“Since that day, Iʼve felt like a newborn”

In this sense 22-year-old Irmgard was lucky:

“Now I'm doing well again. I've not been left with any damage to my health and I've already gained back over 10 kg. Dear Father makes a great effort to find food and take good care of me.

Sadly I don't have any hope of seeing our dear Bruno again, after what I personally saw of what they did with people.”

Indeed, Irmgard and Walter's brother Bruno was murdered by the Nazis in Sobibor in 1943. The fact that many didn't survive even after liberation is also a reason why many survivors of 1945 called themselves “the surviving remnant.” While many of them were stranded in Germany and wanted desperately to leave the country as soon as possible, Irmgard Brill wrote her letter from France. On the contrary, she regretted that she couldn't visit the German city of her birth:

“Unfortunately after the liberation I couldn't return to Herzebrock or Rheda, since the French don't consider me French. Since we took the train from Münster, I saw the cemetery where our dear mother [is buried] as well as our house.

Dear Father inquired whether he can return to Germany. As a German, there's nothing yet to be done. For the time being, we have to stay here, or I'll have to look into it myself because my previous bosses have invited me to Paris to recover there, and maybe from there I can do something for dear Father.”

Before she discusses her current situation in France, however, Irmgard first gives a thorough but economical description of her experiences from her detention in February 1944 to her liberation:

“They detained me on Sunday morning, the 6th of Feb. 44 at 8:30 a.m. when I was with my boss. From there they took me in a car to Father's apartment to take him too, but thank God he had a second apartment, and so I could lead them to the one he wasn't in. From there they brought me to Grenoble where I joined 100 or 120 other detainees.

After we were there for a day, they brought us to the Drancy internment camp. I was there for a month, & from there I was brought with a transport of 1,500 people (a transport like this went about every 8–14 days) to Auschwitz in Upper Silesia, between Katowice & Krakow.

My fate was basically decided upon arrival. To live or die, because when you get out of the cattle car you're selected & it all depends on luck: out of all of us 1,500 men, women + children, 37 young women + 60 young men were sent into the camp, all of the others into the gas chamber & then the crematorium.”

It was part of the strategy of annihilation to systematically deceive the victims about their fate, dragging them into the machinery of murder. But for the letter writer, the gas chamber seemed even worse for those who knew what awaited them. She continues:

“They were lucky, they didn't know where they were going, whereas the weak + sick ones who are picked out from the camp know about everything & stay another 3 days in another barracks after being picked out. That is the worst.”

Next she mainly describes the many coincidences, physical advantages, useful knowledge, personal actions, and meetings with helpful people (including among the perpetrators) that made it possible for her to survive, though she didn't believe in it until the moment of her liberation:

“In this sense, I personally can't complain because I didn't take too many blows, since dear Father told me in advance how you have to behave. Always just keep your eyes open.

Second I didn't suffer too much from the cold because, thank God, none of my limbs got frostbite Third the fieldwork didn't make much of a difference to me because I'd often helped father to cultivate the land.

The first month, the month of March until April 10 44 we were in quarantine against typhus. I laid together with several people sick with typhus (that is, we were six to a pallet) and thank God I didn't catch it. Most people had horrible diarrhea & imagine that we could only use a bucket 2 or 3 times per day, and during that month we could only shower 2x instead of bathing. A shower means quickly undress, under the shower head, quickly dress. No soap, no towel, just 2 minutes of lukewarm water.

After the quarantine I went to the potato bunker. This was one of the best work crews for the initial time because you could get hold of potatoes. Then for 2 months I cut turnips and later until early July I dug + stored potatoes. Then I stopped working because I got sick. For 24 hrs. I had a very high fever & spent Saturday to Tuesday in the sick bay.

When I heard that I wasn't supposed to come back to the potato bunker, I was overjoyed to go to a knitting mill instead because you weren't beaten there, light work + sitting the whole day & you could "get hold" of things more easily. That meant you stole aprons, sweaters, or other things and could get about 1 lb. bread for them. Things even went so far that in the evening after roll call we went to the market. That was forbidden, but if you only did what was allowed, no one would have made it through the inferno.