It was now May 7th
and we went back with the medics and the factory building
was pointed out to me and I approached it by jeep and got out and saw
these walking skeletons scurrying back and forth
to a water pump that was in the center of the yard,
in front of the factory, and... and they... I mean, I had never seen
anything as bad as that, and over on the other side of the yard,
near the entrance to the building, I saw one young woman standing
and I decided to approach her, and I went up to her and asked her about her companions
and how they all were, and we exchanged some words in German, and I asked her, you know, whether... where they had been, and she told me that they had been
on a death march since... with some stops,
since January of that year, and I asked her to take me inside
and let me see the others, and so we went inside,
and, of course, it's nearly impossible to describe
the scene that I found inside, with all these women
scattered on the floor in various stages of illness, and some of them
obviously quite close to death, and in rags and without blankets or,
quite obviously, without food, and it was something
that one never, never can forget. I talked to some of those women, one of them, it was pointed out to me later, was a former university professor
from Prague, still addressed me in English, and when I tried to say
some words of comfort, she said: "I'm sorry,
it's too late, too late for me."
