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

The persons in question have given us the following information: Ilona Klein relates the following: We lived in Kispest, where my parents had a leather goods shop. My three elder sisters worked in my father’s shop, my elder brother was in hiding in Budapest with Christian documents, and I attended school. In the summer of 1944, my three elder sisters were drafted for labour service because they were summoned. They were on service in Csepel, from where they were deported to Germany. My parents and me were taken to the brick factory of Monor, from where we were transported to Auschwitz. At selection, they separated me form my parents, took me into the baths, where they cut my hair off, gave me new clothes and led me to Camp C, block 25, where I met my elder sisters who had been deported here earlier. From the beginning of August till November, all four of us went to work in the weaving mill. We spun fuses out of rags and of tarred women’s hair. They also brought clothes to the weaving mill from the crematoria. We tore them up and used them for the same purpose. Who prepared daily ### ### received a 1 Mark bonus after each 30 metres. We gave the money to the Polish female Capo, who gave in return a voucher, which we gave to the Lagerälteste, who gave us bread, honey and margarine for it, which were stolen from our provisions. In November, we went into the Aussenkommando. We did 15 kilometres a day on foot walking to the bank of the Vistula to work. At 5 o’clock at dawn we lined up for roll call and left for work at 7 am, and worked till 2 pm. We worked with pickaxes, cars, doing very hard male work. Four girls had to fill the car with soil, and we pushed it up on the hill where we spread it with shovels. My elder sister Erzsi’s foot became frozen so she stopped working. As a result she got such a hard beating that she needed to be operated on in five places, and their traces can still be seen. At 7 am, when we left for work Grese checked our march. We had to pass the lines of SS soldiers and their dogs, and if someone was out of step she would give her a kick. Once she gave such a hard kick to me that I became covered with blood. I suffered a lot from the cold; my hands got swollen and wounded but they did not let me stay home. The people who went out to work got Zulag and half a kilo of bread twice a week. We received the lunch when we got home after 2 pm. Our hands were so numb because of the cold that we could not properly eat. The 1st of January 1945, we left Auschwitz for Bergen-Belsen. There were 1,300 of us on the train. They put 90 people in a freight car. We got bread and margarine for the journey. The other transports left Auschwitz only two weeks later. The 1,300 of us got into a block in Bergen-Belsen. On the first day we got neither food nor covers, while the straw we had was taken away. The following day, ten of us could share a loaf of bread. A few days later they led us to the disinfecting room at night. We were already asleep when they woke us up at midnight and told us that we were going to have a bath. At 3 am we were still standing in the yard; we had short hair, no caps or shawls, wore sandals with wooden soles, and ragged clothes. When we started walking an SS-man gave us blows with a thick club to hurry us. I fell and the others trod on me. If they noticed a cap on one of us they would seize it. It was snowing heavily as we were walking towards the baths. They led us into a cold hall, opened the other door, and we undressed and passed naked in front of lines of the SS. One of the Polish female Capo commented that “these are from Budapest” and they had a short laugh at it with an SS man. There was a Slovakian girl called Olga, who had been block leader in block no. 5 of the Czech camp in Auschwitz, and now she was work leader in Bergen-Belsen. She would beat us hard. My sister Erzsi got into the infirmary, where a French doctor operated on her. She had great pains and suffered a lot. Three or four of them lay in the same bed; they were swarming with lice, while her wounds were only rarely bandaged. They lay there dirty, full of lice, and no one care about them. The English liberated us the 15th of April 1945. After liberation they carried us away from the death camp and lodged us in military barracks in Bergen. The 1st of October, seeing that they would not organise our travel home, we started off individually. We travelled for 16 days, and arrived in Budapest yesterday, the 16th of October. When we arrived we went to Kispest to see our home. Our flat had been bombed, and not even an item of our clothes has remained. Our parents have remained in Auschwitz, our brother who was in hiding with Christian documents has survived.

Labour Service