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Remembrances of László Popper

“I was 19 when I was drafted into forced labour in Monor in October 1942. I joined in Nagykáta in the county of Pest together with two others from Monor, István Brüller and Sándor Schwarcz, who was a grocer. The company of forced labourers 101/21 was soon assembled. Dr. István Eissen who was a lieutenant and artilleryman was the company commander. Since it was known that we would soon be taken to the Eastern Front in Russia we were allowed to write letters and our family members could visit us to bid farewell. We were loaded on to a train on the 20th of November and were taken to Ukraine.

The end of November was quite cold in Ukraine. First we were stationed in Alexeyevka and later in Nikolayevka and were working there. We were woken up at 5 am and then we were given breakfast. We had to perform arduous labour throughout the day. We had to carry limestone in pairs, called “troglin” to military construction sites. This excruciating work was made nearly unbearable by the abuse of the “keret” who would beat us with gunstocks and sticks. We finished the day's work at 4 p.m. and our company was then marched to our barracks. The food we got was quite acceptable because our commander did not allow anyone to steal. So, four of us were given a kilogram of canned meat for dinner.

We carried out our assignments until the victory of the Soviet Army at the bend of the River Don. It was the 18th of January, 1943, and then we received orders to withdraw. The only way to leave was on foot. As we were marching, the company broke up into small groups and I found myself in the company of five other labourers. Eventually, we reached the city of Budonniy. We had completely run out of our food supply by then and I dropped behind, and ended up continuing on by myself. During my solitary journey I was starving and fell ill. My body was covered by sores and abscesses from frostbites and the lack of vitamins. I could hardly move ahead. When I finally arrived to the Hungarian military field hospital in Nizhyn, Dr. Mácsai, medical officer, examined me and gave a written military pass for my immediate transfer to the hospital in Kiev.

I met Endre Deutsch from Monor in the hospital in Kiev who was there being treated for serious frostbite. I learned later that they had to amputate many of his toes. In accordance with the orders of Nagybaczoni, he was discharged as a man who became crippled in the war. He could only walk by shuffling his foot. I was also discharged from the hospital and continued my journey on foot.

This exacerbated my illness and I lost consciousness as I was dragging myself along on the road. There were two Russian girls by my side when I regained consciousness and they stopped a German truck. The driver allowed me to get in the truck but he asked me to get out a few hundred meters from Zhytomyr because he did not want to get into trouble. I somehow managed to get into the gendarme barracks of Zhytomyr from where I was taken to a field hospital in Korosten by car. From there I was taken to Doroshich at the first available opportunity.

In Doroshich, I was taken to a huge hall filled with Jewish forced labourers. Most of them were suffering from typhoid, which was generally unattended. It was here where I met Gábor Huppert from Monor who was dying from typhoid. He died soon after I met him and I was the one who closed his eyes.

The main building of the hospital in Doroshich was reserved for forced labourers who were not as ill. I found out that my cousin worked there and with his help I was reassigned to the main building. Head physician, Dr. Gergely, treated the forced labourers well but he was not allowed to send anyone back to Hungary for treatment, not even those Jews whose illness was the most severe.

By April 1943, the hospital of Doroshich was cramped by forced labourers who suffered from typhoid. Words were circulating in the Hungarian army that the Jews were spreading the deadly disease. The soldiers set fire to the large hall that served as a hospital the night of the 29th of April. They justified their act by saying that the source of the disease, the Jews, had to be destroyed in order to stop the spread of the disease. Soldiers armed with machine guns surrounded the building before they set fire to the hall.

The consequences of the burning were horrific. Those who could stand up and tried to escape with their remaining strength were shot by machine guns at the exit. Those who could not move were burnt alive in what was like a bonfire.

We came from the main building to the immense noise and helped those who were trying to flee and were lucky to have missed the bullets. There was a well between the two barracks and my cousin and I did our best to put out the fire of people's burning hair and clothes by pouring water on them. We were able to help about 25 people and only a handful survived in the burning hospital. There was no official report of this event. No one knew how many hundreds were burnt alive and how many of the fleeing were shot or died from their wounds. The few survivors were gathered and driven back to Korosten. I was sent away with this group to accompany the sick. Some soldiers received us in Korosten

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who thought we had not suffered enough and so we were driven into a freezing river to disinfect ourselves.

The brutal treatment of the “keret” got worse daily. Two or three forced labourers were beaten to death almost every day. Corporal Ziegler was especially infamous for his torturing measures. He came up to me once and wanted to beat me to death. I turned to him and said that my mother was waiting for me to return home just like his. This appeared to have hit home because he did not bother me from then on.

As the Soviet troops advanced more and more, military corps returned to Hungary. Horthy's government could already predict the outcome of the war. I was one of the eight thousand forced labourers who survived from the fifty thousand and I returned home at the end of 1943. I was discharged but I was not home for long. I was drafted into a forced labour battalion again in April 1944. I had to enlist in Nagykáta.

In the spring of 1944, I was taken to the forced labour battalion and death camp near Bor in Yugoslavia. The German Todt-units were reinforced by the Hungarian “keret.” My comrades and I had to endure further extreme hardships there in the copper mines and road constructions. The “keret” treated us with unlimited inhumane cruelty. Amongst the forced labourers of Bor there were many well known individuals together with the masses of unknown victims. Such was László Keleti, actor; László Tabi, journalist and comedian; Pál Rubányi, surgeon and professor; Miklós Radnóti, poet; László Kaufer, student (cousin of Tibor Kaufer from Monor who is now a physician in Canada and is known as Kárpáti).

In the fall of 1944, we were liberated from the rule of the German and Hungarian fascists by the Yugoslav partisans. Since only Transylvania was liberated, I went to Timi?oara. As the Soviet troops advanced I made my way to Monor. My mother was not waiting for me. I was awaiting her. That was when I was struck with the final and deadliest blow of the Holocaust. All of my immediate family members were killed when they were deported: my parents, my sister and her 6-year-old son. The only survivor was my sister's husband Dezső.”

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Remembrances of Béla Lőwy

“I was an assistant of Gerő Biluska, watchmaker in Monor for a few years. In 1942, I was in forced labour in Ukraine. After the victory of the Soviets at the bend of the River Don, we retreated as fast as we could. Three of us, forced labourers, were there from Monor: Sanyi Schwarcz, Endre Deutsch and I.

We had a brutal, sadistic “keret” during the retreat at the beginning of 1943. They beat those who were the last ones in the line with shovels while we were marching. My feet were frozen but I helped Sanyi. I had only one last pickle left with me and I gave it to him.

I requested that I be transferred to another company which was more humane, with the excuse that it was the company I had originally been assigned. They gave permission to Endre Deutsch and me to go. Sándor Schwarcz did not join us because he could barely walk. When they beat him up again, he fell. They just left him there to freeze to death.

Endre and I did not go over to the company we had requested to join; instead we started off to go to the distant Hungary on foot. We went begging for food from one Russian house to another, until we reached Nizhyn. We were put into a field gendarme jail there but a medical officer let us go for treatment in Kiev.

Instead of Kiev I ended up in Doroshich, but thankfully I wasn't taken to the barrack where those suffering from typhoid were confined. I was placed into another barrack which was for people who were suffering from other illnesses. I could hardly walk with my gangrenous feet. It was my extreme toughness that contributed to my recovery although it took a long time.

Later at the end of 1943, I was released and went home with some other forced labourers. Zoltán Zelk came from the combat zone. We travelled together in the same train wagon from the front. Zelk's real name was Zelkovics and he received the Kossuth Award for literary achievement, after the war.”

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Remembrances of Tibor Kaufer (Koltai), written in 1998

The Germans occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. At that time I was working as a delivery boy to three textile companies in Budapest. Since we had to put on the yellow star, I got a special permit from the police in Monor, so I could continue my job, commuting from Monor to Budapest daily.

April 3, was the first day of bombing of Budapest. The train station was crowded, because people wanted to go to the country, to escape the bombing. There was a draft notice from the Army waiting for me when I got home, with the order to report at the military post in Jászberény, on the 17th of April with cold food for 3 days. A schoolmate of mine, Laci Honig also received the same draft notice. We took the train with backpacks and yellow stars. We remained on the platform of the train, not knowing what kind of reactions we would get. Later when the cabin was nearly empty, we went in. A young drunk railway worker started to bother us, but an older gentleman told him, “Let those people alone, they have got their problems.” We thanked the gentleman.

In Jászberény our company was assembled as no. 101/97, with colonel István Zentai. After the war he was sentenced to 15 years by the People's Court. From Jászberény we were sent to Pusztamizse, we were quartered on the garrets of barns on the land of Mr. Andreidesz. The Commander was István Végh, reserve lieutenant from WWI, he was an honest man. Within a month we went to Vác where we worked on the building of an airport. After a short time we were loaded onto a train again, this time to the other side of the Carpathians, to the village of Vorokhta, where we stayed for a month unloading ammunitions from trains. Due to the advancing Soviet army we were loaded onto trains again to the village of Visóvölgy, where the Visó River flows into the Tisza in Hungary. We were put in to the houses of the Ruthene inhabitants, who were very hospitable to us.

As the frontline came closer on October 14, we were withdrawn to Máramarossziget. The following day was the unsuccessful attempt by Horthy, to break out of the German Axis and the Arrow Cross coming into power in Hungary. We were ordered to destroy the food supply that was kept in a synagogue, and by doing so the synagogue was also demolished. We were moved to Losonc and from there on December 24, to Kópháza. Before arriving in Kópháza, the train stopped at the boundary of Ratisdorf, close to Pozsony. Despite the order not to leave the train, five of us went into the village to try to get some food. On the way back a gendarme stopped us and struck our hands with a stick. After the first hit my hands became numb and for 5 days I could not hold anything

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nor was I able to go to the toilet without help. On Christmas Eve, 30 of us were closed into a barn. It was so cold and we were so hungry, we did not think we could survive. Seven of us died there. Imre Havas “Csöpi,” a very strong boy, his frostbitten legs got infected. Uncle Friedlander, 62 years old, a short, weak man, was beaten by a German guard who was not happy with his work. The next day he died. We had to work in these conditions.

We built wooden-earth fortresses, the so called “1 hour 1 minute” fortresses. The name came from the saying: “The Russians will come and laugh for an hour and then will destroy it in 1 minute.” Our clothing was torn, we took the clothes of our dead comrades, we did not report when they died, in order to get their portions too. We were happy when a horse died, because we knew there would be meat in the soup. My toes were so frostbitten that the pus gushed from them and I had to go to work with my feet like that.

At the end of February, we got to Nagycenk, where there was a German Hospital train. We were given a hot bath and our clothes were disinfected with hot steam. Unfortunately, the hot steam opened up the sores on my toes, so I limped on at the end. A Ukrainian man with a stick walked behind us and during the whole 10 km he beat me with this stick.

Those Ukrainians were anti Soviet young people who joined the Germans. They all hated the Jews, the Cossack pogroms were well known. The Germans despised them and in bad weather when neither the Germans nor the Arrow Cross people wanted to go out they entrusted them with the dirty work. For example, at the end of February, there was a terrible snow storm and we struggled with the blowing winds. Finally, we could make strong, high walls on both side of the road. One night one of the fellows, Sándor Breitner, died. I inherited his gloves.

I became very weak and stayed in the barn, and could not go to work. Unexpected fortune happened to me when Dr. Miklós Szûcs (Schwarz) from Monor came to Kópháza. I knew him from back home. He received his degree in Italy, as Hungary did not let Jews into the medical schools. He brought me some food from the kitchen and told me it would be better if I got up, because I will become weaker, staying in the barrack. I wanted to live and I forced myself to get up and go to work.

On March 24, we got the order to prepare our equipment. We did not know the direction but we went near the Lake Fertő (Lake Neusiedl) when we reached the village of Loretto. We heard shots, as we got closer we saw that the people

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before us started running. On the two sides of the street the Germans were beating the Jews with gunstocks. The Jews were running by natural instinct. Those, whose heads were beaten, died. Those who did not die fell and were shot. I remember a boy from Sub-Carpathia, Mór Ferenczi, same age as me, dead with a broken head. At that time I was not yet familiar with the poem Razglednica from Radnóti, but his lines are appropriate here: “the company in a big stinking group is standing, above them heinous death is blowing…” This happened in Loretto.

Our accommodation at night was an open mine. We slept on bare ground but we didn't care. In the morning, after waking up, we didn't care about breakfast or washing, because there was no food or water. I was moving a bit so that numbness would go away when I saw “Döme” coming towards to me. His real name was Tibor Gellért and he was my best friend. He was a year younger than me and we were true friends. He worked in the Popper printing house as a pressman. His parents had a small watch-jewellery shop in Monor. When Döme woke up in the morning he saw that Dr. Miklós (Szûcs) Schwarcz was sleeping near him. He asked the doctor whether he knew anything about me. Miklós told him that I was in the hospital team, so Döme set out to find me. He was deported to Fertőrákos and was lucky because the owner of the barn employed him as a general servant and gave him enough food. So, he didn't starve and he didn't look thin. His clothes were in relative order too. My friend arranged with the Jewish leader of his company (named Vadnai) that I could go into his company so we could stay together. Vadnai wasn't too happy when he saw me because he was relatively neat. Also his son and his brother-in-law were in the same company. They came from Kispest. The “jupo” was a position, created by the Germans as a kind of help to provide order among the captives. They got double-portion of food as a salary. There was also a main/first “jupo,” named Farkas. He served solely the Germans. I was sorry to leave my company but I wanted to stay together with Döme. We took the train from the closest railway station. These were normal passenger coaches as opposed to trains designed for animals. Our train crossed Vienna and we saw the Prater and inside the Ferris wheel. Then suddenly the train stopped and we had to get off. We fell in line and started to march.

The name of the railway station was Mauthausen. At that time we didn't know this name but soon it became well-known to us. So, we started marching and after several kilometres walking uphill we reached a camp. We were accommodated in a big tent where we slept on straw. We were sitting on thatch and were waiting. Everybody was excited about the food. Soon we received the reply on this question. Bread portion a day was 80 grams certainly it wasn't normal bread but from bran and a mixture of ground acorn. It would have been a

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big reward if there had been enough of it. We got some black soup for breakfast; God only knew what it was made of. We got cooked food in the evening; it was a kind of thick soup in a big dish. This dish was like a garbage bin in those days. Those, who carried the dish got double portion of food and had a chance to eat the remainder of the food from the bottom of the dish. This was an enormous thing then. The number of dead people continuously increased. Starvation and typhus killed a lot of people. Reports of dead people wasn't reported to our commander as long as possible so we could get the food portions of the dead captives.

In that way, I got a coat from a fellow from Budapest, Ottó Weisz because my coat was ragged. In the pocket of this coat I found a big treasure. The dirt of his coat pocket was mixed with salt, so I could sprinkle my bread with salt. It was fantastic! The other treasure I found in the coat was a Balaton cigarette. In the past, I had smoked but, of course, I had to give it up. Now I went out of the tent and somehow I lit my cigarette. After a few seconds an older deported man came to me and asked for my cigarette. I gave it to him without dispute. He looked at me and said: “Oh my God, this is a Balaton cigarette, taste form home.” Lack of cigarettes was a real torture for a lot of people. There were people who traded their food for a cigarette, and then they starved to death. If anybody thought that Mauthausen was the most dreadful place, he was wrong. In the morning of April 17, we had to fall in line; we got a half kilogram of bread per man and then we had moved on. Regarding the poor food a German sergeant said: “Molotov will give you more food.” In Mauthausen I was together with Laci Hőnig, we were drafted together in Jászberény a year before. We weren't together in the march as his was kept back, but we agreed if anyone of us could return home he would tell the relatives that on April 17, we separated.

Laci Hőnig told me in Mauthausen what tortures they had to survive. They had their own Loretto, but a more abysmal version. Their march was called a death march of Eisenerz. They crossed Eisenerz-Alps and when they were marching across a mountain pass, the Germans would shoot them from the top of the pass. In particular, a half-armed German was “excellent” in killing; a comrade of his loaded the machine gun continuously so he could shoot and shoot continuously. Several hundred Jews died this way.

We were forced to start marching on April 17. Tibor Gellért came with me and we stayed together. In the beginning of the journey, we had a feeling that terrible things would follow. When we stepped out of the gate of the camp shots rang out. Dead people were lying on both sides of the road; this was especially noticeable when we crossed the bridge over the Danube. The Major

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twins died here; one of them was shot dead while his brother fell on him and was also shot. We were marching the whole day. Women were forced to march at the front of the lines; we met them in Kópháza as well as in some of the other villages—they were funnelled there from Budapest—they too, were taken to Mauthausen. In the meanwhile, guns were rumbling. A lot of deported people were shot dead. I remember a young German soldier, about 20 years old, he must have been educated at Hitler Jugend and he likely considered killing the Jews a humanitarian activity, because he was really diligent. He chose his victims; the two people, marching near him had to carry his victim to the bank of a ditch where the German shot him dead. Other German soldiers killed the Jews as well, but this young boy was the most “excellent” of them. During the noon resting-time, the commander of the march, a Wehrmacht sub-lieutenant ordered the young killer to come to him and yelled at him. We didn't understand them because they were quite a distance from us. It seemed the commander wanted to stop the killings. After this, fewer killings happened but still, several Jews were shot dead later. Due to the terrible starvation people were experiencing, a lot of people stepped out of the lines to tear some flowering canola to eat. But every time the result was death. I saw a dead man, holding a canola in his hand but his head was divided into two. Among our guards there were also firemen from Vienna; some of them could speak Hungarian. They behaved humanely.

There was one more memory. We were going through a village. A farmer was pushing his horse and his cart was full of turnips. As we were passing his cart everybody, who could, took a piece of turnip and started to eat the muddy, dirty turnip immediately. I see the face of the farmer, as if it were today; he was shocked but didn't say a word looking at these Jewish people who were robbing his cart. The march continued and we finally got food, bread and “Hitler-bacon.”

We stuffed ourselves with food because the phrase of “what you eat is yours” was very true. Finally, we arrived at Gunskirchen, out of the village there was a pine-wood, a barrack camp, that we were accommodated in. There was already a group of Polish Jews. The Germans hit everybody, shouting that we must take our places. The place meant that everybody sat on his bag and were waiting for food for the whole day. There we also got 80 gram of bread and some soup. We would have been satisfied also with that, if only we had acquired enough of it. But we hadn't. I felt that my strength declined day by day. Sometimes we were sent out to bury people because a lot of dead people had to be buried. On the way leading to this camp, 400 Jewish people were killed from 5,000 by the young killer and his comrades. We dug a mass grave, four people carried one dead man to the grave. Men who died from starvation couldn't be heavier than 35–40 kilograms but we four could hardly carry them. We spent two weeks in this

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camp. The camp could receive 1600 people and there were about 10,000 people crowded in it. It's true that the number of people lessened day by day. On the afternoon of May 4, 1945 at about half past five we heard the rattle of guns, and saw the Germans running excited and frightened. The Americans appeared. There were only a few soldiers, but they didn't experience any resistance. The cruel Nazi executioners became meek; they had no more weapons.

A fight started for food. Everybody wanted to get food. To eat, eat and eat. There was no other aim in life but eating. We were unbelievably dirty; we were full of lice. There was not enough water to drink, let alone water to wash. Somebody passed by me in hurry, with an open tinned artificial honey, I dipped my hand in it and started to lick that poor German artificial honey and the taste of it was marvellous. In the mean time I saw that my hand was bloody, because I hurt my hand when I dipped it in the tin, but I didn't care about my blood; I ate the honey with my blood. On the next day Döme, I and some friends went to the nearby town of Wels. We were going in the ditch because Americans were driving their tanks along the road. It was very touching as the soldiers were sitting on the tops of tanks and were throwing tinned food to us from carton boxes. I caught a tinned tomato fish up in the air; somehow we could open it and ate without bread. In the town we went to the houses and asked for food everywhere. We didn't get too much food as they themselves had hardly anything. Somehow we even got two pieces of boiled potato, together with Döme because we didn't leave each other alone.

Our accommodation in Wels was the barrack of the alpine riflemen. But Döme and I lived in a basement office of a tenement, because the Austrian porter allowed us to stay there. At night I got terrible diarrhea and I needed new clothes. The diarrhea was caused by the huge food, which overloaded my weak stomach. I stayed alive but many people died because they weren't able to stop eating. Several hundreds of people died after the liberation because the liberation came too late for them. It also concerned me a bit. When we were moving to another place and I was carrying my bag suddenly I felt a fever and hardly could reach the new accommodation. It was in Hörsching, where there was a military airport, and accommodation of the former deported people was established there. Döme came with me to the barrack hospital, I had to lie in a bed and I didn't remember anything else. I stayed there for two weeks, and I remember that Döme visited me two times. Apparently he visited me more times but I couldn't remember. I had typhus. I still wonder how I could survive this serious disease in that condition. In that weak state I couldn't eat, I was averse to eating. Finally, I could leave the hospital and went back to the accommodation. But typhus left consequences, I had serious memory failure, I became nearly

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deaf, I heard only loud words. Later my condition got better, though for weeks I could only climb up stairs (on all fours), but I had to go for food.

At the beginning of July, we could take a train and go to Hungary. It was Saturday when we arrived in Sopron, there our religious community received us and we got 100 Pengő (the Hungarian currency at the time) per person. This wasn't a lot of money in that inflationary period. We took a train again, I don't remember where we were travelling but it was the first time in my life that I saw the Balaton. At dawn I woke up in the train and saw a soviet solder sitting near me.

He—as it turned out—was a Jewish boy. We were talking a bit in the Yiddish language, and when I told him that I was hungry, he took out his bread and gave me half of it.

I arrived in Monor after more than a year and met the sad reality there: my father, my step-mother and my step-brother died in Auschwitz. From our four-member family only I survived. How my life continued is another history.

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Remembrances of László Rothauser

“I was born in Monor in 1920. My father worked at the Polacsek lumberyard and my mother was a Polacsek girl. When I completed grade 1 in the Jewish School of Monor, my father became the supervisor of the Polacsek lumberyard in Szolnok and we moved there. I spent most of my holidays in Monor with relatives while I was a student, and I was a regular at the Jewish community's Saturday dances and events organized for the youth in the community hall. These afternoon events were organized by the Jewish Women's Association of Monor. It was there where I met the fifteen and a half-year-old Dusi Widder in 1939. I was nineteen and a half. Within a month I promised I would marry her as soon as I could. Well, that was something we had to wait for quite a bit.

In September 1941, I was drafted into forced labour to the Headquarters of the Military Support Services of Szolnok. Within a few weeks the forced labour company 6/4 was assembled and the company was taken to Püspökladány at the beginning of 1942. It was there that the sixth battalion was stationed under the command of the infamous and soon-to-be colonel, then lieutenant-colonel, Dezső Szentkatolnay. Thankfully, our company commander was cadet first-lieutenant István Kovács II.

We were taken to work to the Rusynsko region of Transcarpathia in 1942, close to the localities of Brustura, Turbacil and Leordina. Our main duty was lumbering.

From the spring of 1943, we were working together with forced labour companies 6/2, 6/3 and 6/4 on the construction of an airport next to Szászrégen in the vicinity of Görgényoroszfalu. Opera singer, Miklós Weinstock, originally from the Hajdúság worked with us. He was well known in the US as “Gufni” the opera singer of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Lieutenant Kovács was transferred to the Ukrainian front in the second half of 1943. The new company commander was not good-willed towards us forced labourers.

At the beginning of 1944, American planes bombed the airport which had been in operation. The forced labourers ran into the nearby forest. Four hundred German airplanes were destroyed in the raid. There were no anti aircraft weapons at the airport. The German officer in command was executed by firing squad on Hitler's order.

One hundred forced labourers, including me, were taken to the Gurghiu mountains in the spring of 1944, for extracting stone. We set up a hangar tent for shelter. We had to extract stones from the freezing water of a river by removing

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and carrying the large boulders and throwing the smaller pieces over the river banks. Due to the advancing Soviet armies, we were pulled back to inside of Hungary's pre-war borders in September, 1944.

I had a terrible toothache in April 1945, while I was in Mauthausen. That was where I met Dr. Miklós Schwarcz, a physician from Monor whose wife was related to me through the Polacsek line. Miklós had a tooth extractor hidden in his pocket and he could extract my tooth. Then we were forced from Mauthausen to Gunskirchen on foot. On the 5th of May, 1945, American soldiers liberated Gunskirchen.

István Kovács II, company commander of the forced labourers was awarded the “Righteous Among the Nations” award in April 1996, for his exceptional humane behaviour. He received this award from the memorial committee of the victims and heroes of the Holocaust of the Jewish State and Yad Vashem.”

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Remembrances of Miklós Derera^[1]

“My parents lived in Monor. My mother went to Budapest to give birth to me in 1919. I spent my childhood in Monor, and I attended high school in Budapest. My parents had converted and I grew up as a Christian.

I was a soldier before the Germans occupied Hungary in March of 1944, and I had been participating in the preparation of an officers' putsch to withdraw Hungary from the war.

I was not considered a Jew and the Laws against Jews did not apply to me before the German invasion. After the invasion of the Germans, things changed suddenly: I lost my job and the Germans came looking for me at my place (Angyalföldi Street 24/b, Budapest). I had to escape. I left and went to my parents in Monor, but at that same time they were taken to the ghetto. I joined them and we all went to the ghetto. We had to provide for ourselves in the ghetto. I found a job as a day-labourer at the clinic of the district veterinary surgeon. It was humiliating for me because I was a professional man. We had been good friends with the surgeon, but it appeared that he forgot about our previous friendship. The situation remained the same until I was conscripted to forced labour in Jászberény. There, we were loaded into cattle cars and transported to Bor in Serbia on June 8, 1944. On arrival, we were put up in a so called “Innsbruck” camp. We had to work on a railroad project for the Todt organization; our job was to construct a passage through a mountain. The purpose of the narrow-gauge rail was to ship copper from Bor to the Danube harbour at Zagubica, from where barges would take the load to Vienna. There were forced labour camps located at about every 30 km along the planned rail route through the mountain, each named after a German city.

We were treated better by the Todt guards than by the Hungarian “keret.” One of the Todt guards, István Balog from Croatia, assigned about 50 of us from Jászberény to somewhat less-demanding work, and even smuggled in food for us. He treated me especially well. At the same time, the Hungarian “keret” was rather ruthless to us. On one occasion, I was tied up because I dared to whistle during work. Lance sergeant Szûcs (from the region of Szeged) tied me up, naked for 2 hours. I was beaten, too. In the camp there was a sergeant named Zbranek, who had previously been a junior officer in the Ministry of Agriculture in Budapest, and who became the deputy commander of the camp. His favourite activity was stealing our food and later selling it back to us at 10 to 20 times the price. The commander of the camp was an ensign by the name of Dr. László Nagy (he lived in Újpest in July 1945, and he was cleared of major crimes after

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the war); he committed no special crimes, but he “closed his eyes” and he let his sergeant do whatever he wanted. Nagy dealt only with his business and played the role of an indifferent observer. Two cadets named Nagy and Tálas slapped my face in Bor. There was also Corporal Tusori, who habitually struck people. Soldier Sándor (a tailor's assistant from Szentes) was posted as assistant to Lance Sergeant Szûcs; Sándor routinely kicked people. He tied them up and his favourite pastime was to kick them in the front rather than in the back. He did these activities of his own volition without any order of the commander of the company. He usually started to fraternize with a worker, and then a minute later he flew in the face of the poor man and beat him to a pulp. Moreover, he was an informer of Lieutenant Colonel Marányi. Marányi, when he came out for inspection, used to say that this will be the graveyard of the Jews.

Later, in the middle of August, the entire camp was ordered to the so called “Süd-camp” in Bor and we stayed there until 17th of September, where we had to pass the time with exercising like somersaulting, crawling, calisthenics etc. On one occasion, when Marányi came for inspection, he ordered 100–150 people to be tied up and hung them all around on the walls of the barracks. Nails were driven into the walls and people were hung from them. When there was no more room left on the walls, people had to wait in line for their turn. On 17th of September 1944, we were lead out of the camp. There were 3600 people in the first column of Jehovah's Witnesses and Sabbatarians, in the second column the people of mixed religion and in the third column was the rest of the camp. We were marched to Belgrade, and we were treated somewhat better during this time. It should be mentioned that we were misled by false newspaper articles, which noted that everything was all right in Hungary now. The rumours were that the Lakatos-government had opened the Jewish shops, and the deported Jews were returned from Germany. Receiving this false news, a boy from Máramaros, who had lost all of his relatives left us and hurried home.

Tito and his people offered to let us stay in Yugoslavia, but Zbranek showed us the newspaper articles about the improved situation in Hungary, and for this reason, we did not join the partisans. Our situation was tolerable and we received acceptable provisions during the march from Bor to Belgrade. However, we were lead through Belgrade during the night because our SS guards were concerned about the demonstrations of the people of Belgrade. In spite of the guards' “precaution,” the people in Belgrade organized sympathy demonstration for us. They threw cigarettes and bread into our lines. The Serbian people displayed their very touching sympathy towards us.

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From Belgrade we were marched to Zimony, where we were housed in an old industrial building, which was infested with lice. There we received hardly any food for 8 days. Some black coffee and hot soup was given to us later.

After this, we were marched towards Hungary through the Bánát of Serbia where the shooting began. It was started by ensign Pál (from Szabadka), then it was continued by the German Deutch Milicia (DM), which followed us, and then by other German military forces. Anybody, who fell behind, stepped out of the line or wanted to relieve himself was shot. Ensign Nagy (convicted in July, 1945), lieutenant Pataki and all the members of the “keret” were responsible for the killings which they could have prevented.

Once we were hit by a heavy rain. A Todt guard drove 10 people into a ravine and they all died when they were swept away by the raging torrent.

We were not given any food so we picked turnip, potato, corn from the fields. This was all that we could eat, and sometimes food which was thrown to us by some Serbian folks.

We were happy when we crossed into Hungary from the Bánát at the border near Titel. An artillery sergeant was standing by the road and asked: “Why have you brought these Jews home, why did you not murder them?”

We went from Titel to Újvidék then continued to Cservenka. We still did not get any provisions. The only way to get some food was to buy 1–1 slice bread from the guards at one hundred times inflated price for our valuables whatever we had left. We were constantly being beaten and people were shot to death for the tiniest misdemeanour. About eighty people were beaten to death or shot by the Hungarian “keret” while we reached Cservenka.

In Cservenka we were quartered in the brickyard and when we wanted to continue on our way the SS surrounded us and kept us there for several days, and then they set us off in 500 people transport groups. While we were still there, the SS selected and took many people from our group for “work.” The people who were selected never returned. After completing their assignments, they were taken to the mine and executed by the Hungarian guards.

From Cservenka we went to Veprőd without any major problems, and we even got hot potato soup there at 10 o'clock at night. Next dawn we set out again, but the tone had changed, the guards were rather rude.

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When we reached the highway leading towards Zombor, it was the first occasion that we met fleeing Germans or Swabians. The SS guards went berserk and pushed us into the roadside ditch and forced us to run in line to Újszivác in groups of 5 while keeping our heads down. While we were running, the SS soldiers passing by and some of the Swabians started firing at us with submachine guns while the Swabian women counted 1-2-3.

In Ószivác, our group was escorted into a side street where we were forced to lie on the ground and stretch out our hands. Then they started to shoot us. Our friend named Lorsi—a violinist—was shot first on the back of his neck because they liked his violin. He was followed by people who the SS did not like. The SS soldiers were walking on the backs of the people. They pulled off my pullover, my shoes, took my blanket and left me bare foot in a shirt and trousers. An SS soldier put his submachine gun to the back of my neck. When the command “los” sounded I jumped up. He fired but missed me and I threw myself back into the lines. 14–15-year-old Swabian youngsters hit us with gunstocks and clubs. When a person was hit on the head he died instantly. Anyone who stepped out of the line was shot. An SS soldier who was passing by on a motorcycle, stopped for a moment and fired into the line with his submachine gun.

We were forced to run until we reached Zombor, just like we had to do on the way to Újszivác, with a few stops. There we were herded into the slaughterhouse of Zombor. We rested there for four days and then, with a new guard under the command of an SS Oberscharführer, we set out to Mohács. The commander did his best to provide us with food. During our march, a man was shot dead for running away when he was called by an SS guard. The march towards Mohács was at a reasonable pace, we covered about 15 km a day.

It should be noted that in Kiskőszeg, the Hungarian sappers, the crew of a river gunboat who were stationed there, and the pilots from Újvidék who were then passing through were exceptionally sympathetic toward us. They gave us food and cigarettes and when we began continuing our journey, one of their officers came after us asking where we were going, and told us that everyone of their company (peasant boys from the Alföld) offered his entire one-day provisions for us. The SS did not permit the distribution of the offered food, and sent the officer and his people away.

In Mohács, we were stationed in a tan-yard for a few days. We were guarded by the SS in the first two days, and then the Hungarian “keret” took over. The members of the “keret”—field gendarmes—were very brutal.

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Approximately 1400 people perished during the treacherous journey from Cservenka to Mohács. Approximately 1200 of us were still alive when we started out from Mohács to Austria.

We spent 2 weeks in Szentkirályszabadja, from there we went on foot to Magyaróvár. On the way we were given a half loaf of rough bread and some hot food once a day, it was about 300 ml. They did not shoot people on the way; however, several people were beaten to death by soldier Lackó and lance sergeant Karakai, who were members of the Hungarian “keret.” Karakai beat me with a gunstock in Zirc until I collapsed. I don't know why he beat me.

We were passed to the Germans at Hegyeshalom, who loaded us into wagons at the railway station, which was about 7 km away. There we got the first decent food from the SS. From there we were carried to Sachsenhausen very quickly.

In the Sachsenhausen camp the usual prison life started on November 11, 1944. I lived in the barrack No. 11, which was a so-called “Jewish block.” I did block-work and work, which could be done while sitting due to my ill health.

I was transferred to the forced labour camp of Fürstenberg am Oder on December 18, where I was with 250 Hungarian and Slovakian Jews. This place is near Frankfurt am Oder. I became ill on the third day, I had encephalitis. I was unconscious for 4 days. I received no medication. I lay in the sick-room. The camp commander came in every day to give us a slap on the face—according to him, this was what we deserved. I was sent back to Sachsenhausen with forty other people on January 1, 1945. As it turned out later, the transport was destined to the crematorium.

When I returned to Sachsenhausen the second time, our group was placed again in the block No. 11. A man (from Sátoraljaújhely) Dr. Miklós Weisz, a medical doctor, helped me to escape from there because he knew this transport was destined to the crematorium. He hid me in the hospital, and in the morning he arranged for my admission, too. The other 39 people were gone. From the 3rd of January to the day of liberation I was lying in the hospital where a conscientious and self-sacrificing Norwegian and a Belgian doctor helped many people survive. These two doctors deserve everything. One of them was called Dr. Albert D. Delaunois; he did everything in the interest of not only his patients but every Jew and every other prisoner. He rescued people from the transports of the crematorium by hiding them in the hospital at the risk of his own life.

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I was still ill when the Russians liberated the camp on April 21, 1945. My health recovered soon with the help of proper food, and I became the head of the laboratory of the hospital-camp.

When I returned to Monor I did not find my parents, who were old people and had been deported from Monor to Auschwitz. There was no news about them…”

Footnote

1. Report of Miklós Derera was written and registered in the report-book No. 116.005 Sachsenhousen by Klára Kandel in the Office of Committee, caring Deported People—2 Bethlen square, 7th district, Budapest—on 20 July 1945. return

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