Protocol Nr. 2177
Name: W. L.
Gender: male
Place of birth: Budapest
Date of birth: 1907
Place of residence: Budapest
Occupation: metal merchant
Camps: Siegendorf, Mauthausen, Günskirchen
Gender: male
Place of birth: Budapest
Date of birth: 1907
Place of residence: Budapest
Occupation: metal merchant
Camps: Siegendorf, Mauthausen, Günskirchen
Name: dr. F. L.
Gender: male
Place of birth: Budapest
Date of birth: 1907
Place of residence: Budapest
Occupation: clerk, economist
Camps: Siegendorf, Mauthausen, Günskirchen
Gender: male
Place of birth: Budapest
Date of birth: 1907
Place of residence: Budapest
Occupation: clerk, economist
Camps: Siegendorf, Mauthausen, Günskirchen
The person in question has given us the following information: We joined the forced labour service company 109/16 at Bustyaháza in April 1943. We were building an airport there, then fortifications at different places in Transylvania. We did quite well there. On 10th September 1944 the Russians took our company in captivity, but five days later the Germans took that region back together with our company. Then they led us to Sopron, we had to march all through the whole country. Some people escaped on the way. There was a warrant officer with us, István Kőházi, who helped the Jews escape, he even gave them money out of his own pocket. The Germans took over the company and took us to Siegendorf. They accommodated us in the storehouse of a factory. We spent the whole winter indoors and we were allowed to heat. We made anti-tank ditches. The SA leaders treated us with humanity. They did not beat us. They even opened a hospital for those suffering from infectious diseases. The provisions were tolerable, it often happened that we even got 150-200 grams of meat. The inhabitants did everything to mitigate our unfortunate lot. At the end of March they set us off on foot. We got almost nothing to eat on the way. Than they entrained us and we travelled for six days without any food. When the train stopped, we ran down to the embankment and picked grass and snails to eat when the SS man allowed us to. We had been totally famished and exhausted by the time we arrived in Mauthausen. There we got less to eat than we had in Siegendorf and meanwhile everybody became very depressed. A lot of people died of complete exhaustion. 100-150 people died every day. More and more people arrived and the conditions became worse day by day. We were marching for three days to Günskirchen. We received almost nothing to eat on the way. Many of us, who could not tolerate hunger and marching, collapsed. A lot of us were shot dead. We stepped on cadavers and we were not allowed to look back to see who had died again from among our comrades. Everybody threw his belongings away in order to bear the march and not to fall behind. A large number of people were crammed together in Günskirchen. We could find place in the barrack only if we sat down on our knapsacks on the muddy ground right next to each other. We kept sitting like that day and night because we could not go out, it was raining continuously and the place was full of mud. We starved terribly, and people were killed by typhus fever. 250-300 people died every day. Their bodies were lying all over the courtyard. There was a horrible smell and dirt and plenty of lice. If the English had not come within another two weeks, the whole camp, that is, 17,000 people would have died.
