Anguish and Torture in German Hell by Béla Schwarcz

Béla Schwarcz

Anguish and Torture in German Hell

Brussels, May 1, 1946

PREFACE

I am not a writer. Besides, I am not writing this book to entertain people.  In this writing I’d like to speak to those people who were lucky to survive this horrible war without great suffering. I am talking to them through my own dreadful torments described in this book.  I am talking to them in the name of millions murdered. And also in the name of those who managed to stay alive and accidentally escaped from the hands of barbarian Gestapo and SS killers.

Through the painful suffering of the massacred people or those who were liberated alive, I want to show that these barbarian killers do not deserve any chance of mercy. More than that. Even a death sentence would not be enough punishment for all these horrible crimes.

In the eyes of those who suffered so much, the entire German nation is responsible, not just the murderous, barbarian SS and Gestapo.  I want everyone to understand this, even if they do not share my opinion.

A year ago today, the German marauding expedition totally collapsed.

A year and two weeks ago, that is on April 23, 1945 (in poor health, between life and death) I escaped from the German hell. On this anniversary, I decided to write briefly about the suffering we experienced there.

Brussels, May 9, 1946.

                                               

Béla Schwarcz

Chapter 1

1938.

            It was frigid cold in December. The snow was just cracking under my feet. It was not even dawn yet, when I arrived to the Consulate Office of the United States of America.

            I was sure that I would not be the first person there, but I would have never thought to see so many people. A lot of people, not only under the gates and up to the stairs, but also on the sidewalks, shivering in the cold. I also queued up at the end of the line. After half an hour, the crowd doubled in size, so the crowd filled up the section of Mór Perczel Street on the sidewalk entirely up to the Liberty Square. A policeman tried to maintain order inside the gates. People were talking about affidavit, quota and waiting list. A receptionist appeared at 9 o’clock sharp and asked all of those people  who had a draft from the consulate to step forward. Of course, only 4 or 5 people did so, in the crowd of hundreds, since only a few had an invitation from the consulate for a visa hearing.  The receptionist asked the rest of the crowd to leave. But they did not move, they stayed put. Everybody wanted to get inside, and ask something about their own immigration case.

.             The consulate staff could not possible talk to so many people, of course. They could not reassure us anyway, since the Hungarian quota was set in four hundred or so (I do not know the exact number). Naturally, first of all, husbands go to wives, and wives go to husbands. Then parents go to their children. Children to parents. They have the priority. The remaining slots go to siblings, relatives or friends. But of course, there are only a few slots or even no slot left at all every year. Immigration was almost impossible for those who were born in Hungary. But in order to give at least something to the shivering, waiting crowd, the consulate receptionist distributed waiting list forms to fill out. The crowd instantly snapped them up. Not everybody managed to get a form. A sign on the door said with big letters that the Hungarian QUOTA was filled for 5 years ahead. It changed to 10 years within a week. It changed to 20 years within a month. The waiting list grew very quickly as well as the number of those thousands of people who wanted to leave their country, their home, their village because they could not stand anymore the vile politics of the Horthy regime.

            I wanted to escape from my native land, Hungary, at all costs. I was not allowed to go to America. Therefore I tried to go to Belgium, since my parents and my younger brother lived in Antwerp. My father went to Belgium to look for a job in 1930. He had been working for four long years in very hard circumstances in the ironworks in Charleroi. My mother and younger brother joined him in Belgium in 1935.

            I was drafted to the Hungarian army at that time, in 1935. On January 1st, 1936, I had to report for military service in Nyírbátor, and then I was transferred for boot camp training to a border patrol military unit, which belonged to the 12th Infantry 2nd Battalion, in a village called Mérk located close to the Romanian border. Ours was the 5th military unit. To tell the truth, the military training method was quite barbarian. The corporal, the lance corporal and the military trainer quite often hit my leg with the end of the rifle when we practiced how to hold our rifles and how to make the turns. On Sundays instead of having the afternoon off, we had to tighten our hips, bend our knees and hop around the table like a frog with a soldier’s wooden chest in our hands. And when our corporal got bored of this, he commanded us “to make an airplane”. I think everybody who served in the Hungarian army knows very well what this expression means. We hid under the bed. Then he commanded “Attention”. Of course, we were not allowed to crawl out; we had to stand to attention with a bed. Of course, the bed fell into pieces. I can’t say that my life was worse than my other friends’ lives that were in the army with me. I can’t even say that I had less trouble, since the corporal made me clean his boots every evening and I made his bed every morning. Otherwise, the corporal was quite an ugly person. He reminded me of the German barbarism. His name was János Szilágyi. He was also the commander in our room.  I'd like to mention that one Sunday afternoon Szilágyi started again his barbarian entertainment. He started giving out commands, tighten your hips, bend your knees deep, and run around the table with a soldier's wooden chest in your hand. There were twelve of us in that group. All twelve of us were sweating. Later we could hardly breathe, when a lad of Kispelecske collapsed. The corporal jumped to him and kicked him in the groin where it is the most painful. The boy could not march, he lay in the sick room because of this kick. He confessed to the doctor that the corporal kicked him. By the time of the official hearing, the corporal threatened the boy well enough that the boy denied that the corporal kicked him. At lunch time we often had to eat our soup with a fork while squatting on the wooden chest.

             In the fall, all married man and gypsies were discharged. I was transferred along with a few others to Pest to the Ludovica Military Academy, here I took care of the horses and served as an orderly. I was transferred from the infantry to the mounted squad. Here I had to learn to ride a horse and dust the horses out very well. Life was a bit easier here. The son of the previous country-poisoning prime minister Gömbös was also there as an officer cadet. Ferencz Szombathelyi, Colonel of General Staff was the Commander of the Ludovica Military Academy at that time, and he was considered a good men by many.  I do not know if  he melted into this plunderer, traitor Arrow Cross gang later on. But as I remember him now, somehow I can't assume that he did.

            I was discharged on September 23, 1937. I could not find any employment. I have to mention here that some men left our garrison on Üllői Street barefoot, because they had no shoes. They were discharged empty handed.

            I was running around in the town for two weeks, when finally I got a job at a butcher in Király Street. My salary was 12 pengos a week and some cold food to eat. Later, I learned that my boss occassionally employed young country boys in the butcher shop, exploiting them to complete exhaustion, from 6 in the morning until 10 in the evening. No lunch breaks. Just quickly grab something to eat, then haul many heavy bags on bicycle to the big coffee houses. Bring  the meat in from the big truck all by yourself. This butcher shop was always full. We sold  a lot of meat, lard and cold cuts every single day. But my boss, Károly Klein did not want to buy an electric grinder. I had to grind all that meat by hand, when a consumer wanted to buy ground meat. Whenever I stopped for a second, either my boss or his wife shouted at me: “Béla, don’t you have anything to do?” If there would be a minute to rest by any chance, then I had to go to scrub or find something else to do. The boss did not profit anything from that work, because in the morning we cleaned everything well. Of course, this heavy workload exhausted me, and I became very sick. I was in bed. My boss gave me a 2-week notice, since he saw he couldn’t squeeze much more out of me anymore. Later I learned that the much stronger, young country lads could not keep up with this work pace longer than a few weeks.

           

            When I got better, I found a job via newspaper ads as a grocery clerk in the shop of József Berger at 16 Drégely Street. I have never worked as a grocery clerk. I could not find any job in my trade, so I tricked him. I told him that I worked in my father's grocery shop in the country before. Since I was not familiar with city customs, I asked my boss to show me everything very well in advance, so I’d know what to do. There was no lack of work at this place either. I had to get up at 3 o'clock in the morning, so I could arrive to the big food market in Csepel at 4 o'clock in the morning with the boss to buy fruits and vegetables. Pack, deliver, and serve customers. I had no lunch break here either. I can call this “from daybreak till nightfall”. But at least, it was not a cruel exploitation like I had at my old job at Károly Kleisz Butcher at Király Street. I worked at this grocery shop for 6 months, then their son came back home from the army, and the boss wanted to reduce my salary, which was not too much to begin with for the work I did.  I quit, because I was waiting for my visa to Belgium. My visa was due to arrive in any minute. I received a non-extendable visa, valid for one month.

            I said my farewells to my relatives and good friends on April 11, 1939 and left my native country, my land. I have to state here that I did not left Hungary in order to find adventures on foreign land. I left the country because I was fed up with Horthy regime, the religious exclusions and the huge unemployment. The terrible exploitation of the working people. You could not say or do anything. The Horthy regime took care of it; the smallest protest in the name of the truth was enough for them to call you a “communist”. Either you were a communist, or not, you would not see the daylight anytime soon.

            Let me mention here the cruel and inhuman oppression of the agricultural laborers and farmhands by the rich landowners.  My dear native village is Kisszekeres in Szatmár County. I happened to be there a lot. My uncle was a steward of the Hajnau Estate, his boss was Dezső Fried, later on Sámuel Schwarcz became a tenant of the estate. Most agricultural laborers had enough bread to eat only for two weeks and they were starving for the other two weeks, or they ate only some potatoes or other kind of vegetables. Of course it depended on the number of their children. If someone had no children, he could eat bread for the whole month. Clothing was very scarce. Farmhands worked from dawn to nightfall, and almost for free. The salary was 12  metric center doubles, which contained half wheat and half refuse of wheat, 2 cartload of firewood, 1 piece of stump (which of course, does not burn well), few kilograms of salt, few kilograms of beans, corn or hemp, a tiny piece of land, usually in a barren area. Very few people had a cow or a pig. The annual salary was 8, 16, or 24 pengos. A 24-pengo salary was offered only those who were working at the same place for years and years. Where were the spices, clothing or lighting? If someone had a hen, he did not allow himself to eat even one egg accidentally, because he had to take it to the store to exchange it for a little salt or vinegar or petrol. Literally, lice ate them.  Once I peeked through the window of a farmhand, his name was Kicsker. He had a table and a bed with little straw on it, nothing else. Only a few kids loafed about in the school, because kids did not have boots.  In one hand, the children did not mind this at all, since their teacher Endre Végh hit their ear a lot and beat them if he had a rough time in his love affairs. “Whipping bench” meant that you had to bend down your head to a bench, the kid sitting on the bench held your head, and the teacher hit your bottom with a cane. I know this well, because I was also on the whipping bench occasionally, my palm was also swollen from cane marks. I’d like to mention here a widowed maidservant, her name was Apátiné. She ran to my aunt and complained in tears that the deputy notary took all her hens (she had 4) because her son, little Jani did not report to a military youth group called “levente”.  My poor uncle was a man who shouted a lot, but the farmhands liked him very much. He was like a good soldier, if a supervisor came by, he shouted, and when the supervisor was not there, he left everything as it was. My poor uncle and his family died in Auswitz. Only one of his daughters is alive, Erzsike, who lives now in Fehérgyarmat, and she is the wife of Jenő Farkas. The Haynau Estate was an infamous place. It was given to Haynau, the cruel hanging judge for executing the leaders of the 1849 uprising. That era was very similar to the barbarian fascism which just ended now.

            When my train moved out of the Eastern Main Railway Station, I wanted to cry. I did not speak any other language, just Hungarian. I knew my situation would be difficult abroad. I asked the ticket inspector whether the German ticket inspectors spoke Hungarian, too. He assured me that they did. A Hungarian officer jumped on the train at our border town, Hegyeshalom, and asked me whether I had any money. I showed him the cash I had on me, 3 pengos. A minute later they asked for my passport in German, and I was horrified as I saw a German swastika stamped in my passport. The German officer started to shout. Later I learned that he said that all Jews should speak German, and he did not believe that I could not speak German. His appearance reminded me of the sadist, barbarian, parasitical SS men in the death camps.

            Early in the morning, our train arrived to Vienna. German soldiers patrolled the train station. I wanted to see into people's heart to know how the Austrians dealt with this barbarian German occupation. After waiting for an hour, I boarded a train to Ostende. There were German soldiers everywhere. During my entire trip, the train was stuffed with soldiers wearing swastikas. I could see the German nation totally gave in to Hitler. From the train, we saw swastikas displayed on huge boards on the fields, everywhere. The German farmers gave a present to Fuhrer by erecting a board with huge swastika on it on the fields. You could see then the Furher was alive. Soldiers and soldiers were everywhere. You did not have to be a smart politician; even a small child could see that this nation was preparing to conquer other nations and countries.

            Finally, I happily arrived to the Belgian zone, and I did not see the abhorred Germans anymore. My unforgettable, dear father, whom I had not seen for 9 years, waited for me in Brussels.  He worked at a cleaning facility at that time. My mother waited for me in Antwerp at the train station. The moment when I arrived and jumped into her arms after so many years apart is burned into my memory.  I was happy to be with my parents and my younger brother. But the Belgian authorities did not let me enjoy the company of my family, and after staying in Belgium for a month, I was expelled from Belgium because of my Hungarian citizenship. I did not go home, of course. I went to Brussels. Later my parents also moved to Brussels, and it was much better for me, I could go visit them time to time.

            From May to September, I lived sleeping here or there, since I had no residence card. They did not give residence cards to Hungarians.  In October, the war was in the air. The Nazi gang occupied Poland. Here, in Belgium, a new regulation required all foreigners without papers to register at the police station. Worriedly I registered at the police too, and I got a permit to stay for a month. After 2 months, they gave out residence permits, Modelle B white cards valid for 6 months.

            During that winter, I lived with my dear parents. It appeared then that we could live a bit calmer life. But unfortunately a big peril fell upon us. In May 1940 the German murderous storm besieged Belgium. Inhabitants took a flight. The lucky ones reached England. The German bandits were shooting at the fugitives with machine guns from airplanes. Many people lost their lives, and there were crippled ones, who lost a leg or other body part while trying to escape.

            The Germans executed their actions with cunning and crafty cruelty, indeed. How cunning they were! During the first 2 years of the occupation, they did not do anything in particular; they let the Jews live and trade. Therefore even those people, who left the country, slowly started to come back, and began to work.  From 1940 to 1942, here in Belgium no apparent atrocities happened beside a few arrests, and the Antwerp temple fire which was set by youngsters who also threw out the Torah. The murderous Germans acted this way so they could pounce down all Jews at once.  Unfortunately, they did execute their plan.

             I’ll describe here what kind of regulations were made by them, how skillfully they were preparing to kill millions. First they ordered all Jews by law to register as a Jew in a Belgian Registry Office. They made an entry about the Jewish person and they printed “JOUD. JVIVE” on his/her identity card. My identity card was taken by the Gestapo when I was arrested, but later, after our liberation, my identity card was found in the Mechlen transit camp along with the identity papers of other wretched prisoners. It is shown on the other page. Another new German law granted permission to organize and operate a Jewish Committee in order to facilitate the removal the Jews. Every Jewish person had to sign up. I am attaching the sign-up document of my sweet sister-in-law, who never came back home. This traitor committee accepted 10 francs at sign-up from each Jewish person. Of course, these unlucky people (hundred thousands of them) did not know this registration meant death for them. After registration, the Germans’ ordered the Jewish Committee to send out letters to the registered members and instructed for work for the Germans. There was no mention of deportation. If someone needed a blanket or anything else, the above named office would provide it. If someone did not report for work, they would turn the person over to the Germans. Of course, thousands reported for work, and they were sent to gas chambers and crematories. Many of them reported for work after receiving these letters, having no idea about their fate.

            But later, a small remaining Jewish community got a wind of this happening; news leaking out of Poland gave us cause to doubt the Germans. And the small remaining Belgian Jewish community scattered. However, safety was nowhere to be found. Gestapo agents patrolled everywhere. Substantial sums were paid for each Jew; a lot of Jews were turned in by their neighbors. If someone noticed a Jewish face on the street, he followed the person from a safe distance to see which building he/she was going in, then called up the Gestapo with the address. The grey taxi appeared in no time for the unlucky ones. A Polish man named Zsák was also a refugee, but he became a traitor. He accompanied the Gestapo agents, and constantly searched for Jews. He could recognize a Jewish face on the street at once, and that person was immediately sentenced to death. Even if he had fake papers, Zsák did not let that person go. He ordered him to remove his pants, and then took him to the basement in the Gestapo building. If Zsák found a Hungarian Jew, who was defending himself that he was a Hungarian  (Jews were not deported yet from Hungary), Zsák replied in Hungarian using the most repulsive words stating that he had to go with him. This criminal knew a few words in Hungarian. This despicable quisling sent many people to death. Nobody knows what happened to him. According to some people, when the Gestapo agents marched out of the country, they killed him. Some say he escaped. The fact is, that a few days before the English and American soldiers liberated Belgium, he was still seen there hunting Jewish people.

October, 1943.

            The Germans suffered huge losses everywhere. The Russians pushed forward all the time. Many talked about the end of the war. If I meet another persecuted person emerging from a hiding place on the street by any chance, we’d recognize each other. We are pale.  Our nerves are all frizzled. Out of fear we do not wear our yellow stars anymore. We know it does not matter anymore. They take us either way. Everyday another friend of mine was taken.  As they say in Hungarian, “the clock struck”. However, we are trying to comfort each other saying that this can’t last much longer. We are waiting for the long overdue English-American invasion. What is going to happen??? The most unbearable thing is that there are so many traitors. We can’t go out of the house anymore. We don’t want to stay in the old place. I go to an apartment in 6 Rue Plantain, and my parents go to house number 34 on the same street, searching for a new hiding place. We moved to this house, but we stayed only for a few days there. My poor, dear, unforgettable and good mother was very afraid that we might be taken from this new hiding place even sooner. Streets and walls were strange; we became even more scared staying there. As always, we followed my poor mother's advice, and we finally returned to our old apartment.

            Only a few days later, during the night of April 22, 1943, I woke up to the sound of the murderers banging on our door. I said to my wife, “this is the end. The Gestapo is here”. There was no way or time to escape.  Trembling and shaking, I opened the door. The killer barbarian bandits, civilians and Gestapo agents together shone a sharp light into my face. My wife was dead pale, and I saw that we had come to the end.  They started shouting at me to identify myself. I presented my identification card; they saw at once that I was Jewish. They started to search for our names on the paper they carried with them. Someone gave us up. Who was it? Maybe a neighbor or someone else. The SS soldier barked at us to pack our things fast because we had to go with them. We never harmed a fly, but we had to go because we were Jewish. I asked the reason of our arrest. Then the civilian Gestapo agent grabbed his pistol and roared,”get ready”. I am telling my wife, who is still shaking, that it is time for us to go where  her siblings and others went before... We are packing now, trembling...

            (I have to put down my pen. I am so upset that I can't continue for a while. I see all the pain and suffering in front of my eyes.)

            Horrors!!!!!  I stopped writing 5 weeks ago.  I’d like to continue but I am not able to do so. I have no nerves to continue.

            One civilian Gestapo agent stays with us, the others go away. The Gestapo agent sits down, watches us as we are packing. Then he says we better hurry up, otherwise we have to go without luggage. We grab things fast, still shaking. We do not know what to take with us, which clothes…          

 (I quit, I can't continue writing) 

BOOK 2

            I am already seventy-three years old. I think it is time to write my memoir. I have enough material to write about, actually a lot. I went through two world wars in my life. True, I was a small child at the time of World War I.

            I was born on July 18th, 1913. After World War I, antisemitism was already strong in Hungary. We lived in that part of the country which was very poor, with a few exceptions. We lived in Vámosoroszi in Szatmár County until I was seven or eight years old. A lot of poor people lived there. Small landholders also lived there, and two big landowners too, one of them was called Stózinger, and the other's name was Kristóf. Wide marsh stretched between two streets of the village. There were willow trees and small bridges. The marsh often overflowed. At those times we could cross the street with punts or walk on wooden planks that people screwed together and put down on the water. Unhealthy weeds and grasses grew along the marsh. Bad odors rose from the swamp. It was unhealthy. Youngsters were infected by tuberculosis and died in a young age. There were more than enough funerals in the village. Pastor Márton Incédi was busy attending burials. The marsh was drained later. A river was dug out for the water to flow in, and it flows there ever since. Our unhealthy swamp disappeared, and the high death rate was almost gone.

            In 1921 or 1922, we moved to Kisszekeres, another village nearby. We lived there until the end of the twenties. Then we moved to Fehérgyarmat. We lived in difficult circumstances. There was a big jesiva, a Jewish school in Fehérgyarmat, with a lot of students. The jesiva’s leader was Rabbi Vilmos Güncler. Some opinions were heard by then, that sidewalks were already too full of Jews and Jewish agents. Our life was hard. In the early thirties my father went to Belgium to look for a job. I worked at a kosher butcher shop in Gyarmat. I was greatly exploited. They began to shave off bócher’s, young Jewish lad’s ringlet at paramilitary youth organization called levente. Fascism became increasingly stronger in Germany. The strong hate against Jews could be felt more and more in Hungary also.

            I was drafted to the military in January of 1936. By then, my poor mother and my younger brother lived in Belgium. I reported for military service at Mérk, a village near the Romanian border. This boot camp was one cruel, inhuman torture. I stayed there until September 1936. Some people were discharged, some were distributed. I was transferred to Budapest to the Ludovica Military Academy, to serve at a military mounted unit. My job was to take care of the horses and serve young men studying to be military officers. We, I and other transferred lads, were enlisted men. We became cavalry men. In Mérk, I served as an infantry man. At Ludovica Military Academy I was the only Jew. Let me write here about an ethnic German farrier sergeant. He did everything in his power to make sure it would be me who had to lift up the legs of the most nervous horses while we put horseshoes on the horses. He was praying for the moment when a wilder horse might kick me to death. Anti Nagy was transferred there from another military garrison. He was cleaning his two horses just across from me. I was cleaning my horses, and he was cleaning his horses. He always passed anti-semitic remarks in my presence. This time he said, "Jews took blood at Tiszaeszlár". I became agitated, jumped at him and started to hit him with a horse scraper. Of course, he began to shout and gave out a high shrill. The farrier sergant stopped by the door and asked, "What is going on here?" I approached him like a soldier, then I repeated him Anti Nagy’s words, "He says, the Jews killed a girl in Tiszaeszlár and took her blood". Because Anti Nagy said such a big lie, I had to beat him up. Then the sergeant replied, "He is right."

            Something just broke inside me. I realized then, that it did not matter that I was a Hungarian soldier; I would always be a Jew, a displaced person, and people would hate me. After this incident I did not clean the horses so faithfully anymore, I did not pick horse dung from the floor at night. Often I had to watch the horses at night.

            Then, I was discharged in September 1937. There were no jobs available. I worked for a miniscule amount of money at a butcher shop, but not for a long time, maybe 2 1/2 or 3 months. After that, I got a job at a grocery store on Drégely Street as a shop assistant. Here, I met young people who were members of the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross Party. This was in the first half of 1938. They greeted each other with raised hand, fascist style. During my next job, I was a bread delivery boy. It was a very hard work. Later, I delivered corn and other stuff from a big crop trader to several small stores. After this, I became an errand boy in a paint shop. One evening I sat at a small dining room and I was listening to the radio. Prime Minister Béla Imrédi was talking about politics and the Hungarian problem. Finally he said, "And now I am going to speak about the Jewish issue, which is like a tumor. It needs to be cut out of the body of the Hungarian nation." He got a big applause.

            When I could not get any more jobs, I went down to Kisszekeres. My aunt lived there with my uncle and their seven children. My uncle was a steward of an estate. From his entire family, only one girl returned home, everybody else perished in concentration camps. This niece of mine now lives in Israel. She is 73 years old, and her name is Erzsike.

            In 1938, I traveled back to Budapest. By then I got a document, an affidavit from my uncle and aunt, inviting me to come to America. The American consul notified me that the Hungarian quota was already full for years to come, so I had no chance to go to America. Only those had a chance, people who went to see their spouses, or children going to visit their parents, or older parents going to visit their American citizen children. I registered, but I did not get a visa. I was in a difficult situation again in Pest. I worked at a butcher shop for a short time at Király Street. My boss was called Károly Klein. During the spring time the Jewish Council called me to Síp Street, and they told me that I might immigrate to South America, since I was already registered. I replied that I had just received my visa to Belgium to live with my parents and my younger brother. This turned out to be a very bad choice. If I went to South America I would have escaped from German concentration camps. Maybe I could have saved my poor parents as well. But I decided to apply for a Belgian visa. I was told that I could get a visa for 3 months. I had no valid passport by then. My passport expired. I tried to get a new passport at the Passport Department of the Police Headquarters, but they did not even want to hear about me. They advised me to wait for a new decree from the Department of Interior Affairs. A few days later, I went back to the Police Headquarters to the Passport Office. An older police officer stood at the entrance gate. I looked at him, and I recognized him at once. He recognized me, too. I said Uncle Huszár, he said Béla Schwartz. We knew each other very well from the Military Hospital on Gyáli Street. During my military service, I had problems with my stomach and I was sent to this hospital for examination. One day this Uncle Huszár, who was a police officer, arrived to our hospital room in bad condition. He had a lung infection. His bed was close to mine, and I helped him a lot. He saw my kindness and he always asked me to get him this or that, or help him to get off the bed or go back to bed. And now, we met again accidentally. We were very glad to see each other again. He asked me about my life, what I was doing there. I told him that I wanted to get an exit permit so I could go to Belgium. His advice was to find a certain military officer, a captain at the Police Headquarters, who was willing to secure short term exit permits for discharged soldiers. He told me to find this captain. He also warned me to behave very much like a soldier, otherwise this captain would refuse to help me. I thanked for his advice, and went up to this captain’s office at once. I knocked on the door. Someone said inside, "Come in". I opened the door. I stood attention as a soldier in front of the officer and with a very loud voice I said, "Captain, Béla Schwartz, reservist infantry man, I hereby humbly ask for a three month leave to visit my parents in Belgium." The officer watched me intently, then took his seal and stamped a three-month exit permit in my passport. By that time, I had a one-month extension in my expired passport with an additional clause that on my way back my passport should be confiscated since my citizenship is not clarified yet. Never mind that all my ancestors were born in Hungary.

            Then I purchased a ticket to Belgium, and in April 1939, I boarded the train. My passport was examined at the German-Austrian border. The German officer, who examined the passports, asked me, "How much money do you have?" Well, I did not have much money. He asked, "What is it in there in that glass jar in your luggage?" I told him, "Coffee". He asked, "Kind of brewed coffee?" I said yes, although I did not understand too much German then. He asked, "How come you do not speak German? All Jews speak German." Previously, when we crossed the Hungarian border at Hegyeshalom, I exchanged all my money at the Hungarian border patrol to German money. Then our train started to leave the station and went all the way to Wien. I had to get off the train there and wait for the Ostend train. Austria was annexed to Germany at that time. German soldiers in boots and iron helmets were walking at Wien Grand Railway Station. After an hour, the Ostend train finally arrived and I boarded the train along with other passengers. We waited a little, then our train left the railway station. Many soldiers were traveling on the train. Two uniformed soldiers stood with swastikas at the window. They looked out of the window. At one station, beer was sold. I wanted to buy a bottle of beer, so I went to the window. I looked at my German money, but I did not know how much it was. The arm banded German turned to me and helped me to buy a small bottle of beer. He probably did not notice that I was a Jew. I did not realize then how dangerous it was for me to travel among these Nazis on the train. We traveled on the train for a day or two, and finally we approached the Belgian border. The train stopped at Achen. I saw that one man was taken off the train. The Germans stamped my passport, the Belgian supervising officers boarded on the train and stamped it again. The train started to leave the border station, and then went all the way to Brussels. I had to change train there to go to Antwerpen. When I got off at Brussels, my poor father was waiting for me. We greeted each other and kissed each other. His first words were, “See, my son, how grey-haired I became." Then we waited for the train to Antwerp, which arrived shortly. We boarded the train and soon we arrived to Antwerp. As we got off the train, I saw my poor mother who was waiting for me. She looked fragile, hardships of her life broke her. We kissed each other. She asked about me, then we went home to Magdalena Street. Józsi, my younger brother also came home to meet me. We were so glad to see each other. He was a young guy then, barely 18 years old. He was trained to be a taylor. The next day, my father and I went to the Police to register. We had to wait for a long time at the police station, our number was two. But every time the officer called two in Flemish, he asked some one else to come in. The officer asked my father whether he spoke Flemish or French. My father told him he could speak a little bit French. He worked in Charleroi ironworks at the time he was alone abroad. My mother and younger brother still lived in Hungary, in Fehérgyarmat at that time. French was spoken in that Belgian town. So after a lot of talks, I received a paper valid for one-month stay. This paper warned me that I had to leave Belgium after one month. This month went by very fast. My poor father went up to Brussels every day. He worked in a used cloth factory. The factory owner was a rich man. He bought a lot of used men suits and trousers. He had them mended on sewing machines, had put ugly patches on the clothing. In Europe, nobody would wear this clothing. Still it was good business for him. His name was Veiman. Cleaners and steamstresses worked for him. My poor father worked as a cleaner. He shipped all cleaned, patched up clothing to Belgian Congo for the black population. At that time Congo belonged to Belgium. It was called Belgian Congo. Now it is called Zaire. It does not belong to Belgium anymore. People must have been very poor there if they wore those clothes.

            My one-month permit was about to expire. I did not want to go back to Hungary. My home country drew closer gradually to German fascism. What could I do? I did not dare to stay in our home at Antwerp. I was afraid that the police would deport me. I traveled to Brussels by train, and slept at remote relatives’ homes. Later my parents moved to Brussels, and I stayed in their home. At a Brussels flee market we bought cheap men’s clothing, and we mended and cleaned them at home. Veiman bought them from us at a pretty cheap price. That’s how we supported ourselves. We also sewed linings into woman’s purses. The purse and bag manufacturers bought it from us after they could not buy new linings. Once I was at Veiman’s used cloth factory, and then I heard on the radio as they announced, Germany started the war. The Germans attacked Poland, and they were already bombing Warsaw. We all got really scared. What would happen to the Jewish community in Poland? As soon as the Germans occupied Poland, they began to exterminate the Jews. In Belgium, the mood was sour. Wealthy people ran away to wherever they could- some to Switzerland, some to England. Very few people could find refuge in these countries. The lucky ones, within the quota, went to America. I also wanted to come here, but I could not get a visa. I had been registered for an entry visa for two years already. The American Consulate confirmed that I had to wait even longer, possibly for a long time, because the Hungarian quota was tiny. I had no papers or IDs. I was afraid all the time that the police would catch me and take me to the border, and I would be deported. I did not have a residence permit.

            In May 1940, Germany started a war against Belgium, Netherlands and France. People were running, fleeing. Chaos prevailed. We went up to the Hungarian Consulate and asked them, “What is going to happen to us now?” A Consulate Associate was standing at the door, and he told us, “You, Hungarians have no reason to be afraid.” He was so wrong. Some people reached England traveling along the withdrawing British troops, and they were saved. The Germans forged ahead and bombed the country. The Belgians blew up the bridges. The king of Belgium surrendered. The German army occupied the city of Brussels on motorcycles, followed by military trucks and other type of military personnel. Streets were deserted. It seems that at that time I did not fully understood this dreadful tragedy, because I went out to the street and watched the marching German army. Later in the evening, I walked along the empty main street to the Grand Railway Station, the Garde Nord. On the way back, I seemed to be lost, so I asked a Belgian man. The man was surprised, but he gave me the directions. Probably he took me for a civilian German. Around sunset, about 15-20 German soldiers stood in front of a house, talking. They looked at me. They could have killed me if they found out that I was a Jew. Soon after this, we went up to the Hungarian Consulate again. We were advised to find a place, settle down, that we won’t be harmed at all. Meanwhile Germany flanked the Maginot line and attacked France and Netherlands. At the beginning, Germany did not hurt the Jews. We could work. A lot of refuges returned and found jobs. When Paris capitulated, Hitler made his appearance in Paris, too. He was so happy, he started dancing. Jewish shops remained open at first, but they had to display a sign in the shop window saying in German that this was a Jewish property (Judishe unternemung). The Nazis began to issue several anti-Jewish laws. Radios were confiscated. Trade licenses (issued earlier by Belgians) were invalidated. Curfew was in effect after 7 pm. The Germans knew they could do whatever they wanted with the Jews, because the Jews were displaced people, they did not have a country of their own. The Germans ordered all Jews to register. Every Jewish person had to register at Belgian City Hall. Registration was done by the Belgians; they stamped the words JUDE-JWIF into our ID cards. There was a Jewish Council, a Jewish authority in Brussels. For the outsiders, they seemed to help the Jewish cause, all Council members were Jews. It was also a great trick. This Jewish Council (Judenrat) received orders from the Germans about what to do with the Jewish people. They registered all Jews, so the Germans knew about every Jew. They received an order from the Germans to make a yellow star for every Jew. We had to sew this on our clothing on the left chest. The Germans occupied a large empty military garrison in the city of Malin, planning ahead that they would collect all Jews there and later transport them into death camps. And that’s exactly what happened. Everything was planned ahead, one decree after another. The deportation process also began with a trick. The Jewish Council printed out some notices. Of course, following the German instructions. These notices announced that Jews had to report for work. Young Jewish boys delivered these notices to Jewish addresses, and dropped them into their mailboxes. Of course, those people, who reported for work, were deported to concentration camps. At that time, when I sewed my yellow star on my chest, it was already very dangerous for a Jew to go outside of his home. When the Germans saw a Jew with a yellow star, they arrested him at once and took him to the basement of the Gestapo building. They kept him there for a few days, until a sufficient number of Jews were gathered in the basement, and then they transported them into a military garrison. Huge transports went from there to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. We heard about what was happening with the captured Jews, but we could not sincerely believe such enormous mercilessness and viciousness could ever take place. Such evil, atrocious mass murders, incomprehensible by human brain, were never committed against people by people since the universe existed. We were dumbfounded. This was beyond description, to take millions into gas chambers to kill and burn. Mothers, with little children and babies. Horrors! The worst of it, is that it happened in our lifetime; in the lifetime of our generation. Here, I have to pause and ask myself, how could it all happen? Who is responsible? Who is guilty? What did we, Jewish people, do so wrong, that we let all these things happen to us? It seems that any minority among other people is always in danger. If the Jewish people would have their own country, a strong and independent state, then none of this could have happened to us. Therefore now every Jew is responsible for helping the state of Israel in all accounts, so such a horrible tragedy against the Jews could never happen again.

            I mentioned that we lived in Belgium during the German occupation. Life became harder and harder for the Jewish people. Livelihood was difficult. Great fear ruled. At the beginning, Hungarian Jews were not deported. The Jews walked free in Hungary, too. They tortured those Jewish people who were reported to the authorities or were taken away to forced labor camps. There were only a very few exceptions, just a few humane officers who remained humans in inhumanity. Somebody said, "It would be the wisest thing to take a couple hundred forced laborer Jews home in a briefcase." You got to understand that what they meant- to take home only the names, and exterminate people. In Belgium, where we lived, Germans issued new anti-Jewish laws all the time. According to the new law, a letter from the Hungarian Consulate did not protect a Hungarian Jew anymore, nor other Jews from other countries which were friendly with Germany, because the Germans issued a law stating that if a country wanted to protect its Jewish citizens, that country should transport these Jews back home from Belgium. These German-friendly countries let very few Jews return to their home country. Even if there were few people who could go home to Hungary, what happened to them? We know what their destiny was after the Germans occupied Hungary. I had submitted a request in 1936 or 1937 when I was a soldier. They asked me to come to Brussels to the Hungarian Embassy once. Cunningly they did not mention in their letter why they wanted me to go to Brussels, only that I had to bring my ID. The Consulate Secretary informed me at once seeing my ID, that I could not go home because I was married. The Department of Interior Affairs replied that I could go home only if I was single. I was married in July 1942, shortly after that we had to sew on our yellow star. Then came the horrible tragedy. The Germans pounced on the Jewish houses at night in Brussels in Anderlecht District. They chased down the Jews onto the streets, put them on freight trains. They took them straight to gas chambers in Auschwitz. My poor brother-in-law, Kálmán was also arrested then, but he jumped out of the wagon and escaped. Later the Gestapo caught him, and unfortunately his young life ended in Auschwitz. We managed to escape then only because the Germans did not come to our small street named Rue Planten.

            Hitler believed his army to be unstoppable. He attacked Russia. He occupied Ukraine, and went ahead all the way to Stalingrad. There the German Army came to a sudden stop, and then the Russians started to push the Germans back slowly. The only problem was that this push-back was very slow. The Germans took revenge on the Jews. The Secret Police and the Gestapo searched for hiding Jews as if this would have solved the war problems. The atrocities were enlarged by the fact that there were people willing to report the hiding Jewish people to the Gestapo. The Gestapo savages went to collect these Jews at nighttime; they loudly banged their doors with rifle butts. I heard the Nazis even paid money for each reported Jew. The unfortunate Jews did not know what to do, wherever they went, wherever they worked, they were frightened that the Nazi Gestapo would catch them. The Gestapo was looking for hiding Jews all the time. Sometimes they broke down the doors of Jewish homes at daytime, but they did it mostly at night, hitting the doors with riffle butts.

            My two sister-in-laws got a small job in Scharbeck District in Brussels. They had to mend mattresses. The Nazi savages broke down the door on them at daytime. Someone must have reported them. Olga, my younger sister-in-law was heavily pregnant, maybe 8 or 9 month pregnant. The Nazi savages decided that instead of the pregnant Olga, they would take Rózsi, my other sister-in-law. Poor Rózsi got very scared, as I heard, the Nazis hit them. Then she said, "Leave me alone. I have children." Then the Nazis asked her, "Where are your children?" Rózsi realized what might happen if she tells them where her children were hiding along with other Jewish children. So she did not tell them where her children were. The Nazis started to beat her. She ran to the window and jumped out of the window. I think they were on the third floor. She broke her bones badly and lost her consciousness. People came rushing together. Kálmán, my poor brother-in-law was closeby and he saw this disaster. He started to cry stroking Rózsi’s hand. No one knew that he was her brother. The Nazi murderers at that moment did not know what to do next. They allowed Rózsi to go to the hospital, and told her doctor to notify them when she gets better in order to take her away, along with the other Jews. Even if they allowed for Olga to get away earlier, now they decided to take with them my poor heavily pregnant sister-in-law. She probably died in the Auschwitz crematorium, or maybe she was killed even beforehand, as her delivery date drew closer. We went to visit my poor sister-in-law, Rózsi in the Scharbeck Hospital, her leg and arm bones were broken. The Gestapo came also to check whether she was ready to go with them. When she recuperated a little, she escaped from the hospital. I heard later that her doctor was taken away because he did not collaborate with the Germans in Rózsi’s deportation. With great difficulties, she, her husband, Dezső and their children survived the bloody war in Brussels; they were liberated in Belgium. Poor Rózsi passed away in Israel a few years ago. Dezső, her husband died a few months before her. She often had serious nervous breakdowns, hysterical nerve complications. She yelled and cried a lot. She also had heart problems. Her children now live in Israel. They are very talented, and the grandchildren are talented also.

            Young people in Israel often ask their parents who escaped miracously, "How could you let these things happen to you? Why didn’t you organize a resistance against the Nazi murderers? How is it possible that the Nazis could do anything they wanted with the Jewish population?" I admit, if they ask me, that we, Jewish people did not do anything, not counting a few exceptions. There were a handful of people who did hide and fight in the woods as partisans or participated in resistance in a military group. What was the reason? Before I reply, let me add that there was a resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto when they learned that the Jewish population was headed to gas chambers and there was no more hope. When the Germans started to lose at front lines, they were still wining against the Jews, because they could kill more and more Jews. How was this possible? It was possible because we, Jewish people were taught for hundreds or maybe thousands of years that we, Jewish people do not have to fight for our own country, that we could live in the diaspora until the Savior arrives and gathers the Jews from all over the world and takes them to the Holy Land, to Israel. If the Jews would have been thinking differently, they could have bought a country. And, if they would have owned a country, then they would not have been so defenseless. They would have their own military equipment. They could have defended themselves. The Jews would have became a great nation. But the diaspora ruined them. We can see that the little Israel managed to achive many great things in 1967, during the Six-Day War. And we can see with our own eyes that now Jews have their own little country. The Jews can protect themselves, Israel and all the Jews in the world against every enemy.

            Let’s continue with our situation at that time. During German occupation we lived in Brussels, Belgium. At the beginning they did not persecute Jews. But is was a trick. The Germans were preparing for the extermination of Jews. Nobody could think that any of this was possible. We got bad news from Poland which was then attacked by the Germans. But let us admit honestly, we did not believe that such things might happen. In our building, a German Jew named Fröshel lived with his wife and daughter. Soon after the German occupied Belgium, he received a call up from the Gestapo. He was a wealthy man in Germany, he had registered with the Germans earlier. Of course, he got very scared. He did not know what to do. The best thing would have been to hide with his family in another apartment. He even asked my poor mother what to do, should he report to the Germans or not. I remember my mother answering, "If you did not do anything wrong, then you do not have anything to fear." He replied that he could not trust the Germans. Nevertheless he went to the Gestapo with his wife and daughter, and of course, he never came back. You can imagine what was his fate. They ruined him. They exterminated him. The Jewish fate became even worse, we heard about this or that friend disappearing, they were dragged away on the street or from their apartment at night. The fear was very, very heavy. We heard about people going to a funeral, and there Germans circled them in the cemetery and dragged them away.

            We had a friend, she was my wife's friend, who was also from Beregszász. Her name was Judit Steinberger. Once she came up to our apartment, and she had a cross around her neck. It was not a small cross, it was quite visible. And she said that she could go everywhere and nobody would think that she was Jewish. Sometimes she went to restaurants where German soldiers were drinking. She was a good looking girl, so the Germans bought her sweet brandy in small glasses. She told us that the brandy went into her head and she said, "Ich bin a Jude." "I am a Jew." But the soldiers told her in German, “You are stupid. If someone wears a cross around her neck then she cannot be Jewish. A Jewish person does not wear a cross around her neck." The Germans did not believe her. They were so sure that a Jewish person would not put a cross around her neck. She told my wife to wear a cross. My wife asked my opinion, but I said not to wear a cross. I was not a religious fanatic. I did not even know our religion well.

            You see, we were all by ourselves. Nobody helped us with advice. The Jews were defenseless and vulnerable to the Nazis. In this case, it should have been imperative to save lives. We, Jews, grew stupid. They made us stupid. And the Germans tried gradually to exterminate all Jews, calculating every step along the way. In Belgium they did not bother those Hungarian Jews who were Hungarian citizens. In the beginning of 1943, Jews could walk free in Hungary, even if suppressed. The country was occupied by the Germans only in 1944. It looked like that Hungarian Embassy was protecting those Hungarian Jews who had their citizenship documents. The Hungarian Embassy gave my parents and me a paper, in which they asked the Germans not to deport us. Once, in 1943 the Gestapo burst into our house, but after seeing this paper, they left. This was a trick. By then they knew about us. A new law came out later. Those countries that were friendly with the Germans, should take back their Jewish citizens from Belgium to their homeland. Otherwise the Germans would deport the Jews. The Consulate Associate who dealt with these cases was named Kelemen. He used to shout at the unfortunate Jews.

            We heard that this or that friend was dragged away. But we never thought that they were taken to the gas chambers. Such a crazy barbarism never existed on the earth before. The liveliness was hard for the Jews in hiding. How did we stay alive? My parents, brother and I often ventured out to the flea market. We bought used clothing. We turned the cloths out, and from them we made linings for women's purses and bags. Because Jewish purse makers could not get new materials to line their purses, they were happy if we delivered them our home made purse linings. Then we cut gloves from all kind of discarded clothes and blankets. We sewed the gloves on our sewing machine. Someone bought the gloves from us. Where the gloves went, we did not know it yet. But later on we learned that these gloves were delivered to Buchenwald concentration camp. These gloves were distributed among poor prisoners in concentration camps and forced labor camps, so the work would go better outside in snow and freezing temperatures. Our hands were freezing anyway, because our ragged gloves were ruined fast, first at the fingertips, while we were carrying stones and bricks to construction sites. At that time when we sewed these gloves for living, we did not know yet where and to whom they would be delivered. We lived in constant fear. But we were still free. We heard here and there, that someone was taken. A lot of people were dragged away at night by Nazi savages and Gestapo bandits. We moved to another place. We went hiding. We moved to a furnished apartment, while we kept our old apartment and paid the rent for it. Then we committed a grave mistake. Deadly mistake. Our poor mother said that she was afraid of being in our new furnished apartment. We heard that the Nazis were taking Jews from next-door buildings. It was October 1943. So my poor parents and my younger brother moved back to our old apartment on Rue Planten. My wife and I went back to live on the same street. Maybe a neighbor saw us going home and informed the Gestapo. Maybe they came for us because we were registered at a Belgian City Hall in Anderlecht for this home address and the Gestapo extracted our address. We were registered there as Jews. But it is more likely that someone reported us to the authorities, because on that very night when we moved back, we woke up hearing loud knocks on the door. People were shouting and banging on our door with rifle butts, and demanded we open the door immediately. If we would not open the door, they would break it down, for sure. My wife and I, we got really scared and opened the door. These murderer gangsters rushed in. There was a Gestapo guy in military uniform, but there was another Gestapo guy in civilian cloths with a gun on his belt. They shouted at us: "Police alamand!" This means German police in French. And they shouted "Deutse policei! Karte d’identite", meaning "German Police! Identification Cards!" Scared as we were, we presented our ID cards with stamp imprints JUDE JWIF. We also showed them a document issued by the Hungarian Consulate a few months back which stated that as Hungarian citizens we can't be deported if we show this paper.

            Earlier, this document was honored, but now they did not let us go. The Gestapo guy in military uniform read our names and said, "Komt mit", meaning "You come with us." I asked, "Varum." "Why?" The Gestapo in civilian clothes gave out a big yell. We got even more frightened. He told to my poor wife that this was the end for us. We had to follow our brothers and sisters, who were already dragged away. We started to pack, crying. They let us pack our things, because they knew that they would take all our valuables. We were yelled at to hurry up, because our father and mother were already waiting down on the street. They would come with us. Now we got even more frightened. These murderers wanted to take our parents and my younger brother, too. Meanwhile, another bandit dressed in military clothing came in to our apartment; with his hand on this head. He showed the other Nazis how much luggage were packed by my mother and my younger brother who were waiting downstairs in a car driven by this Nazi. We were pushed down the stairs, my wife and me, and then we saw again my mother and Józsi, my younger brother. Both of them were very frightened. The Nazis pushed us into the car. One of the SS lifted our house key and told us that they would give it to the Hungarian Consulate. They started the car and took us to Avenue Louis. We stopped in front of the Gestapo building. We got out there and took our luggage. A woman's shoe fell off, and I tried to pick it up. The civilian Gestapo guy hit me on my face with all his force. Another SS soldier pushed us down into the Gestapo basement. All unfortunate Jews captured by these Nazis were kept there in this basement. Some people were brought in earlier, their names were written with pencil on the wall. I found my dear brother-in-law's, Kálmán's signature. He wrote: "Learn to endure and to suffer. Kálmán Goldberger". We stayed in this basement for a few days. From here, they took us to a collection camp in Malin. This camp consisted of empty military barracks. The Nazis prepared it well in advance to hold Jewish people here and later transport these unfortunate souls to Auschwitz or other concentration camps.

            After our arrival, we were led into a large room, where we lined up. Tables were set up where we had to give up our money, jewels and all other valuables. My poor mother had a golden watch and beautiful diamond earrings; she had to give up everything. My poor wife and I, we stood further back. Our line moved slowly ahead. At the tables, they shouted at us, “If you try to keep anything valuable, we will punish you”. I had false teeth. I put one thousand Belgian franks under my false teeth. But as we approached the tables, I saw someone was beaten up badly. I also saw that they removed the false teeth. I got really frightened, of course. They would beat me up if they find the money. So I chewed on the money as hard as I could, and when they were not looking, I threw it under a wardrobe. We gave them all our money and jewels at the table. They hanged a letter "Z" on a string around my neck. This stood for "Zürick halten", meaning "Held Back", because we belonged to another country, Hungary. But Hungary did not let us Jews back into our homeland. At the end, the German Nazis deported us too, in the same category with Turkish Jews, who had letter "Z" around their necks, too. Polish Jews had a green card hanging from their necks, as I remember, the capture on the green card said "Displaced". These people were very depressed. They knew that their future would be the worst. Auschwitz and total destruction would wait for them. Later we were directed into a large room, where we put down our luggage. SS guys yelled. There was a young Jewish man in the room. He was our room supervisor. They called him "Stubedinst" in German. It was organized who would clean the steps. We slept on the floor; we covered it with some clothing. We peeled potatoes. We ate green pea soup, which was sent by the Jewish Council from Brussels. At that time, the Jewish Council still existed, but they reported to the Germans.

            Germans did everything, including extermination of Jews, in a very well organized way. During the daytime we walked in circles in the courtyard. Gypsies arrived from France, but not as many of them as Jews. Whenever they marched in circles in the courtyard, the Jews were not allowed to go down to the courtyard. We only saw them from the windows. They played their violins beautifully. We were in Malin for approximately seven weeks. Then it was announced that all people with the letter "Z" were to be transported from Malin, first the men, then the women. We all cried. The men were lined up on the courtyard. I could not even say good-bye to my mother. She came out to the courtyard and shouted to me "Béla, Béla", but a soldier hurried to her and pushed her back inside the building. I never saw my poor mother again.

            We, the men, with my father and younger brother and a lot of other people were taken to Brussels on a big truck. We went back to the basement of the Gestapo building. We stayed there for a few days, only the men, including my father and my younger brother. The women with the letter "Z" stayed in Malin. They were transported later to a female camp in Ravensbruck. Few days later they took us all men to Garde Nord Railway Station. Civilians circled us there. We boarded on an empty train. When our train left the station, uniformed SS Nazi soldiers came in. We just sat there, very frightened. Our train reached the German border, and we stopped there. Uniformed German Nazis came in and asked for our passport. It was just a mistake. A German soldier coming with us from Brussels told them that we were "Juden", i.e. Jewish. Then they left, and our train arrived to Germany. Through the window, we saw bombed-out houses. Our train went ahead, and we arrived to a huge railway station. We got off. The SS soldiers put up their iron helmets. They pointed their bayoneted guns at us, while we were getting off the train. It seemed to me that they did not want anyone to escape. Anyway, no one could escape in a foreign country and in a foreign city. Then German policemen guarded us for awhile. There was a very frightened young Polish Jew, who asked us if we were Jewish too. He was taken to Buchenwald, also. Some curious people, mostly women, gathered around us. One of them had a small swastika hanging from the end of her headscarf. She said to the others that we were Jews. A policeman started to speak in French. He probably heard that we came from Belgium, and wanted to practice his French language skills. Another policeman came to us later, shouting. Uniformed Germans arrived a little bit later on, and they pushed everybody up onto the trucks. It was their job to deliver the unfortunate prisoners to the concentration camp in Buchenwald and hand us over to the SS bandits in the camp. The trucks started to leave with us on board. There was a young man among us, who spoke Hungarian very well. His name was Oringer, and his wife came to Belgium from Austria. He spoke German well. He noticed that the road signs showed the way to Buchenwald. He told us in Hungarian that they were taking us to Buchenwald. We arrived there soon. We got off the trucks. The was a big entrance gate, a huge iron fence, and a sign with big letters "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" (Work sets you free). What kind of lie and deception that was too! We experienced it later, that no matter how hard the prisoners worked until total exhaustion, freedom never came from that. Clock on the gate tower. Doors below to SS offices. SS soldiers were standing before the offices. They shouted names. They shouted our names too. They read these names from a list. And if I remember correctly, first they read my father’s name, Lébi Schwartz, then mine, Béla Schwartz. I said "Ja wohl", and the SS soldier looked at me. Then he read my younger brother’s name, József Schwartz. He said "Hier". Then they read more names, names of Jews from Turkey and other countries, where they were not allowed to return. When all names were read, SS soldier said "Let’s go". The SS showed us where to go in the camp. We went to a disinfecting station first, where we had to undress. They took our clothes and everything else. We were standing there naked. Then we had to stand in front of an SS soldier one by one. We had to bend down, pull our ass apart. The SS soldier looked into our ass to see if we tried to hide something valuable in our rectum. They already took everything from us, watches, jewels, money in Belgium, in the Malin collection camp. Now we had to stand naked in front of other, younger looking prisoners. They held an electronic haircutting machine. They cut all our hair from our head and body, from everywhere. Then they sprayed us with disinfectants. From here, we went to a storage room. We never saw again our clothes, neither I, nor my younger brother or my father. We could keep our underwear, shirt and shoes. If you had glasses, you could keep them, too. They gave us camp clothes. We looked terrible in them. A stripe was painted on the threadbare pants. An X shape was painted on the worn jacket. They gave us a ragged cap. Some of us got a striped, thin camp coat. They sprayed some water on us, maybe to clean us. Then they gave us these terrible looking clothes. It was a horrible Nazi trick. Nobody could escape in these awful clothes. After all this, we had to line up and we were led to a barrack. Some prisoners were already in the barrack. We were stopped in front of the barrack. We had to stand there for an hour, maybe for more. It was a very cold night. We were standing there in thin rags, we were cold, we shivered. Then a civilian came out of the barrack and loudly said to us in German, "You should know that you got to work here." Then they let us Jews arriving from Belgium into this large wood barrack. This was not a Jewish barrack. Inmates in this barrack were arrested and transported to Buchenwald because they did something against the Germans. They were mostly Polish and German, to my knowledge. Only we, Jews were taken to the concentration camps for nothing. This civilian man, whom I mentioned before, was the blockleader. In German, "blockalteste". He was a prisoner too, a German man. Maybe he was not faithful to the Nazis, or he was brought in for some other reason to Buchenwald as a prisoner. Here, he became good enough for the Nazis to keep an order in the barrack, to be a blockleader, a "blockalteste". After a long wait outside, they begin to let us into the barrack. They gave us a camp badge to sew on our chest. This badge was cut out of a red cloth. Red cloth meant political prisoner, although we were not political prisoners. We were taken to Buchenwald only because we were Jews. They gave us a small yellow cloth that meant we were Jews. We sewed this yellow rag on the red rag. The red and yellow rags together looked like the Star of David, so whenever the Nazis looked at us they knew we were Jewish. This was dangerous itself. Then they gave us a long red ribbon with camp number on it. Everybody had a number. Mine was 20631. The "Stubedinst" gave us a needle and yarn to sew on the red and yellow rags. But the needle and yarn was not right. I told the Stubedinst that it would be hard to sew it on without proper needle and yarn. He looked at me and asked "Can't you sew it on?" I said, "I can, but it is not easy." He said "Geselt machen asztu gekent", which meant "But you could make business deals, could not you?" He was a prisoner, but not a Jew. He hated Jewish prisoners. So sad. We spent that night close to each other. Next day, they escorted us to another barrack, to Barrack 22. This was a Jewish barrack. The Blockalteste was a German Jew, who had been in concentration camp since 1939. His name was Emil Karlbach. He was arrested for his extreme leftism at the time. He was strict with prisoners. There was an A section and B section. Toilet and wash basin were in the middle. Barrack 22 and later Barrack 23 were Jewish barracks. There were other barracks with other nations, other prisoners. There were Russian, Polish, Gypsy, French, Belgian and German inmates. They said there were about twenty thousand prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp. They transported prisoners from here to other concentration camps, to Auschwitz and they brought prisoners here from other camps. Who knew what these Nazis did! They had the prisoners work for them free. They made them suffer. They squeezed out of them everything they could. They manufactured guns, weapons and other military stuff. And they were constantly building something. We carried brick, cement, sand, stone, wood and other construction materials. In Buchenwald, the Germans did not tattooed a number on a prisoner’s arm. We, the newcomers arriving from Belgium, were not allowed to work at the beginning for about two weeks or a bit longer; they said we were quarantined for observation. Every morning and evening we had to go to the Appel Platz. The blockleaders reported there how many people were in the barrack, how many were sick. They counted everybody. Every barrack stood separately. When a German or SS soldier came in with a book or paper, the blockleader shouted "Attention! Hats off!" and reported our number to the SS soldier. While the soldier made a note, we were standing there hatless, in attention. When all barracks were counted for, we could go back to our barrack. We had iron beds on the top of each other, the bodies were pressed to each other. We lived in extremely bad conditions.

            Buchenwald housed only male prisoners and some mislings (Jews in mixed marriages, whose wives were not Jewish). A misling’s wife could live free in Germany. There were also Polish Jews. Mostly long term prisoners, who were kept for construction work in order to build brick walls. They were young people. There was a German, non-Jewish Capo in the camp. He was also a prisoner, as I heard. He was taken to the camp because he was member of the Socialist Workers Party. His name was Zilbert Capo. He was an architect. The Nazis used him in construction work. Even the Nazis listened to his advice, and he advised the Nazis not to exterminate a certain number of young Polish Jews. He offered to train them to build walls for future factories to be erected next to our camp. These young men lived in Barrack 22. This Capo was not brutal. There were more Capos and "Forarbeiters", meaning foremen in Buchenwald. They were not Jewish. We sat in the barracks around the table during daytime. Every morning and evening we went for head counting. This observation lasted for two or three weeks. After this observation period was over, we started to work. We carried stone, sand, brick, wood to the construction site. The Bauführer or construction leader, was an SS named Beker. He was a brutal Nazi; he hit and beat up prisoners all the time. He wanted to finish this building soon. They called this building S-midi. He shouted that S-midi should have been completed already. Work was going on for months. They started to bring in equipment to the building. Prisoners knew that the Nazis wanted to manufacture fo1 and fo2 bombs, which could shoot very far. But not one was completed ever. When Buchenwald camp was bombed later, this building and all machines in it were totally destroyed. I think Americans dropped these bombs on the building.

            We lived horrible times. Freezing cold, starvation, fear and abnormal working conditions. My poor father and younger brother suffered enormously. Very early in the morning, we went to Appel Platz to be counted, then we marched throught the entrace gate to work, 4 or 5 people in a row, we marched as soldiers do. An SS with a stick in his hand counted how many people went out. Everybody had to keep the pace. To march better, a wind and percussion band stood at the road side and played the beat. In the evening on our way back to the camp, they played again, so the Nazi SS with his stick could count us, wretched prisoners returning from forced labor easier. It was one of their tricks. They could claim that they even provided music for prisoners. Former anti-Nazi musicians were transported to Buchenwald, and recruited into this wind and percussion band.

            Old people died fast. Young ones, too. Bitter cold, starvation and fear killed people. A big crematorium chimney was burning with big flames, dead bodies were burned to ashes in huge iron furnaces. A lot of people died of diarrhea. We had few physicians, also prisoners, in the so-called "Rever", but they did not help us much. Dead bodies were carried from here to burning furnaces all the time. Once, my stomach started to hurt at work, and I had a diarrhia. What did I do? I found a piece of burnt charcoal under the snow, I cleaned it with snow, scraped off the dirt and began to chew it, chew it, until it helped me a bit. I also gave it to others. I gave a piece of charcoal to chew to my poor good friend, Stern. It healed him, however, he was taken away by a later transport. He never returned. To my best knowledge, his wife and little son did come back from Ravensbruck female concentration camp. Later, I ended up in Rever with diarrhea. The older son of Belgian Epstein died in diarrhia next to me.

            Not everyone had shoes, a lot of people wore wooden slippers. It was bad for the feet and body. Life was a horror in Buchenwald. Once, we were inside the gate coming back from work, and we already started to run to our barrack, then near Appel Platz we noticed a swing-like thing. When everyone arrived there, we saw it was not a swing, but gallows; the Nazis wanted to hang someone there. The SS announced on the loudspeaker that interpreters must step forward. The interpreters were prisoners, too. The SS said in German, that this and this prisoner tried to escape (he told his name) or he actually escaped, but they captured him. Therefore this prisoner would be hanged in front of thousands of people. Soon they escorted this unfortunate man there, and the Nazi SS hanged him to the hook. The cord was already around his neck. I am still shivering, when I think about this event. Of course, by the time the wretched man was hanged to the hook, nothing was under his feet. He went up on a little ladder, but they took it already away. He just hung in the air. His hands were tied, and they moved. His face became very red. But he still moved around a bit. Then his face turned gradually paler. And by the time life left his body and he suffocated, his face was colorless, pale, and dead. They left him on the gallows for some time. Then he was cut off and taken to be burned in the crematorium.

            In Buchenwald, Nazi SS soldiers were able to call every barracks on the phone from the gate or from the SS offices. Mostly, they phoned blockleaders if they wanted something special, for example to see a prisoner with this or that number at the gate. And who knows what happened to that prisoner! Or often our barrack loudspeaker announced that a blockleader needed to go to the gate immediately and fast. Blockleaders were prisoners too, but they spoke perfect German. They were chosen by Nazi SS soldiers. They were tough people. In the barracks, they issued the orders.

            Our blockleader was a German Jew. In July of 1944, maybe on the 20th or 21st of July, I do not remember exactly when, we were inside the barrack, in Barrack 22. Our barrack loudspeaker started to announce the news. It seemed that they forgot to turn off the loudspeakers when the SS listened to the news in their office. But then we at the Barrack 22 heard from the loudspeaker as the radio announcer said that Jews attempted an assassination against Fuhrer. Then I said to my poor father and younger brother, "Now we are in trouble. Now the Nazis will kill all of us, Jews." I think we were all very frightened. But it seems that the Nazis learned that the assassination attempt was planned by a colonel named Stauffenberg. At a meeting he put down his briefcase with a bomb close to the Fuhrer’s leg. This time bomb was set to explode in an underground map room. It would have been more powerful there, and probably it would have killed everyone. But suddenly Hitler changed his mind due to the heat or his usual mood changes. Immediately before this meeting he changed the meeting place to a light wood barrack at the edge of the forest. Here the explosion was not as powerful, compared to an underground explosion. And, as we know, Hitler stayed alive. He suffered only superficial injuries. The conspiracy against Hitler was unsucessful. But Hitler’s retaliation was successful. He executed everbody who was suspicious. Most of them were brutally hung, a lot of them were shot in the head. Everything would have been different if this assassination would have been successful. So many people would have stayed alive. But now the Nazis were able to extend the war as long as they could. And they managed to exterminate huge part of the human race.

            Let me mention how these Nazis managed to fool the whole world. They pretended that they were paying for our work. For a while they even printed camp money, so they could pay us, workers. They paid two or three marks. This money was without value. "Buchenwald Concentration Camp" was printed on the money. You could not buy anything with it. There was no place where you could buy anything. We saw a house-like thing, they said it was the Heaftling Cantina for the prisoners to use. But who would dare even go in that direction? The SS would probably shot him dead on the spot. A Nazi one-armed civilian craftsman shouted to the prisoners "Ich verde zein un the auscalung" from time to time, that is "I will be there on payday", meaning if you do not work fast enough, you won’t get any money. Any worthless money. Later on, they did not even bother to hand out this worthless piece of paper. We kept carrying bricks, construction materials, cement, stones, sand, and tried to go as close to the kitchen of the civil craftsmen as it was possible. These craftsmen were free German men, who wore armbands and came to work to Buchenwald. The refuse dump was next to their kitchen. I carried a piece of stick with me and scratched the top of the pile. Sometimes I managed to find a piece of lettuce or a bit of carrot. It was good against the hunger.

            As I mentioned, Buchenwald was not exclusively a Jewish camp. Only a few percent was Jewish. Barracks 22 and 23 were excusively Jewish, but Jews and non-Jews worked together outside the camp. There was a father with his son, a non-Jewish prisoner. I can’t say anything bad about the father. We worked together for awhile. We carried bricks, cement, stones and other construction materials side by side. Once I lugged a paper bag on my back, which contained cement. As you know, cement will harden if it is mixed with water. He and his son also dragged something. There was a little bridge, with water underneath. When we stepped on the bridge, well, his son pushed me into the shallow water with the cement bag on my back. Then he called out to the Nazi SS soldier. "Her posten ther juden machen szabotage". "This Jew sabotages work". I was lucky. The SS soldier did not shoot me in the head. He saw this man’s cruelty.

            In Buchenwald, Germans manufactured weapons, guns, pistols, some stuff we did not know about. Machines bore gun barrels. We built weapon factories. We had to remove hills and dirt to make the ground even. I guess they wanted to build something there. I worked at Rusztung Colony once. I had to drag wood logs to future building sites. They build scaffolding from them. We carried construction materials and bricks there. The builders stood on the scaffolding, and they cemented the bricks in their place. After awhile, I was selected to work somewhere else. They started to build a massive, strong building. They used a lot of cement, they poured big cement holes. We carried big cement plates. Mostly German craftsmen lead the work there. They were not prisoners. They came in wearing a stamped armband, and after work they were allowed to go home. Old timer prisoners from Barrack 22 were their helpers. They build brick walls. They cut cement plates with axes. German SS soldiers came in occassionally and they were talking to German civilian craftsmen. We learned that they were building a large high voltage electricity plant, because they did not have enough electricity for their factories etc. Prisoners from other barracks also worked here, non-Jews, Germans, etc.

            At that time, in 1944 we often had air raid warnings. Airplaines flew above Buchenwald, probably they flew to bomb Germany. They were English or American airplanes, or maybe planes from another country. At the beginning we had to work during air raid warnings. Later, at the sound of sirens, we had to run to our barracks. Everybody to his own barrack. If the air raid warning was cancelled, then we had to go back to our work site. Once it happened that my poor father and I, we did not hear that the raid was cancelled, and everybody already ran back to work through the entrance gate. We were frightened, and asked Jozef, who cleaned the barrack, for advice. He told us to go to the gate and report at the SS soldier for work. I told my poor father that it was not a good idea. Everybody already ran back to the work site, the gate was closed; the SS soldier would beat us to death. Or shot us to death. So we decided to stay in the barrack together with the inside people until everybody returned to the camp. When everybody had to go to head counting at Appel Platz, we'd go too. Then our problem would be solved. And that's how it happened. Air raids became more frequent. The Nazi leadership then decided that all prisoners had to run to the small forest nearby at the sound of the siren. After the danger was gone, everybody had to hurry back to the work site. Some German prisoners also worked there. They suggested that we hide in a big hole we were building there. We put some hay-like wood stuff (which they used to protect fragile things) on ourselves. Since SS guards disappeared during air raid warning, we could rest a bit in this hole. When the siren stopped, we climbed out of the hole and started to work. We did it a couple of times. I worked under a foreman then. We met there in the morning and each of us went to the construction work from there. This foreman was a German, to my knowledge he was brought to Buchenwald because he did not want to carry weapons for religious reasons.

            One morning I left our barrack in my ragged clothing, with a tin plate on my stomach. An ugly cap was on my head, its vizor was torn. I hurried to the building that we were constructing then, which supposed to be an electric plant. To my knowledge, if we met an SS soldier during work hours, we did not have to greet him or yank our cap off. As I went, I saw two SS soldiers standing there. One of them was German, he told me to approach him. I knew at once this meant trouble. I yanked my cap off. The German soldier asked me why I missed greeting him. The other soldier did not say a thing. I think he was Polish SS. I told the German, that we do not have to greet soldiers during working hours. At this moment, he hit me in the face with his fist, and then he hit me again. I was lucky that he did not hit my eyes. I fell down. When I got up, I started to cry while I was heading to our work site. There they asked me what happened, why I was crying. I continued to do what I had to do, carried cement plates and other stuff. Around 10 o'clock or half past 10 or 11 o’clock maybe, a siren started to blow. Through the window, we saw few poor prisoners running to the small forest. Of course, we agreed to hide in the hole, and cover ourselves with a straw-like material. And as no SS would be around, we could rest a bit there. We hid in the hole. I hid there too, but suddenly I looked out and saw that there were a few people still running to the small forest. I thought, well, I better run to the forest. And I was out of the building in a flash, and started to run to the forest. Somebody shouted at me, why I was not running faster. As I looked back, I saw the SS soldier who beat me up in the morning. He asked me to come closer. I went to him, and he hit me again telling me to run faster. I arrived at the forest, crying bitterly. I lied down to the ground. I was extremely tired, I fell asleep. I do not know how long I slept. I am sure it was not much. When I woke up, I heard big explosions. Huge smoke swirled towards the sky. I heard loud noises. This was a big air raid. Big factories and buildings next to Buchenwald concentration camp were all bombed to the ground. I heard loud moaning and wailing nearby. Some men lost a hand or other body parts, some men were lying in blood. After huge bombs few smaller firebombs were dropped, and they tore off the prisoners’ body parts. Those who were not caught by the firebombs, started to run. We ran out of the concentration camp area. Any other time they would have killed us for this crime. But now, during air raid, the SS soldiers did not do anything against us. We met an SS officer, and he directed us back to the camp area. The air raid now was over. A lot of small firebombs hit the small forest. The big Factory No. 10, where the gun barrels were manufactured, was completely destroyed. A Romanian SS soldier, who otherwise was very brutal person, died there. He could have hid, but he was such a patriotic person, he kept guarding Factory No. 10 during the air raid. Smoke was rising from the ruins everywhere. Numerous dead and injured were on the ground, many unfortunate prisoners were wailing. SS soldiers were wailing too, they were also injured in the air raid. Some of us, who accidentally survived this raid and were not killed, had to carry the injured SS soldiers on stretchers to the SS barracks, and put them down on the beds. There was an SS doctor in bloody medical coat. We, prisoners were allowed to enter to the SS barracks only in order to carry in these injured SS soldiers. If we would go there for any other reason, they would have shot us to death. Those SS soldiers, who we carried on stretchers, used to beat us up or tried to kill us, but now they called us "friends", or "my friends". You got to think about this. Would they become cruel SS soldiers again after their recuperation? The prisoners’ barracks were not bombed. My poor father worked inside and he stayed alive, only his nose hurt. The next morning, we went out to work again to clean up the ruins. Bekert, the Nazi SS construction leader came and saw with big eyes how the building he built with prisoners’ slave labor was totally ruined now. The electric plant building disappeared from the face of the earth. Nothing was left of the building where we worked before, just one huge and several small holes in the ground. Not a single matchstick remained. Those poor people, who climbed down the hole to rest during air raid, disappeared all without a trace; not even a single strand of hair remained from their bodies. If I did not jump out from that hole in the last minute and run after other prisoners into the woods, if I stayed there, my fate would have been the same. I would have been gone. Not even a single strand of my hair would have remained.

            We started to rebuild the wall again. Nothing came out of it. The wall fell down. There was no sand left for the construction. We filtered dirt through a big iron sieve, and tried to use it instead of sand. Before the air raid, there was a lot of coal. Coal was needed for everything. After the bombing, the coal was burning and smoking for weeks or even months. It was on fire. We saw the Germans did not have coal. Bekert, the Nazi SS construction leader was gone. He was transferred or something else happened to him, but we never saw him again. He was replaced by a one-eyed SS construction leader.

            He was not as brutal and cruel as Bekert, or maybe he saw that the end was near. Once he selected few younger prisoners from those men who had shoes on their legs instead of wooden slippers, and could run. He selected me too to be part of this transport commando. We learnt later that this was a dog commando. We had to get up earlier. Nazi SS soldiers circled us. Each held a trained vicious dog by chain or rope. These dogs could tear apart any prisoner on the SS soldier’s command. We went outside the camp, farther away from Buchenwald. They started to build houses for SS Nazis. Big tucks delivered stones, bricks, sand, pebbles and other construction materials there. Some SS houses were ready and lived in. We peeked into a house and saw a young woman. A man came out in SS uniform. There was a big SS letter in a frame on the wall. Maybe they showcased their Nazi beliefs with it. From our Jewish barrack some old timers came along with us. As I mentioned earlier, they were trained to build brick walls. They came from Barrack 22. Our job was to help them by carrying all necessary building materials to the site. All kind of prisoners worked together there. Once they told me and Jozef to grab a wheelbarrow and bring very small pebbles, so called broken stones to them. Jozef and I did so. I never had any problems with Jozef. He slept in the Polish barrack, because he was arrested for some anti-Nazi activities, and I lived in the Jewish barrack. An SS soldier stood close to the broken stone mound. There was a small pile of red bricks nearby; it represented the concentration camp boundary. No prisoner was allowed to step over the red brick pile. If it happened, the SS soldiers were allowed to shoot him down. I was not thinking about this. I was just in a hurry pushing my wheelbarrow to the broken stone mound in order to get more broken stones. And Jozef was pushing his wheelbarrow. The area was deserted; nobody was there, just me, Jozef and the SS soldier. The prisoners were not allowed to address the guards at all. Nobody ever addressed the SS guards. It would have been a deadly mistake. I saw that a guard stood nearby resting his rifle on his shoulder. With one hand, he was holding a brown dog. Jozef looked up to the guard and addressed him. My blood froze in my vein. He said to the guard "Her pasten" and pointed at me, "Jude", meaning I am Jewish. The guard looked at me and started to shout, "Eszt gibt nach Juden en Deutsland", meaning "Are they still Jews in Germany?" And he said something to his dog and pointed at me. "Du hunte iz a Jude", meaning "Dog, this is a Jew". But somehow the dog did not attack me, did not tear my ragged cloth off my body. Then the SS started to push me towards the red brick pile in order to throw me over the camp boundaries, so he could claim I wanted to escape. Then he could shoot me. I thought, "My end is here. This SS guard would kill me. It does not matter anymore what I do or what I say. I am finished." Then I jumped in front of him, very close. I opened my ragged clothes on my chest and shouted loudly to him to shoot me now at once. He will liberate me from all my sufferings. He can only do me that favor. I do nothing but suffer, although I never harmed anybody. I shouted at him very loudly in German that the only reason I was there because my father was born Jewish. My mother was not Jewish. (I just said it. The truth is that my mother was Jewish also.) The SS said "Du Jude wir wellen gevinen der Krug aber wir wellen werloren?" meaning "Jew, will we win or loose this war?" I shouted back, "I do not know. Maybe you’ll win. Maybe you’ll lose." Then I realized I was not shot by the SS soldier. So I shouted to him, "Her posten Das is meine arbeit stelle lazinzi mich arbeitern", that is "Let me continue my work, this is my workplace." And I ran to my wheelbarrow and began to shovel broken stones into my wheelbarrow. When it was full, I ran straight back to the other prisoners, who were building the wall. Jozef pushed his wheelbarrow, too. He did not say anything to me. I did not say anything to him. But when Jozef and I arrived to the wall, I asked him. "What happened there? Why did you betray me? Did you want me to be killed?" Other bricklayers, majority of who were Jews, told me that my story could not be true, because Jozef was a good man. They did not believe me, since Jozef was a prisoner, and Jozef was suffering, too. Well, you can ponder about it. He talked nicely to bricklayer Jews. He acted as a good person, because it was his best interest. But deep inside, he hated the Jews. And he would have been happy to see a Jew killed. In the evening I approached the deputy barrack leader, he was a German Jew, and asked him to help me somehow. I felt, in this dog commando, they would kill me sooner or later. And I told him what happened. His advice was to stay with my previous group tomorrow morning, after the head counting at Appel Platz. I did exactly that, nobody said a word. After that I kept working at the construction site around the camp, removing the rubbles. I spent only two weeks or little more at the dog commando, I do not remember exactly how long I was there. One day I was selected to work with other prisoners at the officers' houses which were destroyed by bombs. There were no more bombings in Buchenwald, they tried to fix the officers’ houses. During the air raid not only the factories were destroyed, but the officers’ houses as well. Only smaller firebombs reached these houses. Prisoners' barracks were not bombed at all. First we have to put the Commander’s house in order. The Commander’s name was Piszter. He was the leader of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Who knows how many murders he ordered? If he was chosen to be the leader of the Buchenwald concentration camp, he must have been a high ranked SS Nazi officer. Who knows what kind of mass murders was he guilty of? We had to bring in some furniture to the Commander’s house, and take out some other stuff. There was a painting on the wall, Hitler's picture. "Der este grossze tag" meaning the "First Big Day" when Hitler was elected in 1933. This was the First Big Day for the Commander. For us, it was the day when our life was destroyed. In two or three days, the Commander's wife was also at the house. She was a small brown woman with a little girl, who was around 4 years old. Their maid was transported from the Ravensbruck camp, where my mother and wife were held then. The maid was also a female prisoner and a servant to the Commander’s family. We were still working at the Commander’s house, when one rainy day I was mixing some cement and noticed that the Commander's little daughter was jumping in a dirty puddle. What should I do? If I let her jump, the SS guard will break my bones. If I take her out of the puddle, it means trouble too, how could I touch the Commander’s daughter? Well, I decided to take her out of this dirty puddle. I went to her and lifted her up. At this very moment, her mother came out of the house and took her out of my hand. "Danke", she said. "Thank you". So I got away without any trouble. I went to get more sand, and I saw a highly ranked SS officer walking with his dog. It was rumored among the prisoners that his house was destroyed by the bombing, and his family was killed in the air raid.

            Then we worked at other houses which were ruined by the bombing. There was a not so young Nazi SS who loved to hit the prisoners, to slap them in the face. When we gathered to march to work, he was shouting. And he yelled like a dog ... wuff...wuff. Someone yelled back ...wuff..wuff. He was looking around who was that person, but he could not find him. He used to shout that the first world war was lost because of the Austrians, and we would loose this war because of the Austrians, too. Another Nazi’s face became red and started to shout that this war was caused by the Jews, and the Jews caused every trouble, whenever he saw a poor prisoner who had a red little badge and under it a yellow badge, because it meant that this prisoner was a Jew. Such a fanatic Nazi! He was totally wrapped up in Nazism and Hitler, and he was shouting all this nonsense. We were especially afraid of this crazy Nazi SS, because he was fast to hit, strike or kill. There was an SS in Buchenwald, who was, if I can say so, friendly to us Hungarian-speaking Jews, but only because he was a Romanian SS. He did not speak German, only Hungarian and possibly Romanian. He came to us several times and talked to us in Hungarian. He asked if we had a watch. Of course, we had no watches. The Nazis took it from us. This SS was possibly from Transylvania, a part of Romania where Hungarians lived then. He was glad to speak in Hungarian. Once he came to me at work, I was shoveling dirt then, and he started to talk to me in Hungarian. I told him, "Mr. Engineer (we called him Engineer, I do not know why), do not come to me please, because the German SS will beat me up or maybe he will kill me, because I talked to an SS soldier". He said that he could talk to anybody, because he was an SS too, and nobody could give him orders. And he said something else, and then he walked away. The minute I turned around, there was another blond SS guard and asked, "Was haste geret mit hhe SS man", meaning what I talked about with this SS man. I yanked my cap off my head at once and stood in attention. I replied that the SS man came to me. "Well, I’ll finish you off", said the SS guard in German. "I’ll send you somewhere with a transport and you’ll never come back." He took out a pencil and paper and wrote down my number. My number was 20631. This meant death. Prisoners were sent to such dangerous places that they never returned or they died or they were killed. I started to cry. What could I do? In a few moments, the SS guard came back and told me that he would not send me away, instead he would kill me right there. Then he ordered me to take the shovel into my hand, lift it up above my head and exercise with it. Lift the shovel above my head with my two hands and bend my knees up and down all day, until I collapse. These were his own words, "until you collapse". He sure meant it. A starving, much suffered man could not go on with this exercise from morning until the end of the day. And if I collapse, he would order someone to take me to the crematorium to burn my body. How could I do this, with my shovel up above my head and bending my knees, up and down, all day, until the end of work day? How could I do that? I was young, barely 31 years old. The SS guard was watching me, I could not stop. After this affair, I hardly saw the Hungarian-speaking SS.

            Let me mention again the SS overseer, who loved to beat up and hit the prisoners. Some Buchenwald prisoners wore red trousers. They were real Germans, they spoke with a German accent. It is possible that they did not want faithfully serve Hitler anymore, so they were taken to Buchenwald as prisoners. When this SS, who loved to hit and yell, saw a German prisoner in red trousers, he ordered him to come closer, and he asked him, "Was bisz tu?" "Who are you?" The prisoner stood in front of him like a soldier and replied: "Ich bin ein Reich Dajcse". "Du biszt ein Reich Dajcse", and he forcefully slapped him on the face from left and from right. I think the word Reich Deutsche meant German Empire. But where was the German Empire by then? Russians were advancing. Americans, English men and other Westerners were bombing Germany. Germans were pushed out of France and Belgium, and from other Western countries. Forces advanced in order to occupy Germany. Everybody was talking about the end of war. It seemed to be near. Few prisoners in Barrack 22 had German, Christian wives, who lived free in Germany. They sent newspapers to their husbands. We learned from those newspapers what was happening in the world. The Germans did not write the truth. But between the lines you could figure out what was going on, where the war was heading. One of these prisoners, whose wife lived free, asked his wife in a letter to send him some clothes. Maybe to put something on when we would be free again after the war has ended. But the SS guard told him, "Do not think a minute that you will ever go home from here." Time went by. We still had to work. But the work was pretty useless by then. We had to do it anyway. The prisoners suffered, died, and they were burned in the crematorium. Some prisoners were transported to other camps, some people were sent to Auschwitz. There was a man with his young son, who spoke French very well. His wife was in Ravensbruck, and she survived the war. He and his young son came with us from Belgium. I remember him; he was a very good man. His name was Ganzo, and his son's name was Albert. Maybe such a young person had a little bit better life then we did. There was fresh air. They were growing. But one day his father told me between tears in French that Albert died. We felt so sorry for him. He and his father were swallowed by death, they never went home. I think they were Turkish Jews. The construction work continued. At the bricklayer site my father cleaned the cement between the bricks with an iron. He did it so nicely; you could tell which row was his work. Once we had to pick up broken glasses and other trash from the bombed out area facing the road. And then an SS unit marched singing to the military barracks. They were singing in Hungarian. One, two, one, two... they marched. I knew that song by heart at once.

BOOK 2

            I am already seventy-three years old. I think it is time to write my memoir. I have enough material to write about, actually a lot. I went through two world wars in my life. True, I was a small child at the time of World War I.

            I was born on July 18th, 1913. After World War I, antisemitism was already strong in Hungary. We lived in that part of the country which was very poor, with a few exceptions. We lived in Vámosoroszi in Szatmár County until I was seven or eight years old. A lot of poor people lived there. Small landholders also lived there, and two big landowners too, one of them was called Stózinger, and the other's name was Kristóf. Wide marsh stretched between two streets of the village. There were willow trees and small bridges. The marsh often overflowed. At those times we could cross the street with punts or walk on wooden planks that people screwed together and put down on the water. Unhealthy weeds and grasses grew along the marsh. Bad odors rose from the swamp. It was unhealthy. Youngsters were infected by tuberculosis and died in a young age. There were more than enough funerals in the village. Pastor Márton Incédi was busy attending burials. The marsh was drained later. A river was dug out for the water to flow in, and it flows there ever since. Our unhealthy swamp disappeared, and the high death rate was almost gone.

            In 1921 or 1922, we moved to Kisszekeres, another village nearby. We lived there until the end of the twenties. Then we moved to Fehérgyarmat. We lived in difficult circumstances. There was a big jesiva, a Jewish school in Fehérgyarmat, with a lot of students. The jesiva’s leader was Rabbi Vilmos Güncler. Some opinions were heard by then, that sidewalks were already too full of Jews and Jewish agents. Our life was hard. In the early thirties my father went to Belgium to look for a job. I worked at a kosher butcher shop in Gyarmat. I was greatly exploited. They began to shave off bócher’s, young Jewish lad’s ringlet at paramilitary youth organization called levente. Fascism became increasingly stronger in Germany. The strong hate against Jews could be felt more and more in Hungary also.

            I was drafted to the military in January of 1936. By then, my poor mother and my younger brother lived in Belgium. I reported for military service at Mérk, a village near the Romanian border. This boot camp was one cruel, inhuman torture. I stayed there until September 1936. Some people were discharged, some were distributed. I was transferred to Budapest to the Ludovica Military Academy, to serve at a military mounted unit. My job was to take care of the horses and serve young men studying to be military officers. We, I and other transferred lads, were enlisted men. We became cavalry men. In Mérk, I served as an infantry man. At Ludovica Military Academy I was the only Jew. Let me write here about an ethnic German farrier sergeant. He did everything in his power to make sure it would be me who had to lift up the legs of the most nervous horses while we put horseshoes on the horses. He was praying for the moment when a wilder horse might kick me to death. Anti Nagy was transferred there from another military garrison. He was cleaning his two horses just across from me. I was cleaning my horses, and he was cleaning his horses. He always passed anti-semitic remarks in my presence. This time he said, "Jews took blood at Tiszaeszlár". I became agitated, jumped at him and started to hit him with a horse scraper. Of course, he began to shout and gave out a high shrill. The farrier sergant stopped by the door and asked, "What is going on here?" I approached him like a soldier, then I repeated him Anti Nagy’s words, "He says, the Jews killed a girl in Tiszaeszlár and took her blood". Because Anti Nagy said such a big lie, I had to beat him up. Then the sergeant replied, "He is right."

            Something just broke inside me. I realized then, that it did not matter that I was a Hungarian soldier; I would always be a Jew, a displaced person, and people would hate me. After this incident I did not clean the horses so faithfully anymore, I did not pick horse dung from the floor at night. Often I had to watch the horses at night.

            Then, I was discharged in September 1937. There were no jobs available. I worked for a miniscule amount of money at a butcher shop, but not for a long time, maybe 2 1/2 or 3 months. After that, I got a job at a grocery store on Drégely Street as a shop assistant. Here, I met young people who were members of the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross Party. This was in the first half of 1938. They greeted each other with raised hand, fascist style. During my next job, I was a bread delivery boy. It was a very hard work. Later, I delivered corn and other stuff from a big crop trader to several small stores. After this, I became an errand boy in a paint shop. One evening I sat at a small dining room and I was listening to the radio. Prime Minister Béla Imrédi was talking about politics and the Hungarian problem. Finally he said, "And now I am going to speak about the Jewish issue, which is like a tumor. It needs to be cut out of the body of the Hungarian nation." He got a big applause.

            When I could not get any more jobs, I went down to Kisszekeres. My aunt lived there with my uncle and their seven children. My uncle was a steward of an estate. From his entire family, only one girl returned home, everybody else perished in concentration camps. This niece of mine now lives in Israel. She is 73 years old, and her name is Erzsike.

            In 1938, I traveled back to Budapest. By then I got a document, an affidavit from my uncle and aunt, inviting me to come to America. The American consul notified me that the Hungarian quota was already full for years to come, so I had no chance to go to America. Only those had a chance, people who went to see their spouses, or children going to visit their parents, or older parents going to visit their American citizen children. I registered, but I did not get a visa. I was in a difficult situation again in Pest. I worked at a butcher shop for a short time at Király Street. My boss was called Károly Klein. During the spring time the Jewish Council called me to Síp Street, and they told me that I might immigrate to South America, since I was already registered. I replied that I had just received my visa to Belgium to live with my parents and my younger brother. This turned out to be a very bad choice. If I went to South America I would have escaped from German concentration camps. Maybe I could have saved my poor parents as well. But I decided to apply for a Belgian visa. I was told that I could get a visa for 3 months. I had no valid passport by then. My passport expired. I tried to get a new passport at the Passport Department of the Police Headquarters, but they did not even want to hear about me. They advised me to wait for a new decree from the Department of Interior Affairs. A few days later, I went back to the Police Headquarters to the Passport Office. An older police officer stood at the entrance gate. I looked at him, and I recognized him at once. He recognized me, too. I said Uncle Huszár, he said Béla Schwartz. We knew each other very well from the Military Hospital on Gyáli Street. During my military service, I had problems with my stomach and I was sent to this hospital for examination. One day this Uncle Huszár, who was a police officer, arrived to our hospital room in bad condition. He had a lung infection. His bed was close to mine, and I helped him a lot. He saw my kindness and he always asked me to get him this or that, or help him to get off the bed or go back to bed. And now, we met again accidentally. We were very glad to see each other again. He asked me about my life, what I was doing there. I told him that I wanted to get an exit permit so I could go to Belgium. His advice was to find a certain military officer, a captain at the Police Headquarters, who was willing to secure short term exit permits for discharged soldiers. He told me to find this captain. He also warned me to behave very much like a soldier, otherwise this captain would refuse to help me. I thanked for his advice, and went up to this captain’s office at once. I knocked on the door. Someone said inside, "Come in". I opened the door. I stood attention as a soldier in front of the officer and with a very loud voice I said, "Captain, Béla Schwartz, reservist infantry man, I hereby humbly ask for a three month leave to visit my parents in Belgium." The officer watched me intently, then took his seal and stamped a three-month exit permit in my passport. By that time, I had a one-month extension in my expired passport with an additional clause that on my way back my passport should be confiscated since my citizenship is not clarified yet. Never mind that all my ancestors were born in Hungary.

            Then I purchased a ticket to Belgium, and in April 1939, I boarded the train. My passport was examined at the German-Austrian border. The German officer, who examined the passports, asked me, "How much money do you have?" Well, I did not have much money. He asked, "What is it in there in that glass jar in your luggage?" I told him, "Coffee". He asked, "Kind of brewed coffee?" I said yes, although I did not understand too much German then. He asked, "How come you do not speak German? All Jews speak German." Previously, when we crossed the Hungarian border at Hegyeshalom, I exchanged all my money at the Hungarian border patrol to German money. Then our train started to leave the station and went all the way to Wien. I had to get off the train there and wait for the Ostend train. Austria was annexed to Germany at that time. German soldiers in boots and iron helmets were walking at Wien Grand Railway Station. After an hour, the Ostend train finally arrived and I boarded the train along with other passengers. We waited a little, then our train left the railway station. Many soldiers were traveling on the train. Two uniformed soldiers stood with swastikas at the window. They looked out of the window. At one station, beer was sold. I wanted to buy a bottle of beer, so I went to the window. I looked at my German money, but I did not know how much it was. The arm banded German turned to me and helped me to buy a small bottle of beer. He probably did not notice that I was a Jew. I did not realize then how dangerous it was for me to travel among these Nazis on the train. We traveled on the train for a day or two, and finally we approached the Belgian border. The train stopped at Achen. I saw that one man was taken off the train. The Germans stamped my passport, the Belgian supervising officers boarded on the train and stamped it again. The train started to leave the border station, and then went all the way to Brussels. I had to change train there to go to Antwerpen. When I got off at Brussels, my poor father was waiting for me. We greeted each other and kissed each other. His first words were, “See, my son, how grey-haired I became." Then we waited for the train to Antwerp, which arrived shortly. We boarded the train and soon we arrived to Antwerp. As we got off the train, I saw my poor mother who was waiting for me. She looked fragile, hardships of her life broke her. We kissed each other. She asked about me, then we went home to Magdalena Street. Józsi, my younger brother also came home to meet me. We were so glad to see each other. He was a young guy then, barely 18 years old. He was trained to be a taylor. The next day, my father and I went to the Police to register. We had to wait for a long time at the police station, our number was two. But every time the officer called two in Flemish, he asked some one else to come in. The officer asked my father whether he spoke Flemish or French. My father told him he could speak a little bit French. He worked in Charleroi ironworks at the time he was alone abroad. My mother and younger brother still lived in Hungary, in Fehérgyarmat at that time. French was spoken in that Belgian town. So after a lot of talks, I received a paper valid for one-month stay. This paper warned me that I had to leave Belgium after one month. This month went by very fast. My poor father went up to Brussels every day. He worked in a used cloth factory. The factory owner was a rich man. He bought a lot of used men suits and trousers. He had them mended on sewing machines, had put ugly patches on the clothing. In Europe, nobody would wear this clothing. Still it was good business for him. His name was Veiman. Cleaners and steamstresses worked for him. My poor father worked as a cleaner. He shipped all cleaned, patched up clothing to Belgian Congo for the black population. At that time Congo belonged to Belgium. It was called Belgian Congo. Now it is called Zaire. It does not belong to Belgium anymore. People must have been very poor there if they wore those clothes.

            My one-month permit was about to expire. I did not want to go back to Hungary. My home country drew closer gradually to German fascism. What could I do? I did not dare to stay in our home at Antwerp. I was afraid that the police would deport me. I traveled to Brussels by train, and slept at remote relatives’ homes. Later my parents moved to Brussels, and I stayed in their home. At a Brussels flee market we bought cheap men’s clothing, and we mended and cleaned them at home. Veiman bought them from us at a pretty cheap price. That’s how we supported ourselves. We also sewed linings into woman’s purses. The purse and bag manufacturers bought it from us after they could not buy new linings. Once I was at Veiman’s used cloth factory, and then I heard on the radio as they announced, Germany started the war. The Germans attacked Poland, and they were already bombing Warsaw. We all got really scared. What would happen to the Jewish community in Poland? As soon as the Germans occupied Poland, they began to exterminate the Jews. In Belgium, the mood was sour. Wealthy people ran away to wherever they could- some to Switzerland, some to England. Very few people could find refuge in these countries. The lucky ones, within the quota, went to America. I also wanted to come here, but I could not get a visa. I had been registered for an entry visa for two years already. The American Consulate confirmed that I had to wait even longer, possibly for a long time, because the Hungarian quota was tiny. I had no papers or IDs. I was afraid all the time that the police would catch me and take me to the border, and I would be deported. I did not have a residence permit.

            In May 1940, Germany started a war against Belgium, Netherlands and France. People were running, fleeing. Chaos prevailed. We went up to the Hungarian Consulate and asked them, “What is going to happen to us now?” A Consulate Associate was standing at the door, and he told us, “You, Hungarians have no reason to be afraid.” He was so wrong. Some people reached England traveling along the withdrawing British troops, and they were saved. The Germans forged ahead and bombed the country. The Belgians blew up the bridges. The king of Belgium surrendered. The German army occupied the city of Brussels on motorcycles, followed by military trucks and other type of military personnel. Streets were deserted. It seems that at that time I did not fully understood this dreadful tragedy, because I went out to the street and watched the marching German army. Later in the evening, I walked along the empty main street to the Grand Railway Station, the Garde Nord. On the way back, I seemed to be lost, so I asked a Belgian man. The man was surprised, but he gave me the directions. Probably he took me for a civilian German. Around sunset, about 15-20 German soldiers stood in front of a house, talking. They looked at me. They could have killed me if they found out that I was a Jew. Soon after this, we went up to the Hungarian Consulate again. We were advised to find a place, settle down, that we won’t be harmed at all. Meanwhile Germany flanked the Maginot line and attacked France and Netherlands. At the beginning, Germany did not hurt the Jews. We could work. A lot of refuges returned and found jobs. When Paris capitulated, Hitler made his appearance in Paris, too. He was so happy, he started dancing. Jewish shops remained open at first, but they had to display a sign in the shop window saying in German that this was a Jewish property (Judishe unternemung). The Nazis began to issue several anti-Jewish laws. Radios were confiscated. Trade licenses (issued earlier by Belgians) were invalidated. Curfew was in effect after 7 pm. The Germans knew they could do whatever they wanted with the Jews, because the Jews were displaced people, they did not have a country of their own. The Germans ordered all Jews to register. Every Jewish person had to register at Belgian City Hall. Registration was done by the Belgians; they stamped the words JUDE-JWIF into our ID cards. There was a Jewish Council, a Jewish authority in Brussels. For the outsiders, they seemed to help the Jewish cause, all Council members were Jews. It was also a great trick. This Jewish Council (Judenrat) received orders from the Germans about what to do with the Jewish people. They registered all Jews, so the Germans knew about every Jew. They received an order from the Germans to make a yellow star for every Jew. We had to sew this on our clothing on the left chest. The Germans occupied a large empty military garrison in the city of Malin, planning ahead that they would collect all Jews there and later transport them into death camps. And that’s exactly what happened. Everything was planned ahead, one decree after another. The deportation process also began with a trick. The Jewish Council printed out some notices. Of course, following the German instructions. These notices announced that Jews had to report for work. Young Jewish boys delivered these notices to Jewish addresses, and dropped them into their mailboxes. Of course, those people, who reported for work, were deported to concentration camps. At that time, when I sewed my yellow star on my chest, it was already very dangerous for a Jew to go outside of his home. When the Germans saw a Jew with a yellow star, they arrested him at once and took him to the basement of the Gestapo building. They kept him there for a few days, until a sufficient number of Jews were gathered in the basement, and then they transported them into a military garrison. Huge transports went from there to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. We heard about what was happening with the captured Jews, but we could not sincerely believe such enormous mercilessness and viciousness could ever take place. Such evil, atrocious mass murders, incomprehensible by human brain, were never committed against people by people since the universe existed. We were dumbfounded. This was beyond description, to take millions into gas chambers to kill and burn. Mothers, with little children and babies. Horrors! The worst of it, is that it happened in our lifetime; in the lifetime of our generation. Here, I have to pause and ask myself, how could it all happen? Who is responsible? Who is guilty? What did we, Jewish people, do so wrong, that we let all these things happen to us? It seems that any minority among other people is always in danger. If the Jewish people would have their own country, a strong and independent state, then none of this could have happened to us. Therefore now every Jew is responsible for helping the state of Israel in all accounts, so such a horrible tragedy against the Jews could never happen again.

            I mentioned that we lived in Belgium during the German occupation. Life became harder and harder for the Jewish people. Livelihood was difficult. Great fear ruled. At the beginning, Hungarian Jews were not deported. The Jews walked free in Hungary, too. They tortured those Jewish people who were reported to the authorities or were taken away to forced labor camps. There were only a very few exceptions, just a few humane officers who remained humans in inhumanity. Somebody said, "It would be the wisest thing to take a couple hundred forced laborer Jews home in a briefcase." You got to understand that what they meant- to take home only the names, and exterminate people. In Belgium, where we lived, Germans issued new anti-Jewish laws all the time. According to the new law, a letter from the Hungarian Consulate did not protect a Hungarian Jew anymore, nor other Jews from other countries which were friendly with Germany, because the Germans issued a law stating that if a country wanted to protect its Jewish citizens, that country should transport these Jews back home from Belgium. These German-friendly countries let very few Jews return to their home country. Even if there were few people who could go home to Hungary, what happened to them? We know what their destiny was after the Germans occupied Hungary. I had submitted a request in 1936 or 1937 when I was a soldier. They asked me to come to Brussels to the Hungarian Embassy once. Cunningly they did not mention in their letter why they wanted me to go to Brussels, only that I had to bring my ID. The Consulate Secretary informed me at once seeing my ID, that I could not go home because I was married. The Department of Interior Affairs replied that I could go home only if I was single. I was married in July 1942, shortly after that we had to sew on our yellow star. Then came the horrible tragedy. The Germans pounced on the Jewish houses at night in Brussels in Anderlecht District. They chased down the Jews onto the streets, put them on freight trains. They took them straight to gas chambers in Auschwitz. My poor brother-in-law, Kálmán was also arrested then, but he jumped out of the wagon and escaped. Later the Gestapo caught him, and unfortunately his young life ended in Auschwitz. We managed to escape then only because the Germans did not come to our small street named Rue Planten.

            Hitler believed his army to be unstoppable. He attacked Russia. He occupied Ukraine, and went ahead all the way to Stalingrad. There the German Army came to a sudden stop, and then the Russians started to push the Germans back slowly. The only problem was that this push-back was very slow. The Germans took revenge on the Jews. The Secret Police and the Gestapo searched for hiding Jews as if this would have solved the war problems. The atrocities were enlarged by the fact that there were people willing to report the hiding Jewish people to the Gestapo. The Gestapo savages went to collect these Jews at nighttime; they loudly banged their doors with rifle butts. I heard the Nazis even paid money for each reported Jew. The unfortunate Jews did not know what to do, wherever they went, wherever they worked, they were frightened that the Nazi Gestapo would catch them. The Gestapo was looking for hiding Jews all the time. Sometimes they broke down the doors of Jewish homes at daytime, but they did it mostly at night, hitting the doors with riffle butts.

            My two sister-in-laws got a small job in Scharbeck District in Brussels. They had to mend mattresses. The Nazi savages broke down the door on them at daytime. Someone must have reported them. Olga, my younger sister-in-law was heavily pregnant, maybe 8 or 9 month pregnant. The Nazi savages decided that instead of the pregnant Olga, they would take Rózsi, my other sister-in-law. Poor Rózsi got very scared, as I heard, the Nazis hit them. Then she said, "Leave me alone. I have children." Then the Nazis asked her, "Where are your children?" Rózsi realized what might happen if she tells them where her children were hiding along with other Jewish children. So she did not tell them where her children were. The Nazis started to beat her. She ran to the window and jumped out of the window. I think they were on the third floor. She broke her bones badly and lost her consciousness. People came rushing together. Kálmán, my poor brother-in-law was closeby and he saw this disaster. He started to cry stroking Rózsi’s hand. No one knew that he was her brother. The Nazi murderers at that moment did not know what to do next. They allowed Rózsi to go to the hospital, and told her doctor to notify them when she gets better in order to take her away, along with the other Jews. Even if they allowed for Olga to get away earlier, now they decided to take with them my poor heavily pregnant sister-in-law. She probably died in the Auschwitz crematorium, or maybe she was killed even beforehand, as her delivery date drew closer. We went to visit my poor sister-in-law, Rózsi in the Scharbeck Hospital, her leg and arm bones were broken. The Gestapo came also to check whether she was ready to go with them. When she recuperated a little, she escaped from the hospital. I heard later that her doctor was taken away because he did not collaborate with the Germans in Rózsi’s deportation. With great difficulties, she, her husband, Dezső and their children survived the bloody war in Brussels; they were liberated in Belgium. Poor Rózsi passed away in Israel a few years ago. Dezső, her husband died a few months before her. She often had serious nervous breakdowns, hysterical nerve complications. She yelled and cried a lot. She also had heart problems. Her children now live in Israel. They are very talented, and the grandchildren are talented also.

            Young people in Israel often ask their parents who escaped miracously, "How could you let these things happen to you? Why didn’t you organize a resistance against the Nazi murderers? How is it possible that the Nazis could do anything they wanted with the Jewish population?" I admit, if they ask me, that we, Jewish people did not do anything, not counting a few exceptions. There were a handful of people who did hide and fight in the woods as partisans or participated in resistance in a military group. What was the reason? Before I reply, let me add that there was a resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto when they learned that the Jewish population was headed to gas chambers and there was no more hope. When the Germans started to lose at front lines, they were still wining against the Jews, because they could kill more and more Jews. How was this possible? It was possible because we, Jewish people were taught for hundreds or maybe thousands of years that we, Jewish people do not have to fight for our own country, that we could live in the diaspora until the Savior arrives and gathers the Jews from all over the world and takes them to the Holy Land, to Israel. If the Jews would have been thinking differently, they could have bought a country. And, if they would have owned a country, then they would not have been so defenseless. They would have their own military equipment. They could have defended themselves. The Jews would have became a great nation. But the diaspora ruined them. We can see that the little Israel managed to achive many great things in 1967, during the Six-Day War. And we can see with our own eyes that now Jews have their own little country. The Jews can protect themselves, Israel and all the Jews in the world against every enemy.

            Let’s continue with our situation at that time. During German occupation we lived in Brussels, Belgium. At the beginning they did not persecute Jews. But is was a trick. The Germans were preparing for the extermination of Jews. Nobody could think that any of this was possible. We got bad news from Poland which was then attacked by the Germans. But let us admit honestly, we did not believe that such things might happen. In our building, a German Jew named Fröshel lived with his wife and daughter. Soon after the German occupied Belgium, he received a call up from the Gestapo. He was a wealthy man in Germany, he had registered with the Germans earlier. Of course, he got very scared. He did not know what to do. The best thing would have been to hide with his family in another apartment. He even asked my poor mother what to do, should he report to the Germans or not. I remember my mother answering, "If you did not do anything wrong, then you do not have anything to fear." He replied that he could not trust the Germans. Nevertheless he went to the Gestapo with his wife and daughter, and of course, he never came back. You can imagine what was his fate. They ruined him. They exterminated him. The Jewish fate became even worse, we heard about this or that friend disappearing, they were dragged away on the street or from their apartment at night. The fear was very, very heavy. We heard about people going to a funeral, and there Germans circled them in the cemetery and dragged them away.

            We had a friend, she was my wife's friend, who was also from Beregszász. Her name was Judit Steinberger. Once she came up to our apartment, and she had a cross around her neck. It was not a small cross, it was quite visible. And she said that she could go everywhere and nobody would think that she was Jewish. Sometimes she went to restaurants where German soldiers were drinking. She was a good looking girl, so the Germans bought her sweet brandy in small glasses. She told us that the brandy went into her head and she said, "Ich bin a Jude." "I am a Jew." But the soldiers told her in German, “You are stupid. If someone wears a cross around her neck then she cannot be Jewish. A Jewish person does not wear a cross around her neck." The Germans did not believe her. They were so sure that a Jewish person would not put a cross around her neck. She told my wife to wear a cross. My wife asked my opinion, but I said not to wear a cross. I was not a religious fanatic. I did not even know our religion well.

            You see, we were all by ourselves. Nobody helped us with advice. The Jews were defenseless and vulnerable to the Nazis. In this case, it should have been imperative to save lives. We, Jews, grew stupid. They made us stupid. And the Germans tried gradually to exterminate all Jews, calculating every step along the way. In Belgium they did not bother those Hungarian Jews who were Hungarian citizens. In the beginning of 1943, Jews could walk free in Hungary, even if suppressed. The country was occupied by the Germans only in 1944. It looked like that Hungarian Embassy was protecting those Hungarian Jews who had their citizenship documents. The Hungarian Embassy gave my parents and me a paper, in which they asked the Germans not to deport us. Once, in 1943 the Gestapo burst into our house, but after seeing this paper, they left. This was a trick. By then they knew about us. A new law came out later. Those countries that were friendly with the Germans, should take back their Jewish citizens from Belgium to their homeland. Otherwise the Germans would deport the Jews. The Consulate Associate who dealt with these cases was named Kelemen. He used to shout at the unfortunate Jews.

            We heard that this or that friend was dragged away. But we never thought that they were taken to the gas chambers. Such a crazy barbarism never existed on the earth before. The liveliness was hard for the Jews in hiding. How did we stay alive? My parents, brother and I often ventured out to the flea market. We bought used clothing. We turned the cloths out, and from them we made linings for women's purses and bags. Because Jewish purse makers could not get new materials to line their purses, they were happy if we delivered them our home made purse linings. Then we cut gloves from all kind of discarded clothes and blankets. We sewed the gloves on our sewing machine. Someone bought the gloves from us. Where the gloves went, we did not know it yet. But later on we learned that these gloves were delivered to Buchenwald concentration camp. These gloves were distributed among poor prisoners in concentration camps and forced labor camps, so the work would go better outside in snow and freezing temperatures. Our hands were freezing anyway, because our ragged gloves were ruined fast, first at the fingertips, while we were carrying stones and bricks to construction sites. At that time when we sewed these gloves for living, we did not know yet where and to whom they would be delivered. We lived in constant fear. But we were still free. We heard here and there, that someone was taken. A lot of people were dragged away at night by Nazi savages and Gestapo bandits. We moved to another place. We went hiding. We moved to a furnished apartment, while we kept our old apartment and paid the rent for it. Then we committed a grave mistake. Deadly mistake. Our poor mother said that she was afraid of being in our new furnished apartment. We heard that the Nazis were taking Jews from next-door buildings. It was October 1943. So my poor parents and my younger brother moved back to our old apartment on Rue Planten. My wife and I went back to live on the same street. Maybe a neighbor saw us going home and informed the Gestapo. Maybe they came for us because we were registered at a Belgian City Hall in Anderlecht for this home address and the Gestapo extracted our address. We were registered there as Jews. But it is more likely that someone reported us to the authorities, because on that very night when we moved back, we woke up hearing loud knocks on the door. People were shouting and banging on our door with rifle butts, and demanded we open the door immediately. If we would not open the door, they would break it down, for sure. My wife and I, we got really scared and opened the door. These murderer gangsters rushed in. There was a Gestapo guy in military uniform, but there was another Gestapo guy in civilian cloths with a gun on his belt. They shouted at us: "Police alamand!" This means German police in French. And they shouted "Deutse policei! Karte d’identite", meaning "German Police! Identification Cards!" Scared as we were, we presented our ID cards with stamp imprints JUDE JWIF. We also showed them a document issued by the Hungarian Consulate a few months back which stated that as Hungarian citizens we can't be deported if we show this paper.

            Earlier, this document was honored, but now they did not let us go. The Gestapo guy in military uniform read our names and said, "Komt mit", meaning "You come with us." I asked, "Varum." "Why?" The Gestapo in civilian clothes gave out a big yell. We got even more frightened. He told to my poor wife that this was the end for us. We had to follow our brothers and sisters, who were already dragged away. We started to pack, crying. They let us pack our things, because they knew that they would take all our valuables. We were yelled at to hurry up, because our father and mother were already waiting down on the street. They would come with us. Now we got even more frightened. These murderers wanted to take our parents and my younger brother, too. Meanwhile, another bandit dressed in military clothing came in to our apartment; with his hand on this head. He showed the other Nazis how much luggage were packed by my mother and my younger brother who were waiting downstairs in a car driven by this Nazi. We were pushed down the stairs, my wife and me, and then we saw again my mother and Józsi, my younger brother. Both of them were very frightened. The Nazis pushed us into the car. One of the SS lifted our house key and told us that they would give it to the Hungarian Consulate. They started the car and took us to Avenue Louis. We stopped in front of the Gestapo building. We got out there and took our luggage. A woman's shoe fell off, and I tried to pick it up. The civilian Gestapo guy hit me on my face with all his force. Another SS soldier pushed us down into the Gestapo basement. All unfortunate Jews captured by these Nazis were kept there in this basement. Some people were brought in earlier, their names were written with pencil on the wall. I found my dear brother-in-law's, Kálmán's signature. He wrote: "Learn to endure and to suffer. Kálmán Goldberger". We stayed in this basement for a few days. From here, they took us to a collection camp in Malin. This camp consisted of empty military barracks. The Nazis prepared it well in advance to hold Jewish people here and later transport these unfortunate souls to Auschwitz or other concentration camps.

            After our arrival, we were led into a large room, where we lined up. Tables were set up where we had to give up our money, jewels and all other valuables. My poor mother had a golden watch and beautiful diamond earrings; she had to give up everything. My poor wife and I, we stood further back. Our line moved slowly ahead. At the tables, they shouted at us, “If you try to keep anything valuable, we will punish you”. I had false teeth. I put one thousand Belgian franks under my false teeth. But as we approached the tables, I saw someone was beaten up badly. I also saw that they removed the false teeth. I got really frightened, of course. They would beat me up if they find the money. So I chewed on the money as hard as I could, and when they were not looking, I threw it under a wardrobe. We gave them all our money and jewels at the table. They hanged a letter "Z" on a string around my neck. This stood for "Zürick halten", meaning "Held Back", because we belonged to another country, Hungary. But Hungary did not let us Jews back into our homeland. At the end, the German Nazis deported us too, in the same category with Turkish Jews, who had letter "Z" around their necks, too. Polish Jews had a green card hanging from their necks, as I remember, the capture on the green card said "Displaced". These people were very depressed. They knew that their future would be the worst. Auschwitz and total destruction would wait for them. Later we were directed into a large room, where we put down our luggage. SS guys yelled. There was a young Jewish man in the room. He was our room supervisor. They called him "Stubedinst" in German. It was organized who would clean the steps. We slept on the floor; we covered it with some clothing. We peeled potatoes. We ate green pea soup, which was sent by the Jewish Council from Brussels. At that time, the Jewish Council still existed, but they reported to the Germans.

            Germans did everything, including extermination of Jews, in a very well organized way. During the daytime we walked in circles in the courtyard. Gypsies arrived from France, but not as many of them as Jews. Whenever they marched in circles in the courtyard, the Jews were not allowed to go down to the courtyard. We only saw them from the windows. They played their violins beautifully. We were in Malin for approximately seven weeks. Then it was announced that all people with the letter "Z" were to be transported from Malin, first the men, then the women. We all cried. The men were lined up on the courtyard. I could not even say good-bye to my mother. She came out to the courtyard and shouted to me "Béla, Béla", but a soldier hurried to her and pushed her back inside the building. I never saw my poor mother again.

            We, the men, with my father and younger brother and a lot of other people were taken to Brussels on a big truck. We went back to the basement of the Gestapo building. We stayed there for a few days, only the men, including my father and my younger brother. The women with the letter "Z" stayed in Malin. They were transported later to a female camp in Ravensbruck. Few days later they took us all men to Garde Nord Railway Station. Civilians circled us there. We boarded on an empty train. When our train left the station, uniformed SS Nazi soldiers came in. We just sat there, very frightened. Our train reached the German border, and we stopped there. Uniformed German Nazis came in and asked for our passport. It was just a mistake. A German soldier coming with us from Brussels told them that we were "Juden", i.e. Jewish. Then they left, and our train arrived to Germany. Through the window, we saw bombed-out houses. Our train went ahead, and we arrived to a huge railway station. We got off. The SS soldiers put up their iron helmets. They pointed their bayoneted guns at us, while we were getting off the train. It seemed to me that they did not want anyone to escape. Anyway, no one could escape in a foreign country and in a foreign city. Then German policemen guarded us for awhile. There was a very frightened young Polish Jew, who asked us if we were Jewish too. He was taken to Buchenwald, also. Some curious people, mostly women, gathered around us. One of them had a small swastika hanging from the end of her headscarf. She said to the others that we were Jews. A policeman started to speak in French. He probably heard that we came from Belgium, and wanted to practice his French language skills. Another policeman came to us later, shouting. Uniformed Germans arrived a little bit later on, and they pushed everybody up onto the trucks. It was their job to deliver the unfortunate prisoners to the concentration camp in Buchenwald and hand us over to the SS bandits in the camp. The trucks started to leave with us on board. There was a young man among us, who spoke Hungarian very well. His name was Oringer, and his wife came to Belgium from Austria. He spoke German well. He noticed that the road signs showed the way to Buchenwald. He told us in Hungarian that they were taking us to Buchenwald. We arrived there soon. We got off the trucks. The was a big entrance gate, a huge iron fence, and a sign with big letters "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" (Work sets you free). What kind of lie and deception that was too! We experienced it later, that no matter how hard the prisoners worked until total exhaustion, freedom never came from that. Clock on the gate tower. Doors below to SS offices. SS soldiers were standing before the offices. They shouted names. They shouted our names too. They read these names from a list. And if I remember correctly, first they read my father’s name, Lébi Schwartz, then mine, Béla Schwartz. I said "Ja wohl", and the SS soldier looked at me. Then he read my younger brother’s name, József Schwartz. He said "Hier". Then they read more names, names of Jews from Turkey and other countries, where they were not allowed to return. When all names were read, SS soldier said "Let’s go". The SS showed us where to go in the camp. We went to a disinfecting station first, where we had to undress. They took our clothes and everything else. We were standing there naked. Then we had to stand in front of an SS soldier one by one. We had to bend down, pull our ass apart. The SS soldier looked into our ass to see if we tried to hide something valuable in our rectum. They already took everything from us, watches, jewels, money in Belgium, in the Malin collection camp. Now we had to stand naked in front of other, younger looking prisoners. They held an electronic haircutting machine. They cut all our hair from our head and body, from everywhere. Then they sprayed us with disinfectants. From here, we went to a storage room. We never saw again our clothes, neither I, nor my younger brother or my father. We could keep our underwear, shirt and shoes. If you had glasses, you could keep them, too. They gave us camp clothes. We looked terrible in them. A stripe was painted on the threadbare pants. An X shape was painted on the worn jacket. They gave us a ragged cap. Some of us got a striped, thin camp coat. They sprayed some water on us, maybe to clean us. Then they gave us these terrible looking clothes. It was a horrible Nazi trick. Nobody could escape in these awful clothes. After all this, we had to line up and we were led to a barrack. Some prisoners were already in the barrack. We were stopped in front of the barrack. We had to stand there for an hour, maybe for more. It was a very cold night. We were standing there in thin rags, we were cold, we shivered. Then a civilian came out of the barrack and loudly said to us in German, "You should know that you got to work here." Then they let us Jews arriving from Belgium into this large wood barrack. This was not a Jewish barrack. Inmates in this barrack were arrested and transported to Buchenwald because they did something against the Germans. They were mostly Polish and German, to my knowledge. Only we, Jews were taken to the concentration camps for nothing. This civilian man, whom I mentioned before, was the blockleader. In German, "blockalteste". He was a prisoner too, a German man. Maybe he was not faithful to the Nazis, or he was brought in for some other reason to Buchenwald as a prisoner. Here, he became good enough for the Nazis to keep an order in the barrack, to be a blockleader, a "blockalteste". After a long wait outside, they begin to let us into the barrack. They gave us a camp badge to sew on our chest. This badge was cut out of a red cloth. Red cloth meant political prisoner, although we were not political prisoners. We were taken to Buchenwald only because we were Jews. They gave us a small yellow cloth that meant we were Jews. We sewed this yellow rag on the red rag. The red and yellow rags together looked like the Star of David, so whenever the Nazis looked at us they knew we were Jewish. This was dangerous itself. Then they gave us a long red ribbon with camp number on it. Everybody had a number. Mine was 20631. The "Stubedinst" gave us a needle and yarn to sew on the red and yellow rags. But the needle and yarn was not right. I told the Stubedinst that it would be hard to sew it on without proper needle and yarn. He looked at me and asked "Can't you sew it on?" I said, "I can, but it is not easy." He said "Geselt machen asztu gekent", which meant "But you could make business deals, could not you?" He was a prisoner, but not a Jew. He hated Jewish prisoners. So sad. We spent that night close to each other. Next day, they escorted us to another barrack, to Barrack 22. This was a Jewish barrack. The Blockalteste was a German Jew, who had been in concentration camp since 1939. His name was Emil Karlbach. He was arrested for his extreme leftism at the time. He was strict with prisoners. There was an A section and B section. Toilet and wash basin were in the middle. Barrack 22 and later Barrack 23 were Jewish barracks. There were other barracks with other nations, other prisoners. There were Russian, Polish, Gypsy, French, Belgian and German inmates. They said there were about twenty thousand prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp. They transported prisoners from here to other concentration camps, to Auschwitz and they brought prisoners here from other camps. Who knew what these Nazis did! They had the prisoners work for them free. They made them suffer. They squeezed out of them everything they could. They manufactured guns, weapons and other military stuff. And they were constantly building something. We carried brick, cement, sand, stone, wood and other construction materials. In Buchenwald, the Germans did not tattooed a number on a prisoner’s arm. We, the newcomers arriving from Belgium, were not allowed to work at the beginning for about two weeks or a bit longer; they said we were quarantined for observation. Every morning and evening we had to go to the Appel Platz. The blockleaders reported there how many people were in the barrack, how many were sick. They counted everybody. Every barrack stood separately. When a German or SS soldier came in with a book or paper, the blockleader shouted "Attention! Hats off!" and reported our number to the SS soldier. While the soldier made a note, we were standing there hatless, in attention. When all barracks were counted for, we could go back to our barrack. We had iron beds on the top of each other, the bodies were pressed to each other. We lived in extremely bad conditions.

            Buchenwald housed only male prisoners and some mislings (Jews in mixed marriages, whose wives were not Jewish). A misling’s wife could live free in Germany. There were also Polish Jews. Mostly long term prisoners, who were kept for construction work in order to build brick walls. They were young people. There was a German, non-Jewish Capo in the camp. He was also a prisoner, as I heard. He was taken to the camp because he was member of the Socialist Workers Party. His name was Zilbert Capo. He was an architect. The Nazis used him in construction work. Even the Nazis listened to his advice, and he advised the Nazis not to exterminate a certain number of young Polish Jews. He offered to train them to build walls for future factories to be erected next to our camp. These young men lived in Barrack 22. This Capo was not brutal. There were more Capos and "Forarbeiters", meaning foremen in Buchenwald. They were not Jewish. We sat in the barracks around the table during daytime. Every morning and evening we went for head counting. This observation lasted for two or three weeks. After this observation period was over, we started to work. We carried stone, sand, brick, wood to the construction site. The Bauführer or construction leader, was an SS named Beker. He was a brutal Nazi; he hit and beat up prisoners all the time. He wanted to finish this building soon. They called this building S-midi. He shouted that S-midi should have been completed already. Work was going on for months. They started to bring in equipment to the building. Prisoners knew that the Nazis wanted to manufacture fo1 and fo2 bombs, which could shoot very far. But not one was completed ever. When Buchenwald camp was bombed later, this building and all machines in it were totally destroyed. I think Americans dropped these bombs on the building.

            We lived horrible times. Freezing cold, starvation, fear and abnormal working conditions. My poor father and younger brother suffered enormously. Very early in the morning, we went to Appel Platz to be counted, then we marched throught the entrace gate to work, 4 or 5 people in a row, we marched as soldiers do. An SS with a stick in his hand counted how many people went out. Everybody had to keep the pace. To march better, a wind and percussion band stood at the road side and played the beat. In the evening on our way back to the camp, they played again, so the Nazi SS with his stick could count us, wretched prisoners returning from forced labor easier. It was one of their tricks. They could claim that they even provided music for prisoners. Former anti-Nazi musicians were transported to Buchenwald, and recruited into this wind and percussion band.

            Old people died fast. Young ones, too. Bitter cold, starvation and fear killed people. A big crematorium chimney was burning with big flames, dead bodies were burned to ashes in huge iron furnaces. A lot of people died of diarrhea. We had few physicians, also prisoners, in the so-called "Rever", but they did not help us much. Dead bodies were carried from here to burning furnaces all the time. Once, my stomach started to hurt at work, and I had a diarrhia. What did I do? I found a piece of burnt charcoal under the snow, I cleaned it with snow, scraped off the dirt and began to chew it, chew it, until it helped me a bit. I also gave it to others. I gave a piece of charcoal to chew to my poor good friend, Stern. It healed him, however, he was taken away by a later transport. He never returned. To my best knowledge, his wife and little son did come back from Ravensbruck female concentration camp. Later, I ended up in Rever with diarrhea. The older son of Belgian Epstein died in diarrhia next to me.

            Not everyone had shoes, a lot of people wore wooden slippers. It was bad for the feet and body. Life was a horror in Buchenwald. Once, we were inside the gate coming back from work, and we already started to run to our barrack, then near Appel Platz we noticed a swing-like thing. When everyone arrived there, we saw it was not a swing, but gallows; the Nazis wanted to hang someone there. The SS announced on the loudspeaker that interpreters must step forward. The interpreters were prisoners, too. The SS said in German, that this and this prisoner tried to escape (he told his name) or he actually escaped, but they captured him. Therefore this prisoner would be hanged in front of thousands of people. Soon they escorted this unfortunate man there, and the Nazi SS hanged him to the hook. The cord was already around his neck. I am still shivering, when I think about this event. Of course, by the time the wretched man was hanged to the hook, nothing was under his feet. He went up on a little ladder, but they took it already away. He just hung in the air. His hands were tied, and they moved. His face became very red. But he still moved around a bit. Then his face turned gradually paler. And by the time life left his body and he suffocated, his face was colorless, pale, and dead. They left him on the gallows for some time. Then he was cut off and taken to be burned in the crematorium.

            In Buchenwald, Nazi SS soldiers were able to call every barracks on the phone from the gate or from the SS offices. Mostly, they phoned blockleaders if they wanted something special, for example to see a prisoner with this or that number at the gate. And who knows what happened to that prisoner! Or often our barrack loudspeaker announced that a blockleader needed to go to the gate immediately and fast. Blockleaders were prisoners too, but they spoke perfect German. They were chosen by Nazi SS soldiers. They were tough people. In the barracks, they issued the orders.

            Our blockleader was a German Jew. In July of 1944, maybe on the 20th or 21st of July, I do not remember exactly when, we were inside the barrack, in Barrack 22. Our barrack loudspeaker started to announce the news. It seemed that they forgot to turn off the loudspeakers when the SS listened to the news in their office. But then we at the Barrack 22 heard from the loudspeaker as the radio announcer said that Jews attempted an assassination against Fuhrer. Then I said to my poor father and younger brother, "Now we are in trouble. Now the Nazis will kill all of us, Jews." I think we were all very frightened. But it seems that the Nazis learned that the assassination attempt was planned by a colonel named Stauffenberg. At a meeting he put down his briefcase with a bomb close to the Fuhrer’s leg. This time bomb was set to explode in an underground map room. It would have been more powerful there, and probably it would have killed everyone. But suddenly Hitler changed his mind due to the heat or his usual mood changes. Immediately before this meeting he changed the meeting place to a light wood barrack at the edge of the forest. Here the explosion was not as powerful, compared to an underground explosion. And, as we know, Hitler stayed alive. He suffered only superficial injuries. The conspiracy against Hitler was unsucessful. But Hitler’s retaliation was successful. He executed everbody who was suspicious. Most of them were brutally hung, a lot of them were shot in the head. Everything would have been different if this assassination would have been successful. So many people would have stayed alive. But now the Nazis were able to extend the war as long as they could. And they managed to exterminate huge part of the human race.

            Let me mention how these Nazis managed to fool the whole world. They pretended that they were paying for our work. For a while they even printed camp money, so they could pay us, workers. They paid two or three marks. This money was without value. "Buchenwald Concentration Camp" was printed on the money. You could not buy anything with it. There was no place where you could buy anything. We saw a house-like thing, they said it was the Heaftling Cantina for the prisoners to use. But who would dare even go in that direction? The SS would probably shot him dead on the spot. A Nazi one-armed civilian craftsman shouted to the prisoners "Ich verde zein un the auscalung" from time to time, that is "I will be there on payday", meaning if you do not work fast enough, you won’t get any money. Any worthless money. Later on, they did not even bother to hand out this worthless piece of paper. We kept carrying bricks, construction materials, cement, stones, sand, and tried to go as close to the kitchen of the civil craftsmen as it was possible. These craftsmen were free German men, who wore armbands and came to work to Buchenwald. The refuse dump was next to their kitchen. I carried a piece of stick with me and scratched the top of the pile. Sometimes I managed to find a piece of lettuce or a bit of carrot. It was good against the hunger.

            As I mentioned, Buchenwald was not exclusively a Jewish camp. Only a few percent was Jewish. Barracks 22 and 23 were excusively Jewish, but Jews and non-Jews worked together outside the camp. There was a father with his son, a non-Jewish prisoner. I can’t say anything bad about the father. We worked together for awhile. We carried bricks, cement, stones and other construction materials side by side. Once I lugged a paper bag on my back, which contained cement. As you know, cement will harden if it is mixed with water. He and his son also dragged something. There was a little bridge, with water underneath. When we stepped on the bridge, well, his son pushed me into the shallow water with the cement bag on my back. Then he called out to the Nazi SS soldier. "Her posten ther juden machen szabotage". "This Jew sabotages work". I was lucky. The SS soldier did not shoot me in the head. He saw this man’s cruelty.

            In Buchenwald, Germans manufactured weapons, guns, pistols, some stuff we did not know about. Machines bore gun barrels. We built weapon factories. We had to remove hills and dirt to make the ground even. I guess they wanted to build something there. I worked at Rusztung Colony once. I had to drag wood logs to future building sites. They build scaffolding from them. We carried construction materials and bricks there. The builders stood on the scaffolding, and they cemented the bricks in their place. After awhile, I was selected to work somewhere else. They started to build a massive, strong building. They used a lot of cement, they poured big cement holes. We carried big cement plates. Mostly German craftsmen lead the work there. They were not prisoners. They came in wearing a stamped armband, and after work they were allowed to go home. Old timer prisoners from Barrack 22 were their helpers. They build brick walls. They cut cement plates with axes. German SS soldiers came in occassionally and they were talking to German civilian craftsmen. We learned that they were building a large high voltage electricity plant, because they did not have enough electricity for their factories etc. Prisoners from other barracks also worked here, non-Jews, Germans, etc.

            At that time, in 1944 we often had air raid warnings. Airplaines flew above Buchenwald, probably they flew to bomb Germany. They were English or American airplanes, or maybe planes from another country. At the beginning we had to work during air raid warnings. Later, at the sound of sirens, we had to run to our barracks. Everybody to his own barrack. If the air raid warning was cancelled, then we had to go back to our work site. Once it happened that my poor father and I, we did not hear that the raid was cancelled, and everybody already ran back to work through the entrance gate. We were frightened, and asked Jozef, who cleaned the barrack, for advice. He told us to go to the gate and report at the SS soldier for work. I told my poor father that it was not a good idea. Everybody already ran back to the work site, the gate was closed; the SS soldier would beat us to death. Or shot us to death. So we decided to stay in the barrack together with the inside people until everybody returned to the camp. When everybody had to go to head counting at Appel Platz, we'd go too. Then our problem would be solved. And that's how it happened. Air raids became more frequent. The Nazi leadership then decided that all prisoners had to run to the small forest nearby at the sound of the siren. After the danger was gone, everybody had to hurry back to the work site. Some German prisoners also worked there. They suggested that we hide in a big hole we were building there. We put some hay-like wood stuff (which they used to protect fragile things) on ourselves. Since SS guards disappeared during air raid warning, we could rest a bit in this hole. When the siren stopped, we climbed out of the hole and started to work. We did it a couple of times. I worked under a foreman then. We met there in the morning and each of us went to the construction work from there. This foreman was a German, to my knowledge he was brought to Buchenwald because he did not want to carry weapons for religious reasons.

            One morning I left our barrack in my ragged clothing, with a tin plate on my stomach. An ugly cap was on my head, its vizor was torn. I hurried to the building that we were constructing then, which supposed to be an electric plant. To my knowledge, if we met an SS soldier during work hours, we did not have to greet him or yank our cap off. As I went, I saw two SS soldiers standing there. One of them was German, he told me to approach him. I knew at once this meant trouble. I yanked my cap off. The German soldier asked me why I missed greeting him. The other soldier did not say a thing. I think he was Polish SS. I told the German, that we do not have to greet soldiers during working hours. At this moment, he hit me in the face with his fist, and then he hit me again. I was lucky that he did not hit my eyes. I fell down. When I got up, I started to cry while I was heading to our work site. There they asked me what happened, why I was crying. I continued to do what I had to do, carried cement plates and other stuff. Around 10 o'clock or half past 10 or 11 o’clock maybe, a siren started to blow. Through the window, we saw few poor prisoners running to the small forest. Of course, we agreed to hide in the hole, and cover ourselves with a straw-like material. And as no SS would be around, we could rest a bit there. We hid in the hole. I hid there too, but suddenly I looked out and saw that there were a few people still running to the small forest. I thought, well, I better run to the forest. And I was out of the building in a flash, and started to run to the forest. Somebody shouted at me, why I was not running faster. As I looked back, I saw the SS soldier who beat me up in the morning. He asked me to come closer. I went to him, and he hit me again telling me to run faster. I arrived at the forest, crying bitterly. I lied down to the ground. I was extremely tired, I fell asleep. I do not know how long I slept. I am sure it was not much. When I woke up, I heard big explosions. Huge smoke swirled towards the sky. I heard loud noises. This was a big air raid. Big factories and buildings next to Buchenwald concentration camp were all bombed to the ground. I heard loud moaning and wailing nearby. Some men lost a hand or other body parts, some men were lying in blood. After huge bombs few smaller firebombs were dropped, and they tore off the prisoners’ body parts. Those who were not caught by the firebombs, started to run. We ran out of the concentration camp area. Any other time they would have killed us for this crime. But now, during air raid, the SS soldiers did not do anything against us. We met an SS officer, and he directed us back to the camp area. The air raid now was over. A lot of small firebombs hit the small forest. The big Factory No. 10, where the gun barrels were manufactured, was completely destroyed. A Romanian SS soldier, who otherwise was very brutal person, died there. He could have hid, but he was such a patriotic person, he kept guarding Factory No. 10 during the air raid. Smoke was rising from the ruins everywhere. Numerous dead and injured were on the ground, many unfortunate prisoners were wailing. SS soldiers were wailing too, they were also injured in the air raid. Some of us, who accidentally survived this raid and were not killed, had to carry the injured SS soldiers on stretchers to the SS barracks, and put them down on the beds. There was an SS doctor in bloody medical coat. We, prisoners were allowed to enter to the SS barracks only in order to carry in these injured SS soldiers. If we would go there for any other reason, they would have shot us to death. Those SS soldiers, who we carried on stretchers, used to beat us up or tried to kill us, but now they called us "friends", or "my friends". You got to think about this. Would they become cruel SS soldiers again after their recuperation? The prisoners’ barracks were not bombed. My poor father worked inside and he stayed alive, only his nose hurt. The next morning, we went out to work again to clean up the ruins. Bekert, the Nazi SS construction leader came and saw with big eyes how the building he built with prisoners’ slave labor was totally ruined now. The electric plant building disappeared from the face of the earth. Nothing was left of the building where we worked before, just one huge and several small holes in the ground. Not a single matchstick remained. Those poor people, who climbed down the hole to rest during air raid, disappeared all without a trace; not even a single strand of hair remained from their bodies. If I did not jump out from that hole in the last minute and run after other prisoners into the woods, if I stayed there, my fate would have been the same. I would have been gone. Not even a single strand of my hair would have remained.

            We started to rebuild the wall again. Nothing came out of it. The wall fell down. There was no sand left for the construction. We filtered dirt through a big iron sieve, and tried to use it instead of sand. Before the air raid, there was a lot of coal. Coal was needed for everything. After the bombing, the coal was burning and smoking for weeks or even months. It was on fire. We saw the Germans did not have coal. Bekert, the Nazi SS construction leader was gone. He was transferred or something else happened to him, but we never saw him again. He was replaced by a one-eyed SS construction leader.

            He was not as brutal and cruel as Bekert, or maybe he saw that the end was near. Once he selected few younger prisoners from those men who had shoes on their legs instead of wooden slippers, and could run. He selected me too to be part of this transport commando. We learnt later that this was a dog commando. We had to get up earlier. Nazi SS soldiers circled us. Each held a trained vicious dog by chain or rope. These dogs could tear apart any prisoner on the SS soldier’s command. We went outside the camp, farther away from Buchenwald. They started to build houses for SS Nazis. Big tucks delivered stones, bricks, sand, pebbles and other construction materials there. Some SS houses were ready and lived in. We peeked into a house and saw a young woman. A man came out in SS uniform. There was a big SS letter in a frame on the wall. Maybe they showcased their Nazi beliefs with it. From our Jewish barrack some old timers came along with us. As I mentioned earlier, they were trained to build brick walls. They came from Barrack 22. Our job was to help them by carrying all necessary building materials to the site. All kind of prisoners worked together there. Once they told me and Jozef to grab a wheelbarrow and bring very small pebbles, so called broken stones to them. Jozef and I did so. I never had any problems with Jozef. He slept in the Polish barrack, because he was arrested for some anti-Nazi activities, and I lived in the Jewish barrack. An SS soldier stood close to the broken stone mound. There was a small pile of red bricks nearby; it represented the concentration camp boundary. No prisoner was allowed to step over the red brick pile. If it happened, the SS soldiers were allowed to shoot him down. I was not thinking about this. I was just in a hurry pushing my wheelbarrow to the broken stone mound in order to get more broken stones. And Jozef was pushing his wheelbarrow. The area was deserted; nobody was there, just me, Jozef and the SS soldier. The prisoners were not allowed to address the guards at all. Nobody ever addressed the SS guards. It would have been a deadly mistake. I saw that a guard stood nearby resting his rifle on his shoulder. With one hand, he was holding a brown dog. Jozef looked up to the guard and addressed him. My blood froze in my vein. He said to the guard "Her pasten" and pointed at me, "Jude", meaning I am Jewish. The guard looked at me and started to shout, "Eszt gibt nach Juden en Deutsland", meaning "Are they still Jews in Germany?" And he said something to his dog and pointed at me. "Du hunte iz a Jude", meaning "Dog, this is a Jew". But somehow the dog did not attack me, did not tear my ragged cloth off my body. Then the SS started to push me towards the red brick pile in order to throw me over the camp boundaries, so he could claim I wanted to escape. Then he could shoot me. I thought, "My end is here. This SS guard would kill me. It does not matter anymore what I do or what I say. I am finished." Then I jumped in front of him, very close. I opened my ragged clothes on my chest and shouted loudly to him to shoot me now at once. He will liberate me from all my sufferings. He can only do me that favor. I do nothing but suffer, although I never harmed anybody. I shouted at him very loudly in German that the only reason I was there because my father was born Jewish. My mother was not Jewish. (I just said it. The truth is that my mother was Jewish also.) The SS said "Du Jude wir wellen gevinen der Krug aber wir wellen werloren?" meaning "Jew, will we win or loose this war?" I shouted back, "I do not know. Maybe you’ll win. Maybe you’ll lose." Then I realized I was not shot by the SS soldier. So I shouted to him, "Her posten Das is meine arbeit stelle lazinzi mich arbeitern", that is "Let me continue my work, this is my workplace." And I ran to my wheelbarrow and began to shovel broken stones into my wheelbarrow. When it was full, I ran straight back to the other prisoners, who were building the wall. Jozef pushed his wheelbarrow, too. He did not say anything to me. I did not say anything to him. But when Jozef and I arrived to the wall, I asked him. "What happened there? Why did you betray me? Did you want me to be killed?" Other bricklayers, majority of who were Jews, told me that my story could not be true, because Jozef was a good man. They did not believe me, since Jozef was a prisoner, and Jozef was suffering, too. Well, you can ponder about it. He talked nicely to bricklayer Jews. He acted as a good person, because it was his best interest. But deep inside, he hated the Jews. And he would have been happy to see a Jew killed. In the evening I approached the deputy barrack leader, he was a German Jew, and asked him to help me somehow. I felt, in this dog commando, they would kill me sooner or later. And I told him what happened. His advice was to stay with my previous group tomorrow morning, after the head counting at Appel Platz. I did exactly that, nobody said a word. After that I kept working at the construction site around the camp, removing the rubbles. I spent only two weeks or little more at the dog commando, I do not remember exactly how long I was there. One day I was selected to work with other prisoners at the officers' houses which were destroyed by bombs. There were no more bombings in Buchenwald, they tried to fix the officers’ houses. During the air raid not only the factories were destroyed, but the officers’ houses as well. Only smaller firebombs reached these houses. Prisoners' barracks were not bombed at all. First we have to put the Commander’s house in order. The Commander’s name was Piszter. He was the leader of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Who knows how many murders he ordered? If he was chosen to be the leader of the Buchenwald concentration camp, he must have been a high ranked SS Nazi officer. Who knows what kind of mass murders was he guilty of? We had to bring in some furniture to the Commander’s house, and take out some other stuff. There was a painting on the wall, Hitler's picture. "Der este grossze tag" meaning the "First Big Day" when Hitler was elected in 1933. This was the First Big Day for the Commander. For us, it was the day when our life was destroyed. In two or three days, the Commander's wife was also at the house. She was a small brown woman with a little girl, who was around 4 years old. Their maid was transported from the Ravensbruck camp, where my mother and wife were held then. The maid was also a female prisoner and a servant to the Commander’s family. We were still working at the Commander’s house, when one rainy day I was mixing some cement and noticed that the Commander's little daughter was jumping in a dirty puddle. What should I do? If I let her jump, the SS guard will break my bones. If I take her out of the puddle, it means trouble too, how could I touch the Commander’s daughter? Well, I decided to take her out of this dirty puddle. I went to her and lifted her up. At this very moment, her mother came out of the house and took her out of my hand. "Danke", she said. "Thank you". So I got away without any trouble. I went to get more sand, and I saw a highly ranked SS officer walking with his dog. It was rumored among the prisoners that his house was destroyed by the bombing, and his family was killed in the air raid.

            Then we worked at other houses which were ruined by the bombing. There was a not so young Nazi SS who loved to hit the prisoners, to slap them in the face. When we gathered to march to work, he was shouting. And he yelled like a dog ... wuff...wuff. Someone yelled back ...wuff..wuff. He was looking around who was that person, but he could not find him. He used to shout that the first world war was lost because of the Austrians, and we would loose this war because of the Austrians, too. Another Nazi’s face became red and started to shout that this war was caused by the Jews, and the Jews caused every trouble, whenever he saw a poor prisoner who had a red little badge and under it a yellow badge, because it meant that this prisoner was a Jew. Such a fanatic Nazi! He was totally wrapped up in Nazism and Hitler, and he was shouting all this nonsense. We were especially afraid of this crazy Nazi SS, because he was fast to hit, strike or kill. There was an SS in Buchenwald, who was, if I can say so, friendly to us Hungarian-speaking Jews, but only because he was a Romanian SS. He did not speak German, only Hungarian and possibly Romanian. He came to us several times and talked to us in Hungarian. He asked if we had a watch. Of course, we had no watches. The Nazis took it from us. This SS was possibly from Transylvania, a part of Romania where Hungarians lived then. He was glad to speak in Hungarian. Once he came to me at work, I was shoveling dirt then, and he started to talk to me in Hungarian. I told him, "Mr. Engineer (we called him Engineer, I do not know why), do not come to me please, because the German SS will beat me up or maybe he will kill me, because I talked to an SS soldier". He said that he could talk to anybody, because he was an SS too, and nobody could give him orders. And he said something else, and then he walked away. The minute I turned around, there was another blond SS guard and asked, "Was haste geret mit hhe SS man", meaning what I talked about with this SS man. I yanked my cap off my head at once and stood in attention. I replied that the SS man came to me. "Well, I’ll finish you off", said the SS guard in German. "I’ll send you somewhere with a transport and you’ll never come back." He took out a pencil and paper and wrote down my number. My number was 20631. This meant death. Prisoners were sent to such dangerous places that they never returned or they died or they were killed. I started to cry. What could I do? In a few moments, the SS guard came back and told me that he would not send me away, instead he would kill me right there. Then he ordered me to take the shovel into my hand, lift it up above my head and exercise with it. Lift the shovel above my head with my two hands and bend my knees up and down all day, until I collapse. These were his own words, "until you collapse". He sure meant it. A starving, much suffered man could not go on with this exercise from morning until the end of the day. And if I collapse, he would order someone to take me to the crematorium to burn my body. How could I do this, with my shovel up above my head and bending my knees, up and down, all day, until the end of work day? How could I do that? I was young, barely 31 years old. The SS guard was watching me, I could not stop. After this affair, I hardly saw the Hungarian-speaking SS.

            Let me mention again the SS overseer, who loved to beat up and hit the prisoners. Some Buchenwald prisoners wore red trousers. They were real Germans, they spoke with a German accent. It is possible that they did not want faithfully serve Hitler anymore, so they were taken to Buchenwald as prisoners. When this SS, who loved to hit and yell, saw a German prisoner in red trousers, he ordered him to come closer, and he asked him, "Was bisz tu?" "Who are you?" The prisoner stood in front of him like a soldier and replied: "Ich bin ein Reich Dajcse". "Du biszt ein Reich Dajcse", and he forcefully slapped him on the face from left and from right. I think the word Reich Deutsche meant German Empire. But where was the German Empire by then? Russians were advancing. Americans, English men and other Westerners were bombing Germany. Germans were pushed out of France and Belgium, and from other Western countries. Forces advanced in order to occupy Germany. Everybody was talking about the end of war. It seemed to be near. Few prisoners in Barrack 22 had German, Christian wives, who lived free in Germany. They sent newspapers to their husbands. We learned from those newspapers what was happening in the world. The Germans did not write the truth. But between the lines you could figure out what was going on, where the war was heading. One of these prisoners, whose wife lived free, asked his wife in a letter to send him some clothes. Maybe to put something on when we would be free again after the war has ended. But the SS guard told him, "Do not think a minute that you will ever go home from here." Time went by. We still had to work. But the work was pretty useless by then. We had to do it anyway. The prisoners suffered, died, and they were burned in the crematorium. Some prisoners were transported to other camps, some people were sent to Auschwitz. There was a man with his young son, who spoke French very well. His wife was in Ravensbruck, and she survived the war. He and his young son came with us from Belgium. I remember him; he was a very good man. His name was Ganzo, and his son's name was Albert. Maybe such a young person had a little bit better life then we did. There was fresh air. They were growing. But one day his father told me between tears in French that Albert died. We felt so sorry for him. He and his father were swallowed by death, they never went home. I think they were Turkish Jews. The construction work continued. At the bricklayer site my father cleaned the cement between the bricks with an iron. He did it so nicely; you could tell which row was his work. Once we had to pick up broken glasses and other trash from the bombed out area facing the road. And then an SS unit marched singing to the military barracks. They were singing in Hungarian. One, two, one, two... they marched. I knew that song by heart at once.

BOOK 3

The Germans seemed to know that they were losing the war. Once, the SS guard who loved to yell, started to scream, "We lost two World Wars because of the Austrians, World War I and this war." However, the Hungarian speaking SS told us, one night in the SS garrison, that SS soldiers talked about a secret weapon which could win the war for the Germans in the last minute. Of course, this was a fantasy. They manufactured only small guns. The civilian masters tried the new guns out by shooting into small stone piles; however, there was not too much enthusiasm on their faces. We went to work in the spring mud. The deputy construction leader walked by, but he did not say a thing. We dug holes, in the holes we inserted those cement poles which held electric wires before the bombing. Now these poles were on the ground. Our work was useless. The construction foreman named Sontag told the prisoners to build a wall. We carried stone, brick, cement, and other stuff, but somehow nothing came out of this. The American Army began to move from Belgium to Germany. We, prisoners, were talking about our future freedom which could not be too far now, if the Germans would not kill us first. It was rumored that Piszter, the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Commander, said that he would not empty the concentration camp; instead he would surrender to the American Army. He told so to our camp alteste (elder). This camp alteste was a prisoner, too. He was German, and he had a red sign and a number on his coat. He was arrested and brought into the camp for anti-Nazi activities. He helped the Nazis to maintain order. He even had a dog. I can’t say that he was brutal.

            The Commander stated that he would not empty the concentration camp, but he did the opposite. They organized a death transport. Unfortunately, I fell into it. My poor father was killed in that death transport. My younger brother reached Dachau with a transport, and he was set free there. I was set free in a forest on a hill. The SS murderers pushed us, still alive prisoners into the woods. As I remember they even pointed guns at us in order to kill us. But then we heard gun fire in the forest. It came from American soldiers. The SS murderers seemed to be scared; they knew that the American soldiers were really close. Then ran away and left us prisoners, who were still alive there, because they did not have time to shoot or kill us. The gun shots would have been loud, and these SS murderers might have thought that if they shoot and kill us, the American soldiers would hear it and capture them easily.

            Our death transport lasted about three weeks, maybe two or three days less. I am going to describe our death transport exactly as it happened. I think it was the cruelest crime ever committed on the earth against innocent people. Speaking a little bit more about our last days in Buchenwald, we still went to work and they still counted us on Appel Platz. But we already knew that after Belgium fell, cities of Achen and Cologne were under American occupation. Moreover, as I remember, we ourselves heard some shots in the distance. The front line drew closer. We still went to work for about two days. Then next day around noon, they lined us up and we went back to the camp. The Nazi leadership already knew that this work could not go on anymore. We lined up at Appel Platz. People started to talk that we were going to be freed soon, that we would have the world. That's what other prisoners said, those, who were still alive. As we stood there, the Jewish Barrack 22, Szepl started to talk. Szepl was the right hand for Emil, the Jewish blockleader. Szepl was a German Jew, a prisoner. He said, "Forswind!" "Scram!" At this point, we and prisoners from other barracks started to run away from Appel Platz. Where did we run? We ran down to the Little Camp, which was an even more devastated place. My poor father and my younger brother ran there, too. Prisoners of Little Camp lived among terrible circumstances. Awful diarrhia prevailed. Death was everywhere.

            How could we ran away before head counting? Because the Nazi SS soldiers did not want to do head counting anymore. It was the blockleaders’ job to count the unfortunate prisoners and deliver them to the SS murderers, who gathered around the prisoners and organized the death transports. Most of these unfortunate prisoners were killed during death transports. In Little Camp, where we stayed, camp overseers began to gather around the barracks in order to deliver us to the SS soldiers who lead these death transports. My father and I jumped out of the window, and ran. Where did we run? Suddenly I saw a French overseer leading my father and another poor prisoner to the death transport preparation site; we learned about its function later. My father saw me and turned to me saying, "Come with us, my son. Everybody has to go." Poor father, he did not realize that he was going to his death. Another day, they began to push people out of the barracks. I made a deadly mistake again, as I let them push me out of our barrack. Once outside, I saw that I was in big trouble. SS soldiers stood around us, and we were taken to the evacuation area. We became part of a death transport. The SS soldier hit me hard on my back and said to me in German, "Aren’t you an old timer?" When we looked to the other side, we saw a lot of people in the hilly forest, a lot of prisoners; at some places we saw rising smoke. We could see it from a distance. It looked like they were roasting something. But what they were roasting, I did not know. I was not there. But I am sure that SS soldiers, Nazis, did not bring any meat there for the prisoners to roast. Then what was it? Well, we can think about it.

            Already too many of us were squeezed together, a lot of non-Jewish prisoners also. Then they pushed us out of the main gate, and armed SS soldiers gathered around us. Hungarian speaking SS Nazis were among them, too. We saw that we were in a lot of misery. These armed SS soldiers were there to kill us. Some people wanted to run back to the camp. I saw a poor man lying on the ground, a small red sport was visible on the middle of his forehead. He still moved his head a bit, to the left and to the right. They shot him in the head a few moments ago. He probably tried to escape. The big crowd started to move. We had to go. Armed SS soldiers were all around us. In residential areas even civilian guards were walking with us on both sides, with light guns. As we marched, we saw potato and kohlrabi skins dropped on the dirty road. I do not know why the local Germans threw dirty, muddy potato skins on the road. So we wretched prisoners could eat something? Or did they throw these dirty, raw potato skins in front of us because they hoped we would die from it even sooner?

            We approached the big railway station in Weimar. We arrived; they put us in big cattle freight cars. The freight cars were crowded. And the train left, and went, went ahead taking us away. There I saw a friend named Kláber from Barrack 22. He was a Hungarian Jew, but he lived in Germany. He was deported from there to Buchenwald together with his father. His father died before they arrived to Buchenwald. There were different type of prisoners in the wagon, Jews and non-Jews alike. In another open freight car, I suddenly spotted my poor father. He told me, "Do not come here, my son. They will distribute some bread here". He meant, in his wagon. He probably thought that I did not belong to his wagon; therefore they would not give me any bread there. I would better off if I go back to my own wagon, and receive some bread there. This was the very last moment that I saw my father alive. I have not seen him again. Even in this minute as I am writing these words, my heart aches. I can hardly withhold my tears.

            I went back to my own freight car, and indeed, they started to give out some bread. In that very minute bombs started to fall. We had to jump out of the wagons. A lot of wagons burned down. Our transport was bombed from airplanes. From the air, our death transport looked like an ordinary military transport. If they knew that we were unfortunate concentration camp prisoners, they would not have shoot at our train. After the bomb raid was over, SS soldiers started to yell at the prisoners, "Back to the freight cars!" A lot of prisoner died, some was injured. I saw with my own eyes that these SS soldiers who were shot in the head all those injured prisoners who sat on the ground or could not stand up. The SS had a revolver in his hand and shot all injured prisoners in the head from behind. I was also looking for my freight car along with other prisoners but somehow I did not find it. They all looked the same, some were burned out. By then an SS escorted us and told us to go to the death wagon if we couldn’t find our wagon. At the end of the transport we had a death wagon; it contained only dead or killed people. We were told to jump up into this wagon, if we couldn’t find our own wagon, but those who jumped in, were instantly killed by the SS. In that wagon only dead people could travel. The SS took us along other open wagons, and then I saw a prisoner, and I recognized him from his mouth upwards, and I said to the SS, "Her posten iche ware in dem vagone." The SS asked the young man in German and pointed at me, whether I was there in that freight car. The lad nodded with this head, yes. Then the SS told me to jump up into this freight car. I jumped and indeed, since this was my previous wagon. This young man saved my life. If he did not stand there and did not nod with his head, then the SS would have killed me in the death wagon. Our train started to move. I did not see my poor father anywhere. The train went ahead with us prisoners. I nibbled on a little piece of bread which I managed to get at the moment when the bombing started. When we jumped out of the wagon, I hid the bread in my trousers, so no one could take it away from me. I do not know how long we traveled on the freight train, I do not remember exactly. It stopped finally, and everyone got off. A lot of prisoners were there. I looked for my father shouting "Dad! Dad!"

            Unfortunately, I could not find him. Then came the most horrible minute of my life. I met Lajos Veizer, son of a cutter in Kisszekeres, and he told me, "You could have saved your father if you would have stayed with him." My heart ached. Why did not I stay with him! But he sent me away. He told me, "My son, do not come here now. They will distribute bread here." Then suddenly the airplanes appeared dropping bombs on us, and we jumped off the train. I could not even find my freight car easily after the bombing.

            Since then, several years went by, but I can say this much, that my heart still cries for my father. He was such a good man. He suffered a lot in his life. In World War I, he was prisoner of war in Russian captivity in Siberia. I remember an old post card that he sent us from Irkutsk, Siberia. And during the first years following World War I, in the twenties and thirties, it was especially difficult in Hungary to make a living. That’s why he went to Belgium around 1930. But when the Germans occupied Belgium in 1940, everything was ruined.

            Well, as we got off the freight train, Nazi SS soldiers started to move us. The human brain cannot understand the cruelty I am about to write now. A little boy, a Jewish boy, who was around six or seven years old, was lying on his back on the ground. He was crying terribly. Why? Because an SS, whom I saw before shooting the injured prisoners to death who were not able to go back to their wagons, that same SS held a revolver to the kid's temple. He did not pull the trigger yet. He was waiting. He was enjoying the agony of this child and his terrible fear. The little boy was screaming awfully. The SS enjoyed it fully before he killed this innocent kid. Isn’t it terrible?

            As we marched we saw Germans with small carts loaded with all kind of stuff, they looked like refugees. There were very sick and starving prisoners among us who became too weak to go on. They were killed instantly by the Nazis. Another transport from Buchenwald marched before us. A lot of prisoners were killed in that transport. We could see bodies of murdered prisoners lying on both sides of the road. I saw an unfortunate prisoner who tried to march on crutches, but was not able to continue. The SS wrote the prisoner’s number on the prisoner’s arm or hand. I did not actually see the SS shooting him, but I am sure that was his fate. We marched on. They escorted us. It was a bitter cold April. We shivered in our tattered clothes. Some people screamed, "Gun us down now. Why do you torture us?" In a German village people threw cooked potatoes towards us. I lifted up my threadbare cap. A small cooked potato fell into my cap, but a prisoner next to me snatched the potato out of my cap. At the end, I got nothing. We found wild sorrel leaves at the road side, I ate it. Later on, we marched along wheat fields. Green wheat, sown in fall, just started to grow. I tore it off and started to eat it. Not like cows. I put the green wheat into my mouth and chewed on it so long that it disintegrated and slid down into my stomach. Some people among us looked young and healthy, but they said they would not go any further, because these Nazis would kill us anyway. And they jumped head first into the ditch. Of course, the SS immediately shot everybody who jumped out of the line. There were young lads from Transcarpathia who spoke Hungarian, and I begged them not to jump aside. I told them there might be a way to be saved. But they just jumped and they were killed. Once we marched near a wooded area, the road lead that way. A young prisoner sat down between the trees to relieve himself. The SS saw him and said to him in German, "You wanted to escape." And with his rifle butt he hit this young boy’s head so hard that he collapsed on the ground and quite possibly he died there. They threw him up to a cart pulled by other prisoners. Most likely this boy was already dead when they threw him up onto the cart. A Hungarian speaking prisoner addressed an SS guard, because he noticed that the SS guard spoke Hungarian. He asked him, "Where do you take us? How far?" "Until you die."- was the Hungarian speaking SS guard’s answer.

            We were marching further. Then we noticed that we were approaching a concentration camp. This concentration camp was called Flossenburg. Even before we arrived to the gate, they started to shout, "You have too many lice. Throw away your clothes. You will get clean ones inside." This was a big lie, too. I threw away certain things, because of the lice. But I had a small blanket; I wrapped it around my waist instead of throwing it away. Then we marched into the concentration camp. We went in a large hangar, an empty building which was used to build airplanes or something like that. They distributed some bread in the evening. We slept in one or two empty barracks; they were awfully crowded. Very early in the morning, someone came in to the barrack and said, "Jews, wake up! You go with a separate transport." I was thinking about staying behind with the others, the non-Jews. But then I got up. Some of the non-Jews kicked me, I remember it. The big Jewish transport was set up, and we marched through the big gate again, down to the railway station. Then we, Jews, climbed up into a freight train. A German woman who lived close to the railway station took small bowls from some prisoners in order to give them water. A high ranked SS soldier saw this from the street and told the SS to write down the woman’s name who offered water to the prisoners. The SS shouted back to the high ranked officer, "Her Haubtman, can we give back the bowls to the prisoners?" The officer did not say yes or no. Then the SS or Wehrmacht soldier gave back the bowl to the prisoner. The train started to leave with us, poor Jewish prisoners. There was a man in the wagon from Szatmár. He found out that somehow he was a remote relative of my family. He spoke very intelligently. I listened to him. The wagon was extremely crowded. We fought for air. Someone poked my hand and it got infected. This wagon was not an open freight car. It had a big door and a top; they could shut someone there if they wanted to. They were talking about giving us some bread. I started to cry and scream, but of course, we did not get any bread. This wretched train just chugged along with us, Jews. An armed Nazi SS also traveled in our wagon. I guess there was an armed Nazi in each wagon. Then our train stopped and they yelled at us to get off. The unfortunate prisoners started to get off. In our wagons, some people started to get off. Then the guard told us, "If you want, you can get off. If you want, you can stay." A prisoner from Szatmár and a few others decided to stay, thinking they would have more free space on the train. They would have more air. I also began to cover the floor with my clothes, as they did. By now, only those were in the wagon, who wanted to stay. The SS began to close the doors. And as I accidentally looked at the SS soldier’s face, I saw a very ugly smile, a hidden laughter on his face. At this moment I realized that SS soldiers had never been so gracious as to let us decide whether we want to stay or to go. This SS tricked us. Behind closed doors, he would kill us all who stayed in the wagon. The doors were almost closed, but there was a tiny crack open. I jumped fast at the SS, and then jumped out of the wagon, down into the crowd. The SS threw a stone after me from the wagon; he probably was angry that he couldn’t kill me. My friend from Szatmár and others stayed in the wagon. I am sure that the SS executed them all after closing the doors. Prisoners lined up below. My injured hand hurt badly by then. The punctured injury site got swollen, it oozed pus. SS soldiers were yelling. They hurried the crowd. I showed my swollen hand to an SS, how much it hurt. He yelled at me, "It will heal eventually". As we begin to leave, I spotted a small plant along the road. I knew it sucked the pus out of the body. I put some of this little plant on my injured hand. It helped. My hand slowly began to heal. I put this small burdock like plant on my hand several times. The SS took us through small villages and empty fields. At night we slept in a woodsy area. We saw dead bodies on both sides of the road along the empty fields everywhere. These poor prisoners belonged to another transport marching ahead of us. What happened to those poor prisoners who were shot in the head by the Nazis? The American army and other liberation forces could not see those dead bodies, because they were buried along the road in a big hurry. The SS sent two or three prisoners into the village to bring some turnips for us. Horses or cows used to eat this type of turnip. We got little pieces to eat. They did this only one time. We drank water from streams, using our cap. The SS once stopped us in the middle of a village. Few SS soldiers went into a shop. A well dressed older gentleman came out and asked one of the SS soldiers outside, "How far are the Americans?" I did not understand the SS soldier’s reply. This SS lisped a bit. I remember him well. And I remember that this SS committed terrible murders at night two days later. Another day in another village, an SS gave us a cooked potato; he poured it into our ragged cap. The house was empty, someone left the potato there. I was very hungry, and I ate the potato with skin on. After that, we continued to march at night only. During daytime we stayed in the woods. The SS soldiers were also afraid. After giving out the potatoes, the SS ordered us to march only in the dark. It was cold. A little blanket that I took with me from Buchenwald, was wrapped around my waist. Now I took it off and put the blanket on my head. I do not know if this was the reason or something else, but an SS grabbed me and pulled me out of the line. He told me in German that I would pull a small cart with another lad. This small cart had the SS luggage and packages. It was not easy to pull, but there was a small rod across. I pulled it on one end of the rod, a young Polish Jewish lad held the other end, that’s how we pulled this small cart. It was pitch dark at night. It was horrible. We heard SS soldiers shooting. These shots killed people. As we pulled this small cart, we saw blood and dead bodies in front of us. Our block was Block 4; we pulled this small cart at the end of the Block 4. I was very tired. The poor Polish Jewish lad, who was pulling the cart with me, was also exhausted. It was night time, and to hear those deadly shots affected me greatly. I did not know what to do. I had no chance to stay alive. I become embittered. A lot of SS soldiers were around us. I addressed an SS soldier, "Her posten bitte shön toskense mich osz." "Please let someone else pull this cart for now". The SS said, "Du Jude bistu nüde?". "Are you tired, Jew?" "Jahwol, ich bien zehir müde." "Yes, I am very tired." "Leig dich" "Lie down." Well, if I lie down, he will shoot me without hesitation. What am I going to do now? I was not allowed to talk to an SS. This SS guard would not let me live. I had to do something. And I did. It was night time. It was cold. My little blanket that I brought with me from Buchenwald, was wrapped around my waist. I put the blanket on my head and suddenly ran away from the little cart. But not to the side. I ran ahead into the crowd. To the other prisoners. If I jump to the side, the SS shoots me to death immediately. The SS was searching for me, he was shouting, but he could not find me. At night all prisoners looked the same. If he would have found me, he would shot me, that's for sure.

            A young man among the prisoners asked me where I came from. I told him I was deported to Buchenwald from Belgium. He told me he lived in Antwerp. I told him I was a Hungarian Jew. He told me he was a Polish Jew. I told him that my brother-in-law lived in Antwerp, his name was Hendler. He was a good looking, tall, younger guy. His wife Helen, my wife’s sister, was a beautiful, pretty redhead. They had a beautiful little daughter, Magdi. Unfortunately, the Nazis deported them from Antwerp. This beautiful woman, my sister-in-law, and her beautiful daughter most likely perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. And what I just heard from this young man from Antwerp felt like someone stabbed me in my heart with a sharp knife. He said that my brother-in-law, Hendler, was shot to death in this very death transport. How horrible! It was night time. We marched on a country road along homesteads, fields, barren lands. It was pitch dark. Shots were fired everywhere. They were shooting at poor prisoners. Wherever we went, we saw blood and dead bodies in front of our feet. A poor Jewish prisoner ahead of us attracted my attention, he spoke fluent German, and begged for his life to an SS. He was probably a German Jew. The SS said, "Halt de schnocen", "Shut up!". The SS was lisping a bit. I recognized him at once hearing his voice. This was the same SS I mentioned earlier, who went into the shop to buy something. And this SS, after saying very loudly, "Halt de schnocen", fired into this poor Jewish prisoner, who spoke German well. The poor prisoner was silenced. His blood flowed onto the ground, and he died. Who knows how many more prisoners died by the hands of this and other SS soldiers? We, prisoners, did not have any chance for survival. We did not even know where we went, where we were taken. Next evening a heavy rain started to pour. Few prisoners were allowed to go into a barn, where the farmers kept hay and straw. We lied down at once on the straw in our wet, soggy old tattered clothes. Before we went into the barn, I heard from someone that Buchenwald was liberated a few days ago. Americans arrived to Buchenwald, and the majority of those prisoners, whom the Nazis did not have time to haul away, were already free. A prisoner accidentally overheard an SS talking about it, and the news got around.

            But we were still in the Nazi hell. I remember that a Nazi gave us each a potato at this straw covered place. In the morning, when the sun was up, the SS soldiers started to yell "Line up!" We prisoners still alive, did not know what was going on. Are we going to march again at daylight? We started to look for Block 4. Then the SS soldier shouted again, "Sajsze Block 4!" It did not matter anymore where we line up. Some prisoners tried to hide in the straw. I was thinking about it, too. Maybe, I could escape. But the SS began to poke the straw here and there with his bayonet. Well, I thought, he would poke me and kill me at the same time. What could I do? I went outside, lined up with the others who were already waiting for us in order to leave. Among those who poked the straw, I recognized the Hungarian speaking SS soldier. He was poking diligently in the barn, as I joined to the marching column. We began to march. It was very bright morning already. It seemed that something was very urgent for the Germans. I covered myself again with my blanket that I took with me from Buchenwald. Another prisoner from Barrack 22 wanted to take it away from me. I did not let him, he could not take my blanket. Then suddenly, the SS grabbed me again and pulled me out of the line, to pull the cart loaded with SS luggage. Well, I went to the cart. There was nothing else to do. Two of us began to pull the cart.

            At that time, I was sure I was finished. It was not night time; I could not run away into the crowd. The SS would see me and shoot me. I couldn’t pull the cart either, because I did not have any strength. What was I going to do? I could pull the cart for half an hour maybe, then I'd fall and I'd be shot in the head. But as far as I has a clear mind, I would not sit down or lie down, because it meant instant death. I was thinking about my poor father. He was a religious man. And he said that suicide was a sin. I thought my life could last only another half an hour. In front of us there was a little hill with trees. I had to climb up on the hill with the other lad while pulling up the cart. I could not move my legs. Pulling up a cart loaded with luggage was out of the question. An awful feeling overpowered me at the bottom of the hill. I was scared of dying.

            Suddenly we felt that our cart loaded with luggage became very light. It became light because one or two SS soldiers started to push it upwards on the hill. They knew that we prisoners were not able to pull that cart up the hill. And it was urgent for them to be up on the hill as soon as possible. The little cart seemed to move by itself. We kept our hands on the cart rod. And the cart moved well, since the SS soldiers pushed it with all force. They had strength. We arrived to the top of the hill. The SS soldiers shouted, "Everybody into the woods! Push the cart under the trees!" It looked like they planned to kill us all in the woods. They lifted up their weapons. But in the same moment we heard faint sounds from gun shots in the same forest on the hill. The SS soldiers knew that those were the American military forces. I saw that the Hungarian speaking SS soldiers' hands were trembling. The SS did not have enough time to pick up their luggage. They left all of their luggage and ran away. The probably did not kill us because they did not have enough time. The American soldiers might have heard the gun shots, and they might have captured these SS soldiers easily. So the SS rather ran away and left us prisoners there. The prisoners took slices of bread or a pair of shoes out of the luggage abandoned by the SS. Some prisoners took a blanket. Most of the prisoners said in Yiddish, "Mö zemer fráj". "We are free." I was in a very weakened state. I felt awfully sick. When I saw the SS stuff in the hands of the prisoners, I started to cry, and said, "When the SS will come back, they will kill us because you took their luggage." Stronger prisoners suggested that we go down to the nearest village, "We are free." And they started to go. Then we saw the American soldiers. One soldier asked me in Yiddish, "Where did the SS go? Where are they?" I could not tell. They ran away so fast. Another American soldier gave me a sugar cube. I kissed his hand.

            The ex-prisoners began to scatter towards the village. We all went in different directions. I walked together with a Jewish lad from Transcarpathia to find a village, but we were so weak that we had to sit down under the trees. Then an SS soldier came by. He saw us; but we were lucky, he did not kill us. He did not have a gun. He told us in German to go to the village, we were free. He probably tried to follow the other SS soldiers. The Transcarpathian lad had a small turnip. I told him, "Give me half of it. In the village we'll have something to eat." He gave me a half, I put it into my mouth and I started to chew. And slowly we went out of the forest, down the hill. When we reached the bottom of the hill, we saw American trucks coming on the road. I waved to them. An American soldier threw a can of beans to me from his truck. There were small fires on the ground. I thought I would heat up the beans before I ate them. Somehow I managed to open the can, and I put some beans into my mouth. But they felt as if I swallowed stones. My stomach could not stand food anymore. We continued walking. We found the village, ex-prisoners walked on the streets in ragged clothes. We were sent to the school building. The floor was covered with straw. There was a German with a thermometer and he took everyone's temperature. Sick people were everywhere. In the restroom an ex-prisoner, one of us, was lying on the floor. He was dead. He looked somewhat healthy in the death transport. We were in the front line, things were not organized yet. I put down two bricks in the yard to build a fire. I found some wheat on the terrace, I cooked it. I got very sick from this wheat. I almost died. Then the Americans took all sick people to clean rooms, where uniformed American physicians worked. They asked how many times we had diarrhea, they gave us medicine. They had a military nurse, too. This was not far from the place where we were liberated. They called the location CAM; it was somewhere close to Czechoslovakia. From there, they took us to Bamberg, a big German town. I stayed there together with Belgian and French people, who worked in Nazi Germany. From here, they took me to the Bamberg City Hospital. There we got a clean bed with clean sheets and a clean blanket. An older nurse came to my bed and asked my name. I told her that I came from the Buchenwald concentration camp. She asked about my religion. I was afraid, because I saw a newspaper from the Nazi times with a Jewish cartoon on the window. I do not know why, maybe because of this cartoon, maybe because it became a habit when I was asked about my religion, but I replied to this older nurse that I did not have any religion. I saw her smiling. She probably knew that I was a Jewish man. When she left, I slept. When I woke up, a young man stood next to my bed. I noticed that he also came from the camps. He asked me "Bisz tu a Jude?" "Are you a Jew?" , because he was a Jew himself. I told him that I was a Jew, but somehow I was still scared here. He said not to be afraid, they would not dare to do anything with me. The next day a young German doctor came in. He behaved well; he took an X-ray picture of my chest. He called me Herr Schwartz. And there was a male nurse; he asked me, what I needed. I told him that I had bad constipation, and if he could help me with an enima. And he did. A uniformed American soldier came in. He was looking for someone. He spoke Yiddish very well. Transports leaving to Belgium and France were soon organized.

            Before I checked into the hospital, I stood in line for clothes. We were told that they gave clothes to those people who were in concentration camps. I was so weak that I approached that place sitting and crawling. I received a pair of shoes and a khaki colored suit which was probably a military jacket. Before getting the clothes, I gave my name to a man and told him that I was from the Buchenwald concentration camp, and that I was deported from Belgium to Buchenwald. He asked why I was deported there. I told him I was deported to Buchenwald with a Jewish transport, because I was Jewish. Then he told me angrily, "If you were in the camp only because you were a Jew, then you can’t get clothes." Then I began to cry. The war is over, but they still hated us and discriminated against us, Jews. Then a woman, who was working at the cloth table told him on a soft voice in German, but I still could hear it, "American soldiers stay in Bamberg Garrison, which has a Jewish commander. The Jewish people have a big voice now. So do not say anything like this. Give some clothes to this man." And she ordered me some clothes. That’s how I received the jacket and the shoes. In the hospital, a doctor and a male nurse asked me, "How are you?" I asked the doctor to secure me a paper stating that I am Hungarian and I lived in Belgium before I was deported. I wanted to go back to Belgium. My family lived in Belgium. The doctor got me this paper. Then I was discharged from the hospital, I began to look for Belgians. I found a Belgian Committee which organized a transport. This Belgian Committee asked several questions of me, like where was the Garde Nord, the big railway station, and several other questions. They wanted to be sure that I indeed lived in Belgium. I answered them correctly, because I knew. I lived in Belgium. Then I went to another place, there was a Hungarian doctor still in his Hungarian uniform, and a male nurse in Hungarian uniform. Several people stayed there who wanted to go home. There were Belgian, French and Polish people. They gave me vitamin tablets. An American officer came in once and asked who wanted to go to Belgium or France. I put up my hand. Someone said, “He is not Belgian. He is a Hungarian”. The officer just turned around. He did not say a word. Most of the people, who stayed there, worked in Germany during the war. They managed to organize a Belgian transport. We traveled in freight trains. We saw Belgian women at the Belgian border. They greeted and treated us very nicely. Especially since I put my Buchenwald camp number (my number was 20631) on my military jacket. I spoke very little French. Whatever I knew, I forgot it in the concentration camp. These women thought I was Flemish, since several Flemish speaking Belgian lived in Antwerp who did not speak much French.

            Finally we arrived to Brussels. I was deeply moved. First, I went to the street, where we lived when the Nazis dragged us away at night. I went down into the grocery shop, where my wife and I used to shop. This grocery shop was very close to our apartment. When I opened the door, the shop owner looked at me, but he pretended he did not know me. He turned his head away. I saw immediately that his man did not want to recognize me. He really proved to be an anti-semitic person. I hurriedly left the shop. It was right there where we used to live. Strangers lived in our apartment by then. A female neighbor, who had a coal and wood shop, recognized me and told me to go to Rue Broyere. "Shon father" and "Shon mather", that is my father-in-law and mother-in-law, were living there. I thanked her and slowly went to Rue Broyere. This street was very close. I knocked on the door. They opened the door and we hugged and kissed each other immediately. They were crying, and I was crying. They said Racu (we called her Racu, otherwise her name was Terézia), my wife was alive and she was in Sweden; she was expected to come home soon. People came to visit me. They were frightened as they looked at me. My weight was around 40 kilograms. Dr. Titelbaum, our doctor visited me. He told me that he would give me vitamin injections. I remember he gave injections to me often. Then I did not put on my jacket with the camp number any more. I got a decent jacket. I remember, my brother-in-law, Dezső gave me this jacket. They survived the war in Belgium. He is not living today, neither his wife, Rózsi. They died in Israel. Then after a few days, my wife arrived from Sweden. What a great joy it was! We cried a lot. She was in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. She gave birth to a boy under abnormal circumstances. The child unfortunately lived only for 2 weeks. My poor mother was in Ravensbruck, in the female concentration camp. The Nazis killed her in Ravensbruck or somewhere else. My father had a niece in Belgium, her name was Ilonka Klein. She survived the war together with her children in Brussels, Belgium. Her husband was Ármin Klein, he was dragged away by the Nazis at night. He never came back. Ilonka Klein visited me later, and gladly announced that she received a letter from my younger brother, Józsi from Hungary. He was in Hungary. He was liberated in Dachau, and he was trying to get back to Belgium. Later he arrived to Belgium. We were so happy when we finally saw each other. He lived with us some time in Belgium. My other younger brother, Miklós never came back, he was killed in the war. We still have a postcard from him. He sent it from a Hungarian labor camp to Belgium, to my poor parents' address before the Nazi Gestapos dragged us away. I have a military picture of him, where he poses as a Hungarian soldier. Erzsike Weiss, my poor niece sent this picture to me from Israel. Erzsike alone survived the Ravensbruck concentration camp from her family. She died in Israel from breast cancer. It was a beautiful family. Uncle Izidor, Aunt Fánika and seven children, and a lot of grandchildren. They were educated, the two older boys graduated from high school. The father, mother and seven children all were killed. The Nazi madness killed them. The only one who came home was Erzsike. She died from breast cancer. My poor father-in-law was always crying, he was waiting for someone else to come home from his family. He was waiting for his only son so much. He was sitting at the window all the time and he was looking outside. Maybe somebody he would come back. But nobody returned home. He said to my wife, "My daughter, did you lock the door already...? Maybe somebody will come?" And he was crying. All this crying made him very weak. He got ill, and a year later after the end of the war he died in Brussels. I felt so sorry for him. My heart still aches as I am thinking of him. He was a very good man. My poor mother-in-law, poor Mom, her life was so hard. Her life would have been so different if we would not have had this terrible war. She could have lived together with her children. Once, an electrician was working at our place in Brussels, and he came in. This electrician somehow survived Auschwitz. I remember, he told us that he was deported with my poor brother-in-law, Kálmán from Malin to Auschwitz. He told us that my poor brother-in-law died in Auschwitz due to suffering and starvation. Poor Mom overheard this and her face got distorted from the pain. The electrician asked whether she was poor Kálmán’s mother. We said, yes. Then he told us, he had no idea. He would not tell us anything about poor Kálmán’s death in front of his mother if he knew. Poor Mom suffered a lot in her life. She died in 1972.

            I feel so sad. I am an old man. I am very depressed. My heart and my soul weep. My heart cries for my family. My heart cries for my wife’s family. My heart cries for my people and all other nations who perished in concentration camps and death transports.

            I arrived to the end of this very sad story. I tried to write down everything as it happened.

Béla Schwartz