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

The person in question has given us the following information: I was called up for the labour service in Jászberény on 17th May 1944. We worked at Ferihegy airport till 2nd July, when the first big air raid hit Budapest. I also got injured during the air raid. They took me to the military hospital that was set up in the orphanage in Fasor. There I found out that my right hand had become crippled, I would not be able to use it any more. The person sent by the welfare centre of disabled soldiers who visited me promised that either they would retrain me for a new trade or they would teach me to write with my left hand. Some weeks later they moved me to the military hospital in Komárom, because there was not enough place for the army. Then, because of the lack of space they sent me back to my company in Ferihegy again; I had to shuttle from there to the ambulance in Pest. On 27th November, they took me to Józsefváros railway station where they entrained me. I cannot remember how many people were locked up together in a cattle car, but I know that lying down was out of the question; we only had room enough to sit down pressed against each other. At Hegyeshalom we were handed over to the SS, then they took us to Zürndorf. There the SS demanded us to give them every possession, they said that otherwise they would shoot us dead. From there they took us back to Sopron, where armed youngsters of the Arrow Cross beat the hell out of us with rifle butts and kicked us all over while we were getting off the train. They took us to Fertőrákos where they put up to 200 of us in a big stable and they forgot about us for two days: we were not given anything to eat or drink and they did not take us to work either. On the third day, which was a Sunday afternoon, they took us to dig trenches and at last we got something resembling a turnip soup. On 15th December they took us to Balf, where we dug trenches again. There I fell ill, I got typhus fever and I was lying in the open barn for weeks. The snow fell in. After my recovery I worked as a saddler for a short while. The inhabitants of Balf did everything to humiliate and mock us. From little children to adults, everybody threw stones at us and hit us with sticks. On 28th March we set off on foot to Mauthausen. We received practically nothing to eat; we ate grass, buds, clovers on the way, but only when our attendants did not see it, because they would have shot us down for it. They shot dead those wretches who did not bear the march and sat down to have a little rest. We stayed for about 10-12 days in Mauthausen. We were put up in tents, but we were squeezed together so much that we preferred to sleep outside in the open air. The provisions were unbelievably bad and small. Then another march followed, we went to Günskirchen. They did not give us any food for the three-day-long march; we fed ourselves again with grass and alfalfa that we picked in secret. There were already many people who could not bear the march without rest. A number of people fell behind to have some rest and the SS guards simply shot all of them down. Cadavers were lying along the street at every tenth metre. In Günskirchen the circumstances were even worse, because we were all totally weak and they withdrew both our food and water, which we did not get at all while we were staying there. More than 2,000 people were put in a barrack. There were so many lice that we removed them from our clothes by the thousands and if we looked at ourselves again within half an hour we found even more there. Lying down in the barrack was out of the question; we were sitting day and night with our knees pulled up. Several of us chose to sleep outside in the open air, but when it started raining they began to hit each other so that they could get a place to stand inside. The SS men hit and shot people with pleasure, without any reason. One of the SS sergeants always walked along with a big German shepherd dog, usually in rainy weather when everybody was in the barrack. He came in and beat up everybody he could with a club and went out through the other door. Everybody was trying to escape from him, so they trampled each other to death. On the evening of 4th May, when the American troops arrived I had already been very weak and I even hallucinated. They took me to Wells, then to Lambach, where I received careful medical treatment.

Looting