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Chief of our camp was a German from Budapest, a volksdeutsch [10]. Parents of some of my fellow comrades from Budapest knew him and he was rather loyal to us: we got better food and were sent to easier jobs. Once I injured my arm at work and this injury developed periostitis. I couldn’t do any work and there were no medications available. All I could do was keeping my hand in the water that I heated on the fire. Once, when I was keeping my hand in water a boy from Hitler Jugend stopped before me shouting in German: ‘You, dirty Jew, you must work!’. I remained sitting and he threatened to kill me. He took his rifle from his shoulder, pulled the breech mechanism as if he wanted to load it, when all of a sudden a bullet fell out of the rifle. This means it was loaded and if he pointed it at me even incidentally and pulled the trigger, this would mean the end of me. He got so confused seeing this bullet that he forgot about everything and left.
In winter 1945 Soviet planes started firing at our positions and we evacuated from there urgently. Women evacuated separately. Only recently I read in a newspaper of the Hungarian Jewish community what happened to them. They were moving to the north in the direction of the Slovak border. Of 2000 women about 800 survived. The rest of them were either killed or died from hunger and exhaustion on their way. 300 women came to Budapest and the rest of them wandered to different locations.
In winter 1945 Soviet planes started firing at our positions and we evacuated from there urgently. Women evacuated separately. Only recently I read in a newspaper of the Hungarian Jewish community what happened to them. They were moving to the north in the direction of the Slovak border. Of 2000 women about 800 survived. The rest of them were either killed or died from hunger and exhaustion on their way. 300 women came to Budapest and the rest of them wandered to different locations.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Laszlo Ringel