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3-The Ghetto

Could you tell us a little bit about the ghetto?

I said before, right? That we were spared for a long time, but on March 19, 1944 apparently—historically, the Nazis invaded Hungary because they wanted the Jews to be deported like they deported all the others. When the Nazis came, everything happened so fast. They came on March 19, and in one month, we were all in the ghetto, and in two months, all the Jews—12,000—were on their way to Auschwitz.

The moment the Nazis arrived they started to make lists of the Jews, which was probably done from before. They started the raids on the houses, they took lots of valuables—whatever they found they confiscated. We had only two, three rooms, they confiscated one of them for one of the officers. He was very nice when my father asked, "What's going to happen to us?" and he was so nice—“What do you think we are, monsters? The Germans are nice people.” Sort of, he was calming us. But then they started—I told you—making the raids on the houses. In about two, three weeks they started to move us into the ghetto.

By then, in two weeks, literally, the ghetto was ready. They separated a small part of the town—the small streets at the edge of the town, they moved out all of the Hungarians and Romanians into the center. They emptied it and the 12,000 Jews moved into the ghetto. When they came to us and they said, “Tomorrow morning you're moving to the ghetto. You can take with you one suitcase of belongings for every person. You can take food for two weeks, and mattresses and everything has to fit into a pushcart.”

By then, Moishi was not home yet, only Yancu was home. They told us to leave everything in the house and leave it open. And indeed, we were ready in front of our house on that morning when it was decreed. From every street corner people came, pushing their pushcarts to the edge of the town. There was a gate at the entrance of the ghetto, some guards took our names and walked us in one of the small streets, stopped in front of a very small house and went in and opened the door to our room and said, “Put here your belongings,”—a small room. There was already a family in that home so we put the mattresses for my parents.

That house had all together two rooms, a kitchen and a porch and an outhouse and a backyard. A few hours later, another family was brought in. In the evening, another family. The following morning another family. In one week, 12,000 Jews were amassed in the ghettos—with about six, seven, eight little streets—in those small houses, every house had about ten families. We were extremely crowded. The young people slept on the porch or others on the mattresses on the floor. We had to stand in line for the kitchen—there was no running water, there was no heating, nothing. We brought with us some dry food.

There was no market in the ghetto. There were no stores in the ghetto. There were no doctors in the ghetto. They discharged the patients from the city hospital to the ghetto and since they were so sick, there was no place in those little crowded rooms, so they organized the infirmary in the synagogue—one synagogue from the ghetto. And I remember how I volunteered in the infirmary and there were patients ready to die, patients with sores. We had to take dirty dressings and wash them, boil them, iron them, and roll them up again and those were the dressings we used. And we had no medicine, we had to go back to people who had some medicine. People were dying on us.

Luckily, the ghetto did not last long. In one week, the ghetto was so jammed. They started the raids in the houses. I remember this is when Moishi returned—and many other young people returned. And we just couldn't understand—why did they return? Maybe this is because they are going to take us somewhere to work and they need young people. And we just hoped, really, that they would take us somewhere to work.

The ghetto lasted about two and a half weeks, by which time we didn't have food anymore and me working in the movie house, the first few days I had a pass to go out. But if I went to the city, everybody—I was the only Jewish person with a yellow star. I forgot to tell you—when the Nazis came, we had to wear a yellow star and there was a curfew. So the manager dispensed of me so I couldn't go to the city anymore. When I was in the city, I got some food for my friends. There was a lot of hardship.

Moishi, when he came back from the front he had a severe toothache and we didn't have medicine for him and we didn't have a dentist. I told you that they ransacked all of the belongings, took his suits and then it was decreed that the following morning we were going to leave the city. By then—I don't know exactly the date, but it must have been the beginning of—the end of April, just after Passover. I don't have memories of my last Passover. It bothers me very much because I wrote one of the letters about Passover, I could not remember how the last Passover was with my parents. So, for me, the ghetto, looking back, was really the last happy days with my family. My mother worked very hard to cook something, my father was writing his book in the ghetto. The last image I have of my father there in the ghetto was having a little table, writing in the backyard—and writing, and writing, and writing his manuscripts. We never knew what he wrote about.

Shipped to Auschwitz

That morning when we had to be on the streets for the first transport, 3,000 people, early morning and there's a lot of crying and screaming and children crying and people arguing and everybody's saying where they think that they are going to be taken. We could take only one backpack or a handbag. Moishi had so much pain. I remember I sat down with him somewhere in a ditch and he put his head on my lap and this is one of the most saddest images of mine because Moishi did not survive and he was my older brother who was so handsome. I leaned so much on him. He was just suffering with a toothache.

Finally, they decided that we were ready to march to the railroad station and they started to chase the whole crowd of 3,000 people through the streets of the city. They were hitting us, whipping us, screaming at us and we had to run sometimes. And the elderly were losing—the elderly were stumbling, and people were dropping their belongings. We wanted to help the elderly. The five of us held hands together so as not to get lost in the scare and commotion. The whole street leading toward the railroad station was strewn with discarded stuff—food and pillows and blankets, even strollers were discarded. We had to run sometimes and holding one the other and helping those who stumbled. Finally we arrived at the railroad station and they said to wait and wait. We had to wait for a long time because the train didn't arrive.

And something happened there, very strange. As we were there, the 3,000–and I forgot to tell you that my boyfriend's family—his little sister Zsuzsi, mother, grandmother—they all were close to us in the ghetto and they were all with us there at the railroad station—more so Zsuzsi who was five years younger and she always relied on me to help her out. And as we are there, we are very, very anxious and afraid of what will happen.

A military train arrives to the station and one young man steps down seeing the crowd, and I recognize my older brother, Alter, there in this train and I start waving to him and he finally sees us and he runs to us and says, “Where do you go?” I say, “We don't know—maybe Hungary, maybe Germany—where do you go?” “Well, I'm sent to the front from Budapest.” And his train whistles, and we just hug and kiss and cry and then we just watch how the train leaves. And I had the feeling then that I will never see him again. And he was the only brother who I saw again after the war.

Everything was so fast. Zsuzsi, the young girl—I was by then twenty-two and Zsuzsi was five years younger—and Zsuzsi looked and said, “What happened? What are you looking? Who—what was on the train?” It was only a few minutes when all of this tragic drama happened.

Finally, a long cattle train is brought, arrives to the front track and they start to divide sixty, seventy, eighty in one car. Very, very rude—they separated families, they separated sisters. When they have their number they push us inside, inside, and they lock the door. Those cattle trains had no benches, had no seats and no lights. There was a little opening high up with barbed wire—you could hardly see the cities you passed. There was no food, no water. There was no toilet—they took a bucket in the middle to use it. And the train left and we traveled in these conditions for three days and two nights with no food, no drinks. Everybody was hungry, everybody was thirsty, people were crying, children were crying.

Very, very uncomfortably, my mother was crying all the time. My father tried to calm her and you know just under the little window was my mother, my father, me and Yancu and Moishi was in the middle, and this is how they stacked one on top of the other. I remember at night I put my head on Moishi's chest and I tried to curl up around mother to protect her from being hit at night by others because there was no room to sleep obviously. It was very uncomfortable and mainly, not only the hunger, but the thirst was awful and the bucket and the smell.

And there was a little boy, my boyfriend's nephew was five year-old. He was crying all the time, “I want water, I want water.” So we told this little boy how to say in German, "Please give me a little water." When we arrived at larger stations, the train would stop. They would un-board the train, and they would ask for someone to bring out the bucket and empty it. They would ask if there were dead people—and there were always dead people—and they just threw them like sacks of potatoes on the platform. And this is when we lifted the little boy to the window to say, "Please give me a little water," but nobody gave him water.

This thirst was such that I remember a thought as the train—the second day—I felt that my throat was so dry, and I remember how we crossed a bridge. I heard the clicking on the wheels, I saw the arches. "My God," I said to myself, "if now they would bomb this bridge and our train would fall into the water and I would drown, what a relief such a death would be." It didn't happen, nobody bombed it. By the third the day we were so exhausted, and we were so panicky because we're just trying to—you know at night, people are crying, the elderly were praying. If we had to go to relieve ourselves, sometimes they would put a blanket around just to protect us—I mean to give us a little privacy. And we had eaten everything. I just remember when I finally arrived to Auschwitz, I had a little basket with a little marmalade left.

How cramped were the cars? Could you lie down?

No, nobody could lie down. I told you, I had to lie down on my brother's chest and they were one on top of the other. People are pushing, and there is calling and screaming and crying and we're perspiring. I remember how I took something to make a little vent for my mother and my father. Mother was very panicky.

Did you meet anyone on the train? Did you make any acquaintances?

No, you couldn't have. They were all from our neighborhood, they were all from my street in the ghetto. I had there my boyfriend's family, his sister—she had a boyfriend and all the time they were together. The boyfriend did not survive—seventeen years old. In his family, there was his mother, his two sisters—one had been married and had a little boy, Yortso, and the younger sister of seventeen and the grandmother—five people. Later, you will see only Zsuzsi entered the camp, the way that only I entered the camp.

How many people survived the ride?

I will tell you later about it when I arrived at Auschwitz and how I figured it out.

How did you spend the three days?

I cannot tell you because there was a lot of crowding, a lot of suffering, a lot of hunger and a lot of trying to calm those who were either sick or children—children were crying. It was a lot of despair. Despair, panic, a lot of guessing—"Why do they have to take us so far away?" I just remember one thing—I was saying all along after that that I didn't know about the camps, but I must have known because I remember that when people realized that the train was changing direction, that we were out of Hungary. By then, the guards started to change into Nazi guards. We were out of Hungary to Poland and somebody says, "We are going to Poland to Lublin." That hit me that there were some atrocities around Lublin, I think Maidanek must have been near Lublin. I remember that Lublin scared me too. I was just sure that now they were going to take us to a forest and machine gun us, so I must have known what happened to other Jews, because I was afraid of that. The forest and all of us being killed there. There was a lot of speculation—they cannot take us to work because there are children and elderly.

How was it for you seeing the people that were close to you suffering?

There was a lot of crying, and a lot of speculation. I remember I told you there was Zsuzsi with her boyfriend. Later on she was telling me, "I feel so guilty that all the three days I sat with my boyfriend, hugging, and I didn't stay with my mother." She had this guilt feeling that she didn't—like I spent with my parents—the last three days.

I have a question before the train. Could you describe to us your first experience with a Nazi soldier?

There were no Nazi soldiers.

Oh? Not until you got to Auschwitz?

No, really. I did not—I don't remember seeing—yes, I had seen a Nazi officer that was in our house. We had seen officers, but I do think that the ghetto was entirely run by Hungarian guards.

What were you thinking about when you were in the ghetto?

I told you. I was thinking they would take us to our death by then, I was really panicky—everybody was panicky.

Did you have any sense why you were being treated this way?

No, you know it's very funny. There was a time when we marched to the train and I had this feeling that they're taking us to work. Me, my brother—even my parents were not old—we could work. But then when we were in the train, the doom was following us. We were so far from home—"Where do they take us?" We just couldn't get it. If they want to kill us, why didn't they kill us at home?

One last thing—at the end of those three days, you had no water, no food, right?

Nothing.

Could you describe what that felt like?

It felt awful. We hadn't slept and we were all sweaty, and we were all dirty. We couldn't relieve ourselves as we should have and it was smelly. It's hard to describe. I think it was a very confining place and even the thirst started to be confining—this is all our life. We were happy to jump into the water and die in the water.