Tag #139559 - Interview #101729 (Bella Steinmetz)

The march was approaching our street. They knocked on every Jewish house’s door, so that we go to the brick factory. And they didn’t come into my house. Me and my mother too, we packed in what we could in a rucksack. When they passed by, I shouted after one of the guards: ‘A Jewish family lives here too, and you didn’t ring here!’ He comes back very angrily: ‘What’s your name?’ I tell him ‘Mrs. Andor Almasi’. He takes a look on the list: ‘Don’t play jokes with me, you’re not on the list.’ And the march goes away, and we stay there with mammy in despair, as, well, there were quite a lot of Jewish families around us, they are all gone, and we were left there… Well, I thought: ‘So they want to hang us up here, or what the hell?’ I could hardly wait that the captain arrived home, and I told him what happened. ‘It’s alright, it’s alright! You stay home. I told you I would take you over the frontier. The border to Romania is just a few kilometers far, and you and mammy have the chance to escape.’ But I didn’t want to hear a word on this. I said: ‘I have nobody over there. Where would mammy lay down in the evening?’ Because I was concerned all the time with mammy… But he kept on repeating: ‘I would like if, I really would like that…’ I implored him on bended knees to call for a soldier or policeman, and take me in, because I couldn’t leave for the brick factory by myself, with mammy, wearing that big [yellow] star [7]. He says: ‘If you insist so much, I can’t resist it.’ So he sent his orderly, then two soldiers came, two rotters, seventeen-eighteen years old kids – these were the most dangerous – and ‘Now go…!’ That’s how we got to the brick factory.