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The person in question has given us the
following information: During the rule of the
Czechs we did very well in
Várpalánka. They never
abused Jews and we enjoyed equal rights with the others. When the
Hungarians came in, they took away the trade licenses and
abused the
Jewish inhabitants of the village quite a lot. There was a garrison in the village
and the
soldiers marching there sang satirical songs, the target of which was Jews. Later,
incited by young ethnic
Germans they broke in some Jewish homes, led by officers called
Kiss and
István
Boldog. They went to
Munkács every evening and
they broke in Jewish houses under the pretext that those were
military exercises. They robbed the Jews of every possession and beat them to a
pulp. They came back to
Palánka at 12 o'clock at night and continued with us. Terrible noises,
screams could be heard in the night. We lived through terrible times, trembling in horrible
fear; that was the time when I got a heart ailment. The
army
terrorized the inhabitants all the time and
beat Jewish
men horribly without any reason. A lance corporal called
Vörös also behaved in such a base way that we did not dare
go out to the street in the evening at all. That was the beginning of the terror for us.
Then we already had to be in
hiding
in
Hungary; we did
not dare sleep at home, we spent the nights at our relatives living in nearby towns, where
we
slept
in barns and haylofts. The
Hungarians had already treated us in an inhuman and cruel way before the
German
invasion. The
Hungarians committed more horrible tortures than the
Germans did in
Germany. They completely ruined us psychically. 70 Jewish families
lived in
Várpalánka, most of them were tradesmen and craftsmen. Most of them lived in
good financial conditions and were not short of anything. I was a dressmaker and I earned as
much as I needed. It was the
Hungarian
police of
Munkács who ordered the
anti-Jewish
decrees against us. The inhabitants of the village behaved in a relatively
considerate way, except the ethnic
German members of the organization Jugendheiz, who were the followers of
Hitler and
acted in a shameful manner towards us. We wanted to give 10,000 pengős to the notary's
office in order to let us stay in the village but they could not do anything. After
Passover they took us to the
ghetto
in the brickyard of
Munkács. There the
Hungarian
policemen forced the
men to
crawl on their bellies in the mud and hit their heads with rifle butts. The
Hungarian
policemen and 3
Germans, one of them was called
Sefcsenko, beat the young boys extremely hard, some of them they beat to
death.
We were already so desperate that we could hardly wait to be taken to
work.
That is, they lied that they would take us to
work in
the
Hortobágy.
They entrained us in
Munkács but they did not give us water, nor did they give us a bucket for
toilet purposes. In
Sátoraljaújhely, Jewish
labour
servicemen saw us and they wanted to give us water, which the
Hungarian
policemen did not allow them to do so. 80 of us were in a
cattle
car: fainting old people, crying little
children. They handed us over to the
Germans in
Kassa. The
Gestapo told us
that they would take us to
work at
a good place.
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On our arrival in
Auschwitz they
separated me from the rest of my
family
and I had no idea what was in store for me. We did not even want to believe it from a
Slovakian
woman there that they were burning our
family
members in the
crematorium. They took all the expectant
mothers
away and still we managed to hide an expectant
woman,
who gave birth to her
child in secret; of course we arranged it so that the
child
would not remain alive. When we arrived in
Geislingen, we thought
that it would be a very good place to stay, because we could sit at a table, where we had to
work 12 hours a day. We did well in the beginning, but later
German
Capos came and stole our
food.
We slept in cold rooms in the winter and
worked
in a factory, which was not heated. Our hands got frostbitten and the flesh between our
fingers cracked. After
Passover, they took us to Münchenallsch where we stayed only for two
weeks, then they entrained us. We did not receive anything else to
eat
than a little
bread for a week. We
starved
very, very much, we lost weight, we were nothing but skin and bones and several
men
died. The
American troops
liberated us on 1st May. They
supplied us with the best things imaginable, like first-class
food,
clothes and shoes. They took us to
Illdorf near Stahldoch,
where we stayed for four weeks, then we were taken to a home for members of the
Hitlerjugend in
Feldafing. We
received excellent medical treatment. A
Czech
soldier came for us and told us not to speak
Hungarian anywhere; they put us in a car
and after a nine-hour journey we arrived in
Pilsen. In the
Czech villages,
children, old people and
men ran
to meet us and received us very happily. We were crying from emotion when we saw that
welcome boards were put on view and
mothers
were holding their
children up in the windows. Then they took us to
Prague by bus and from
there, we came to
Pest through
Pozsony. Now I am going home to see whether my little
son is
there and then we will
go together to
Palestine. I cannot imagine living among the evil people at home, so I would like
to work on building of our new homeland in
Palestine.