Tag #122151 - Interview #78261 (Ljudevit Blumenberg)

That's when the harsh Jewish tragedy began for me; it was then that I began to encounter horrible things. One day, they lined up our unit and took us to Szombathely. The first thing we saw was a school with an open gate. And what we saw there! Heaps of dead bodies were arranged like wood, one on top of the other, in a pile. The Hungarians forced us into a room. The first directive was to get naked. Once we were undressed they began to beat us. We had to hand over everything we had with us: money, jewelry, documents, pictures, prayer books. They literally ran over and killed anyone who fell over and couldn't get up. The Hungarians put us in a barrack where we cried for our dead friends who weren't strong enough to make it. The next day a malicious and repulsive officer handed us over to the Austrians.

They divided us into two groups. It was very hard because we were separated from our family and friends with whom we had shared the pain from the beginning. Our group was taken to a school in Sandorfa [today Hungary] where we got awful food and were terribly hungry. We were there for two months. Our assignment was to make holes so tanks couldn't pass. One day they lined us up and took us to a road where there were already a lot of Jews from other units. There we were reunited with some of our friends and family. Then we started our way towards Mauthausen. The journey lasted days and days without sleep and food, and the procession was very long. I was so hungry I ate grass.