Then came the great escape from this camp. I have never heard this mentioned anywhere.

The only thing I remember is the distant Clock-Tower, thinking of my sister, and I somehow managed to sneak into the camp for a few minutes. Don't ask me how I did that. Maybe there was a chance, because we had to use the camp toilets.

After two weeks confinement, we were back in the Camp. We talked about our experiences. The next escapees took cutters to cut through fences, avoided villages and took water along. They all arrived safely back home. Then came the great escape from this camp. I have never heard this mentioned anywhere.

The outside working groups received their lunch from the camp delivered by truck. These trucks were driven by reliable POW's. One day many POW's had vanished without any trace. Days later same thing happened again. The camp was thoroughly searched by the Americans, but nothing was discovered. Another night; everybody was called outside.

The Americans came with their weapons into the camp searching everywhere, counted all POW's, and again found nothing. The guards had been given the order to shoot anybody outside the building during nights. Bullet holes in the walls proved that they did shoot at night. This meant that we could no longer use the toilets during the night, as these were outside. Miraculously some writing appeared on the outside wall in big white oil paint: 'Concentration Camp'.

This went on until one day a guard realized what was going on, when he saw a POW waving from the back of the lunch delivery truck, that left the camp for his trip. That was the end of it all. The answer was simple. The driver of the lunch delivery truck, first went full speed towards the Belgian/German border, where his load of POW's disappeared in a forest. He then returned to deliver the lunch.

In the beginning of November 1946 came my transfer to a POW camp in Henri Chapelle, Belgium. This camp was very near the Belgian/German and near the Belgian/Dutch borders. As usual, there were barbed wire fences with Belgian guards. This time we had quite good tents to sleep in and a few timber barracks. Now came an extremely nasty job. It was the moving of German war cemeteries to a new location in Bourg Leopold, Belgium. This involved the opening of year old graves and the transfer of bodies to the new location.

At the beginning I had to work on the nearby cemetery, where our job was to exhume the German section and prepare for transport in boxes. The work was partly finished here, when daily truck loads of POW's were taken, via the Belgian/German border to a cemetery in Margraten, Holland.