They then transported us further. We traveled for days in the train, and arrived in Germany one night, in a small camp 200 kilometers from Berlin, Malchow [11]. Malchow was a labor camp. We arrived at night, there were no lights, no water, there was nothing. Everybody had diarrhea, and all kinds of problems.
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Lilly Lovenberg
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Then, two or three days later, a train came and took us to Ravensbruck [10]. There we were in quarantine for three weeks. We got soup at noon. It was a huge camp. Some went out to work. There was so much sadism, cruelty.
When the barrack was half empty, the barrack commander came over holding a little girl by the hand, maybe sixteen years old. She told me, ‘You and Nelli come with me.’ She took us to the empty part in the back. She said, ‘Hide in here, in one of the beds farthest in the back, on top, in the hollow of the bed.
The sound of a fly is not loud, but don’t even make that much noise. I’ll come back for you!’ We got in and waited in silence. Suddenly, the barrack emptied out. There was a horribly great silence: you can’t imagine what that terrifying silence was. We stayed there covered up.
I heard an SS officer asking the commander woman, ‘All 800 are gone?’ She said, ‘Yes’ in German. The officer left, and the woman came over to us with tears streaming down her face, ‘So now you can come out. Come out, that’s all I can do.’ I didn’t understand what she meant by that. We followed her. ‘And where do we go?’ we asked. ‘Wherever you want’, and she left.
Only later did I find out that we were the only three who survived that night, out of 800. The others were all killed that night.
The sound of a fly is not loud, but don’t even make that much noise. I’ll come back for you!’ We got in and waited in silence. Suddenly, the barrack emptied out. There was a horribly great silence: you can’t imagine what that terrifying silence was. We stayed there covered up.
I heard an SS officer asking the commander woman, ‘All 800 are gone?’ She said, ‘Yes’ in German. The officer left, and the woman came over to us with tears streaming down her face, ‘So now you can come out. Come out, that’s all I can do.’ I didn’t understand what she meant by that. We followed her. ‘And where do we go?’ we asked. ‘Wherever you want’, and she left.
Only later did I find out that we were the only three who survived that night, out of 800. The others were all killed that night.
I was put in the punishment barrack, and my sister Erzebet stayed in the other barrack. There was food in the punishment barracks. They had milk there, and boiled potatoes. I took some milk to my sister because they gave us the best of what they cooked. The workers just got the scraps.
It happened one night, when I first heard Hungarian from someone other than my colleagues. I went out to the trash pile to look for something. In the dark, I heard a guard cursing in Hungarian, ‘God dammit, what do I do? Shoot her?’ He was talking to himself. When I heard him I thought, thank you God, there are Hungarians here! So I went away, he didn’t shoot me, I got lucky that night.
Those in Lager C didn’t go to work, they didn’t get food. They were exterminated.
In the beginning, we didn’t even know. We found out, about three weeks later, that our parents were no longer alive.
In the beginning, we didn’t even know. We found out, about three weeks later, that our parents were no longer alive.
For dinner, we got a cup of black coffee: something brown with saccharin. You had to save your bread. I don’t know how many dekagrams it was, but it wasn’t a half kilogram. I always went out to the trash heap, and collected the vegetables off the top, which the kitchen had thrown away. We washed them well, and in a tin can on two bricks, we cooked what we had found, inside the barrack. There was a place in the middle of the barrack for that.
Eva Vari
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So I met my grandfather and uncles. They lived in Nagymezo street, in a walkway block. I would say that their apartment was rather an haute bourgeois apartment. I was slightly amazed when we first went in because the first room was dedicated to my grandmother. There was a glass case with the last things that she had touched: her glasses, the book she was reading, everything that was part of her last days, and the entire wall was covered with pictures of her.
I know so, because I as a young girl wanted to help and take out and wash up a few dishes, and there was a kind of housekeeper who said the next day that we would not say anything to grandfather, but I had done it wrong and washed up the meat and milk dishes together – as I had no idea how to do it – and so I realized it was probably a kosher house.
From where they were hiding they heard shouts that the Russians were coming at the end of the street. And they were very happy to be liberated. Hand in hand they ran towards the Russians. But at the end of the street were Germans, retreating, the soldiers turned round and shot them so they died on liberation day.
My stepfather showed willing, but I didn’t want to go at all. By then I was separated from my children’s father. And I said that I would not take on three children, and go to a strange land, with a bad marriage behind me. But they really wanted to go and I eventually said okay, thinking that we would not get emigration papers. But God, we got them. Then I said no very decidedly because I was already homesick before I had even left. I said I wouldn’t go without my parents. As we could go, but they could not. So my uncle’s family left hurt because they took it hard that we didn’t want to go. If I remember right the place they lived was called Petach Tikva.
My father, if I am right, was the third son. He was originally a pianist. The whole family was musical, due to my grandfather’s link to the piano. They wanted to make a merchant of him but music won. I also think that is why my parents’ marriage broke up.
My mother was 18 when she married. And she didn’t like this type of Bohemian life, working here and there. Later I believe he became a merchant too, but I won’t swear to it.
He was a religious Jew. For me that meant that he never breakfasted without praying first in tallit and with tefillin. My grandfather observed the holidays. He was I suppose brought up that way, and I heard from my mother that he had always done so, even during military service. So he did not eat breakfast without praying first. We also observed the holidays to the extent that on Yom Kippur we did not sit down to dinner until grandfather came home.
He was gassed in 1944, he was deported.
My grandmother’s maiden name was Zseni Grunstein. She was only religious in as far as she attended synagogue on high holidays.
When the war ended my stepfather also emerged – they had hidden here and there, and somehow found each other.
My stepfather’s father was a watchmaker but whether he learned this trade I cannot say. He tried his hand at anything in order to live.
On a small plot there were four small bungalows, there was a concierge woman and three residents. The one we lived in, my parents, grandparents and I, was a two-roomed apartment with a kitchen and a WC in the yard. The grandparents and I in one room, and my parents in the other. There were books at home. There was no library, that would have been impossible, but there were good books which I read too. I read a lot. They did employ someone to do a big wash, but otherwise there were no servants.
I started school in Miskolc, at the Jewish primary school. From there I went to the Jewish middle school, which I thinks was one of the most definitive times of my life. Because the teachers there would be far above today’s university lecturers. In that school we only learned the best at a high level. A lot of Christian girls also attended the school, as within the school there was a teacher training college which many people attended from all over the country, including Christian girls. So it was not a bigoted school.
I was never one to make friends. Of course I had friends who were important in my life, but very few. In my youth when my aunt’s family were still in Pest I was often there during the holidays. I remember that my parents did go skiing but there were no big summer vacations. I went to a ball once in my life, when I was about 17-18. I don’t know what it was for but it was a big event. My mother accompanied me and I was very much in love which was both lovely and memorable.
I visited the synagogue on high holidays as then my grandmother went. And it was such a meeting place. I didn’t like it because it didn’t seem to be about what it should be. Religion in itself, neither Judaism nor any other, really appeals to me. Because I feel it is bigoted.
I heard about Zionism when I was already a big girl. After middle school. As I had a few friends from Kassa, mates, good friends, boys and one of them was a big Zionist. They did foresting and helped a lot of Jews through Hungary while making aliya, so they could get out. I was friends with him but didn’t really bother with Zionism.
As my family were not well off, when I finished middle school and wanted to go on to high school there was not enough money, so they enrolled me in a women’s trade school where, apart from high quality art history lessons, they also taught everything else, including sewing and tailoring. I believe I was the only Jew in the school. But for a long time I didn’t notice it really.
When the Germans invaded I recall that I was going home and two really young, handsome German soldiers stopped me on the street – I naturally had a yellow star on – and we talked. And by the end I invited them back home. My mother’s eyes dilated somewhat when I appeared at home with two SS. Then the family sat down and we talked. They were two intelligent, very sympathetic, young guys. They told of all the horrors of war and said everything that we should beware of, and that we should believe that they could not help it, that this was the situation. They had been brought in, it was all far removed from them but they had to do it.
I believe it was – I can’t remember exactly – around April when the gendarmes came to take us to the ghetto. It was in Arany Janos Street. We could only take what we could carry. My father was not at home, by then he was in forced labor.
Then, not long afterwards at the end of May, in June 1944 they collected up those in the ghetto and took us to the brick factory. There we were in terrible conditions, all on top of each other. There were gendarmes there and there they packed us into wagons and took us to Auschwitz. They took us in cattle trucks packed together. I was with my grandparents and mother.
Well when we got to Birkenau, they took us out and we had to leave everything we had saved, food, everything. And Mengele was there, he selected us and waved us left and right. They sent my grandfather right first. My last image of him is as he turned back and said ‘look after your mother’. And then I was there with my mother and grandmother. Then my grandmother was sent to the right and that was the last time I saw her.
Then they herded us into a big space – it was June already, the sun shone beautifully, I remember -- and they shaved everyone’s head, and shaved us everywhere. And I remember my mother and I exchanged glances, and we started to laugh. In our terror because we looked awful. Then we had to strip naked and they took us to the baths. We didn’t know then that it could be the baths or the gas. There were special baths then. And there was no towel, no nothing. We went in single file, there was a big pile of rags called clothes, and you took what came. We entered the Auschwitz camp, the extermination camp, people didn’t really go to work from there. That’s why I have no tattoo. I was with my mother till the end, everywhere. If she hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have returned home.
And there was a line up there too, and they took us to Wienerneustadt where there was a huge arms factory. The conditions were more humane there: there were bunk beds and everyone had their own sleeping place. They took us into a huge room – lots of people worked there – and sat everyone down. I was in a completely different part of the room to my mother, where they were making hand grenade heads. And there was a very nice forewoman. And she got to know that my mother spoke German well, and said she wasn’t allowed to talk to us but she did. And she said that in the line in front, they are very slow to learn what they have to do. And my mother took the chance and said that her daughter was working here, and she was very good with her hands, why didn’t she try her. So they took me on.