When we arrived at Buchenwald, all the prisoners were mixed together; the Germans could no longer tell who was Jewish and who was not. We removed our identifying marks. During the re-registration, I said I was a non-Jewish Pole, and that my name was Adam Friderski — and in an instant I ceased to be Avraham Fridberg.

There was not enough room at Buchenwald for all the prisoners, so the Germans decided to evacuate us. They loaded us onto trains. The Jews were sent to Theresienstadt and the non-Jews to Leitmeritz. After a few days in the Leitmeritz camp, we heard that a transport to Germany was being organized. In view of this situation, and the mounting chaos and confusion we could see growing before our eyes in the camp, I turned to two of my friends in the camp – and proposed that we try to join the next transport leaving the camp – and attempt to escape along the way. We did not know where this transport or another was headed, but it was not our intention to reach the final destination. We knew we were in the territory of the former Czechoslovakia. We decided to escape. We joined the transport that was loaded onto a passenger train – not a freight train. There was a hint in this of the state in which Germany found itself at that time: chaos and confusion.
We believed that this time we would succeed in our escape attempt. We were experienced at escaping. Like me, my friends also knew that if we were caught escaping this time too, the Germans would execute us without delay. Yet we also knew that our chances of coming out of this journey alive were slim. An escape attempt was preferable to certain death.
We set out on our way. None of us knew where. We knew only one thing: at the first opportunity, we would try to flee from the train that was carrying our transport.
At one of the stations, when our train stopped beside a coal train, we exchanged glances with one another. One thought passed through all our hearts: This is it!
As one man, we leapt from our places, moved to the coal train, and lay flat on the heaps of coal. The Germans did not notice us.
The coal train arrived at the railway station of Prague 7, the capital of Czechoslovakia. At this station, in the district known as Holešovice, the coal depots were concentrated at that time.
We arrived there in the morning. We stood – in our prisoner’s clothes – among the coal heaps, behind one of the station’s buildings, not knowing what to do.
Dawn was breaking, and the danger that someone would pass by and notice us grew steadily. Suddenly we saw a girl and a boy who looked like high school students. We guessed they were on their way to school. (We later learned that the boy was on his way to a pharmacy, where he worked as a messenger and pharmacist’s apprentice.) We risked our lives, emerged from our hiding place, and stopped them. We addressed the boy with hand gestures and words in Polish and Russian, which bear a considerable resemblance to the Czech language. We made clear to him that we needed clothing. The boy replied in Czech and with hand gestures. He pointed to his watch and said: "Počkej." In Polish, "czekaj" means to wait. We understood that he was advising us to wait for him – and he hurried back the way he had come.
He was Indra, the only child of the midwife Yřina and Indrřich Sobotka. Yřina was the sister of Vlasta Kouchová, secretary to Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk.
Indra went home, took three sets of clothes from the wardrobe, put them in a small suitcase, and left the house.
Indra brought the clothes to our hiding place at the railway station. While he stood watch, looking alertly in every direction, we changed out of our prisoner’s clothes into the civilian clothes, which barely fit us, and he motioned for us to follow him. He led us through alleyways to his family’s modest apartment, which consisted of only two rooms and in which his grandmother also lived. Mother Sobotková gave us one quick look – and immediately put water on to heat. She then told us to undress, took a brush, soap, disinfectant alcohol, and hot water, and began scrubbing from our bodies – with the skill of a midwife-nurse – the filth that had accumulated on us in the concentration camp. Since we were circumcised, she certainly guessed that we were Jews, but she said nothing.