Tag #156753 - Interview #78355 (Mrs. Gábor Révész)

Then came October 15. That was the day of the Horthy Proclamation, when the Governor wanted to negotiate a separate peace in that absolutely dilettante political way of his. He thought that the Germans would be kind enough and leave, as if that were only to be expected from Hitler and the Germans in general. The next day Horthy was no longer the regent, and that same day, October 15, the Arrow Cross Party, which had been waiting in the wings, took over the government, and Szálasi sprang into action. That’s when the deportation of Budapest’s Jews began.37 The camp at Auschwitz had been liberated sometime in January 1944, so we couldn’t be taken there.38  There weren’t enough wagons by then. The Jews from the countryside were transported by cattle cars, but we walked on foot all the way to Austria. We had to walk twenty to twenty-five kilometres a day. Those who couldn’t make it were shot. I survived because I was young and had warm clothes and sturdy boots. About fifty of us left together from the same house, and I know that only six of us made it back.

The Arrow Cross took over on October 15, and by the next day there were various limiting degrees issued, for example, that every Jewish who in the spirit of the Nürenberg laws is considered Jewish must show up for labour service, including women between the ages of sixteen and fifty. I had just turned sixteen, so the law applied to me, too.39 . Luckily, my mother was older. Men had to go into labour service if they were between sixteen and sixty years of age. My stepfather was also exempt, because he was working in a German ammunitions factory.40 They ended up going from Dohány utca to the Ernst Museum, where the superintendent hid them, but they later ended up back in the ghetto, from where they were then liberated.