Pavel Werner’s provisional identity card

I got these temporary documents at the end of the war, they were to serve as proof of my identity until I had a chance to obtain new documents. At the same time they served as confirmation that I had been jailed in concentration camps - I boarded the transport to Terezin on 3rd November 1942, and was freed by the Americans in Gunskirchen on 4th May 1945.

Even though I had these documents with me on the trip from Vienna's New Town (Wiener Neustadt) to Bratislava, I fell under suspicion of being a member of the Hitlerjugend. In Vienna’s New Town some guys and I decided that we'd go home on foot. We calculated it to be about ninety kilometers. Three of us picked up and set out on foot for Bratislava. How we found the way, that I don't know. It was quite a dramatic trip. It was June 1945, horribly hot, we were extremely weak, so we agreed amongst each other that we couldn't manage the trip during the day, that we'd walk at night. We didn't have any gear, food, nothing. One night we happened upon some drunk Russians. They thought that we were some young members of the Hitlerjugend and wanted to shoot us. This was because we were wearing German uniforms, just without the insignia. The Americans had dressed us up in them at the airport in Wels, when they took off our prison rags, because the warehouse in the barracks was full of German uniforms and they didn't have any other clothing for us. 

These drunk Russians thought we were Germans, they wanted to kill us. It was night, dark, we had to try very hard to convince them that we're not Germans, for them to not shoot us. We were crying, showing our tattooed numbers and were saying 'Czech, Czech, Czech,' because we didn't speak Russian. The problem is that it's impossible to lead a conversation with a drunk, much less a soldier, and what's more when you're walking about at night in a German uniform. It was already looking quite grim, they had their pistols out and at any moment could have started shooting. Finally we managed to convince them.