked as much as the ever dwindling supply of parts permitted. Even a nail was hard to find anymore. The plant was to be shut down around the 15th or 16th of March, although the official line was that it would be switched over to producing some other type of weaponry. The German workers seemed to believe it, for the Nazi fanatics were spewing their lies so convincingly that they even managed to deceive themselves.
 

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