They began to register us, they wrote a number near the names. Everybody got a number, and we had no more name, we became just a number. They stuck the number and a triangle on everybody’s dress – we had a yellow triangle and the Polish a red one. We didn’t wear the Star of David, just a triangle and a number. We were the emancipated Jews: They called us ‘Zigeuner Bande' [Gipsy band]. It wasn’t enough that we were Jews, they considered us gipsy also. We were the assimilate Jews.
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Displaying 45811 - 45840 of 50826 results
Anna Eva Gaspar
The shoes were in our hand, we had to dip them in a fluid, and we got a dress. A long, gray dress. Some even got a belt. The dress was similar to the nun’s dress, only the gray color was the difference. I didn’t get a belt and I went up to the SS woman, who was with us and gave the dresses, and I asked her prettily: ‘Bitte schon...’ [Please...], gave me a belt. I got a slap in the face, that I saw stars. It was the first such kind of experience, because nobody beat me until then. ‘Now! There is your belt!’ I swore that I wouldn’t make a single observation in front of an SS. We had no rights there, we weren’t considered people, and they treated us like the animals or even worse. That was a dread.
Dr. Molnar continued his activity in the camp also, and he was alive when the liberation took place. But he died in the camp, a stray bullet killed him. Somebody just pulled the trigger and killed him. So he didn’t come home.
Her cousin’s husband, Dr. Molnar, [the husband of the daughter of my maternal grandmother's sibling] Vilmos Molnar found a cellar, a bunker, where they could hide from the deportation. We had to build a bombproof cellar also. They knew already that they would be deported to Poland, and he invited my mother to join them to the bunker. My mother told him not to hide there, because the soldiers will find them. My mother asked him this, and finally they didn’t hide in the bunker.
A doctor from Varad, Dr. Nyiszli, who came home, worked there, in the incinerator. This doctor worked there, in the incinerator. And he published a book. I read it, and I felt sorry so much, that I was sick for two weeks. When I imagined that my mother had to take her clothes off in front of her mother and father... they were very prissy and very shied! Up to this day I awake when I see in my dream my mother naked in front of my grandfather. This haunted me.
The other group, which went to left, was taken directly to the gas-chamber. I didn’t know this then, I just noticed a permanent, very strange and terribly tang smell around the camp. The smell of the burnt flesh. This smell haunted me during many years, and even now, if I think of that, I’m on the verge of bursting into tears. That my grandfather and my mother... went together to the gas-chamber. And they had to take her clothes off... and when they turned on the faucets, because there were faucets in the gas chamber, gas flowed instead of water. I found out just later what happened exactly.
There stood a man with flashlight, - later we found out that he was Mengele - together with a few SS officers. My aunt and my cousin, Evi, were in front of me, and Mengele directed them to left. And when I got there, he directed me to right. I told: ‘I’m not mad to go to the right alone!' And I tried to go with my mother-in-law [to right]. She had a shawl on her head, because she felt cold. And the SS told us: ‘Die Frau nicht!’ [The woman not!]. ‘If you don’t let my mother-in-law to go to right, I go with her to left!’ Then he took out his handgun and pointed it at me. He told that he would shoot me, if I didn't go to right... Thus it was thanks to Mengele that I’m alive. Because those who went to left, were taken straight to the gas-chamber. There wasn’t getting away.
We arrived to Auschwitz. It was night. They opened the door of the cattle-truck and men in zebra suits got on the truck. We thought that they are mad, because they behaved so. But seriously. They mumbled and tried to explain something. They said: ‘Gave the children to the old people!’ ‘Gave the children to the old people!’ So they tried to advertise us, that the mothers who held a baby in their lap, were taken to the gas-chamber. That's why they told us to give the children to the old people.
And we went for a very long time. You could imagine what was there...that we had no food. They opened the door once a day, then we could go to number one and number two, and they gave us bread and margarine. And once they didn’t open the doors for two days. We were closed for two days and two nights. If somebody had to do number one, he/she had a pee through a gap. Nobody did number two.
On a day the SS soldiers took us to the railway station and entrained us in cattle-trucks. They squeezed sixty people in a truck, more families together. Everything what we had remained in the camp. We took some food with us, but before the entraining they took the food away from everybody.
First they tried prettily, and my father-in-law told them that he had no money, but they didn't believe this. However it was true, because they ran through the money what they had. And then they beat his palms and foot-soles with a truncheon until he fainted. It was terrible. And he had to tell where he hid the jewelry, because it wasn’t enough for them what they found in the closets. There were rolling shutters in our house, we could drew up and down them. There is a place above the window, where the shutters were rolled up. They put there my entire dowry. And my father-in-law revealed this. The gendarmes visited the house, because the headquarters informed Szopor about the hidden things.
My mother-in-law washed her clothes and she gave them to me. Then she washed my clothes. It was summer, and until the clothes became dry, the owner sat in the tent... We washed the undergarment and we put it to dry... there were wires and strings everywhere. It became dry quickly, and we put it on. You became very inventive in the last resort. The days passed, the young people always had to discuss about something. For example there were people who brought cards with them. Then we played cards, and the others played chess.
Everybody was put on. The boys helped us to sweep and to do other things, and we, the girls, got the milk cans and we had to deliver the milk for the small children from the camp. We had a list, and we knew who had small child, because the tents were numbered. I think the children got milk until age 6-7. We had to deliver this milk, and we finished our duty just in the afternoon, because there were a lot of people, the whole Jewry of Szilagy county were there. The Germans helped us out with the catering. There were SS and Hungarian soldiers also. Every family cooked separately. They didn’t give too much food for a family, you didn’t have enough. But we could divide up it. I think we got a lot of potatoes, which were the main food and the bread. Then we made watery soups, you just showed the vegetables to the soup, but it was good. Everything was good. And we didn’t hunger. The deep religious Jews had to choose between eating and death.
There was a kerosene lamp, we used to cook with that. It was like a storm-lantern. It had a tank for the kerosene, and it had some bulb-like thing, just like the lamps, you had to wind up the match, ignited it and there was a thing from glass you could put a pot on. Every food had a smell of parafinny. We had no hotplate, because there was no electricity in the tent.
There was a young German SS soldier, he was around 20, and I was scared stiff of him. He always picked on me. He came to me and he said that I’m not a Jew, I must be German. And he wanted to take me out from there. I was so afraid from him, that I never went out alone. I was afraid, that once he will catch my neck, take me in... and he will rape me. We always went two, three or four. I was afraid because I was a woman and he was a man...
The SS soldiers gave the orders in the ghetto, not the Hungarians. It was an enclosure, we couldn’t go out. Who entered, remained there. I remember that the son of our acquaintance, who was forced laborer and got a few days permission, visited us. They didn't let him back to the army.
And during these five days we slept on the floor, we had no even blankets. The villagers came in, during the night, and brought us pillows, quilts and blankets. So the villagers were very nice, they behaved fantastically.
They drove out us like the animals from the house. They didn’t take us directly to the railway station, first they kept us in the school for three days. But I don’t know why. The Hungarian inhabitants of the village watched how they drove in us to the voided school building... Then the villagers and the farmers began to come, everybody brought eggs, sugar, cakes and food. They [the gendarmes] didn’t give us anything. We spent there about five days, the villagers brought the food and they cried. They cried, because they said that they wouldn't see us anymore.
They came to us also [when the ghettoizing took place]. The midwife came together with the nurse, who worked in the doctor’s office. They came in two. And I went up to my room, and she told what I could take with me. Two handkerchiefs, two knickers and so on. ‘You put on this slip, this knicker and this dress! And a jersey, shoes, stocking and nothing else!’. They didn't let me to take even an extra handkerchief... Of course they took away everything, but I had to watch, God damn it, as I wasn’t allowed to do what I wanted with my stuff.
Romania
I remained pregnant. We called my mother and there was a discussion with the parents of my husband. The discussion took a week. My father-in-law was a very intelligent man, he used to listen to the radio [until it was possible] and he heard a lot of things from the foreign radio stations. We decided to abort the baby – we went to [Nagy]Karoly, because there was a doctor who did the operation. My father-in-law tried to persuade us to abort the baby, he said that it would be better this way. But of course we kept this in secret. I passed through this pretty hard. My husband was forced laborer, he couldn’t come home. I think that we wrote this to him, but just when I got through. If I had that baby, I didn’t live now... They killed all the mothers who had baby...I lived together the parents of my husband for half a year after my husband became forced laborer. We were on very good terms. I was deported from there.
Romania
The atmosphere changed slowly. We were afraid, although we didn’t know from what. The air vibrated around us... We didn’t think about what will happen, because we couldn’t listen to the radio. They probably announced that the Jews were deported from Poland and the French Jews were deported also [in March 1942]. But we didn’t know this. That’s why everybody was shocked, [mostly afterwards] mainly the Americans, that no man alive lift a finger to save the Jewish people... They couldn’t or they didn’t want.
The Hungarians never reported each other... Probably they got something to report more people. These were the arrow-cross men. At that time they used to seal up the radios. But there was a method to remove the seal from the radio. So everybody was everybody’s enemy. You didn’t know who would attack you or who was ill intentioned. I had no problems with our neighbors at all. The neighbors mentioned above, who lived on the other side of the street, weren’t Jews. They could write down what I told, and if they reported me, the arrow-cross men would take me away. They didn’t verify at all, they didn’t have to prove that you said that or not. So everybody lived afraid.
And we were afraid from the war. We were very, very afraid. We could listen to only one radio station, the station from Pest. The others were forbidden because they were anti-German. And the Hungarians were allied with the Germans already. Some people were reported by their neighbors, that they listened to the Voice of America and London.
Our circumstances of life remained almost the same, because my uncle took over the estate from my grandfather. The post worked, my uncle could send money through the bank, and there was no problem. My poor mother felt sorry only for her younger brother, who remained in Zerind and once they arranged a meeting on the no-man's-land. They didn’t take me with them, because I was a very sensible child. I’m a sensible woman also. But my mom went, and she met her younger brother on no-man’s-land. After 1940 we couldn’t go [through the border]. But the furnishing was weaker because of the war. The Germans warred already. We couldn’t obtain this, we couldn’t obtain that. They came to us from Romania, they brought flour, sugar and basic aliments, that’s why we had no problems with the food. But the atmosphere was bad because of the war. The Romanians weren’t deported.
Romania
They attacked us in the street. Although we weren't Jews with payes.... but they beat some of us. There were fascists too. The most painful was that these things tried my poor grandfather very much. They lived in Varad already when the Hungarians came in, and Zerind remained in Romania [following the Second Vienna Dictate] [1]. The Hungarian-Romanian border was near Zerind, so my grandfather’s estate remained in Romania. He got a stroke because of this. Then my grandfather was 76 and my grandmother 72.
There was Hungarian era [2] then, they introduced the Anti-Jewish laws [4], and the Jews lived in poor conditions. The situation was better in the villages, but in the towns there were a lot of restrictions, regarding what the Jews could do, and where they could travel. So they persecuted the Jews already.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
It was a very nice and loyal village. For example we were on good terms with the Catholic priest. My neighbors were Hungarians too and they had a small boy, who loved very much my father-in-law: ‘Uncle! Uncle!’- he wanted to be together with my father-in-law all the time. They were Hungarian people and we used to visit each other. So, there wasn't anti-Semitism in the village.
Romania
We had a common household with my mother-in-law. They didn’t have kosher household, although they were Jews. They weren’t religious at all, and this suited me very much. They slaughtered the geese and the hens, which is forbidden for the Jews [only the shochet can slaughter]. They ate pork meat also. My mother ate with them, but for example my grandfather wouldn’t eat there. Maybe they used to go to the temple when they were young, but I never went with them to the temple. There was a synagogue in the village and there were very religious Jews also.
Romania
I was 19 and my husband 21 at that time. And after the marriage I moved to Alsoszopor, to my father-in-law’s house. I lived together with my husband for one year. We lived together with my husband’s parents, they had a nice, two-storied house. My husband’s parents were well-situated very nice people. I had no problems with them at all. My mom came to visit us every six weeks or two months. She didn’t come more often, because she didn’t want to disturb us. She missed me of course. My brother lived in Kolozsvar at that time.
Romania
Later they took me to my room, I got changed, and they called the cab already and we went for honeymoon to Pest. This happened right after the dinner because we had the train around 4-5pm. They took us to the railway station by cab, and it was very affecting, because my mom gave us the tickets as a present and she put some money in my pocket too. My father-in-law put some money in his son’s pocket also, they took care about our spending money this way. And then we went for honeymoon to Pest, for two weeks.