Interview conducted on June 29, 1945, in Budapest at the home of the National Care Committee for DEGOB Deportees / Elisabeth Women’s School, 37 Ajtose Dürer Avenue

Name: …..
Born: Beregkövesd, September 28, 1925
Occupation: Housewife
Last place of residence: Beregkövesd
Concentration camps: Beregszasz
Birkenau May 20, 1944 – July 20, 1944
Geislingen July 20, 1944 – April 15, 1945
Allach April 15 – May 1, 1945

The person named above reports the following:
About 300 Jewish families lived in Beregkövesd. They were craftsmen, merchants, and farm workers. There were also doctors and lawyers among them. The Jews did not have good living conditions; they lived in poverty and worked hard.

My father was a carpenter and farm laborer, and we worked hard to make ends meet.
The first anti-Jewish measures began in 1939, when there were plans to exterminate the entire Jewish population of the village. In 1941, they began revoking business licenses and expropriating businesses. One man in particular, named Ferenc Papp, took over the Jewish businesses for himself.

A major typhus epidemic was raging in our area, so in early May they were only able to take us to Beregszas, to the ghetto. It was located on a farm where Jews from three villages were crammed together. A thousand families lived there. The gendarmes herded us into the churchyard and told us that we were not allowed to take any money or gold with us. But everyone hoped to save their lives with a little bread. And so not everyone handed over their valuables. Many, of course, gave everything.

We gave everything we owned to the gendarmes. German soldiers also came into the ghetto, and we had to keep a distance of three steps from them. They threatened to shoot us if we got any closer.
Then they took away our silverware, candlesticks, clocks, and so on. Everyone was afraid, and whoever owned anything gave it to them. The men dug trenches and pits. We took our food with us. We didn’t get anything from anyone.

One day, the order came to cut off our beards. But there was no time left for that, since we were being loaded into railcars. On May 16, 1944, we were loaded into railcars. There were sixty people in each railcar. They gave us water, and we took bread with us. For the seven of us, there was one loaf of bread, which was supposed to last four days.

The Germans took us over from the Hungarians in Košice (Hungarian: Kassa). I know that they didn’t give any water to the people in the other railcar, and many of them died when they arrived there. It was dark, the door was locked, and it was a terrible journey.

When we arrived in Birkenau, our father went on alone. We walked with our mother for a while. Then we were separated from her. She went with the three little children—our sisters—and I stayed with my sister. First we were taken to the bathhouse, where we had to hand over all our belongings—shoes, clothes, and so on. Instead, we were given prison uniforms and old shoes. Our hair was shaved off. We were crammed into a barracks with a thousand other women, where sleep was out of the question because we were lying so close together. Thirteen of us slept in one bed (a wooden cot). We were stacked on top of each other on shelves (bunk beds), and some even slept under the beds.
They constantly took roll call to make sure everyone was present. We saw neither people nor trees there; we were like prisoners. The block was surrounded by power lines. (Power lines = electric fence??)

We weren’t allowed to use the toilet. That really got to us. We were served food in terribly dirty dishes. At first we could put up with it because we’d lost our appetites. That’s why we often preferred not to eat at all—it was that dirty.

There were bedbugs and filth, and we were completely covered in lice once our hair started to grow.

We often had to stand at attention. If anyone could no longer stand, crouched down, or sat down, everyone had to stand at attention on their knees as punishment. If anyone did something wrong, we were all punished.

The Germans called us to roll call twice a day; whether it was raining or snowing, we always had to stand outside. Many people collapsed from hunger, the snowfall, and the freezing cold. Hundreds fell over, and the guard wouldn’t even give us any water to give them. During roll call, many people died from having to stand for hours on end. We did nothing else all day. Our breakfast was roll call; our lunch was roll call. In the evening, we were allowed back into our barracks, where absolute silence reigned. We weren’t allowed to speak.

We didn’t have to work. At dawn—it was still dark—we got up for roll call, and when we cried, the commanders said, “There’s the crematorium; that’s where they burned your parents,” and unfortunately, that was true. They woke us up at night and frightened us by saying they were taking us to the crematorium.

The selections took place daily in different blocks. Whether small or large, fat, thin, or weak—they took everyone, just as they pleased. Age didn’t matter; they were merciless. I always held my sister close because I was terrified they would take her away from me. They saw that and took my sister away, and I cried the whole time.

In the morning, we were given some bitter tea, then the five of us lined up and were counted. The five of us had to share a single bowl, which we used to wash ourselves and from which we drank. At 9:00 a.m., many people went to the kitchen to help. At that time, lunch was distributed to thousands.

It was very cold, and we were freezing. We rationed our food to buy socks or a small coat from those who had been there before us. If they saw us with them, they took them away immediately and even beat us for it.

Anyone who had a cold or diarrhea was not allowed to go out (to the toilet), even if they cried. This suffering was terrible. During the time when we were not allowed to go to the toilet, terrible things happened—so terrible that they can hardly be put into words.

We were taken from Birkenau to Geislingen. There, we worked in an ammunition factory. We worked 12-hour shifts, alternating weekly between day and night shifts. There were two factories (perhaps departments in different buildings). We operated machines, worked at tables, or had to transport goods back and forth between the “factories.” I worked at a table. Many of the machine operators had lost their hands or fingers there. We were very tired and would doze off, but the machines kept running, and that’s when the unfortunate incidents happened.

If someone dozed off in the factory, the female guard would note down the prisoner number and report it to the camp. At seven in the morning, we went home, lined up for roll call, and they counted us off to make sure no one was left behind. Suddenly, the one whose number had been noted was called out. She had to go, but of course she didn’t know why. They asked her, “What did you do?” If she answered “nothing,” she was beaten and punished for falling asleep. The others went to sleep, but she had to keep working. She had to work on the cold ground with a pickaxe, shovel, and spade. She received no food all day, and in the evening she had to work again (in the factory). Whenever she fell asleep again—which was impossible to avoid without sleep or food—she wasn’t punished the next day, but was beaten until she was completely exhausted. They beat people so brutally that everyone was covered in bruises. She became ill from crying so much and ended up in the infirmary. No one ever came out of there alive.

At the factory, they were satisfied with us. We worked very hard. A friend of mine was exploited so severely by the foreman that she became seriously ill, contracted pneumonia, and died. She was only 19 years old.

Our food was so bad that people were starving. There was a mother with two children who could no longer bear the extreme hunger. She went to the camp commander and told him that our food was being stolen and that we were left with nothing to eat. The camp commander then summoned the kitchen worker, who came up with all sorts of excuses. As a result, the woman was beaten so brutally that she fainted. Her two daughters and the entire camp witnessed this, and everyone had to serve five hours of detention.

There were many sick people. Our whole bodies were covered with sores and rashes, and many of us died from them. I can’t even describe it, but our blood had already turned bad; we were constantly sick, and many died.

There was a time when, driven by hunger, we went to the dump to collect potato peels to eat. We chewed on the bones that the commanders had gnawed on. We were terribly hungry. If we were caught doing this, they took it away from us and beat us cruelly. People were forced to steal. They would get up at night and go down to the cellars to get potatoes. If anyone saw them, that person wouldn’t get any bread for a week or two. They would take it away as punishment and make him go even hungrier. Many of us developed stomach problems, stomach cramps, and all sorts of other stomach ailments. Anyone caught stealing was beaten.

A typical example was this: Potatoes were being peeled in the kitchen. By accident, a potato with its skin on was thrown away. We searched for it in the trash. But we were caught, and we received 25 lashes on our bare bodies.

Later, we came down with an itchy disease that really took its toll on us because we had to scratch constantly. If just one person had a louse and someone else put their clothes on top of it, in no time the whole block—and then the whole camp—was full of lice. They took our combs away, so we ended up with head lice, too. That’s why they kept cutting our hair. For some, their hair is just starting to grow back. That’s how often it had already been cut.
Later, there was no more work at the factory, and we had to work in the camp—digging trenches and so on.

They saw that the enemy was approaching, so they took us to Allach. There was a large camp there, where we also saw men. We went to see if we could find our father or brother among them. When the guards noticed, they came and beat us brutally. They said, “There’s no father or brother here—only prisoners.”

The Polish guards were German political prisoners (who were assigned as Kapos). Even without orders, they beat us for the slightest infraction. They were utterly loyal to the Germans, which was evident in the way they beat us and forced us to work. We had to go out into the fields, cut tufts of grass, and lay them in front of the guards’ apartment buildings so that they would have a nice view in front of their homes.

It was bitterly cold in Allach, and we were so hungry that we would have starved to death within two more weeks. We had been starving the whole time and could no longer bear it. We had to work hard, and everyone was very weak. I wasn’t sick; I just couldn’t stand anymore and was shaking all over. They took me away from Allach on a transport. On the way, we lived on dry bread and very little water for a week.

The train kept moving forward and backward until we finally arrived in Tyrol. There, we met the Americans in a field. And from then on, things went well for us. We were provided with food. However, our stomachs were so parched that we could hardly eat anything, and both the food and our intense hunger made us feel sick. But little by little, we got used to eating again and slowly recovered.

I know all this from my own experience.

I would like to travel to Palestine and settle there.

Minutes taken by: Kandel Klara

Certified by: illegible
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Notes:

• Information in parentheses has been added for clarity.
• The train carrying the concentration camp prisoners was supposedly headed for Tyrol, but was liberated by the U.S. Army en route in Iffeldorf/Staltach, near Lake Starnberg.
• Bello Moskovits, married name Lebobits, had prisoner number 20680 at the Geislingen satellite camp.
• Based on an index card, it can be assumed that Bella and her sister Mali (born October 12, 1922, No. 20681) survived the Geislingen concentration camp.