Protocol Nr. 1746

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Name: K. E.
Gender: female
Place of birth: Szerencs
Date of birth: 1919
Place of residence: Budapest
Occupation: clerk
Ghetto: Sátoraljaujhely
Camps: Auschwitz, Bergenbelsen


The person in question has given us the following information: When Germans invaded the country I travelled back home to Szerencs, from where they took my mother and me to the ghetto of Sátoraljaújhely. I came to know a wealthy Christian lady of Sátoraljaújhely and I promised to give her all my jewellery if she helped my mother and me escape from the ghetto. She managed to bring us out of the ghetto into her own flat where she closed us in a little room, while her husband travelled to Budapest to procure Christian documents for us. In the meantime, someone denounced us and detectives appeared in her flat during the morning. They tore the door open in a brutal way. One of them pointed his gun at us while the other one held a baton in his hand and they gave us five minutes to get prepared, otherwise we were threatened to get shot. He took us into a separate room of the police station, and they shut me in the torture chamber. At the start of my interrogation they asked whether I knew the detective. “I am the one who beat the bodies of Jews black but this is only the better case”. He was inspector Varró, who started my interrogation. I honestly told him that we were going to get away, and I also told him where the gold was dug. He led me to the place, made me dig it out and put us onto the next transport. The 20th of April during the night we arrived in Auschwitz. A strongly lit station was waiting for us. We heard shouts from everywhere, men in striped clothes were approaching us, and there were German guards everywhere. They made us line up five in a row, men and women separately. We had to stop in the floodlights while Dr. Mengele selected the people who were fit for work. I was selected for the same group with my mother. There was a huge fire there, and we believed we would be thrown in it alive, but it appears that it was only to raise panic. They took us into the baths and cut our hair off, gave us a single dress in the cold of April, and took us into Camp C. There were 1,052 of us in a block, 13 on a bunk. Roll call started at 2:30 am with a reveille, and we stood there erect until 9 am of the morning. One of the horrors in Camp C was Grese, who came into the bathroom when there were many people there while they closed the other door and she started to hit the unfortunate women with a club, so everyone was running away. She got men to bring sewing machines from another camp because she wanted to set up a tailor’s workshop. Men had to leave the machines at the gate of the camp. One of the little girls recognised her father among these men but she was not allowed to go to her father. They ordered women to come out from one of the blocks and got the machines carried into a block. There was a very young Italian girl among them. The Arbeitsdienst urged her to move faster while the little girl, who was surely not much aware of the situation, shrugged her shoulders and said that it was not urgent for her. The woman gave her a slap on the cheek, and the little girl returned it. The woman called the SS Blockführer who gave the girl two huge slaps and then three kicks with the boot into the solar plexus. The little girl collapsed. She was carried into the infirmary where she died three hours later. It is well known that they tried to separate relatives from each other. There was a woman in Camp C and her daughter in Camp B. When a Sunday afternoon they were talking to each other through the wire fence the guard shot, hit the skull of the girl, who collapsed bleeding. When her mother saw it she went mad. They took her into the gas chamber while her daughter into the infirmary. Later, we were glad to hear that she got better. We had to go to the kitchen to fetch the coffee at 4 at dawn. Four girls carried the vessel weighing 50 kilograms. The road was slippery and they wanted to cut across and took an unknown path. Three of them fell in a huge water container. Two swam out but unfortunately one drowned. In the morning one of the guards said to the other one: “It is Sunday now. Do you feel like having a bath? You would also have a partner!” The corpse was swimming there in the water. It happened during the selections that they took away the sick from the infirmary. A huge black car was filled with nude people. It was in the evening. There was ghostly silence like at a funeral; the car was going very slowly. A 14-year-old girl jumped out of car. Poor kid, she tripped, stood up and wanted go on running but the guard noticed her. She cried “I am still young, let me stay here!” It was to no avail, and the poor child was taken away. In the middle of January, Russians approached Auschwitz, so they took us into Bergen- Belsen, where my camp life finished later. Here, they were mostly the men who had to experience the most unimaginable things. In the mornings 5-6 dead bodies were lying in front of the kitchen with stolen turnips in the hands. The guard shot them from above. I worked in the kitchen. Once a man sneaked into the kitchen and fetched a piece of turnip. The chef of the kitchen noticed him and gave him a huge slap, so big that he started bleeding. The man kneeled down and begged not to be hurt but the chef grabbed his pistol and shot him in the middle of the kitchen. The 15th of April the English liberated us. I was lying with severe typhus fever and stayed there sick for a while. I returned to Budapest at the beginning of July. My future plans: I travel home and look for my mother. If possible we will emigrate into England or America.
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