RelatioNet SEN AL 25 BU HU

The change was when I started to go to secondary school in 1933. It was a public school. In this period of time hostility toward the Jewish people began, and the Jews suffered from anti-Semitism by the inhabitants and government. In those times many schools didn't want to accept Jewish students, and the universities rationed Jewish students. Two years after I started the secondary school, Jewish students could not be accepted to schools and universities. We were 35 boys in the class, and 10 of them were Jewish. Our class members didn't harass us, but the older boys from the higher classes did. The veteran teachers weren't involved in politics, unlike the young teachers who were anti-Semitics, and we felt it. It was unpleasant time in those years, 1934-1935. We weren't separated from city life – we could go to the cinema, theater and coffee shops, but we felt the anti-Semitic comments related to us in the streets. During high school I was a member of the Betar organization. Because of the difficult situation we had the idea of immigrating to Israel. We traveled, sang Israeli songs and heard about Israel. In the ninth grade I was coerced to leave school because of the situation – if you were a Jewish student and you were not excellent you needed to leave school and come back after the situation calmed down. Only two Jewish students were left. Most of the ones who left started to work in the industry because we felt we needed to prove ourselves, and we assumed that we would be less persecuted due to the part we took in physical labor. I worked in a knitting factory for 4 and half years. In this period of time World War 2 had already started, and the Jews were persecuted all over Europe. In Germany and Russia Jews had already been killed, and the Jews in Hungary felt they disn't know what would happen the next day. In Hungary we already had limitations and laws against Jews, people had been arrested, but the Jews still lived in their own houses. We were desperate. It was a difficult time. In 1943 my father's store was confiscated. But the turning point was when the Germans came into Hungary in March 15 1944 and took the control over Hungary. In Hungary there were one million Jews because of the refugees that came to Hungary from other countries. Two days later Jews already could not get to Budapest because inspections were everywhere, and you could have been taken to an unknown place, and I couldn't get to my work place in Budapest. Two weeks later, at the end of March, my father got an order to come to a work camp. The next day, in the morning, my mother, my brother Shuli and I escorted my father to the trolley car, my father blessed us, and from then my parents never saw each other again. I was 17 at the time. Two weeks after my father was recruited, on April 20 1944, I got an order to go to a work camp too. Six weeks later I got a letter from my mother saying that she and my brother Shuly were expelled to Auschwitz along with all the other residents left in Kishpest- old people, women and children under the age of 16. A few people succeeded in hiding and staying in Kispest.
In the camp we got a yellow band to put on our sleeve. we were divided into companies and platoons like in the Hungarian army. My unit number was 101/223. I was with another 100 people, and 20 of them were acquaintances from Kispest. Our duty was to fix the railroad tracks that were harmed by the bombing. Our commanders were Hungarian, and they guarded us with weapons. On my first night in the camp, the company sergeant major told us: "you all are going to die under my hands". Three days later, the Americans bombed a big train station in Solnok. We were sent to fix it. It took us 5 months. During the whole time we stayed there we didn't have equipment from the Hungarian, except for soap, and we needed to manage with the things we had brought from home. We slept on the floor in a school. Everyday we got half loaf of bread and sweet watery coffee for breakfast, for lunch meat soup and beans, potatoes or peas and for dinner soup or noodles. We didn't have surplus food, but we weren't hungry. We were physically strong, the food was reasonable and we were young. I was 19. Few weeks after we started to fix the railroad tracks, our treatment became less threatening because the Russians advanced toward Hungary and the allies invaded Normandy. Everyday at 10 A.M we heard a siren and American airplanes flew above us on their way to Rumania. On October 10, 1944 my company got an order to leave Solnok and start walking to Budapest. It took 3 days. We made our way on a main road. In the morning of October 15 1944 we got to the train station of my home town Kispest, and the company commander told us: "the leader of Hungary decided to quit the war, therefore the war is over. Everyone is permitted to go anywhere he wants". My friend, that was one of the people who stayed in Kispest, heard that a work company arrived at the train station, so she showed up there to see if there was someone from the company that she knew. I and all my friends, whom I grew up with, went with her to her home. In the evening we heard the Fascists had cancelled the cease-fire. We didn't know what to do. We decided to go to sleep and to plan what to do in the morning. In the morning I woke up and no one was in the house, everybody had run away. I was shocked, and again, I didn't know what to do. I decided to go up to the garret and to go down at nightfall. I went up and locked the door. Suddenly I heard the shouts of drunken people in the house who had came to loot. I took a building block to strike them if they come up. I heard them talking and saying that they wanted to go up. They came up and tried to open the door. Suddenly the church bells rang, so they decided to go home for lunch, and to come back in the afternoon. I opened the window in the garret, and jumped to the street. I knew that my parents had Hungarian acquaintances, non-Jewish. One of them lived not faraway from my home. I went there, in the dark, to ask for help. I knocked on the door, and his wife opened. She knew me. I asked to stay in their house for the night, but she told me I could not stay because her husband was a Communist, and if someone found out, the Nazis would come to take him. Then, I remembered that my father had another acquaintance. I asked her to accompany me to his house. She agreed. We couldn't find the house, so eventually she let me sleep in her house. In the morning, I decided to go to the small forest at the end of the street. Russian airplanes flew above me. I remembered my father had another acquaintance who was a senior government clerk. We gave him my mother's jewelries to keep for us during the war years. I decided to go to his house. He told me I could stay at his house. I stayed in his basement, and he brought me food. I was bored. After 2-4 days he told me I couldn't stay because his son was the army extermination link commander, and if he found out that he was hiding a Jew, he couldn't guarantee that I would stay alive. For lack of any other option, I decided that I would come into Budapest. I knew that there was a bypass to come into the city, where there were no guardians, so I sneaked into the city. I got to Budapest's center by the trolley car. No Jews wandered around there. From there I went through the Danube bridges to pass into Buda to find a place to hide in the forests there. While I was on the bridge I saw an organized work camp platoon coming towards me. In a second I entered it. It was the beginning of the chaos. The discipline became looser, so it was quite easy to be assimilated. This group had been housed in the O'buda's synagogue, and from there we were sent to work in coal and cars evacuation everyday. Two weeks after I joined this group, in November, I heard that my father's group was housed in a school on the other side of the city. I left my group, I wasn't scared, and went to look for my father. I got to the school, I came into it, and in the corridor a man, who I didn't known, was walking towards me. When we were really close I saw it was my father. I didn't know him, he was very slim. I stayed with my father's group. We were in the school for 10 days, we did not work, and we just stayed in the school all day long. On November 28 1944 our group announced that we would be leaving in the morning for the north train station. Everyone got a loaf of bread, and we went. At this point you could run away, but you didn't have anywhere to go. We were loaded on to the train cars, 40 people in each car. It was really dense in there and at night there was a battle for who would straighten his arms and legs. We also didn't have any water. After 4 days we arrived at the final station – to Engerau. The doors opened and we saw the S.A soldiers with their dogs. The Germans organized us in small groups, of 15-20 people. Our job there was to make a communication trench. We stayed there for 4 months. In the mornings we received a hot black beverage, a slice of bread and a little bit of margarine or jam, and in the evening we got a beet soup. There were good people: a doctor, a lawyer and his son, an owner of a big flour station from Budapest, a land owner, the Baron Suszberger, and a publisher with whom I became friends with and promised me to give me a Britanika encyclopedia at the end of the war. When I left home it was spring so I didn't take warm clothes with me, and there, in Austria, it was winter. Many people died from dysentery. I heard that the baron was very ill. He had dysentery. We slept in the basement, so he lay down there in his coat, which was filled with excrement. I asked him to give me his coat because he was dying. I don't know how I dared. He gave me his coat, because he knew he was going to die. This coat accompanied me until after the war. The S.A soldiers that guarded us were quite old – in their 50's, and they did not treat us very badly. On our way to the digging place we had been in contact with the inhabitants, and some of the people exchanged jewelry for food. Some of them got caught. We were positioned in a square, and the people who got caught were hit in front of everyone. I remember that two of them were father and son. They got hit and they fall to the ground. The Nazis started to kick them. They didn't scream. They behaved in a very honorable way, and didn't ask for mercy. The Nazis did it in front of everyone because the wanted to deter the others from doing the same thing. The weeks passed. We heard some rumors about the situation, so we had hope. In the 3rd month in the camp we were full of lice and the Germans were worried that we would infect them and the inhabitants because on our way to the workplace we were on the streets so we were near the inhabitants. They took us to wash ourselves. It was quite far, and people didn't have strength. We arrived at a concrete structure with a veranda and iron doors. It was a gas chamber structure. We were told to get undressed. Our clothes were taken to be cleaned. We received soap and disinfection chemical preparation to spread on ourselves. It really burned. We entered a big hall. Every 2-3 meters was a shower, and hot boiling water came out. We came out and took our clothes. In the corridor was a pool and German guard who worked in the facility. There was a 14-15 year old German boy, and I smiled at him. He took a mug, filled it with water from the pool, and spilled it on my face. I felt humiliated.
In those days we almost didn't work. One night, at the end of March 1945 we heard shouts "get out, run" and shots. We were expelled out of the streets and we started to run. The people that stayed behind and couldn't run were shot. We ran for a few hours until we got to the Danube. There were a lot of people and guards. We waited there for 1-2 days without any food. Then, a wheat transporter ship arrived and we got it. While we were sailing we saw people wandering Danube banks, we passed small beautiful picturesque towns, and we were on the ship – dirty, pressed together and hungry. We drank water from the river, and we ate the wheat grains that were left in wood crack and had swelled because of the rain. It took 3 days until we got to our destination – Mauthuzen. It was a big concentration camp. We got off the ship and we got to a fortress. The big gate opened and we went in. In the camp our names were written by intellectual anti-Nazi Hungarian prisoners. We were a group of 100 people. Suddenly garbage cans full of soup were been brought to us. Everybody gathered around it and it been spilled. People licked it from the ground. My father and I didn't eat anything. We were taken to a tent area, and a place was allocated to our group, where we put our belongings and slept. It was kilometer from a red chimney that emitted black smoke 24 hours a day. It was corpses' smoke, but we didn't know it. People died non-stop. Every morning the bodies were taken and were gathered in a heap. But my father and I held on. One morning I woke up and saw the lawyer in the heap. I continued walking and I saw his son who asked me if I had seen his father and I said no.
We didn't do anything in this camp, we just wandered around all day long. We were in this camp for two or three weeks. One day we saw Russian airplanes flying above us. We were happy, we felt that the release was very close. The next day we heard shouts of "Forward! Forward!". The Germans decided to evacuate the camp because the Russians were almost there. We were expelled and we started walking. During this journey, from Mauthuzen to Gunsikirhen, which took us 4 days, we heard shots all the time and anyone who couldn't walk was killed. It was between March 10-15. The escorts were blue S.S soldiers. Every night we were told to sit in some place, and we spent the night there. My father and I spread his blanket and lay on it, and covered ourselves with mine. In the morning we continued walking. we didn't receive food. Only after 3 days of walking we received food – soup- that was already sour. Almost no one ate, but I took 3 helpings. It was the first time in months that I had been satiated. On the second day of the death march, we passed a beautiful Austrian town. We walked on the paved road, and even there people, who couldn't walk, were killed. There, I heard two military officers who talked to each other and said that if the situation was that people were being killed in the middle of the town, the war was probably lost. On the 4th day, we got to a dreamy forest. It was a clean beautiful fenced off place, with wood houses and pretty sheds with beds in it. We entered into crowded sheds. Powerful rain started. Many people died. We stayed there not longer than two weeks. Every day more groups arrived and were pushed to the sheds. One day a women's group arrived, and a husband met his wife. On May 2 or 3 1945 a rumor spread that the S.S soldiers ran away. People broke into the food storeroom. My father didn't have the strength to go there so I went to bring some food for him and for me. My physical condition was good compared to others. I succeeded in bringing 2-3 loafs of bread with effort because of the crowds in the storeroom. I hid them under my coat. On my way to my father someone grabbed it. I came back to my father without any bread and it was anguishing. After all my efforts I didn't get anything.
People who had strength left the camp for a city nearby. My father didn't have the strength, and in the shed almost everyone was gone. At the end of the shed I saw a bonfire and few women cooked milk with noodles. I asked for some and they gave me and I took to my father, but neither of us could eat it. In the morning we left the shed and saw American cars and soldiers dismantled meat boxes, and anyone who wanted could take some. I took one too but I couldn't eat it. Thanks to that I stayed alive. The people who ate died because their stomach couldn't digest this fatty meat. The Americans released us, and took everyone who couldn't walk to the German airport Hursing. It was the airport employees' camp in a two storey building, and we stayed there for two days. The Americans opened an improvised hospital there. My father wasn't feeling well and he had a fever so we went to the hospital. In the admission his clothes were taken to be burned and were sprayed with a disinfection chemical preparation. He received a bed on the first floor, and we decided that I would come to visit him the next day. The next day I had a fever too, and I decided to go to the hospital. I was told to go to the second floor, and before I went I went to my father's room. He was unconscious, he had typhus. I was blurry. I went to my floor. I was in the hospital for 3 weeks, two weeks of them unconscious. I had typhus too. After two weeks, when I woke up, I felt I was going to die. I called the doctor, who was German, and told him in German that I felt that my heart was going to stop. He gave me an injection and I recuperated. That day I went down stairs and looked for my father' but I didn't find him. I realized that he had died. I looked for the bathroom where a mirror was, and I didn't know the person who stood before me. Suddenly I realized that it was me. The feeling was that I didn't know who I was.
After I left the hospital I moved between transit camps. In the middle of August they announced that whoever wanted to go back to Hungary could. I got on a train with another 10-12 people and an American soldier in every car. After a day and a half we arrived in Winernaysla, that was the train station "new Vienna", that was on the American side and the other side was a Russia conquest. The American soldier told us to go wherever we wanted. We started to walk to the Hungarian border,. it took us 3 days and two nights. On the first night we slept in a field and the second night we were housed in a Hungarian family on the other side of the border. We arrived at a Hungarian train station, and there were a lot of refugees. The JOINT organization had lists and gave us some money. In a very loaded train I finally arrived in Budapest. It was at the end of August. I took a trolley car and I went home, to Kispest. At home I found my brother Shuli who came back a short time before from Auschwitz. We heard that our mother died in Bergen-Belsen. It was clear to us that we were not staying in Hungary. In October Shuli was on his way to Israel already and I had nothing to do. One afternoon I sat on the veranda and I saw two girls come towards me. When they were close I noticed that they were my mathematics tutor Yona Schvartz's daughters. Our families were friendly, so they came to see how we were doing. I didn't have anyone. Ergi (Elizabet) (Lea) Schvartz and I fall in love. In December we decided to immigrate to Israel and to get married. On April 31 1945 we got married, and in August 1945 we left Hungary with a group of immigrates for Israel.
We got to Israel in a ship, but the British didn't let us come into Israel. They sent us to Cyprus where we were for 10 months. Then we got to Israel and were establishers of moshav "Ben Ami". Three children were born to us – Uri, Dani and Edna. Dani was been killed by terrorists in the army, when he was 21 years old.
Today Lea and I are still living in Ben Ami."