The Americans came in, finally,
around 3:30 in the afternoon.
And--
The Americans came. You didn't see any big military or anything.
They just, you know-- They just came on the side, like.
Then the people came in to look at the camp-- some G.I.'s.
And I walked over to a G.I.-- a young guy--
and I asked him if he could give me some food.
I was very hungry.
So he took out-- He gave me a Nestle bar,
and he gave me some of his--
He had a little sack. He gave me one of those...
paraffin packages that had cheese in it,
and it had some crackers in it,
and it had--
And he gave me a little gold envelope. It said "Nescafe."
I didn't know what it was.
And he gave me also,
besides the chocolate and cheese and crackers, he gave me a little can.
I didn't know what it was, but later I realized it was Spam.
So he gave me a little food. Now, do you know how much that food was worth?
He could've gotten anything for it in Weimar.
But he gave it to me. And I'm sure--
He didn't look like a Jewish guy.
He was strawberry blonde, tall, a little hunchback,
meaning he was a little bit--
And I spoke, again, high school English.
I just-- I thanked him.
He said, "Okay." He walked away.
And then, the Americans made the mistake of trying to feed the camp.
They cooked up a bunch of food.
There was no water in the camp, so they cooked it with shortening, with fat.
And some people ate it.
I didn't eat it, not because I didn't wanna eat it.
I didn't get to it. They couldn't have it for everybody.
So those who got it, half of them died,
because they got dysentery from it.
It was too much. Their stomach couldn't take it.
The next day, they got smart. They brought in the Germans.
The Germans brought in tanks full of water, so we had water.
And then, they did the one thing that was the greatest.
They disinfected everybody.
We lined up with our clothes and our naked bodies.
They sprayed us with D.D.T.
Got rid of all the lice, because we were full of lice.
Within three days, there was no lice.
They started to bring in a little more food,
and they treated us very well.
You know, when I was liberated, the strangest thing.
The first guy that came over to talk to me...
and take me around was Elie Wiesel.
Because we wound up in the same barrack.
So Elie comes over, he says to me, "Archie, we are free."
And I said to him-- This is exact words.
I said, "We are free, but how will we live our lives without our families?"
But we were happy.
We were happy, we were sad, we were happy...
that we were free with our life, and the Germans lost.
Because we felt as long as one is alive, they lost,
because they wanted to kill us all and they couldn't kill us all.
So we had that Pyrrhic victory--
that more than one was alive.
I'm talking symbolically. Some of us survived.
And then, a few days later, Elie and I went up...
to the cleaner S.S.-- what used to be S.S. barracks.
And we occupied the barracks. And then Elie and I went to France together.