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The person in question has given us the following information: I left home, from the ghetto in Huszt, with my parents, my sister and my three brothers. 85 of us travelled in a freight car, until Kassa the Hungarian gendarmes kept robbing us, and later, when Germans took over, they continued. That is how we arrived in Auschwitz after three days of horrible travelling. Here everybody was immediately separated from their families, mothers with their children went separately from men. Soon, I realised with my sister that only the two of us were left of the family, and we did not even have time to say goodbye to each other. For most of us this was the final separation, we never saw any of these people again. We were taken to some baths where our hair was cut, they bathed us and took away the clothes we wore, which were the last things we possessed. We were dressed in rags to complete the picture, and we looked so ridiculous that we did not know whether to laugh or cry when we looked at each other. First, we also got into Camp C, but from there we were taken to Camp B.2, where we worked all the time. Our job was to deliver food from one camp to the other. Later, 800 of us got into a transport. 65 of us travelled in a freight car, and we got some food as well. After three days of travelling we arrived in Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen was in a forest, 2 km from Hanover. This camp was called an Erholungslager. We hardly arrived when the captain came and selected us. This is how all of us moved on to Salzwedel, where we worked in an ammunition factory. In the beginning, conditions were tolerable, although the food was very bad. Work was hard, but treatment was not the worst. Our camp was clean. We were filling bullets in the factory. There were not only Jews here but also prisoners from all sorts of nations. We did not have much trouble until the liberation. A few weeks before it happened we did not have to work any more, they saw no point in it. Later, Germans escaped, only the captain and two German SS women stayed with us. When the Americans came in, they killed these two SS women, and we saved the captain, because he treated us very well all the time. The Americans opened the gates of the camp, and we were really free. I cannot express what this meant to us who had spent a whole year in the most horrible captivity. My future plans: I have met my brother at home, we will wait for my sister and we will try to emigrate to Palestine to start our lives over again. We will try to forget, and will hopefully manage, but our wounds are still too fresh. All the losses we suffered still hurt us.

Labour Service