Protocol Nr. 70
Name: S. A.
Gender: male
Place of birth: Mircse
Date of birth: 1927
Place of residence: Mircse
Occupation: student
Concentration: Ungvár
Ghetto: Ungvár
Camps: Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Melk, Ebensee
Gender: male
Place of birth: Mircse
Date of birth: 1927
Place of residence: Mircse
Occupation: student
Concentration: Ungvár
Ghetto: Ungvár
Camps: Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Melk, Ebensee
The person in question has given us the following information: 4 Jewish families lived in Mircse. We owned a pub and a tobacconist's. The other Jew was a shoemaker, the third a shopkeeper and the fourth one worked as a day labourer. We lived very plainly. The antisemitic decrees were introduced last April; the notary and the gendarmes dealt with everything related to us. The houses were searched and when we were taken to the ghetto, our flats were sealed. The other inhabitants were watching, laughing as we were being taken to Ungvár. In the ghetto in Ungvár those who still had money could acquire food. We went to work at the train station. Many of us were locked up together, because all the Jews from Ungvár and its environs were there. Around 10th July 1945 we were taken away from Ungvár and we were entrained. 80 people travelled in a cattle car and it was our task to get water for ourselves. We had no chance to escape from there, nor from the ghetto, since the gendarmes guarded us watchfully everywhere. The Germans took over from the Hungarian gendarmerie in Kassa. We received water there too. When we got out of the train in Auschwitz, they made the old people, the women and the men under 40 years stand aside and took them away. I never saw them again. We were taken to the disinfecting building where they cut our hair, we had a bath and we received striped clothes. We spent 5 days in Auschwitz. We did not have to work. We just got acquainted with the punishment called Appell there. In Mauthausen we were locked up in a block for a week, and then they took us with a transport to Melk. We bored a tunnel in a mountain in Melk, because they made us build a factory there. It was very hard work: we worked in 3 shifts, 10-12 hours a day. We got very little to eat. If somebody made a little mistake he received 58 blows for it. Many people died of complete exhaustion because the work was terribly hard. Those who were weak, were taken to hospital and they never came back. There were disinfections every second week. 30-50 people died daily in the winter. We had to obey the capos and the Kommandoführer, otherwise they beat us up. If somebody stopped for a short time during the work, they beat him up very harshly. We had to line up for roll call for 2-3 hours every day. From Melk I was taken to Ebensee. There I worked in a quarry, which was tough. There they gave us even less to eat than in Melk. We got up at 3 o'clock every day and marched for 3 hours to the place of work, then we worked from 6 o'clock in the morning to 6 o'clock in the evening. Then another 3 hour long march home followed, so it was at least 9 o'clock when we arrived home. Then we received about 100 grams of bread and a little jam. Then we lined up for roll call and then we went to sleep. The Americans came and liberated us around 15th May. From that time on we did well, we were given food and clothes.