But he's talking here about running away with the Nazis—and not ‘Nazis’ who were mere rank and file party members but supposedly the worst of the worst. He's talking here about running away with the same ‘Nazis’ and SS who had supposedly carried out the greatest imaginable mass murders of Jews and others in the entire history of the universe. He's talking about running away with the people who supposedly did the actual killings of thousands daily for several years. But, according to his own words he would probably have gone with them nonetheless, except that he was not feeling good that day; he was feeling weak. The "fear" that he overcame was clearly fear of the Russians and not the ‘Nazis;' there is no mention of fear of what the 'Nazis' and SS might do when the evacuees entered the forest or sometime later.
The choices that were made here in January 1945 are enormously important. In the entire history of Jewish suffering at the hands of gentiles what moment in time could possibly be more dramatic than this precious moment when Jews could choose between, on the one hand, liberation by the Soviets with the chance to tell the whole world about the evil 'Nazis' and to help bring about their defeat and the other choice of going with the 'Nazi' mass murderers and to continue working for them and to help preserve their evil regime. In the vast majority of cases, they chose to go with the 'Nazis'.
