“Our hut floor was always damp. The sun warmed only the ‘B’ huts, they have the windows facing the south. ‘A’ huts have the windows to the north, and the sun’s rays never fall through them. in December and January the sun only comes out from behind the mountains after 9 o’clock in the morning and at 3 o’clock is already disappearing again. I felt certain that I could not for long bear it in this damp hut, in mud and slush and storms of snow and rain. In the last week of January I was struck down with a fever… After five days other prisoners brought the doctor, as I could no longer get up… My temperature was 106 degrees… I had pneumonia.”
“No one can understand what it means as a young man to spend so many years behind barbed wire, if they have not experienced this themselves. In the camp, sport became our only salvation… football, baseball and tennis, but primarily boxing”
“I consider myself lucky to have been there, it was not so bad, after all, we had our school and our football grounds and that was the most important thing at that time… at that time I spoke English and my best friends were the ‘sentries’ marching along the barbed wire, I often talked with them, they were all rather elderly men and they brought me in some chocolate, woollen socks, fresh collars for shirts and many other little things that really were not allowed to come in, but they were kind to me”
