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The person in question has given us the following information: On the 23rd of October 1944, placards announced that all women between the age of 16 and 40 were to be drafted. I dug trenches in the neighbourhood of Pest, in Maglód, Albertfalva, and Csepel. The 11th of November, they took me to the brick factory of Óbuda, and the day after I started from here towards Hegyeshalom on the highway to Vienna among a mess of people. We did 20-25 kilometres a day. At night they put us up in barns or stables, but it happened also that we slept in the open. This march was not tragic for me, I had no problems walking but it was horrible that old and sick people had to do the same. They had difficulties walking, and several of them went crazy or died. In Dorog we had a hailstorm and arrived wet. We hoped to be lodged in some dry place but it did not happen: we had to spend the night in the open. We slept on the football ground, or more precisely we lay down on the ground. People were crying, yelling and tearing their hair, and many went mad because of the idea of spending this horrible night in the open. These unfortunate people undressed completely, and were running up and down naked and yelling. By the morning, a great number of people died because their hearts had stopped working. Sometimes we could also sit on a horse-drawn wagon. Locals from Western Hungary abused our situation a great deal. In the beginning, they did not ask much for letting us sit on their wagons but later they started to ask more and more. The longer we marched the weaker we were, and people could not carry on and locals knew it, and knew that they would be ready to get rid of their last valuables in order to sit on a wagon. Several of us gave also our last garments to them. Soldiers escorted us, and I can say they were really nice to us, at least in my group. They also helped us but could not do much in our interest. At Hegyeshalom the Wehrmacht took charge of us. They entrained us in Zünndorf; there were 60 of us in a freight car. Then we got a proper meal of dense soup, bread, cheese and butter. We believed we came to a superb place. After a day of travel we got off in K?szeg, and the 3,000 of us were lodged in the local beer brewery. Later, we were lodged in a On the 23rd of October 1944, placards announced that all women between the age of 16 and 40 were to be drafted. I dug trenches in the neighbourhood of Pest, in Maglód, Albertfalva, and Csepel. The 11th of November, they took me to the brick factory of Óbuda, and the day after I started from here towards Hegyeshalom on the highway to Vienna among a mess of people. We did 20-25 kilometres a day. At night they put us up in barns or stables, but it happened also that we slept in the open. This march was not tragic for me, I had no problems walking but it was horrible that old and sick people had to do the same. They had difficulties walking, and several of them went crazy or died. In Dorog we had a hailstorm and arrived wet. We hoped to be lodged in some dry place but it did not happen: we had to spend the night in the open. We slept on the football ground, or more precisely we lay down on the ground. People were crying, yelling and tearing their hair, and many went mad because of the idea of spending this horrible night in the open. These unfortunate people undressed completely, and were running up and down naked and yelling. By the morning, a great number of people died because their hearts had stopped working. Sometimes we could also sit on a horse-drawn wagon. Locals from Western Hungary abused our situation a great deal. In the beginning, they did not ask much for letting us sit on their wagons but later they started to ask more and more. The longer we marched the weaker we were, and people could not carry on and locals knew it, and knew that they would be ready to get rid of their last valuables in order to sit on a wagon. Several of us gave also our last garments to them. Soldiers escorted us, and I can say they were really nice to us, at least in my group. They also helped us but could not do much in our interest. At Hegyeshalom the Wehrmacht took charge of us. They entrained us in Zünndorf; there were 60 of us in a freight car. Then we got a proper meal of dense soup, bread, cheese and butter. We believed we came to a superb place. After a day of travel we got off in K?szeg, and the 3,000 of us were lodged in the local beer brewery. Later, we were lodged in a barn. We lived under awful circumstances in K?szeg. We dug trenches only in the first two days and later we did not do anything. We lay in the barn in minus 15-20 degrees C. We would have been happy to work because that would have meant that we moved and were not so terribly cold. One hundred and sixty women got a tub of water for washing and drinking. But it was quite the same how much water they gave us because we could not use it anyhow for it got frozen in an hour. I can say we did not even talk to each other for days. We lay on the straw, covered our bodies as much as possible, nestled up to each other to keep ourselves warm and waited for the meal that was completely inedible. Later, in K?szeg I got into one of the so-called Finnish barracks. These were little circular houses made of paper with a diameter of five metres. They were designed for 12 people but there were 22 of us in these little barracks. In this period I was a potato peeler in the camp kitchen. It sounds good because it is an easy job but it gave us a lot of pain because potatoes were icy and our hands froze to them when peeling. We worked in a dark cellar standing in potato peels up to the knees. An oil candle lit this dark cellar while ice was sprinkling off our knives as we were peeling. There was cold, a terribly cold draught everywhere, and wet cellar walls radiated moisture from everywhere. This situation became easier as spring was approaching inasmuch as potatoes were not icy any more. In K?szeg it was not as terrible for women as for men. This was indeed a death camp. Men got the same rations as we did while they had to perform heavy physical jobs. If a man fell sick and did not become fit for work in a week he was moved into a separate barrack and was starved till he died. They got only some very light soup once a day, but they never got bread, not even once. Once, a man who was sentenced to death by starvation crawled to our barrack on all fours already half mad. He started telling us in a begging voice that he felt he was going to die by the evening. He wanted to receive his daily soup portion in order to eat one last time in his life. On the 23rd of March 1945, a part of the inhabitants of the camp was taken away, that is, they had to start walking towards Rohonc. The people who remained were killed with automatic weapons or cyanide. We remained in Rohonc only for 5 days before we departed towards Mauthausen. This journey lasted for 17 days, and we got food only four times, once soup, and the other two times 200 grams of bread. People collapsed on the way, and consequently were shot. We ate sorrel, rape, and snails but sometimes not even this was allowed to us. If we crossed a town an armed guard was standing in front of each building so that we could not ask or receive bread from locals. My most horrible memory comes from this journey. We were crossing the Alps of Styria and when we arrived to the top of the mountain at Eisenerz our guards were changed. The new guards started to chase us and were crying: “rauch, rauch, los!” We had to run down the slopes while they were shooting behind us. We believed they were shooting in the air but when we got to a curve we saw that people were lying with bullets in the backs of their necks. We went on running without a break, or taking even a breath of air, over corpses and rucksacks that had been thrown away, while the guards kept shooting into the running mob. When finally we arrived at the end of the slope they did not let us carry on, we had to stand there for three hours in a terrible snowstorm. The worst thing was that they made sure we had the impression they were going to execute all of us. They were saying to each other: “It is not dark enough, yet” or “Have you got sufficient bullets?” That was how we stood there for three hours in a swirling blizzard waiting for death. After three hours of suffering they led us into some barracks. Before we arrived in Mauthausen there was a heap of rotten potatoes at the side of the road. We rushed to it and our guards started shooting but they did not target at the people who were running towards the potatoes but at the thronging mess of hunched up people. They shot several to death and many others got injured. We arrived in Mauthausen the 5th or the 6th of April. Men were received one by one at the gate. They counted them and gave a strong blow to the head on each. 1,200 people were put in a barrack. We lay on the floor without straw; one person had a 30-centimetre-wide place… so one should not say we were lying but rather we were huddling there. We could not avoid lice any more and typhus started to spread in a second. Rations were horrible; nevertheless we did nothing during the day but talked about the lunch and waited for it with indescribable excitement. Purposefully, they brought us lunch every day in a different moment, sometimes in the morning at 9 am, sometimes at 7 pm. So we could not calculate when lunch would be served, which made us awfully nervous. Of course, they were aware of it. Twelve days later, we left for Gunskirchen. For me, it was the best trip; we even got food. It was even worse to arrive here than to arrive in Mauthausen. 200-250 people died every day. Their bodies were thrown in front of the only toilet of the camp. It was here that I saw the most horrible thing. People cut parts of the flesh of corpses and fried them. What was even worse is that those who did it also sold the flesh. And people did not ask where it came from. They ate it. One could not get hold of water. Women were led sometimes to the river Traun to wash. We did not care even if there was a hailstorm; we happily went into the water to wash. Of course, this happened always in front of the SS. Men were not taken to the river at all. If they wanted water they had to sacrifice their bread portions for it. The 4th of May 1945, American troops liberated us.

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