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The persons in question have given us the following information: Our father was a grain
dealer. He had a house and we made a decent living from our income until around 1943, when the front was approaching our town. One year before the
German
occupation,
Hungarian
soldiers marching to the frontline came to the so-called Jewish street. They
blocked a section of it and then entered each house. They were
looting
and
beating up
women and sometimes even
children. Afterwards they chased the people out of the houses and forced them to
do
punitive exercises on the street. Later it turned even worse, since they started
firing and as far as I remember, they even mounted a cannon in the street. A few people
died or were wounded in that incident. After the
German
occupation those kinds of acts became common occurrences and were
institutionalised. The
Germans were
looting and searching for money and jewellery all the time. We were
very scared. The
mayor was
Engelbreckl and we had no cause for complaint against him. However, the
gendarmes saw to it that all the
anti-Jewish
decrees were put into effect ruthlessly. One day it was announced that all the Jews
in town should
move into streets designated for them by 6 o’clock the following
day. We were allowed to take as many things as we could carry. However, two days later we
had to move from the designated streets, since the
ghetto
had been restricted to an even smaller area. Therefore we had to move into another street,
but that time we were given only half an hour to move and we were supervised by the
Gestapo. Of course,
they never forgot to beat us. All the Jews from
Munkács remember the
so-called
Black Sabbath
. The
men were going to the
synagogue that morning, but the
Germans
arrested them on the way and said they would take them to work. Indeed, they took
away ca. 200
men and made them
remove the gates from the street-front and later rounded them up in the yard of the
synagogue and
beat them up severely.
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One of our uncles,
Mendel Bleier, was among them. The
Germans
beat him
up so badly that he was lying
ill for
a couple of days. After that, they forced the
men to bring out all
the furnishings from the
synagogue. They even
threw
out the
Torah scrolls and had the Jews wash the floor with their talliths.
As far as I remember, some of the
men who had been
beaten to a bloody pulp
died of their injuries. We had nothing to complain about with regard
to the activity of the
Jewish Council, including
Segelstein and others. We had a
soup
kitchen, which provided the other
ghetto
in the brickyard with
food as well. The
ghetto was surrounded by a fence and it was
not allowed to
move from one
ghetto to the other;
only a half hour was given a day to do that. The
ghetto was guarded by
military
gendarmes, who
collected jewellery, money and all the valuables they could find.
The internal order was maintained by the
Jewish police. We were staying in the
ghetto
for four weeks. One morning at 7 the
gendarmes broke the
gates in with rifle butts, entered the flats and chased all of us out. They were virtually
dragging people out of bed. Meanwhile they were
beating
everybody mercilessly, including the
children. That was our most terrifying experience during our
deportation. The
gendarmes went from
house to house joined by the
Germans, who were also beating us. They jointly rounded up everybody on the
marketplace, lined us up in rows of five and we were set off for the brickyard. The
cruelties continued: those who could not keep pace were beaten to a pulp. Among
many others, one of our relatives also
died
during that trip, because he had a
stroke due to
over-excitement. We stayed five more days in the brickyard
ghetto.
The
Germans made the
men do
punitive
exercises and
beat them up once again. Then they locked up religious
men and
forced
them to sign a statement that read that they had taken the
blood of a Christian
girl for the
Passover matzo. They beat the poor victims until they signed the
statement. They took away the wealthy people and
beat
them to a pulp as well. We had already packed up our luggage and we were ready to go when
they searched us once again. If they found money or any valuable item on someone, they
beat
that person to
death. We remember an ethnic
German named
Sefcsik, who was especially cruel. Before our departure they rounded up the
girls and had them disassemble the empty barracks of the
ghetto. Those who
refused to go were beaten up. We heard that we would be taken to work in
Diósgyőr. Soon they
entrained us. Seventy people were put into our
cattle
car, which was an ambulance car with 15 people confined to a bed. Therefore it was
very crowded. The passengers included a one-day-old
baby, a
little
boy in plaster to the waist and an
insane
woman as well as many patients from the
hospital and people from the home for the aged. It is easy to imagine how terrible
journey we had. Surprisingly enough, nobody
died in our car. At
departure we were given buckets for water as well as for the purpose of a WC. The
Jewish
Council had
bread put into the cars as well. There was another search for
valuables in
Kassa. The
Germans took over the
train
there and then we went further at the speed of a fast
train.
We arrived in
Auschwitz on May 25 in the early
morning.
Polish prisoners in striped
clothes
assisted in detraining us. We had to leave behind our luggage. They lined up the
men and
the
women separately. Then they divided the
women into two groups:
some of us were
sent to the right and the others to the left. After that, we went to
the bath where our heads were shaven and we got rags in return for our
clothes. Our better
shoes
were taken away as well.
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We were housed in
camp C.
One thousand of us
stayed in one block and 12 of us on one bunk. The wake-up call was
at 3 in the morning and then we had to line up for
roll
call, which sometimes lasted as long as three or four hours. We were not allowed to
leave the
roll call area until the numbers did not match. Afterwards we went to the block
totally exhausted and we got some plain
coffee.
We got half a litre of
soup at noon in large pots. Spoons and plates were unknown there and
therefore 12 of us had to
drink from the same pot one after the other. We got
bread
only in the afternoon. Then we had to line up for
roll
call at least for two hours and the
Zulage
was distributed only after that.
Selections began about two or three weeks later. I, the aforementioned
Berta Bleier, was sent to
work in the
kitchen in August and I worked there until November. The
work
was very hard, but the
food supply was better there and we did not have to line up for
roll
call. Later
camp C was disbanded and so was the
kitchen. Then I was assigned to a
labourers
transport in
camp D. One thousand of us went out regularly to a
workplace that was eight kilometres away to perform earthwork. It was very hard;
we
worked from 7 am to 3 pm. We got
food
only in the
camp in the evening. We suffered a lot from the
weather. We often had to march and to
work in
mud and
rain in our bad
shoes. We passed the
crematorium every day. In December we saw it being
demolished. Meanwhile I got injured at
work: a tram hit my
leg and I was
lying ill for two weeks. My leg still hurts. They set me off for
Bergen-Belsen with a
transport on January 1. I, the aforementioned
Jolán Bleier, was
selected on September 15 and taken to
Weisswasser with a
labourer’s
transport of 300. We were travelling for two days; 55 of us were in a freight car.
We got one third of a loaf of
bread
and some Zulage for provisions as well as clean
clothes
and better
shoes. In
Weisswasser we
stayed
in rooms: 12 persons in each. We
worked
in an armament
factory; we went out
to
work in groups. We
worked very hard for
10 hours a day. The
food supply was scarce and therefore we ate even
potato
peels and other
vegetables from the garbage. I
worked
there until February 2, when we were set off on foot. After
walking for two days, we were
entrained. Fifty of us were put into one car and taken to
Horneburg on a five-day
journey. We were given half a
loaf of
bread and some
Zulage for provisions. Just like in
Weisswasser, we were
working
in an armament
factory for five
weeks. However, we had a much stricter commander, an
Unterscharführer, who
beat us
severely for the slightest offence. Even very young
girls were sometimes
sentenced for
25 strokes. If we queued up for another helping of
food at
lunch and he noticed that, he beat and kicked us. We tried to avoid him in order to avoid
being badly wounded. I was assigned to a
transport once again on April 13. After two days of
travel we arrived in
Bergen-Belsen. I met my
sister,
Berta Bleier there two days before
liberation. She was
working hard in the
kitchen and shortly after we met,
she fell
ill with
typhus. The
English
liberated us on April 15, but the
kitchen continued to operate
afterwards. From there we went to
Bergen
and then to
Zelle.
We stayed there for four weeks and after that we came to
Budapest via
Pilsen and
Prague. Our plans for the
future: as soon as our
family is reunited,
which we hope for, we would like
to go
to
Palestine.