When I got back to Turkheim I had to admit immediately that I had typhus. They took me into the Revier [the barrack of the sick] where there were some sort of doctors, but there was no disinfectant. Within a short time I got a fever and they could do nothing about it. In the meantime, a death barrack was put up for prisoners with typhus. It was surrounded with cables and the guards had their spotlight on us. We couldn’t move and we didn’t receive any treatment. We even had our own latrine dug right next to our barrack. At first there were many, 20 to 30 of us, and we got some food and the guards checked on us but later nobody came to see us and we stopped getting food, too. Only two of us survived, Sandor Schwartz, a talented young businessman from Kolozsvar, and I. We felt a constant weakness, and couldn’t really perceive what was happening around us. After a while it became very peaceful and we heard cannon fire coming towards the camp.
- Traditions 11756
- Language spoken 3019
- Identity 7808
- Description of town 2440
- Education, school 8506
- Economics 8772
- Work 11672
- Love & romance 4929
- Leisure/Social life 4159
- Antisemitism 4822
-
Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
- Doctor's Plot (1953) 178
- Soviet invasion of Poland 31
- Siege of Leningrad 86
- The Six Day War 4
- Yom Kippur War 2
- Ataturk's death 5
- Balkan Wars (1912-1913) 35
- First Soviet-Finnish War 37
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia 1938 83
- Invasion of France 9
- Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 65
- Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax) 36
- First World War (1914-1918) 216
- Spanish flu (1918-1920) 14
- Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) 4
- The Great Depression (1929-1933) 20
- Hitler comes to power (1933) 127
- 151 Hospital 1
- Fire of Thessaloniki (1917) 9
- Greek Civil War (1946-49) 12
- Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 5
- Annexation of Bukovina to Romania (1918) 7
- Annexation of Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union (1940) 19
- The German invasion of Poland (1939) 94
- Kishinev Pogrom (1903) 7
- Romanian Annexation of Bessarabia (1918) 25
- Returning of the Hungarian rule in Transylvania (1940-1944) 43
- Soviet Occupation of Bessarabia (1940) 59
- Second Vienna Dictate 27
- Estonian war of independence 3
- Warsaw Uprising 2
- Soviet occupation of the Balitc states (1940) 147
- Austrian Civil War (1934) 9
- Anschluss (1938) 71
- Collapse of Habsburg empire 3
- Dollfuß Regime 3
- Emigration to Vienna before WWII 36
- Kolkhoz 131
- KuK - Königlich und Kaiserlich 40
- Mineriade 1
- Post War Allied occupation 7
- Waldheim affair 5
- Trianon Peace Treaty 12
- NEP 56
- Russian Revolution 351
- Ukrainian Famine 199
- The Great Terror 283
- Perestroika 233
- 22nd June 1941 468
- Molotov's radio speech 115
- Victory Day 147
- Stalin's death 365
- Khrushchev's speech at 20th Congress 148
- KGB 62
- NKVD 153
- German occupation of Hungary (18-19 March 1944) 45
- Józef Pilsudski (until 1935) 33
- 1956 revolution 84
- Prague Spring (1968) 73
- 1989 change of regime 174
- Gomulka campaign (1968) 81
-
Holocaust
9685
- Holocaust (in general) 2789
- Concentration camp / Work camp 1235
- Mass shooting operations 337
- Ghetto 1183
- Death / extermination camp 647
- Deportation 1063
- Forced labor 791
- Flight 1410
- Hiding 594
- Resistance 121
- 1941 evacuations 866
- Novemberpogrom / Kristallnacht 34
- Eleftherias Square 10
- Kasztner group 1
- Pogrom in Iasi and the Death Train 21
- Sammelwohnungen 9
- Strohmann system 11
- Struma ship 17
- Life under occupation 803
- Yellow star house 72
- Protected house 15
- Arrow Cross ("nyilasok") 42
- Danube bank shots 6
- Kindertransport 26
- Schutzpass / false papers 95
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 24
- Warsaw Uprising (1944) 23
- Helpers 521
- Righteous Gentiles 269
- Returning home 1090
- Holocaust compensation 112
- Restitution 109
- Property (loss of property) 595
- Loss of loved ones 1724
- Trauma 1029
- Talking about what happened 1807
- Liberation 558
- Military 3322
- Politics 2640
-
Communism
4468
- Life in the Soviet Union/under Communism (in general) 2592
- Anti-communist resistance in general 63
- Nationalization under Communism 221
- Illegal communist movements 98
- Systematic demolitions under communism 45
- Communist holidays 311
- Sentiments about the communist rule 930
- Collectivization 94
- Experiences with state police 349
- Prison/Forced labor under communist/socialist rule 449
- Lack or violation of human and citizen rights 483
- Life after the change of the regime (1989) 493
- Israel / Palestine 2190
- Zionism 847
- Jewish Organizations 1200
Displaying 19411 - 19440 of 50826 results
Egon Lovith
![](/themes/custom/centro/flags/ro.svg)
One time when we came back to Dachau we were really lucky. The Fuehrer of the Turkheim concentration camp, where we were stationed before, knew that the war was coming to an end; the Allies were constantly bombing everything, and he wanted to have a chance after the war so he was very protective of his laborers. This Fuehrer took us back to his camp. If I compare it to Dachau I would say that we lived a normal life in Turkheim and they didn’t beat us there. When we had to line up for food they only screamed at us or pushed us or said something rude. I don’t even know if there was a high voltage gate around the camp. The soldiers who guarded us were not SS soldiers, they were Wehrmacht guards. The camp had a tailor and a shoe workshop and German soldiers came to ask us to do something for them and they even gave us some cigarettes.
Dachau was an awful place and they had a crematorium as well. In those awful circumstances in the dirt, because of unhealed wounds, I got typhus but I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t want to reveal my sickness because no one knew what happened to sick people. It was a horrible seven-kilometer march to the work site, in the snow, in wooden-soled shoes, and being worn out. We had to walk 7 km back to the camp again in the dark. If the snow caught somebody’s wooden soled shoes he twisted his ankle and fell down to the ground screaming. The next thing we heard was the firing of bullets; the person was shot down. We didn’t even have time to see who it was because the guards were driving us on, ‘Los! Los!’ I was trying to walk as fast as I could because whoever got behind had something bad happen to him. I was a fit guy and marched at a good pace but I was getting so dizzy from my illness that I bumped into the first officer guard. This was a tragic mistake because he turned around right away and hit my mouth with the butt of his gun so that all my teeth fell out. Since then I have dentures. I felt something salty and warm in my mouth and I thought I was going to pass out. Later I found out that this officer was a Dutch fascist who had joined the SS.
They took us to a factory, to big bunkers where they were making Fau 1 and Fau 2 airplanes. There was an infernal row and enormous darkness, light could hardly be seen. We were tiny people in there, who had to bring big sandstones and other building materials back and forth. We didn’t want to hide or only pretend to be working because it was so ice-cold that we would have rather worked than be so cold. In the factory we were under German guard and we had to work wearing our armbands. Even though I was lanky, I was a resourceful and tough guy. Having to work hard and lugging things at home had made me more resistant, I was holding up pretty well. Soon the factory was closed down and we were transported to Dachau.
We arrived in Turkheim in Germany. It was nighttime and there was barking, great clamor, screaming, shouting, not much light and a pine forest right by us. We were on foot. We passed a concentration camp. ‘Raus, raus, schnell!’ [Out, out, fast] and I got some hits and kicks. The concentration camp seemed to be empty and we didn’t see any prisoners. It turned out to be a new concentration camp. I still remember the smell of resin. The barracks only had a roof slightly above the ground and we had to go down under because they were made in the ground. In each one of them was a miserably small stove and a small window on the ground level from where the only light came in. They weren’t big barracks. The beds, that were planks of wood, were lined up along the two sides of the barracks. I think about 30 of us were on one side and there were 50 or 60 of us altogether in one barrack. Altogether there were about 200-240 of us, forced laborers, in the camp. The guards had their barracks there as well. The Germans appointed Greek Jewish prisoners as our guards and they beat us really badly, treated us very roughly. In the camp there was also a big kitchen, the Revier – the first aid place – and the offices. There was a barrack where the Germans only collected clothing. I think there were about eight to ten barracks altogether. The camp was the labor subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp. At first, there were only men but later they also brought women.
They didn’t let us outside into the open air. We were locked into the prison for the entire time. As the days went by, they threw in some kitchen waste for us so we wouldn’t starve to death. It was a big problem if we had to pee because we couldn’t just go outside. They gathered a group of people and then the guards took us outside. After a few weeks they organized those who had remained from the 110/63 Torokbalint brigade and they made us march all the way to the Hungarian border. At night they always drove us into a brick factory. We walked for about three or four days until we reached the border and then they took us over to the Austrian side where the train was already waiting for us and we were put into the wagons.
From there I was taken to the internment camp in Kistarcsa where I was put with political prisoners because that was where Jews and Hungarian communists were brought. The camp was pretty strictly run but there was solidarity among the prisoners, the communists especially held together. There was somewhat of a feeling that the communists were organizing a plan, discussing what to do once the war was over. They were really hoping that the Soviet Union would come into this region.
It was obvious that I was a forced laborer. I was arrested immediately but they didn’t handcuff me, instead they put me into a closed car. I had no time to estimate how many and what kind of people were in there. They crammed a lot of us ‘unidentified people’ into the car. Most of us who were caught were people who had escaped from forced labor. They took us straight to the Maria Terezia barracks. I had nothing they could take away from me since I was so poor. They hardly gave us anything to eat.
I went back to the house and looked around and when I thought that nobody would see me, I jumped in through the window. It was a spacious three-bedroom furnished apartment, I had a good view over the bank of the Danube. While I was munching I looked out the window down to the street and I saw that the owner of the food store with his white apron– a suspicious, informer-type looking man – was pointing to the window I was at. I knew my hiding was over, I had been spotted. I got up and went upstairs until I found an open attic door, so I could go up to the attic. In my fear that they were coming after me, I was hiding there for a while. And, indeed, they came after me. They were looking for me and I climbed out onto the roof. It was fall and it was hell chilly. I hid behind the furthest chimney, which wasn’t easy to get to, but I already had some experience. When I was with the transportation company we also had to go up to the attics many times. I heard voices and I heard doors slamming and they came out onto the roof, then they disappeared. I stayed in the attic all night because I was too afraid to go down and I was extremely cold. I ate the last crackers and kept shivering. The next day I decided to leave the house. When it was already getting dark, I went downstairs, and in a moment I stepped out to the street. I started walking again but I got back to the same square I had escaped from in front of the tigers [German military tank serial]. But this time I was captured by policemen.
I arrived at a square where tanks surrounded us. I got scared and ran off. By nightfall, when I couldn’t stand any longer the uncertainty of trying to figure out my escape, I arrived at the bank of the Danube. There were big houses by the river and I saw a few marked Jewish houses [yellow star houses] [19] but they were already empty. I found an open window and if I remember correctly I climbed inside. There was nobody in the house, so I hid there. I could even get to the second floor. I was there all night. I spent a day there, but by the second day I became very hungry. I had a few forints – because the soldier gave me some money, with which I was supposed to buy food for myself – and so I looked out the window and I saw that there was a food store on the other side of the street. Once in a while I could see a customer coming or going. I decided to go over and buy something. Of course the mark of the armband was visible and my cloths were ragged. I asked for some crackers or scones and left.
After that I was transferred to Torokbalint where a soldier picked me to go up to Budapest with him to get a package from the purchasing center. These soldiers used to be simple peasants, workers, and they weren’t as brutal as the Arrow Cross [16] men. We took the train to Budapest. We fulfilled our assignment but for some reason we had to stay overnight and the soldier said to me, ‘I’m going to leave you here and I’ll come for you in the morning and we will go back. Where will you be?’ He addressed me formally, not informally. I went out into the street. I was somewhere around Kiraly Street. I started wandering around, I wanted to see the city and it was then, when the Horthy declaration [17] was announced. I think the radio announced something about Hungary laying down its arms. Within 24 hours the Arrow Cross Party and Szalasi [18] took over the whole country. I was out on the street not having a clue about any of this. I still thought that Miki [Miklos] Horthy was in charge and I was just about to go back to spend the night with the Jewish family, where I was supposed to sleep. Then came a Hungarian who said to me, ‘You are a forced laborer – I was wearing the armband – ‘take that band off! You are Jewish, aren’t you? Get the hell out of here, Szalasi is in power!’ I had never been to Budapest before so I completely got myself lost in the situation.
,
1944
See text in interview
From Nagybanya I got to Baja, I don’t know how far it is from Budapest. We had to dig trenches and anti-aircraft shelters. In Baja we were considerably free. On Sundays they let us go swimming in one of the streams of the Danube River. We were there all day and only came back for lunch. We lived in uninhabited barracks in very poor conditions and we also lived in stables into which we had to jump from the attic. Hungarian soldiers guarded us in the barracks. The soldiers stabbed people, who didn’t move fast enough, with their bayonets. I got stabbed once, too.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Going towards Nagybanya we marched up some incredibly steep roads, walking down hills to streams and back up again. During the first night the authorities came to inspect us: get in line, sit down, open your luggage. The first thing they took was our money and our watches and we were left without a penny. The second time they took the nicer clothes. They didn’t take anything from me since my buttock looked out my pants, they were so worn out. The third time they took the boots as well. The guy who asked for the boots for me said, ‘See bugger, he didn’t want to give away his spare boots and now he doesn’t have any at all’.
My feet were aching terribly marching on those stony roads and somebody next to me, who saw that my feet were hanging out of my shoes, said, ‘Hey, give Egon those good boots!’ But they didn’t.
I was called up to forced labor in 1944 into the 110/63 army brigade in Nagybanya. In Kolozsvar we all still had our backpacks and we were marching in our civil clothes but only some people had boots. I didn’t have boots only paper-soled shoes that I got from the Jewish Association before we left, but my feet were hanging out of the shoes. We were in our own clothes but there were also some rich Jewish kids amongst us who were wearing their best clothes; nice textile pants, big boots, down jackets, and some of them even had extra boots with them. Their faces were so puffy from being overweight that their eyes were protruding. They sat down to eat their food but they wouldn’t have shared it with the others. I didn’t even ask for it, just out of pride. This is telling how great the class difference was even among us Jews.
Samu played his cards well, he wasn’t in the ghetto at all, and he wasn’t deported because he could prove with some kind of documents that he was of German origin [which was not true]. He had Austrian education and spoke German really well and so he made people believe he had come from Vienna and he wouldn’t let anyone in on the secret that he had gone to Vienna from here in the first place. They had their second baby, Judit, in 1945.
Already in my first week at school I felt discriminated against. [Egon was the only Jewish student in class.] I’m a friendly person and initially, during our breaks, my classmates were fascinated with my Mexican background, which they discovered since I was wearing Mexican clothes: there were either buffaloes or Indians painted on my jumpers. To wear such clothing was very noticeable, but they all liked my Mexican outfits. On one day, these Romanian kids with whom I was on good terms, started asking me about my background and soon they found out that I wasn’t Mexican but Jewish. Afterwards the kids whispered behind my back.
We arrived in Kolozsvar either in September or October. I was put into school right away. Out of my eight school years in Mexico, only six were recognized so I had to go back to the 2nd grade in public school. However, they decided to put me into the elementary school on Paris Street first, to learn Romanian. In that school I learned Romanian well and then I transferred to the 2nd grade at Angelescu Gymnasium. I didn’t go to Christian religion classes because I was a declared Jew. It was possible to attend the Tarbut’s [4] religion class but I never went.
In Hamburg we found out that we had to go to Berlin because we held French passports and only the French embassy could allow us to travel further through Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary to Romania. While going to the embassy we saw a mass of people in front of a podium. We had no clue what was happening and my mother asked somebody in German who the speaker was. ‘You don’t know him?!’ came the answer. ‘No, because we’ve just come from America’, said my mother. As an answer to that I remember the person said, ‘That’s Hitler, our leader’. Then we saw Hitler up on the podium where he was giving a speech. My mother might have heard of Hitler and probably even said something to me about him, but I forgot it. That’s all I can remember about this incident. Later after we arrived back here to Kolozsvar I heard what my grandmother said about Hitler: ‘Hitler ist unser Feind, Hitler is our enemy. My grandmother was very engaged in politics; she was a post-woman, with a sharp intellect, who was always informed about the news.
We traveled for a long time. The ship was transporting goods as well as passengers and it wasn’t exactly a luxury ship. It was called Iberia. We traveled on the ship for over a month. I remember the company’s name: HALPAG, Hamburg-AmeriKa Linien-Packaktion Gesellschaft. It must have been an American-German cooperation. They were bringing Germans home because Hitler was calling the German emigrants back because the great German Empire was to be reborn. And many of them were coming; the cabins were full of Germans.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
The ship was very crowded. The tailor couple had more money and they could get themselves a cabin. We slept outside on the covered part of the deck on sunbathing chairs. They were big and comfortable and we also got two blankets and when it was windy we had to get under them. We had the cheapest fare; my ticket was a half-prize because I was only 13 years old and my sister’s was free since she was still so young.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
To be able to get ship tickets we had to sell all our remaining jewelry. But it wasn’t enough so my mother had to get a job in order to get the rest of the money. As far as I know she worked in a fish processing company. I saw how she would come home and the first thing she did was take off all her clothes because they were really smelly. She washed them but when we could afford it the neighbor Indian woman did it. They washed my mother’s clothes in lye and put them out so they would be dry by the next morning and my mother could wear fresh clothes to work every day.
After he passed away, the Gopas family helped my mother so my father could be buried, but I don’t remember the funeral. There was a big cemetery somewhere in the suburbs of Mexico City, I don’t know exactly where, but that’s where they buried my father. The Hungarian couple with the tailor business probably also helped my mother out with the funeral. I know they decided with my mother to move back to Europe and we did come back together.
My father sold his shop in the city and he didn’t take on as much work anymore and stayed at home longer. Then he fell ill and stayed in bed for nearly a year and never recovered. We lived off my father’s savings and we even sold the little jewelry and few watches that my parents had. Throughout my dad’s illness my mother had help. For some money, the neighbor Indian woman came over and spent time with my sister and I and sometimes cooked for us. It’s possible that there were already clinics for the wealthy but I don’t remember that. By the 1930s Mexico hadn’t developed and built up enough to provide clinical treatments, but my mother still brought an old private doctor to my father from somewhere. However, it was too late. My father died of stomach cancer in 1934.
We had a very good relationship with the native people. They called my father Senor Max. They must have thought we were Germans. They were much friendlier towards us Europeans, and in certain instances they would ask my father for his opinion because he was also very open and talkative with the Mexican people. He also helped them a lot, mostly he fixed their watches and gave them advice.
At first, my parents wanted me to go to school on a donkey, but my mother didn’t really want me to ride a donkey even though there were many others who did it. She was worried that I would fall off because the donkey didn’t have a saddle. So, after all, they rented a horse for me. My father made a deal with an Indian man who rented his horse to me. It came with a saddle and stirrup. They put me on the horse with my books and notebooks and I sat in the saddle properly and that’s how I used to go to school. My dad paid someone to feed the horse while I was in school or maybe he only paid for a spot for the horse and it had food [in a fodder-bag]. I don’t know but the whole thing cost little money.
Good schools were only in the city. There was a peasant school in the suburbs where they paid a person to teach but my parents had me rather attend a school in the city. At the beginning I had to walk to school, and I had to get through the forest and through totally unknown swamp areas I had to go seven kilometers across desolate places.
On Saturdays, our Indian neighbor performed the so-called goy jobs, which meant the kind of work that Jews weren’t allowed to perform. For instance, she would kill the chicken or the turkey and cook lunch if there was no cholent, and she would stay until she finished making lunch. My mother didn’t do any of this. Even during weekdays it was the Indian woman who slaughtered the chickens and she also did our shopping. My mother would also shop once in a while but generally she wouldn’t do it on Saturdays. My mother was a noble woman and she looked like one as well: she had a beautiful textile knee skirt, silk stockings and high-heeled shoes. Everybody knew she was Senora Max.
I think my father worked on Saturdays. If his business was going fine and we had enough for a living he didn’t work on Saturdays. On Saturdays and on Sundays the family sat together. On Saturdays we had a bean dish. My parents tried to make cholent, but without an oven they had to agree with a neighbor Indian woman so they could leave the cholent there, in her oven. My mother prepared it and took it over to the Indian woman’s on Friday because she had a clay oven. My parents prepared the cholent not with Mexican seasoning but with black peppers that they bought in the city. I’m not sure where they got parsley but the cholent had some in it because otherwise it wouldn’t have tasted so good. In Mexico we didn’t eat bread, only tortillas, which are corn flans. I know that a German customer of my father used to bring us Leberwurst, meat and liver paté that was probably made from pork. The German had a butcher’s shop or he imported the meat from Europe, I’m not sure, but he always used to bring us pate. In general, we didn’t eat pork, mostly because at the time it was difficult to get pork meat. In Mexico the national food on holidays was turkey. We lived on turkey and chicken meat.
I saw my mother lit the candle, put a shawl on her head and that’s how she prayed. From the time she lit the candle up until we finished eating dinner she had a shawl on her head. Once we were done eating she took the shawl off. My father put a hat on and I got something on my head as well; at first, it was a hanky and later on a hat.