Search
Main page
On DEGOB
The Survivor Witnesses
Glossary
Encylopedia of Camps
Supporters

The person in question has given us the following information: I have been serving as a labour serviceman almost constantly since 1941, therefore it would take long to recount all the places where I stayed and all kinds of work I did. However, I find it very important to let other people know how the Hungarian officers and soldiers treated the Jewish labour servicemen, who did not do any harm to them, but on the contrary, were doing useful work. I stayed in various places in Transylvania in 1941. Lieutenant Aladár Jeges, a draughtsman, treated us terribly. He was beating us without any reason. Vitéz Lieutenant Károly Kőszegi, a friend of the notorious Muray, treated us the worst. He drove us out to work even in the heaviest storm and rainfall. I was taken to Szentkirályszabadja in 1942 where we were building an airfield for six months. Lieutenant Sachs, the commander of the company no. 101/16 was torturing and humiliating us with antisemitic slurs all the time. He was one of the most notorious Arrow Cross villains. He cancelled our leave permits and other favours. The guards followed him and therefore they treated us badly as well. I was called up for the last time on May 31, 1944 in Jászberény. The first order of Lieutenant Károly Wayand, who lives at number 3 Orczy Road in Budapest, was that he did not allow us to go to the well to drink or to wash ourselves. In his opinion Jews were professed in poisoning wells and he was sure we intended to poison this well too and to kill Christians. After a while we went to Kisilva. We were working on the railways controlled by a foreman called Kató, a wicked Arrow Cross sympathizer. He was beating the labour servicemen as severely as he could. We were being beaten and humiliated for months and years by men of lower classes who were often even younger than us. We lost all of our self-confidence as well as our faith in justice and human dignity. We felt we were prisoners, excluded from the human society. We went to Szabadka in September where we were repairing the railway station destroyed by air raids. We arrived in Budapest on October 15, 1944. We were working at the Ferencváros railway station. We were subordinate to Sergeant Dr Polka, an officer candidate with high school degree from the supply office and an official from Kispest in civilian life. He received us with stating that by the time the Allies would arrive we would not be alive because he would hand us over to the Germans, who with machine guns would kill all the Jews. He stole from our food rations too. We were handed over to the Germans on November 27. We were entrained and taken to Kőszeg. The labour servicemen were shot down one by one like rabbits. We had to go out to dig trenches even in the heaviest snowstorm. People died of starvation one after another. We hardly got any food. We were housed in a barn at a peasant house. I woke up every morning before 4 am in order to steal some of the pig swill and I ate it. I threw it up for a week but later I could eat it. Those who were unable to force themselves to eat swill, snails or oat were doomed. Seventy percent perished. After I began to eat in such a way on a regular basis, our “sympathetic” host reported us for eating the share of his poor pigs. He said he could not stand the innocent pigs not having enough food. When we were ordered to depart on March 28, those who were weak or whose feet were frostbitten were told to report. They said those people would be transported by car. Seventy-two people reported. The guards put them into a barrack, the windows of which were nailed in, and killed them with cyanide. I stood only two meters from the building and could do nothing to help the poor victims who were shouting desperately the names of their parents and wives. We went on foot to Rechnitz. There they told us to report if we wanted our luggage to be transported by a wagon. Two hundred and eighty-eight people reported. They were put on a wagon with their luggage and they were taken away. There was an alert at night. Fifty people (including me) were taken to dig a big hole and then we left. The following morning we were asked if we needed clothes or shoes. Then we were given the clothes of our poor brothers-in-arms who were taken away a day before. Hands and feet were sticking out of the hole, because they buried the dead bodies hastily and insufficiently. We went further via Graz. During the journey lasting more than three weeks we got soup about four times and 70 decagrams of bread altogether. Before Eisenerz we reached an incline of six kilometres near the village Trofayach. We were going up in single file one after another. One of our guards shot down two hundred people one by one just for fun. He killed the three men marching in front of me. He was aiming at my head when he ran out of cartridge. By the time he reloaded I was 20 metres away. Then he shot dead the three people coming after me. The following day we collected the dead bodies and threw them in a hole. We spent all our nights outdoors, sleeping in the snow. We arrived in Mauthausen where we spent ten days. People degenerated there so much that for instance two Poles turned out to mutilate corpses and to sell human flesh to us. They were shot dead. We lost 200 to 300 people a day along the way. When we arrived in Günskirchen, there were 17,000 people in the camp. When we were liberated, there were only 5000. After liberation by the Americans, I was taken in the hospital in Hörsching, where I was laid up ill with typhus. Instead of the normal 70, I weighed only 35 kilograms. I got blood transfusion three times. I could stand up only weeks later. I have found my wife and we want to start a new life. I was completely robbed: I do not have any clothes with the exception of one shirt. But it does not matter, as I am happy to be at home. Out of the 159 people who were in my group in Kőszeg only I survived.

Labour Service