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They housed us in a barrack, where there were a lot of us. It was raining. There was standing water there, so we could only sleep sitting or standing. There were hundreds of us there in one place. You couldn’t get any rest there. Every night someone went insane, ran around or messed themselves. There was no water there. We had to go out to a latrine, but nobody dared go out at night because they were afraid they’d be shot. We woke at dawn. They counted us. We stood in lines of five, a lot of us suffered at night because of the cold. In the daytime, a person agonized through 35 degree [C.- 95 degrees F.] heat. Every dawn, we were practically frozen, just standing in line. They poured coffee into a ‘csajka’ [a tin or alimunium plate with high sides] for breakfast, towards evening we got a little piece of bread with some bit of meat. We were continuously hungry. There was no water, they brought that from the cistern. You had to stand in line for water. My sister Hanna and I, and three girlfriends from Galanta stood in line. Of course, everybody pushed near the water. The SS soldiers hit the women with the metal [buckle] on their waist belts, as they scuffled for the water. If someone was hit in the head, it could kill them. there were always a couple who died.
Once I got sick, I got typhus which causes a high fever. In the barrack, where we were, there was a place where they collected the sick. From there they took the sick along with the dead in a Red Cross car straight to the crematorium, we knew that. My sister, and girlfriends started crying, don’t give up. As they all hustled out an SS woman came and gave me two slaps so hard I’ll never forget them. I was seeing two candles burning in front of my eyes. My ear started bleeding, my mouth, everything, but I got better. I was able to go out, and I stood out there in line. The sickness went away, even though I didn’t go to a doctor. A seventeen year old person wanted to stay alive. The Slovak girls who were living in the camp already for three years [the first transport of Jewish girls and women aged 16 -30 arrived from East Slovakia in Spring of 1942], they were the ‘Lageralteste’ or ‘Stubendienst’[German – ‘Camp elders’ or ‘Room Duty’]. They always said, ‘Do you see that smoke? They’re burning. That’s where your mother and sisters went’.
I found out about the death of Mother and my sisters still in Auschwitz, in July. We’d been there for two weeks, and we heard. We smelled it also, because it stank, the smell of burnt meat lingering constantly. New prisoners arrived daily. We were in barrack seven. I remember the gypsy [Roma] camp was on the other side, where there were German gypsies. One night we heard only that they were yelling, help, help, they’re taking us to the crematorium. In the morning, everything was quiet, none of the gypsies were left there. They were all young, we couldn’t get to them, there was an electrical fence separating us from them. We saw them. In their place came prisoners like us.
I met my mother’s younger brother, Uncle Alter in Auschwitz. He unpacked the trains. The old man asked, who’s with me. I said, ‘Hana’. - ‘Go to work, if they take you.’ I asked him, ’Where’s mother?’. He said, ‘Mother’s already in a good place.’ He worked in the crematorium, with clothes. We reported for work a couple days later when there was a ‘selection’. They took us to an area, there could have been thousands of us. They took a thousand for work. They put us on the night shift at the crematorium. In Silesia, the weather is terrible. It was so cold at night, we almost froze, while in the daytime, you can hardly stand the heat, it burned your skin. There was a woman from Pozsony [Bratislava]. It was cold, we were shivering, so she said she’d give us a little gas[heat], but we shouldn’t yell. When she turned on the gas, we thought we were being gassed. Of course, we started screaming. She shut everything quickly so the Germans wouldn’t hear. The next day they gave us water, to bathe, we got clothes, and headed towards Allendorf [One of the labor camps of the Buchenwald concentration camp]. We went for three days, they bombed Dresden horribly. They let us out there, so we could do a little ‘business’, at least. One German who happened to be passing, asked me, naturally in German, what are you? a boy or a girl? I said girl. He shook his head and said, ‘Gott, how you look!’ So you can’t say that every German was rotten.
From June to the middle of August, I was in Auschwitz. When we ended up in Allendorf, we laid down on the ground and kissed it. There were little flowers growing in the camp. Everybody got one bunk, the beds were three high. We got a little blanket, a sack of hay. It wasn’t like this in Auschwitz, where we had to sleep sitting on the ground. We couldn’t have even laid down. In Allendorf, life was more humane. There were a thousand of us. Seven hundred Hungarians from Hungary, there were about 300 of us from ‘Felvidek’ [‘oberland’ in German – literally ‘the upperlands’; today, an area in Slovakia on the Hungarian border that was annexed to the First Czechoslovakian Republic by the Trianon Treaty at Versailles, then re-annexed by Hungary in 1938 by the First Vienna Decision.] I always signed up to work everywhere, I ended up in the kitchen. Of course, my knowledge of German helped me. I worked in the kitchen to the end of our time in the lager.
One supervisor woman, Margaret, was especially cruel. We named her ‘pearl hen’. If she approached, we said pearl hen is coming, because we couldn’t say Margaret is coming. Once she heard it, and they told her what the word meant. We got our pearl hen. She really beat us with a rubber club and her hands, then locked us in the cellar for I don’t know how many days, of course, we got no food. They really beat me on two occasions there.
Once I got sick, I got typhus which causes a high fever. In the barrack, where we were, there was a place where they collected the sick. From there they took the sick along with the dead in a Red Cross car straight to the crematorium, we knew that. My sister, and girlfriends started crying, don’t give up. As they all hustled out an SS woman came and gave me two slaps so hard I’ll never forget them. I was seeing two candles burning in front of my eyes. My ear started bleeding, my mouth, everything, but I got better. I was able to go out, and I stood out there in line. The sickness went away, even though I didn’t go to a doctor. A seventeen year old person wanted to stay alive. The Slovak girls who were living in the camp already for three years [the first transport of Jewish girls and women aged 16 -30 arrived from East Slovakia in Spring of 1942], they were the ‘Lageralteste’ or ‘Stubendienst’[German – ‘Camp elders’ or ‘Room Duty’]. They always said, ‘Do you see that smoke? They’re burning. That’s where your mother and sisters went’.
I found out about the death of Mother and my sisters still in Auschwitz, in July. We’d been there for two weeks, and we heard. We smelled it also, because it stank, the smell of burnt meat lingering constantly. New prisoners arrived daily. We were in barrack seven. I remember the gypsy [Roma] camp was on the other side, where there were German gypsies. One night we heard only that they were yelling, help, help, they’re taking us to the crematorium. In the morning, everything was quiet, none of the gypsies were left there. They were all young, we couldn’t get to them, there was an electrical fence separating us from them. We saw them. In their place came prisoners like us.
I met my mother’s younger brother, Uncle Alter in Auschwitz. He unpacked the trains. The old man asked, who’s with me. I said, ‘Hana’. - ‘Go to work, if they take you.’ I asked him, ’Where’s mother?’. He said, ‘Mother’s already in a good place.’ He worked in the crematorium, with clothes. We reported for work a couple days later when there was a ‘selection’. They took us to an area, there could have been thousands of us. They took a thousand for work. They put us on the night shift at the crematorium. In Silesia, the weather is terrible. It was so cold at night, we almost froze, while in the daytime, you can hardly stand the heat, it burned your skin. There was a woman from Pozsony [Bratislava]. It was cold, we were shivering, so she said she’d give us a little gas[heat], but we shouldn’t yell. When she turned on the gas, we thought we were being gassed. Of course, we started screaming. She shut everything quickly so the Germans wouldn’t hear. The next day they gave us water, to bathe, we got clothes, and headed towards Allendorf [One of the labor camps of the Buchenwald concentration camp]. We went for three days, they bombed Dresden horribly. They let us out there, so we could do a little ‘business’, at least. One German who happened to be passing, asked me, naturally in German, what are you? a boy or a girl? I said girl. He shook his head and said, ‘Gott, how you look!’ So you can’t say that every German was rotten.
From June to the middle of August, I was in Auschwitz. When we ended up in Allendorf, we laid down on the ground and kissed it. There were little flowers growing in the camp. Everybody got one bunk, the beds were three high. We got a little blanket, a sack of hay. It wasn’t like this in Auschwitz, where we had to sleep sitting on the ground. We couldn’t have even laid down. In Allendorf, life was more humane. There were a thousand of us. Seven hundred Hungarians from Hungary, there were about 300 of us from ‘Felvidek’ [‘oberland’ in German – literally ‘the upperlands’; today, an area in Slovakia on the Hungarian border that was annexed to the First Czechoslovakian Republic by the Trianon Treaty at Versailles, then re-annexed by Hungary in 1938 by the First Vienna Decision.] I always signed up to work everywhere, I ended up in the kitchen. Of course, my knowledge of German helped me. I worked in the kitchen to the end of our time in the lager.
One supervisor woman, Margaret, was especially cruel. We named her ‘pearl hen’. If she approached, we said pearl hen is coming, because we couldn’t say Margaret is coming. Once she heard it, and they told her what the word meant. We got our pearl hen. She really beat us with a rubber club and her hands, then locked us in the cellar for I don’t know how many days, of course, we got no food. They really beat me on two occasions there.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Ruzena Deutschova