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The person in question has given us the following information: 52 Jewish families were deported from Tarpa. We always lived in peace with locals; we had no problems with each other. When we got into the ghetto they felt really sorry for us. Gendarmes allowed us two hours for packing but we were so much shocked that in that great anxiety we hardly took anything with us. We spent four weeks in Beregszász. We got food there. We also had to work, but that was not too bad. Four weeks later, we were entrained, 85 of us were crammed in a freight car, we got no water, only in Kassa, when Germans took charge of us. When we arrived in Auschwitz, they immediately separated me from my wife and daughter already at the train. They took me in the camp, took off my dress, cut off my hair, made me have a bath and gave me striped clothes like the ones prisoners have. It is needless to say that I lost all my belongings as a result. After three days stay in Auschwitz they entrained me and took me into Wolfsberg. Here we constructed roads, which was a very hard work. There were 3,200 of us in this camp. Food was ok but of course not enough. We slept in tents lying on the floor, 20 of us in a tent. In August, they picked 40 people including me and transported us 6 kilometres away into Wüstegiersdorf. However, the camp remained in Wolfsberg; it was only our workplace here. We had a good life here as we were employed as professionals. I produced wooden shoes. We did not lack anything. We also had enough food as we produced shoes also particularly for the SS. We stayed here till the 16th of February, when we were entrained – around 500 people – and set off. For the journey we received a kilo of can and a loaf of bread to share between four of us. We arrived in Hildesheim, where we stayed for four weeks. The journey was very difficult and long. We had to escape from here because the whole town got bombed in 18 minutes. Also our workplace was burnt down completely but thank God we survived. From here we moved on to Bergen-Belsen on foot. We marched hungry and thirsty and chew grass because of hunger. When we arrived to Bergenj for three days we did nothing else than carried dead bodies 3 kilometres away without a pause. When we arrived there were 13,600 cadavers, complete mounds of corpses. This was something horrible, even for me as a person of mature age and experience it is horrible to remember it, and it was even more horrible to go through it. – Because of dead people – and because of agonising living people - we got infected, too, and most of us fell sick. Food was 0.2 litre of turnip soup. We stayed 6 days in Belsen. At the end Germans poisoned our bread that took the life of another great number of people on the last day. I got a severe spotted fever. Out of 500 comrades 100 of us survived. My future plans? I would like to work and I also still hope to find my family.

Labour Service