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The person is question has given us the following information: They said they would create the ghetto after Passover. One morning we woke up to see that the street was full of wailing people. The policemen were beating everybody so much that everything was full of blood, wherever we looked. After we had spent five weeks in the ghetto in Munkács, they chased us out of the flat and they took us to the brickyard. In the brickyard they entrained us. How much we suffered on the way, it would be horrible even to tell it. It is enough to say that 80 people were crammed into a cattle car without water. I started from home with my parents and my fiancé. The train stopped many times, so we arrived in Auschwitz at the end of an eight-day journey. When we arrived, they separated me from my parents and they took me to a hall where a woman stood up and shouted in Hungarian and in German: “Undress and don’t ask why, only undress completely”. One can imagine how scared we were and our threat was not totally without reason. My earrings were torn off my ears and our rings were taken off our fingers. I had a proper pair of shoes, so they pulled them off my feet too, then they took us into another room where they poured hot water on us, but beforehand they had shaved us. We thought they would kill us immediately but they took us further to be disinfected. We put on some rags they gave us instead of our proper clothes and they made us stand for the whole night in the open air being wet, barefoot, naked and with bare heads. In the morning we lined up for roll call. There were horrible conditions there. About ten of us ate from one bowl without any cutlery, so we already started to die in Auschwitz. We got all kinds of mouth infections, because we ate after each other. We did not work there at all, only waited for our terrible fate. Then they put us on a passenger train and we travelled under normal conditions until we got to Neusalz. There we worked in a factory. We prepared thread. The camp was tolerable and our beds were also much better than in Auschwitz, but we received very little food there as well. While working, we were not allowed even to say a word to each other. I worked at a big machine. If we breached discipline they seriously punished us for the smallest offence. If we talked to each other on the way they cut our hair as a punishment. When the Russians were approaching we were set off on foot. We were marching for eight weeks and a large number of people died on the way. We barely received a spoonful of soup on the way; that march was so horrible that it is not possible to describe. If only I think of it I get terribly anxious. At last, after eight weeks they put those who had survived the march into cattle cars. We were so much squeezed against each other that we could not breathe during the journey. We were travelling like that for 4 days and we were not given anything to eat. A number of people went mad on the way in the cattle car; they were always talking about eating, they were shouting with troubled eyes, then they collapsed dead. This in itself was already too much suffering, but our fate made matters worse in that there were air raids in the meantime, so the train often stopped. Finally we arrived in Bergen-Belsen. We hoped that our suffering would finally come to an end, but we were disappointed. There we slept on a stone floor and there was nothing under us in the winter frost. But that was not enough: they woke us up to line up for roll call at 2 o’clock at dawn and we were standing there till 10 o’clock, when the Aufseherin came to count us. Later different epidemics broke out and the fact that I survived is a miracle of God. An awfully large number of people died there; no more than one quarter of the original number was liberated. We all yelled from pain, we kept shouting for food because we were dying of hunger; we suffered like that for an unspeakably long time. Nobody cared about those who fell ill and we were not given anything to eat. They wanted as many of us as possible to die. They managed to achieve this aim, even if some their other aims did not come true. On an April day we saw white bands on the arms of German women, who had not escaped. They had no time to escape like the others. Then they also wanted peace already, after they had carried out their devilish tasks. Now their lives were in danger and that was very dear to those criminals; they thought they could do everything, they could decide about human lives and go unpunished, but then they were all trembling for their own lives. Suddenly we saw English cars glide in and after long suffering, we were liberated at last. Although we could not be happy for our liberty too long, because our stomachs, which had been used to the watery turnip soup, could not tolerate human food. Thanks to the careful tending, I managed to recover, but many of my companions in distress died even after the liberation. My plans for the future: I want to go to Palestine; I would not want for all the world for my children to go through such torments as I did. If I suffer in Palestine I will know why I am suffering. For the time being, I cannot work at all, because my right hand was frostbitten so much that I cannot hold anything in my hand, but I hope I will recover soon.

Labour Service