Search
Main page
On DEGOB
The Survivor Witnesses
Encylopedia of Camps
Supporters

The person in question has given us the following information: On the 20th of March 1944, a day after the Germans invaded the country I wanted to send a pack to my husband who was in labour service with one of his comrades, who spent his days off at home and was travelling back the same day. I asked a policeman whether I could enter the building of the railway station. He politely responded “Just come in,” and he right away put me in the line of other captured Jews. In the evening they took me to Kistarcsa, and the 29th of April to Auschwitz. The first weeks in Kistarcsa were awful. 10-12 people lay on a straw mattress without any cover or provision. The only food we got was sent to us by the Hungarian National Jewish Aid Action. There was a policeman called Bakos, who was infinitely cruel to us. He destroyed us mentally. He kept telling us that “You would not go home from here any more.” It appeared that he was going to be right because we had to leave for Auschwitz the 28th of April. There were 78 people in the freight car: 50 women and 28 men. We arrived after a day of travel. On arrival, they asked us at the station whether someone was sick or unable to walk. Naturally, many volunteered. They were sent directly to the gas chamber. In those days the train stopped far away, and later we - the first Hungarian transport – built the rail on which the train could come closer. For three weeks we stayed in a so-called quarantine before I got into the so-called Kanadakommando together with 150 others. The Kanadakommando used to open the luggage and sort out the clothes of the deported. We received better treatment, and wore the same striped clothes and red headscarves. I spent here around four months. We worked with the clothes of dead people. We found documents and photos in their pockets. Mentally, this work destroyed us completely. It was horrible to see the chimneys throwing out fire everyday, and to see the pits on fire from afar. Dead bodies were so numerous that the crematoria did not have the capacities to burn them all so they burnt people also in pits out in the open. There were transports that arrived during the night and were sent to the gas chamber without selections. There were nights when they burnt 25,000 people. People from the last Hungarian transport came from Újpest and the neighbourhoods of Pest. A few weeks later there was less work to do because no new transports arrived so the Kanadakommando was dismissed. My last horrible memory working in the Kanada is the episode when men, who had worked in the gas chambers, were brought to our place and gassed in the room where the Kanada used to gas clothes. For four weeks I was in quarantine from where I got into an Aussenkommando. On the third day an SS-man beat me almost to death with no apparent reason only because he was drunk. He was treading on me, kicking me, and he broke three of my ribs. The German head doctor of the hospital prepared a report (so-called Meldung) about it, since it was too much even for him. I stayed in hospital for 8 days, and I could stay another week in the block for the convalescent. Later, I was transferred into the commando of the weaving mill. This was the most horrible. If we did not weave the expected quantity they would beat us. The road to the workplace led through totally muddy parts and we crossed them without shoes and warm clothes. At the end of October, also the commando of the weaving mill was moved into Camp C. This was even more horrible because the rain fell into the block. We stood there lined up for roll call in the freezing cold and we had to work afterwards. It also happened that they were disinfecting us all the night and we could not sleep at all but we had to go to work all the same. At the same time the kitchen moved and it meant that we did not get a bite of food from Sunday noon till Wednesday evening. They said it was a punishment but we never found out for what. When they wanted to make Aryan people work in the weaving mill the Jews were dismissed and I was selected for a transport the 29th of November. They took me to St. Gheorgenthal, where I worked for an aircraft parts plant. In the beginning there were only 200 people working there guarded by 10 Aufseherins. These Aufseherins were quite nice when compared to those in Auschwitz. When Russians approached us they brought here prisoners from various camps, and also the SS came with them. This meant that life became hell also here. They would keep beating us. We dug trenches, and they forced us to get prepared to counter the enemy. On the 20th of December, I fell sick with pneumonia and typhus that had an effect later also on my legs. The 9th of May, the Russians liberated us. I spent another two weeks in hospital before I came home.

Looting