4.14 - Liberation

Liberation

At the beginning of April 1945, the Soviet army had advanced to Styria. At the SS estate the situation grew more and more tense. The female inmates were also aware of the changes at hand. The SS men had changed their uniforms for civilian clothing. ‘Everywhere you heard that the war was nearly over. The Hauptscharführer was angry, everything went wrong. The Germans intended to load the inmates into wagons and blow them all up.’¹PA, interview Hoogers-Elbertsen, Jans, 16-10-2002.

The inmates were ordered by the SS guards to pack their belongings and prepare for the return transport. They received a ‘last meal’ consisting of fried potatoes and carrots. The female Bible Students however didn’t touch it. A sense of panic spread through the women’s concentration camp. None of the Jehovah’s Witnesses managed to sleep, until an SS man told them there would be no more return transport. The Bible Students supposed that the reason for not carrying out the planned execution was the advance of the partisans and the Soviet army. Also, the SS guards now were only interested in making their own escape.²PA, interview Huisman, Gerdina, 15-10-2002; WTA Emmen, interview Berkers, Toos, 1985, Nr. 372; PA, interview Hoogers-Elbertsen, Jans, 16-10-2002.

Just before the arrival of the Allied forces, treatment of the inmates had apparently improved and personal contact with the population was permitted.³See Seiler 1994, p. 46. The female Bible Students were invited by the camp management to visit and view the most beautiful spots in the region.⁴PA, interview Hoogers-Elbertsen, Jans, 16-10-2002. This event stayed very clear in the memories of the Dutch Jehovah’s Witnesses. The beauty of the landscape fascinated the women, who came from a flat country. Gerdina Huisman seriously considered taking up residence there. The forester, SS-Untersturmführer Willibald Reiner, invited the Bible Students to stay and marry here.⁵PA, interview Hoogers-Elbertsen, Jans, 16-10-2002; interview Huisman, Gerdina, 15-10-2002.

Hubert Erhart ordered the liquidation of concentration camp Schloss Lind on 3 May 1945 by ordering that the inmates be transported back to Mauthausen. The Allied troops were advancing quickly, however, so this was already impossible. There was no attempt made to evacuate St. Lambrecht. Instead, during those last days, they started to wipe out the traces and evidence of the Nazi practices. ‘For days on end documents were burned at the gate to the vegetable garden.’⁶PA, interview Messnarz-Günter, Margarete, 13-09-2002 The perpetrators were very thorough concerning destruction of registrations regarding the concentration camp at St. Lambrecht.

 

The British Army troops arrived at St. Lambrecht only after 11 May 1945, because advance in the Mur valley was difficult.⁷See Baumgartner 1997, p. 132; Rauchensteiner 1995, pp. 241-278. The German Wehrmacht had already capitulated on 8 May. The British liberated the 23 Jehovah’s Witnesses and an unknown number of Spanish prisoners out of the hands of the last SS men who had maintained the Nazi regime up till then. Verwalter Hubert Erhart and camp commandant Schöller had long since fled St. Lambrecht. On 12 May the once so powerful lord of St. Lambrecht, Hubert Erhart, who had determined the fate of four stolen monasteries, was arrested in Admont and transferred to Graz.⁸See Seiler 1994, p. 48.

The SS men who had remained at St. Lambrecht were arrested there and the British soldiers moved into the rooms in the abbey where SS men had previously lived. The goods that had been stolen by the Nazis and had been stored in the cellars of the abbey, were confiscated by the British and designated ‘German military goods’.⁹PA, interview Messnarz-Günter, Margarete, 13-09-2002.

After liberation the population of St. Lambrecht donated clothing to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They put their prison clothes in their rucksacks and took them, along with the cutlery from Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp, on their homeward journey. They didn’t immediately leave St. Lambrecht and the monastery but remained for about two weeks¹⁰WTA Emmen, interview Huisman, Gerdina, 15-03-1993. because it took some time to organise their return journey.

When the British troops arrived, the German female camp guard was still at her ‘place of work’. It isn’t clear whether she was arrested at St. Lambrecht, but it certainly is probable. It is said that denying the situation she even tried to command the Bible Students after liberation, but they no longer obeyed her orders.

Before the Jehovah’s Witnesses left their prison, they gathered in front of the abbey beside a tree and gave thanks for their deliverance and survival of the imprisonment in the camp by singing the song Die Ehre sei Jehova.¹¹Giving Jehovah the Praise; PA, interview Huisman, Gerdina, 15-10-2002. They regarded their salvation as coming from Jehovah, the God of their religious community, in answer to their prayers and requests.

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