Protocol Nr. 3043

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Name: K. D.
Gender: male
Place of birth: Gyetva
Date of birth: 1880
Place of residence: Budapest
Occupation: merchant
Camps: Dachau


The person in question has given us the following information: On the 14th of November 1944, I was heading towards my flat when people were being captured already in the courtyard of the building. It happened already twice that they collected people for work but they always let people older than 60 return home. When I arrived there was great confusion but some Christian people warned me already on the way home that something was going to happen. When we arrived I saw that Jews were taken away. I thought they were being taken into the ghetto. I was not aware of what was happening. My wife was in bed having had a severe nervous breakdown, and I told her that they were going to take me away, too, and she insisted she would come with me at any price. It happened only a month before that my daughter had been taken away for labour service and it had a great effect on my wife. I knew how upset she was so I did not even try to convince her to stay home. Even if she had stayed home I do not know what would have happened to her since all Jews had to gather in a designated area. I was even happy that she came with me. When we were in the brick factory I tried to report that my wife was sick but no one listened to me. We started our march through Piliscsaba, where I learned in the market square, where we slept in the open, that 48 people from the previous transport of 3,000 people had died, out of whom 30 committed suicide and the rest were frozen in the cold. In our group only 16-18 people passed away. On our way to Komárom we saw women and men lying in the ditch, most of them had already departed this life, and this had a horrible effect on us, so we arrived in an awful mood. There were no horse-drawn wagons here anymore but even if there had been we would not have been allowed to get on them. So we continued on foot. My wife was extremely apathetic and tired so we fell behind the group. They warned us beforehand that wild things were going on in Komárom. Suddenly, we found ourselves atthe market of Komárom, where I wanted to buy apples but was not allowed. A young Arrow Cross kid came to us and said: "I see! You were going to escape. We’ll find a better place for you in Csillagvár!" and they took us somewhere where they registered our data and then they took us to the headquarters of the Arrow Cross. There were already 20-30 of us here, and now we had to enter a room one by one. We still had the valuables we could carry with us. They seized here everything and left us only some invaluable stuff that was later taken away in Dachau. This was early in the morning, and we were waiting there till 5 pm, when they gathered us and led us to the Csillag fortress. They did not punish us here but took away all our documents. They promised to return the documents to us before we departed but it did not happen. This was where they separated me from my wife, who I could still see for a minute on the third day. Later, on the 5th of November, women were taken away allegedly in the direction of Berlin. I remained in Komárom till the 16th of December. Treatment was severe but was not unbearable. They sorted out people day after day but we hoped that some political change might save us soon from deportation to Germany. But this did not happen. On the 16th of December we were put into freight cars – there were around 1,500 of us – and each of us received a loaf of bread, some kind of sausage and cheese and later on the way also some jam. We were in horrible condition because we could not move, since there were around 60 of us crammed into a freight car. This unpleasant travel made us terribly exhausted but we still cherished the hopes that people older than 60 might be singled out at Hegyeshalom and sent back. Unfortunately, this was not the case. On the 21st of December we got off the train at Dachau. We stood there for a long, long while before they made us undress in the baths and that was how they led us into a room where they seized everything we had, and then we could go under the showers. That was where they seized also my glasses that I lacked so much later on, because we became later so full of lice, that lice were swarming on our bodies and I could have killed them only with my glasses on. But they did not return my glasses to me no matter how much I begged for them. Then we had to wait in the baths for a long while. Bathing was later the most horrible thing that could happen to us (we had a bath once a month) because they would seize all that we managed to collect during a month, all our valuable treasures. Later, they took us to the baths already at dawn and we had to stand there till late evening while the windows were open and it was terribly cold. When we (finally) entered the baths there were already 5-6 dead people laying there whose immune system did not function. Once, it happened that they gathered our clothes saying that they would return them soon but we did not get them back so we had to walk completely naked from the baths to the block; they gave us only shoes. That was how we walked through the camp in the wind, the rain and the cold. I have gastric disorders and we got food that I should not have eaten. But we starved so much that no one cared about anything but food. Later, I got double rations because I became the scribe of the block. I had to suffer an immense quantity of mental and physical pain. They did not treat us badly except for Polish and Russian (I mean Ukrainian) people, who were nasty. I got a smack only once. As I have said I was a scribe so I had three covers. For that reason a brutal scoundrel gave me a huge smack but I suffered no other atrocities. Quarantine was long, therefore, we had roll calls at the most 15 times altogether, which were horrible enough. Roll calls lasted for us a maximum of an hour, so we were in a better situation. First, I got into block no. 25, where a hotel man from Bruno called Moravek was the leader and he treated us in a very nasty way. Later, I got into another block where the heads were Polish priests and they treated us in a very nice way. On the 24th of April, they took out all the Jews – but only the Jews – and we got extremely scared because we thought they were going to do something. Indeed, they were. They took us to Tirol although they told us that they were going to carry us to Switzerland but everybody knew that this was not the case, and that they were after something else. When they took us to the railway station we went by passenger cars and that was when we received the first Dutch charity packs, which contained first-class food, margarine, gingerbread, cheese, so these packs saved the lives of many. When we were in the block 15- 30 people died every day while no one died later on the road. I have to add here that I never fell sick with anything. Sick people with typhus were lying right next to me but I fortunately did not get infected, I only had a temperature of 38 degrees C once but that was because of myositis. We spent 4-5 days in the passenger cars, and on the fifth day we left for Tirol. First we got off in Seefeld, which is a nice little town in Tirol and where the radio announced that the war was over. We decided not to reveal our happiness in any way because we suspected that an agent provocateur was spreading the news. However, secretly we hoped the news were true. Now, they took us to a river where we spent 3 days and nights. They were already shooting everywhere all the time and we believed they were going to chase us into the river. But Americans were already very close and three days later we started heading backwards and saw that the Germans were running away in a panic. One day, we arrived on the side of a mountain and a few of us slept here in a barn while they were cannoning all night long. The following day Americans were there early in the morning and gave us all the good things. Particularly, a black soldier was nice to us who distributed with a smile the ca. 10 kilos of cheese, the tea and other food. They gave me also medicine because I had diarrhoea. Still the same day we walked in Garmicsh- Partenkircher, which was around 12 kilometres away. We spent around 3 months here. I have to note that it left a bad taste in my mouth (even after the mental and physical pains of camp life) that Americans could not care less about organising the return of deported people to their home country. I thought alout about my relatives, of my wife, till finally I managed to join a Czech transport and arrive in Budapest on the 23rd of September.
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