IV: And so you left your, your home town in spring or summer '44.
Is it not so?
May, you could not remember exactly, but.
EF: Eh yeah, eh, eh, yeah it, it, it, it was probably earlier.
I think eh, I think we left the ghetto on that transport in June.
IV: In June.
EF: So, and we were maybe as long as a couple of months in the ghetto, I..
More, I think more than a month.
IV: More than a month. So..
EF: So that means we would have been taken probably in April or some time.
IV: And so it means you spent..
EF: '40, '44.
IV: Nearly a year in all those camps, in lots, a lot of camps.
EF: Y.., yes, let us see.
IV: Yeah, maybe, 10 months or 9 or something.
Yeah ma.., well it could have been May.
Let us see, if it was May.
IV: May..
EF: Eh '44.
IV: Yeah.
EF: When we were transported.
IV: Yeah, so..
EF: Eh and liberated in April..
IV: So nearly..
EF: 23rd, nearly a year total, yeah.
IV: So in, in all this time, what do you think, what was the most difficult, most hard and most terrible thing for you?
EF: {breathing} Eh {breathing} you know {laughing} it is, you know it is hard to say.
{breathing} Eh I mean one of, one of the, one of the things I remember before we were deported, for about a year at least living in just total anxiety.
You know the fear when, because we were hearing things of what was happening in Poland and Czechoslovakia with the Jews.
So we knew eh that something was happening.
And I just remember this kind of general fear and anxiety for, for a long time.
{breathing} Eh {breathing} well you know, {breathing} it is hard, you know, once, once we were into labour camp and you know we were in a kind of a routine.
Then it was simply a matter of survival, you know.
You try not to get sick.
Because you knew, if somebody got sick they never {shaking the head} came back.
Eh you try not to get in, not to make any problems or..
Because you knew that eh, eh an SS man, if he felt like it, could just shoot you and nobody would object {laughing}.
So you got simply trying to survive.
{moving the shoulders} As best you could trying to stay healthy.
Trying to stay psychologically healthy.
Eh, eh but so I would say the worst part was eh both before.
Eh leaving the village you know being marched like to the village and the villagers just look and go on.
Eh I mean, that was {shaking his head and body} wha {shivering} {laughing}.
Eh it was something very, very strange in a way.
{breathing} And then eh getting to Birkenau and, and eh the separation.
And we sort of knew what was going on in Birkenau, you know.
Eh in fact you, you could smell the crematorium already.
And just eh, just it was so, such a, such a dark time eh that it is very difficult to describe really.
Eh {shaking his head} it was eh something you could absolutely not imagine.
I could not.
But once we were sort of off to the labour camp, eh like I said, then it was more {moving his shoulders, head and body} I do not know, a certain acceptance.
And then you think you want to survive.
Because I, I, I, I should say eh and it is obvious that eh Hungarian Jews in this respect were, were eh {breathing} were lucky, because eh the deportation did not happen until 1944 the last, last year of the war.
And eh I mean, it, it was pretty clear to us that if this had gone on much longer we would, we would not eh survive.
In fact I, I do not know how some of the Polish and other people maybe German and Czech who were in camps long.., much longer than we were.
And they still survived, but..
I think the way things were going at, at Buna, you know the way we were being fed and worked {shaking his head and shoulders} eh you would not..
The end of the war came in time {confirming with head} yeah, let us put it that way.
IV: And now...
EF: Yeah {breathing}..
IV: 63 years later, what is the reason why do you came back now to Germany?
EF: {breathing} Well, you know I, I, I have thought of eh, of eh coming back eh just, just, just for a visit eh sometime.
But you know I, I have not really thought of Flossenbürg, because we were such a relati.., I mean compared to, to Buna, we were such a very short time in Flossenbürg.
And I had eh, I had not, I had thought maybe I would want to go back to Birkenau, Auschwitz just to see, see the place and maybe some kind of commemoration for, for, for my family you know.
But I have not thought of Flossenbürg.
I mean it was just a place that we stayed.
But eh so it was really Anna Andlauer's doing that I am here.
{laughing} {moving his head, shoulders and body} Eh and, and this is, I, I did not know it was a Flossenbürg memorial thing.
{laughing} I had no idea until she, she told us about it.
{moving his shoulders} {breathing} But I, I am glad eh both, from the point of view of seeing what is being done.
And from, from the point of view of eh getting together with some of the people that we were {breathing} in Indersdorf in and some even going back to the camps.
Eh which is eh just a you know, in a way that, in a way that times after liberation were kind of good times, you know.
Even though, because we knew our family was gone.
We are maybe, we, we, we did not have any hope that we will find anybody.
Although we sp.., we were looking for a while.
But eh in a way it was, it was a hopeful period.
Eh we knew that eh we were going some place.
We were leaving Germany {laughing} {moving his shoulders and body}.
Eh and eh starting some kind of new life.
Of course the, the fact that we had the relatives in New York was also helpful, because eh it was some, some family, you know.
But eh if, if Anna had not been doing what she was doing I, I would not even know about Flossen..
IV: Yeah.
EF: That Flossenbürg..
Apparently there was a lot more going on here than, than I knew {laughing}.
IV: Yeah. Yeah.
EF: When I, it was one of apparently some kind of major camp which to us it was just a sort of a transit point.
IV: Yeah.
EF: Eh and eh we, we found out after liberation that we, we were on the way to Dachau.
We did not, we did not eh know that of course.
And eh we go.., we always thou.., of course we, I, I do not know that we ever completely lost hope of being {moving head and body} somehow {laughing} saved.
But we really felt that, that eh German eh you know the SS, the Nazis that they would not let us survive, because they would not want eh witnesses.
IV: ..want any witnesses.
EF: I always thought, well they, they just would not. But at the same time we did not completely eh loose hope that it might happen.
It is kind of strange, yeah.
But eh ne..,near the end I think some, some of the.. Actually this is what, what I heard was that eh, eh..
Many people were saved, because eh some of the soldiers even SS thought that eh obviously the war ist lost and the Americans or whoever is coming and they try, they actually saved some people and thought this would save them..
IV: Save them..
EF: From this.
But eh when we were liberated it was simply a matter of going one way and I, I assume eh, I that those Germans who were guarding us were, were probably became prisoners, but I do not know.
It was, it was really an active war situation, because the war was not over yet {laughing}.
But it was over for us {laughing}.
That was..
IV: Sort of it.
EF: That was {laughing}.
IV: OK.