Alving Andersen, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, February 25, 2003: Saving the legacy tape no. 628

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LV D th m to d ath. I ll push my revolv r ov r to y u d actually shoot them. Shoot in the air or ground or them in and he says, ' You guys you have broken th la . ou t t t 't u u ht u r n t supposed to come in here. It's very dangerous not for you alon but or ry n u here if you blow something up. You're condemned to death. He push d the r ol r over and then put a blindfold on them. I grabbed them by the shoulders and took th m out in the hall. There, I took the blindfold off and told them, I m not going to shoot you but promise me that you'll never come back again. He told me to shoot you but I'm just going to shoot into the air so he thinks that I shot you, but don t ever show your face in here again." You should have seen him take off when I shot into the air. He took off like a strong wind. And then the next one, and the next one, and so on. Some of them looked a little pale when I came in and grabbed them. They had heard the shots, you know. They could not have missed that. They got condemned to death and then the .45 was brought out. I've never seen anyone run so fast. I never saw them again. If they noticed me anywhere later, I'm sure that they hid. I had to do it. But it was a hard thing to do, because what do these fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds think when they heard the shots. BEC: That must have been just terrible for them. AL V: Yes, but it was effective. Across the street, I had 3,500 prisoners, all of the German civilian people that had run up to Denmark when the Russians came. We had them in the school there. They were of all ages, from young children up to eighty years old men, women and children. From the right hand side, the same side where I was, I had the German soldiers that we used for taking care of the mine fields and the things that they had to take care of. The Germans had run and hadn't had time to get proper clothing and 35