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"It was a cattle car as you know, no windows, had no seats and no toilet." | |||
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Bart Stern Born 1926 Hungary 
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We were pushed up on railroad cars, actually cattle cars. But the amazing thing, what I still remember is, that on the way, being driven, or herded, by the Hungarian gendarmes, we were singing so...songs of hope. I do not remember exactly how to translate the song but I know where, which part of the Psalms it is in. And we thought that we are already enough in it [the cattle car]. We were about 50 people or 60. Twenty more, 30 more, so we must have been in that little cattle car, which is about a third of the size of an American railroad car, about 120, 140. And before we knew, whoever didn't make it of the family in the same car was cut off and they, they just slammed the doors, and those who were outside, they still had to put barbed wire on the little bit of opening which was on the outside on the top of the railroad car. These car were usually used for cattle transports or for grain. In the car the situation got by the minute worse and worse. People were looking to find a spot for the older...elder people to sit down. There was no space to sit down, because if you sat down you couldn't get up, because we were herded in, squeezed like in a sardine box. The journey actually lasted--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday--three nights and about three days. If anybody had something to eat--because in the ghettos we already used up most of the stuff what we have been successful taking out of our homes when we were taken out into the ghetto--had to share it with others. But we realized that it is not a simple journey of just a few hours. People were holding back, or they couldn't as generously pass it out to others. Then suddenly we start seeing that people are taking care of their needs in the cars, and the stench got worse every minute. | ||
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Blanka Rothschild Born 1922 Lodz, Poland 
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When we walked through the ghetto to work after the entire ghetto was empty, it was a very weird feeling. Empty streets, open windows, flowing curtains blowing with the wind. No people. Once we thought that we saw a glimmer of somebody in the window, or a candle or something and, of course, we averted our eyes not to give away to the German escorts that somebody was there. In November of 1944 came our time, we had to be taken out. The entire population of our hospital was walked to the place where the cattle cars were, and we were loaded. It was a horrible thing because people had to stand. There was no place to sit or squat. If somebody was sick or even dying, he died on his feet standing up. It was just unbearable. Water was the worst...the lack of water, the thirst was the worst. | ||
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Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall Born 1929 Klucarky, Czechoslovakia 
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My grandparents, my aunt, my relatives and all the other Jews in the community, we were all loaded onto this train, going to Auschwitz. When we were put onto this train, which of course I don't need to describe to you--it was a cattle car as you know, no windows, had no seats and no toilet. When we got onto the trains none of us knew we were being taken to a concentration camp. None of us knew anything about Auschwitz. At least I don't think we knew. We honestly thought we were going to be relocated, until the door closed and we heard the lock go on from the outside. I believe that was the first we knew, wherever we were going to be taken to, it was not going to be freedom. | ||
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Irene Hizme and Rene Slotkin Born 1937 Teplice Sanov, Czechoslovakia 
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IRENE: The next memory I have, shortly after that, is us walking--it was nighttime--through the snow and our, my mom, our mom had a suitcase that she was dragging along, and I remember I didn't, I kind of didn't want to go wherever it was that we were going. I remember she gave me a real yank, like, like, you know, just come. So I remember her--and that's when I remember her presence, 'cause I remember, you know, her actually pulling me, to, like...RENE:I guess I was going peacefully, because I don't, I don't remember the pulling. I do remember that night, though, and I remember dogs. IRENE: Yes, yes, there were dogs, barking. Then we got on a train. RENE:Yeah, that train ride I remember. IRENE: Yeah, me too. RENE:I mean, this was, uh, this now, we now know, that this was the train ride to, to Auschwitz. But the combination of, uh, heat, odor, crammed quarters, the, uh, the size, the agony of it, uh, in the car. You, I mean you heard that people just died... IRENE: There was this moaning and... RENE:Moaning, I mean it was, it was horrible. IRENE: And being little, it was, like, hard to, you know, it was just all these bodies kind of next to you. And I remember I just wanted to, like, I wanted to lie down. RENE:Yeah, right, we couldn't lie down for some reason... IRENE: Right, there was no place... RENE:Either there was no place, or there wasn't room, or it was too dirty, or it was like nowhere to lie down. IRENE: You couldn't, there was no place. You just kind of had to stay the way you got on. And...but we didn't cry. RENE:No. IRENE: We didn't. We were scared. We knew that crying was not something you did. |
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Leo Schneiderman Born 1921 Lodz, Poland 
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And there we were in that train, over a hundred people. The only facility in the train was two buckets for over a hundred men, women, and children. And the train was standing on one place. It was unbearable hot. Lack of air. So some people had an idea that the minute we start moving it's going to get cooler. But at one moment we heard that the gate opened up in the boxcar, so we thought maybe they changed their mind. They're going to leave us out. But instead they brought a few dozen Jews discovered in a hiding place, they were all badly beaten up because they were hiding. I remember one young man, all his front teeth was kicked out. And one boy's face was so badly swollen, it was just a nose that we could see--no eyes. And they added to our car. And soon we started to move. It didn't cool off. And at one moment we heard a young teenage girl crying. She had to go to the bucket in front of everybody. Her mother, her sister tried to shield her with a coat. A man was begging the people around to give a little more room his pregnant wife. Me being among the youngsters, I was asked to climb up those packages, and look out to see where are we going. I start reading signs. One recognized those names. He said that we are moving south towards Krakow. I also saw some Polish peasants lining the road. They were probably used to those scenes, those trains. Some made signs to us, pointing to the sky. And some went with the fingers across the throat, the throat. I didn't tell the people what I saw. | ||
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Jeno Muhlrad Born 1888 Ujpest, Hungary 
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Jeno was the youngest of five children born to Jewish parents living in a suburb of Budapest. His father was a wholesale merchant who sold beer to restaurants and stores. After receiving a university diploma, Jeno became a pharmacist. He and his wife, Aranka, and their two children, Eva and Andras, shared a large old house in Ujpest with Jeno's father and other members of the extended family.
1933-39: My friends and family have helped me raise the large amount of money I need to lease my own pharmacy. Because of anti-Jewish restrictions, I still can't own a pharmacy in my own name. But leasing will give me a lot more independence than I had when I was just another pharmacist's employee. We've moved into a nice, modern apartment near the pharmacy in downtown Ujpest. Aranka helps me out at work while Eva and Andras go to school. 1940-44: It has been only a few weeks since the Germans invaded Hungary, but already we are being deported out of Hungary by train in cattle cars. There are 70 or 80 of us crammed in together with just one bucket of water for drinking and one empty bucket for relieving ourselves. I'm trying to boost Eva's morale by joking that I'd hoped her first trip abroad would be more pleasant. Jeno and his family were among the 435,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz in the early summer of 1944. He was later moved to a camp in Bavaria where he perished. |
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David Bergman Born 1931 Velikiye-Bychkov, Czechoslovakia 
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David was born to religious Jewish parents in a small town in Ruthenia, the country's easternmost province, which had been ruled by Hungary until 1918. Located in the Carpathian Mountains, the town was so isolated that news from the rest of the country would arrive by a drummer who would read the news in the town's central square. David's father worked as a tailor and his mother was a seamstress.
1933-39: While my parents worked, I'd be at home having a good time. We had a beautiful home with all the necessary comforts, including an outhouse in the back. A Czech army officer lived in our home until the Hungarians annexed our province in March of 1939. After that, at school we had to pledge allegiance to Hungary. Hungarian police with feathers in their green hats patrolled our streets enforcing anti-Jewish laws. 1940-44: I was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 [and soon after was selected for deportation to the Plaszow concentration camp]. Later, at the Reichenbach camp I was crammed in an open cattle car with 150 living skeletons headed for another concentration camp. One by one they fell down and were trampled. After half died, it was possible to sit on the dead. Someone fell on me--he was dying. I hadn't had any food or water in four days. With all my remaining strength I pushed the body off and fell on top of him. He tried to push me away, but we were both too weak. In a final effort, he bit my leg and then died. David was one of three who survived the seven-day trip to the Dachau camp. He was freed near Innsbruck, Austria, in May 1945 and emigrated to the United States in 1947. |
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Selma (Wijnberg) Engel Born 1922 Groningen, the Netherlands 
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We went three days and three nights to Sobibor. Uh, when we stopped sometimes the train, in every freight wagon is a little window on top, and everybody tried to look through it, so when you had chance to look through it, and you saw people was, was standing like, and they did like that, and we thought they were just an...anti-Jews, and they know we, we Jews didn't like us, but we had no idea that they told us that we go to our death. And, every time when the train stopped, the Germans start shooting on top of the train, and with dogs around us, and it was very panicky, and, uh, it was very scary, and we hope, you know, we, we girls, we really stuck together, and we helped each other to stay a little bit in good mood. After three days and three nights, we thought we were in Russia, everybody looked so poor, and, uh, we had no idea where we were, and then we come on and we see the big sign, Sobibor, and when we came in, everything looks very nice, little windows and flowers and, and, uh, the houses were painted green and red, and, it, it looks very nice, and when they opened the doors, these big doors that we had to go out, they start screaming and hitting with the whips, and, uh, we had to go out and out, and, all, all the people, and there was a little trolley, a little wagon what, uh, the coal miners use that goes, you can, uh, uh, rip it open that people can easy go out, so all the people that couldn't walk, they throwed them in there, and also children what got lost from their parents, they had to go in the trolley, and this trolley went straight to the gas chamber. | ||
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