Protocol Nr. 447

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Name: F. H.
Gender: male
Place of birth: Toronya
Date of birth: 1909
Place of residence: Budapest
Occupation: student
Camps: Wienerneustadt


The person in question has given us the following information: My permanent residency was in Tiszaújlak, where there were around 1,000 Jews, mostly craftsmen, generally tailors and shoemakers. Financially they were doing well. I worked on the fields, we had a small estate. We lived well. At the end of June, 1941, I was drafted for the army as a labour servicemen in Ungvár, and in July we crossed the border at Körösmező and followed the Germans across Poland into Ukraine, etc. We returned to the country the 10th of October, 1944. Around half of our company was kept there as war prisoners, or as prisoners of the partisans. Many died of typhus. At the beginning we suffered a lot. We were regularly beaten. In front of our eyes a sergeant of Nyíregyháza Jenő Király had 17 people thrown into the Dnyeszter, people deported from Hungary in 1941. Amongst them there was a married couple I knew. Engineer Lieutenant Simon was another commander. At this time in Kamenetz Podolski we also met 35,000 Hungarian Jews, who had been expelled of Hungary, and were shot and buried there. There are mass graves there. When we crossed this area by car, they were being collected and we were almost caught, too, but we managed to make the Germans believe that we were not Jews, so we were not touched. When we crossed that place on the way back home there was not even a single Jew alive. At the same time, as we travelled on, in each Ukrainian town (such as Proskorov or Vinnitsa) Germans caught the Jews and killed them. They are in mass graves now. In the winter of 1942, frontline was below Charkov. We were selected to work in the first line. We lived under terrible conditions. We had to stay in the open for weeks from 4 am till 9 pm during the winter of 1941-1942. Even in March it was minus 32 C. We made trenches, bunkers, and roads. We received poor military provision. They gave us some bread in the morning and that was all for 14 hours in the open. In the evening we got a lunch. Many of us got sick, even died, passed away. We had lice, as we had no opportunity to wash. Every day we had to get out, there were no Sundays, no holidays, for Jews not even hospitals. When we started to withdraw on the 14th of May, we went into the direction of Kiev, and went out onto a partisan territory. It was already somewhat easier here although some non-commissioned officers treated us badly also here. They beat us and made us do different disciplining practices. At the beginning of 1943, a part of our company were taken prisoners and were transported into Russia. Half of them died there, out of 64 people 30 are now in the Czech legion, the rest went missing, died of typhus. 26 of us were taken prisoners of the partisans, only a part of them live now. We returned to the country the 16th of October, 1944, when our company was redirected into several directions. I got into a hospital in Pest and was employed as a labour serviceman at the Keleti railway station. Later, I went into a Swiss protected house on Vilma Queen Road. The company was then taken to Garrison Albrecht but I escaped also from there and returned to the staffing station where I stayed for another few weeks. Then they took me to Aréna Road No. 55, where there was a collecting company. I escaped also from here and while I had obtained in the meantime a Christian soldier’s pay-book, I used it for working as a private in the Jewish hospital of Wesselényi Street for two and a half weeks. Then I quit. I went to the staffing station and let myself selected for a Christian labour company. I was a courier in Pest, I went into the ghetto, into the hospital in Wesselényi Street while one day the Arrow Cross caught me and almost sent me to the unknown on Svábhegy. Then they took me to the Arrow Cross building in Hársfa Street and beat me up because I denied I was a Jew. Then I joined foreign corps, the vehicle unit and went with them till Érsekújvár from where I was brought back by the staffing director. From here we went to Sopron, where I stayed until the end of January, when all soldiers, the whole corps was taken into Austria. We were all forced to work there and I worked as a Christian soldier till the liberation, the beginning of April. These have been my own personal experiences.
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