IV: Heute ist Samstag der 20. Juli, wir sind in Weiden in der Oberpfalz im Hotel Admira.
Mein Name ist Michael Aue von der Medien Werkstatt und wir führen jetzt ein Interview mit Agi Geva,
die heute in den USA lebt und die 1930 am 2. Juni in Budapest geboren wurde.
AG: You, you didn't started anything?
IV: I start, I started, you just have to wait to just..
AG: No, but I can talk when, I mean, what I am telling now is not, is off record?
IV: Now it's off.
AG: Ok. Then my..
IV: Ok, so let's start a little bit with the beginning, can you tell me a little bit about your childhood,
where you have been born, about your parents, your family, how you grew up?
AG: Ok, I was born in Budapest, but we didn't live there at the time.
We lived at a farm, where my father was the director of a very big farm
and ah problem started in 1936, when Jews couldn't be in key positions anymore and he was ah fired.
It affected him more than we could have imagined.
He got heart, heart sickness and ah he, he never recoverd actually from this shock that he had to loose his job.
Ah until up, up to then we had quite a nice ah childhood, but at the age five, six we had to leave, was called Pogon Puszta.
And ah we went to Miskolc where I grew up actually and where we were deported from also.
My mother ah opened a pension ah like a small boarding house, small hotel in order to save my father worries and work
and ah she did all the management and ah we liked to live there very much with my sister.
We had again quite nice.
Ah we didn't feel antisemitism, because our parents were very careful about not having us ah know a lot about it.
At school, there was no Jewish school ah no Gymnasium, only a protestant one that's where we attended
and that were only two Jewish girls in my class room.
We felt it in ah social way that we were never invited to any birthday parties and ah any other parties we two Jewish girls so.
That we, we could have managed with it {breathing}.
IV: So and how ah can you remember ah when it started changing the situation a little bit for you?
AG: It didn't change a little bit.
It changed a lot in 1944 actually on the 19th of March my dad died.
He died on, in the morning and we called our relatives in Budapest to come to the funeral and they told: "We can't, uncle Nazi arrived."
And my mother understood that the occupation started.
My dad, if he hadn't died that day, for natural, not natural reasons exactly,
he had this heart trouble and he had lung trouble and he had high blood pressure, he had everything one can imagine.
He would have died from the shock.
So when we came back from the cemetery all the street corners were already ah full of ah SS ah guards and soldiers and officers and,
so Miskolc was occupied on the same day when he died.
IV: So and what did you do?
What did your family do?
At this day, about the next days?
AG: {Breathing} The next days, I mean, from that day on everything changed.
But everything changed for the worst in ah in an unimaginable way.
Rules started to come out of, for instance the red, the yellow star.
We couldn't go out to the street without the yellow star.
We couldn't have a bicycle.
I had to give my bicycle that, take it to the municipality.
It was an idea I never, never would have imagined that should be connected.
We {breathing} heard new words like "ghetto", "yellow star", "deportation",
concentration camps, this became new words,
we had to learn with my sisters, we didn't know the meaning.
We never thought we have to know about it.
And things started to change rapidly.
IV: Did you have heard about the things that happened in other countries before like Poland?
Or what happened to Jewish people or what the Germans did there?
AG: You know, as there was not television on those days and the BBC wasn't supposed to be heard.
Ah the Hungarian Radio did not give the exact news.
So the little news that we had we had to imagine the rest of it,
but somehow most of my acquaintances and friends and relatives
everybody's told one sentence: "To Hungary it can't happen."
It happened.
IV: So maybe you continue what happened then?
So you could, could go on to school further on, or?
AG: No.
IV: No.
AG: We couldn't go to school anymore.
It was the only good thing about it.
IV: {Laughing} And ah..
AG: That's what we thought.
IV: And the little boarding.., the pension your mother that was running, it was closed..?
AG: No my mother kept on running the pension until the last minute when we just had to walk out from it.
We had to walk out, leave everything behind.
We could take something with us what we could carry, nothing more.
The choice was very hard for my mother mostly.
And we didn't know where we were going and why.
IV: Nobody told you before?
AG: No, we were taken to the ghetto.
But before we were taken to the ghetto, there were rumours that we could save us the possiblility of being deported,
if we go to the municipality and swear loyalty to the country and go and work in the fields.
So my mother ground.., rounded up some 30, 33 friends who were ready to do this
and we went to the municipality and we swore loyalty and we were send to Muhi Puszta,
that was the place where we had to work in the fields.
And nobody exactly knew for how to work in the fields,
but we had guards around and we had long, long hours and we did it
and we thought with this we can save our lifes maybe.
{Breathing} But we didn't.
They came to take us, they changed their minds or the rules
or the laws and they took us back to Miskolc
to the ghetto, that was we thought the worst possibility, in very small apartments they ah send five, six families,
of, of course only one bathroom and one kitchen.
It was terribly crowded and very un.., very, very uncomfortable.
We had very little food, also water was scarce ah they didn't let us go out.
We were fenced in.
It was a very bad situation.
IV: Ah, can you remember how many people have been living in this ghetto?
AG: {Breathing} You know, all the Jews from Miskolc.
IV: Yeah.
AG: All the Jews, I can, I don't have a number.
I, I have no idea.
I knew only pro apartment how many families were in there.
Nein, I couldn't tell you.
IV: But so, was it a big ghetto or a small one?
AG: It was a very big ghetto.
It was a very big ghetto.
Ah people were there much longer than us, because we were in the fields trying to work
so we, they brought us back and then, whatever they say, meant {breathing} they had some other plans,
we took, they took the whole ghetto to the brick factory and outskirts of ah Miskolc.
And ah we were waiting there for trains they told us.
We can't be ah anymore in our hometown, we can't even be in Hungary anymore,
we have to be in concentration camps, we have to be deported.
These abstract words didn't mean to us anything.
We didn't understand the meaning, my sister and me.
But my mother was with us, so at least we were together
and after a couple of, I don't know, it was a week, two weeks, ah the trains came.
IV: And all the time you've been waiting at the brick factory just waiting for trains to come?
AG: For the, yes, yes.
And disappointment was very big.
It wasn't trains, they were boxing cars.
They were wagons, cattle wagons.
We couldn't believe it that we have to crawl up on these wagons,
they were very high and they pushed us inside.
And there was, there were only standing place
until there was absolutely no more standing place, they closed the door on us.
{Breathing} It was very hot, no air, there was a pail in of the corners.
We had no, very little food, no water {breathing}, waited for a long time until they started
and ah we had no idea where we were going, for how long ah took a long, long time.
Took three, three and a half days.
And we were in very bad condition when, from day to day it was getting worse and worse.
Worse about it was that there were pregnant women,
women with very small babies, very old people, very sick people.
Ah, all sorts of conditions.
There were people who were yelling, they didn't know how certain things can be possible.
How, how human beings can be transported that way.
There were women starting to cry, they never could stop, they never stopped the whole three days.
There were of course babies crying who couldn't stop either.
There was nothing to stop them with.
Ah it was ah very, very desperate, fant.., a terrible situation.
We thought that the ghettos were the worst, so that was the worst.
IV: So and where the train ended up?
AG: When we got to a certain station the train stopped and we had no idea where we were.
The doors opened, we saw a lot of SS soldiers,
we were supposed to get off those trains, was hard to get off.
We were helped off partly, but not out of politeness,
they had to, they wanted us to get down already.
And they went back to see who was left in many other boxcars,
or how you call them, cattle, cattle wagons?
Many people died before they arrived.
In, in, in the one I was, nobody.
And then, men and women were separated, that was a very tearful,
very, very emotional sight the way they clung
to each other and they didn't want to be separated and they wanted to stay together.
There was lots of ah yelling, shouting: "Los, los."
And lots of ah, ah yelling, crying, hysterics faintings.
It is impossible to describe it even, until they could seperate the two groups.
And we didn't know where the men were taken.
IV: What about the children?
They also were, the little boys came with the men or they were seperated with..
AG: No, no, they were, they were, they stayed with the women.
Children stayed with the women.
Nobody ever asked me this, I didn't think of it.
And then, we were going to our, to a certain point.
And my mother was very scared and very worried and she told us to keep on going the way the line is moving.
And she is going to the front and see what's going on
and of course from both sides there were ah SS with guns pointing at us and she risked,
she risked this, her life I would say, but told she has to find out what's going on.
She has to know what's the next step should be.
And when she came back she told us never to mention family ties,
because she saw that whenever someone told: "Let me go with my mother, let me go with my grandmother."
Or with my daughter or sister.
That was immediately, yeah, select ah I mean, separated.
Then she saw that they asked ages, she heard under 16
they were automatically send to the, to a certain side.
She didn't know what was good, what was bad.
The women with, whoever had a child with ah her, definitely went to the other side, we called it.
Ah these babies naturally, pregnant women of course, ah old people also, sick people also, people who couldn't walk, also.
So she observed that ah the able-bodied women might be sent to a working camp,
she thought, and she came back and told us this.
And then she told: "You can't say your age."
We were 13, my, my sister and I was 14.
She told: "You can't say, you have to say 18 and 19 at least."
And she will say five years younger, if it came to it that they asked her.
And then they ah asked all, they, they looked over also whether people were healthy and, and moving well.
So she warned us how to behave in case we were asked.
It went terribly quickly, left, right, left, right.
There was not much to think about.
And then she saw that we had scarfs with us
and she told we should bind our scarfs on our head in a way that we should look older and it was like this {putting the scarf on}.
My sister and me we both bind, bound our heads that way.
And we don't know exactly what helped, but we were sent all the three of us to one side.
IV: And then you stood there still beside the trains?
AG: Not any more, not any more.
We were sent to a building ah in a big, big hall and we sat on the cold stone for hours
we were waiting we didn't know for what.
And then they came and took our bags away,
this bag we had to, we could take with us, ah my sister and me, we had a doll, watch,
I had a new watch, I had a book that I read currently, I took a dress I remember
and we had to put it down in one of the corners of this big hall.
And grown-ups didn't have such not un.., unremarkable stuff.
They had documents, money, jewels, pictures, they didn't want to part from the bags..
They were hysterical, they were crying, they were begging, they were ah fainting.
But they didn't let them.
They told you: "Put it in that corner."
Of course that we were ah, everything was on gun point.
So, I don't know what my mother heard, but I imagined that she was also desperate
and had to get, had to part with her bag.
{Breathing} They were, everybody was in a very bad situation
and every time we thought that is the worst, but it wasn't.
After that we had to undress and that was the utmost humiliation.
They told us to undress everything, to not to have on anything.
Now ah besides the humiliation it was again the point that ah most of the women had sewn in their cloth
and in their pockets, but they thought that if the bags get lost
or it will be taken maybe, but they didn't think it will be,
will have, they will have to think of something else.
So they took some of the jewels, some of the money, documents, pictures, what ever they could think of,
whatever was very, very important for them they sew it in the linings up the cloth
or in the pockets and now they have to take it off.
So it started all over again the beggings, the cryings, the faintings, the screamings.
It's impossible to, to, to imagine what was going on.
{Breathing} But we had no other way.
And then we were standing there without anything on and then they came to shave all hairs of all from our body.
That was, I can't tell what humiliation it meant.
And after it more, they desinfected us with, they sprayed us with a disinfectant,
so, we just, we just couldn't breath even, we couldn't even recognize each other
without hair and, and ah without cloth and ah {breathing}..
IV: Who did this work?
Other inmates from this camps or soldiers or female soldiers?
AG: Female soldiers, but men soldiers were, were present all the time, so it was getting worse even.
I, I couldn't even look who, who, who it was.
It was so unpleasant and so unbelievable.
And then we were sent to the showers and then we didn't know
that in the other barracks all those people who were sent to the other side,
we had no idea that they had gas coming from the showers.
We didn't know and we didn't find out for a long, long time.
So after the showers we were ah led to another hall and we had to pass by a big pile of cloth
and as we were passing by slowly everybody could took, everybody could take a dress and the shoe.
Whether the shoe fits or not, it wasn't important and
of course no underwear, no nothing, just one single dress.
After this was done, we were sitting on the cold stone again for hours and waiting,
we didn't know for what.
And the way we looked and the way we felt, was anyhow, nothing was important anymore.
And then we were given two grey blankets.
Everything was grey in Auschwitz, the blankets, the barracks, the air, everything.
And then we were sent to barracks that had three floors, three pritsches.
IV: So, from (???)
AG: Yes, yes. And there were six, seven women on one of them, on each one ah
And we had these two blankets with us, we could use it underneath or we could cover with it.
And sometimes they got wet and we're standing still Zählappell was the way,
that we spent our time in Auschwitz, we were standing outside in five lines,
rows and they came to count us all the time,
three, four times a day and when it was raining these blankets got wet.
Or this only dress we had on got wet.
We had to deal with it.
And it was a very bad situation.
IV: At this time did you know that you had been in Auschwitz or had you ever heard the name Auschwitz before?
AG: I have never, never.
So there we heard that we were in Birkenau in Auschwitz, I am not quite sure.
And we didn't know what it meant.
We didn't know it was a ah extermination camp.
We had no idea and my mother spoke to all the grown-ups around her.
They were mostly friends from Miskolc from our city.
Not to let my sister and me know, what's going on.
And whenever something bad was going on, did she, we were taken away,
we shouldn't know and she was very scared of our, our a moods and, and ah knowledge,
we shouldn't be involved in anything that's scary.
And she succeeded, we never found out what happened until the liberation.
In this she succeeded, so after ah two weeks I suppose there were selections daily,
she was so scared of these selections, she knew that if one of us will be sent somewhere else
ah we will not survive, that she was sure of it.
And she did everything to keep us together.
And she kept taking of my glasses to put them sideways in her shoe, to hide it.
That I shouldn't look different like anybody else.
And I should have my glasses.
And then we were selected together and taken to the railway station and into the wagons again.
And we were sent out of Auschwitz at last to Plaszow.
We didn't know, we didn't know it was Plaszow, we didn't know what it meant,
we didn't know what it was.
Later Spielberg made a film there.
IV: It's not so far.
It's not so far from Auschwitz?
AG: It was an hours train ride.
IV: Yeah, yeah.
AG: And it was much worse.
It was better only in a way that there were no selections.
So we didn't have to be, have this scare every single day to be separated.
But it was ah camp of ah I could say a camp of torture,
but what I didn't see ah I don't, I am not going to talk about it.
I heard a lot of stories, later.
My mother was careful we shouldn't hear it there.
We did a very ah humiliating work.
We had to take big rocks, carry them up the hill,
next day we had to carry them back, back down.
My sister was thirteen and out of frail she couldn't lift those rocks that they showed her to take
and when she couldn't move it and pick it up she was very badly beaten.
Nor my mother and me couldn't do anything, we couldn't say that we could help or something,
because we were not suppose to say that, that we were family.
So she had to deal with it.
Ah I will not even talk what was going on in Plaszow with other people,
things that I haven't seen and haven't experienced myself.
We were working a lot in the sun.
We were very s.., we looked very bad, we were sunburned and our skin was peeling and ah, ah
we had pains and, and ah we were tired and the food was a little bit only better than in Auschwitz.
And ah it was hard.
IV: So you told that this work you had to do was totaly senseless?
AG: Totally, totally senseless.
IV: Also and other people, was there also work like in other camps to produce things
like weapons or something in Plaszow or you didn't see, you didn't..
AG: I didn't see.
I know one more working place that we sometimes did it.
We were sitting on the ground and hammering small stones into a small path that it should be straight.
Ah there were many, many other working places that I don't personally know about
and then we hoped that we are going to be liberated by the Russians as we heard some gun shots,
we thought they are nearing.
And we were big, ah hopeful, but they liquidated the camp and they did not.
IV: You like to drink a little bit?
AG: Ah thank you.
They took the whole camp to the railway station into the wagons.
And this time, my sister and me at the first time we were so desperate we couldn't stop crying.
Because in Plaszow as bad as it was we knew, you know, sometimes you, it's very bad, but you it, it's known, it's familiar.
And to go back again to the wagons and start this travel, we didn't know where,
where to and my mother kept on telling:
"You were in Auschwitz, it was the worst.
You were in Plaszow, it was, not, not much better, but it was also bad,
you can be taken only to a better place."
So, she kept on telling us the whole hour and then the train stopped and when they opened the door
we just couldn't believe our eyes, we were back in Auschwitz.
So this time my mother had really nothing to say anymore.
She only saw one officer alone, selecting, that's how I remember it.
The information is, that it was Mengele.
We didn't know of course that he was a doctor.
We didn't know the experiments, we didn't know what he was doing there,
but we saw that he was selecting alone.
And then my mother really got scared, she told,
she will go first, sister will be next and I will be the third.
And we should try to follow her wherever she was sent, she took this risk,
because she didn't think that we can survive without her.
Or we should say or try to get to a working camp and say that it's a working camp, in case it's possible.
So she kept on telling this to us and ah, because I, my face and my whole skin was peeling all the time
so that's why she thought that I should be the last
and she trusted me that I'll go where she was sent to.
So she went in front of him, in front of Mengele and she was sent right and so was my sister.
And I was sent to the left.
Then I told him:
"No, please, please, let me go to that side."
He says: "Why, what is on that side?"
I told: "The working camp."
Of course I didn't say that it was my mother or sister.
Ah she really prepared us well and he told: "You don't,
what, what you want to do in a working camp?
You don't look to me who can still work."
But then he realized that we were talking German.
And then he asked: "How do you speak German that well?"
And somehow something changed and he told: "Ok, go there."
IV: He was talking in German to you?
AG: And I was talking in German.
IV: Yeah, but he, when he asked?
AG: Yes, yes, he was talking in German, I was answering in German.
And ah he was impressed enough to let me go wherever I asked to go.
So, I was safe, but my mother from far, when she saw, what was going on, she was sure, she lost me.
And she fainted and she didn't ah come to herself yet, when I arrived even to, to that side.
So at least we were again together.
And then came another humiliation, we were tattooed on our left arm,
the letter A, Auschwitz, and a long number.
All the three of us.
And then I fainted.
Maybe also from the shock of almost being sent somewhere else, I didn't know what it meant.
I didn't know that it was ah the crematorium, I didn't know these things.
But to be separated from the family I knew that it, I won't make it.
And then the pain after tattooing, so I fainted.
IV: So that was the first time, you got tattooed in all this?
AG: Yes, but it was the second time in Auschwitz.
We didn't get in the, at the first time.
IV: And then you've been brought to barracks?
AG: Yes, then we were brought to barracks and we had an incident.
Ah, my mother had some wounds, someth.., something on her shoulders,
because someone stood on her shoulder to look out the window where we were taken to
and they were afraid that it might be contagious,
so she was sent to a quarantine barrack and we were sent to a different one.
And she was scared of course of the selections that we were,
this time we can be separated easily and she will not be able to join us or vice versa.
So she agreed with a girl whose sister was in our barrack to ex.., to get exchanged.
And when the evening came and the time came to, to make the change, the girl got scared and she stayed.
And my mother came and that meant that in our barrack there was one more
and when the Zählappell was done in the evening and they saw that there is one more
and they wanted to find out who it was.
And they threatened us that it, when they found out that it was missing from the quarantine barrack
of course we were only numbers, there were no names,
they ah threatened us that we are going to die, we are going to be sick,
we are going to be this and the people were told, tell who it was who joined you.
Now my mother was highly respected for one reason.
Ah the hunger was really very bad and many mothers or daughters stole from each other at night
the piece of bread that they put aside and when it was found out of course there were beatings and shoutings
and yellings and cryings and ah almost everybody did it.
That was ah such a situation where you were not human even anymore sometimes.
And they respected my Mum, because she did not steel from us, on the contrary,
she came and told us sometimes to my sister and me that:
"Look, I had my portion already and here have another, another slice or ah half a slice"
and they couldn't understand how she could do it.
And they knew that she joined us, so nobody, nobody was ready to tell it.
And then they came this another SSs who told us, that if you don't tell it the whole barrack will be shot.
And still nobody told it.
And we stood till five o' clock in the morning Zählappell,
outside and we don't know and we never found out what was the reason,
but we were sent back to the barracks and we were not shot.
So that was one of the incidents.
The other, other let's say it was pleasant, somehow, the other incident,
when one of ah we found out that one of the young women from Miskolc
was an opera singer and we asked her to sing to us.
And ah it was hard to convince her, because
ah at the selections her mother was sent to the other side,
when we came back from Plaszow and she was desperate and her si..,
she was also, also two girls with their mother,
and her sister was with her, but ah she was in no mood to sing of course, but she did it.
And ah we applauded her so much and loved her so much for it that she did it
every couple of days and that lifted our spirits really, really for the time being.
IV: Can you remember what kind of songs, or?
AG: Traviata.
I remember most opera arias, that are very well known,
but the Traviata was very, very impressive for us.
Also because of those words and so this, this really meant a lot.
And then someone found out an old accquaintance of my mother was working in the kitchen
and she found out, she was afraid to ask whether we are with her, my sister and me,
and I and she sent us raw cabbage, every now and then,
when she could find us and might have been a lifesaver in a way
until we were selected again and sent to the station again.
IV: Can you remember how many days you have been in this situation?
AG: Weeks, weeks.
IV: Weeks, weeks, and so after this ah first ah thing you mentioned, wou.., ah
where ah nobody told ah the guards that your mother is the one,
who, who came back so and they ah told you:
"We are gonna shoot you, all."
Did somebody change?
So in, in your imagination what could happen?
Or, or are they, are treating the people?
CM: Ah, sie müsste mal das Papier aus der Hand nehmen, weil das {???}
IV: Das krazt? Das Tempo Taschentuch?
CM: Ja, sie tut die ganze Zeit so mitm Tempo machen und direkt vorm Mikrofon.
IV: Ah, excuse me, do you need the ah, ah,
AG: Ah, ok.
IV: It makes some noice sometimes.
AG: I didn't know, I didn't know, oh good you just say so.
IV: But he can, can hear it, with the ear phones and..
AG: Ok, sorry.
IV: Make a noise, we cannot hear.
CM: What's that? {Cell phone ringing}
IV: I forgot to turn off my ..
AG: You know, we were in such an inhuman situation, position, ah desperate, ah starving,
we were so thirsty in most of the time, ah even sleep deprived ah,
we were not quite, we were not ourselves at all, so, who was thinking?
Look, if someone would have told, who it was,
well we would have accept it, what could we do?
But we knew somehow that nobody will tell.
Somehow we knew.
And my mother wasn't scared eigther, I mean it was a, it was a situation where you, you,
ah you couldn't even talk, we were standing, standing in this Appellplatz for, for so many hours.
All, all our concern was that we can't stand even anymore,
when we can, we have to drink something, we have to eat something,
we, we were not thinking anymore.
IV: So we're now, we came to the time you got selected again or?
AG: Yes.
IV: Maybe you can go on?
AG: And we were s.., ah lucky again, three of us together, but that was already September,
and we were stands to the r.., we were sent to the railway station,
that's the forth time I was in this railway station
and back into the wagons and ah the wagons started and we didn't know again where to.
And ah my mother again kept on consoling us, that it can't be worse,
and this won't be worse and we should cheer up and
think positively and whatever they say at these days, but it was terribly cold.
And it wasn't winter yet, but it was very cold those nights and we with the
little cloth we had on and this time we didn't have any blankets even.
And we had no shoes proper, proper shoes and we had no proper clothing and no food no drink ah
during this ah trip and we were sent to Rochlitz, to Germany and
when they opened ah doors, at least we didn't see a camp.
Ah Rochlitz was a very small camp and we were chosen, selected actually 200 women,
20 Polish and 180 Hungarians.
And we were brought to a barrack and they told us,
we are going to be taught how to make small spare parts, screws, for aeroplanes.
But it's not the factory where we are going to work, it's the school actually
where we are going to be taught how to do it.
So in a way we felt good, that we are humans that we are not just a number, we are not cattles,
we are treated better, but the discipline was very, very harsh.
Food was a little bit better and the sleeping quarters were of course much better,
but it was, all the time we were scared,
all the time, it was very hard discipline and threats and ah,
and there were women guards, SS guards who were in many ways worse
and we were there a couple of weeks.
IV: And how many hours a day you had to work?
So or was it just to learn you..
AG: It wasn't bad, it was just to teach us, it wasn't so bad
and ah what was bad was the cold and ah the whole situation of course.
My sister had suffered very much, because she saw in September,
it was September that the school children, she saw school children from,
we were taken to another location that I can't recall where to
and she saw school children with bags and she broke and
she cried for two days that she will never go to school anymore.
I couldn't care less.
And that was the end of September when we were sent to,
I can't remember by train, by bus, I had no idea how we got to Stuttgart.
Near Stuttgart to Calw into the aeroplane factory, spare parts factory.
And there it was very bad.
They, people told us, our guards, that we are not supposed go near, go near the windows.
We had no ah fresh air for weeks, no daylight.
We were working from seven in the evening till seven in the morning
near monotonous machines that, that have put you to sleep even without being night.
And it was very hard to stay awake and do our job.
One girl lost her balance, because she fell asleep and she fell into the machine.
She was very badly hurt, she didn't die, she survived it.
One woman got Typhus, we thought that we are all going to get it, somehow I don't know, we didn't, she died.
Ah my, one day my mother fainted, because her stone exploded,
it was a filing stone, a big filing stone.
I was working on a revolver Drehbank.
I got the piece of Aluminium and the plans and I had to make a screw out of it and I did.
And when it was too big, it went to her departement
where they filed it the ac.., the necessary size
and my sister was in the controlling departement
where they checked whether the size was right.
So she filed ah these little screws and the stone exploded, she fainted
and they explained her that the stone is very, not only expensive,
but very rare and they, it will take a long time until they can have another one, until it comes in
the screws will stay in the cartons near the doors.
They can't do, they can't send them out.
And then she realized that maybe this was a good idea, she could make some mini sabotage
and keep those screws from arriving to the planes.
And so she did it many times.
The stone exploded, she fainted and nobody found out, of course we kids, we didn't know.
We had no idea that it was real, we thought really that it ah happened again,
so the maximum what could have happened, they thought she was stupid.
Nobody thought that she is doing it on purpose {breathing}.
Ah one day {clearing the throat} they came to tell us that this period is also done, finished, we have to leave.
So we thought, ok, we are going to get into the wagons again and god knows were, but we have to leave.
But there were no wagons, we had to walk.
Ah, it was unimaginable, that was already January, February, it was the end of February,
the cold was impossible and we were supposed to walk only at night.
IV: There was snow?
AG: I don't remember snow.
That was later than February, it was March already.
I have, I can't remember.
You know there was this 50-year silence, I never mentioned,
where we tried everything in our power to forget what happened
and nobody wanted to talk about it and we really tried hard to forget.
And my mother and sister mostly they didn't ah want to talk about it even, they didn't even, after I
came up with a question or wanted to know really something, they told:
"You survived, you just don't mention it anymore."
So, many things I really can't remember, couldn't remember
and anyhow we had to leave and it was the start of the death march the way it was called.
I can't describe what it was ah really we, we had no proper clothing of course, we had no proper shoes,
we had no hats, gloves, scarfs, underwear, it was undescribable, food, drinks I'm not even mentioning anymore.
{Breathing} We, I think, we took one blanket, that was not helpful at all.
And they wanted us to walk only at night.
They didn't want the people, the villagers to see us and to ask questions, who we are.
IV: And during day time?
You have been sleeping somewhere or?
AG: They found us barns.
IV: Yeah.
AG: And they found us, we, we had to find ourselves, they tried to find us something to eat.
Sometimes it was milk, sometimes it was bread.
We found us, we found ourselves the ah raw potatos, raw cabbage and we lived on it for a long time.
And ah I don't know, what they told to the villagers, who we were, what we were.
Sometimes they brought us something, most of the time no
and ah it took a long, long time this walk.
It was four hundred kilometers.
We were supposed to get to either Mauthausen or Dachau and we got till Garmisch-Partenkirchen,
but before we got to Garmisch-Partenkirchen I just really couldn't walk anymore
and one of the guards was helping me and told me
that we have to get to a station and then we can continue by train.
Now, some other people who understood German told us in Hungarian, that this is not true,
they are taking us to a railway station where they are waiting for trains with guns and the order to execute us.
"So just don't hurry so much", they told us.
Well, I couldn't hurry anyhow, I just sat down, I told:
"I don't care, I don't, I just can't walk anymore."
And I was the, the last one in the line.
And we didn't know what to believe, but we didn't even care anymore,
you know, we were so cold and so hungry and this time the tiredness were added to it.
That, we just, the, the despair was, was undescribable so we just couldn't cope anymore.
But they, we were, we were on gun point and we heared it later,
not then, we didn't know that many death marches ended with ah lots of ah casualties,
because those who couldn't continue walking they were shot and left on the roadside.
We didn't know it and even if we had known, I don't think we would have cared anymore.
So we got to the railway station somehow and the trains left.
So there was, there were no guns to execute us,
what we didn't know, we found out after a couple of days.
And ah, there were white envelopes given to the officers,
not to the soldiers, that's what we saw from far
and they contained ah false papers to go to Switzerland for the officers.
All this we found out a couple of days later.
And we were sent back to the forrest, there were creeks in those forrests
with small stones and my foot was bleeding and I was hurting
and I really didn't care anymore and it was the worst, worst day of my whole ah year, let's put it that way.
And I just said: "No more, that's it, I really, really don't care anymore."
And then somebody told: "Look around there are no guards around us."
And then ah the twenty Polish people were actually the Kapos and the Lagerälteste during the whole period
so the Lagerälteste called us to be around her
and she let us know that: "From today the 28th of April you are free."
So, yeah, it was impossible to understand even the, the
word and to imagine that it might be true.
And ah you know the worst day turned out to be the best
and the happiest and something that we never imagined even.
I never thought I will be ever free.
And ah actually that was the liberation, no, that was not the liberation.
I mean they told us, we are free
and then we were hundred and eighty Hungarians with hundred and eighty opinions
where we were, what to do, where to go, just didn't know what to do.
We were too tired and too worn out to think even.
{Breathing} And then somehow some 30, 35 women where of one opinion with my mother and we started out,
I don't know South, West at a certain direction and we heard soldiers from far
and we get scared again, might be Germans, Russians.
We had no idea, we found a stick, we, we bound some underwear on it, lifted it that it's, we are peaceful,
was supposed to be white and at least the soldiers saw that
we are peaceful and they sent me to talk to them
because of my English knowledge and they told me they have never in their lifes seen so many ugly, dirty, bold,
thin I don't know what else women in their lifes.
So, we told them, if they were liberating a camp they would have seen much worse.
As it was really true.
IV: And those were the Americans?
AG: And the.., those were the first Americans in my life I have seen.
And I have met and I never found,
who, never found them, those liberating veterans {breathing}.
IV: You've been looking for them, later?
AG: A lot, a lot, the Museum where I work also.
IV: Yeah, so and then, what happened?
So you are in a foreign country with nothing, ah with people you don't know,
how would they react when you show up, so..
AG: So they were the nicest people we have ever met.
They took us to their headquarters, they let us rest of course, they will fed us,
they brought doctors, nurses, whatever was necessary, we were in very bad state.
They ah really looked after us, but it couldn't have been forever.
They, the, they went shopping one day,
they told everybody can ask for something.
They will bring us whatever we were dreaming of the whole year.
Some people asked for a piece of cake, someone asked for Schnitzel, someone asked for chocolate,
someone asked for a jacket, because of the cold all the time and I asked for lipstick
and they brought whatever we asked for they give it, was ah, they were a very nice few weeks,
the way they looked after us.
But they had to give us up, they had to got to, to the URO,
United Restitutions Offices, they took us to Innsbruck
and we stayed there for eight months, my, we couldn't decide what to do.
I didn't want to go back to Hungary.
When my mother wanted to go and see who stayed alive, so we went back eventually.
IV: Let's have another short break, a little bit of water {breathing}.
Or maybe Hungaria, you learned German there?
AG: This is off record, right?
IV: This is off, yeah, yeah.
AG: I could tell this actually, ah I can't cope with the realitiy
as it really was, so that's not exactly as it was.
What I can't cope is the harder, harder parts of it.
This can be told actually, I mean, not off record.
IV: Yeah, yeah.
AG: At the end I will tell it.
So tell me when you start, when you..
IV: Yeah.
AG: Ok, so from, from Innsbruck ah we went back eventually to
Hungary and my mother reopened the pension
although it was ah in a bad condition that it was not un.., not furnished the, the way, we left it.
So she went to the municipality and asked for help,
they sent with her people and she went to the neighbours and asked back for her curtains,
beds, carpets, whatever she found that they took {breathing}
and she refurnished it and restarted it.
And I went to school for one day, because the class mates told me, they did never thought,
they never thought that they will see me again
and the other one asked: "Why did you come back?"
So the antisemitism wasn't done.
Wait, so I went to the principal and told him: "I can't sit here, I can't study here."
But I was studying here all my, all the years, before it was a protestant Gymnasium.
Ah it was the best in the vicinity.
So, he came to the conclusion that he will give me the material and I will study at home
and come for the exams and I will finish my studies that way.
So while I studied at home, I tought English and German to Hungarians
who wanted to flee, many of them wanted to flee,
so they took private lessons that I provided.
And ah when the communism started to started in Hungary, I told my mother that I have to leave
and she couldn't leave of course, but ah it was ah known, that if kids leave
their parents come after them or if grown ups leave, their kids can come,
there will be a lot to go, they will get the pass.
And ah they were looking for soldiers 18, 19 years old, young Jewish people
who were ready to go to Palestine and fight for Isra.., for become Israel.
So, my mother did refuse to sign this petition actually and I ran af..,
went after this ah person who brought the list and signed my mother's name
and so my passport was sent to me in a couple of weeks
and my sister and me where the last once to leave Hungary,
I mean, last ones means, there were no more groups, only individual ah, ah passports,
so we left and ah they didn't let us in to Palestine before the war ended,
so we were in Marseille waiting
and when we came to Israel it was already ok.
No, it was a hard beginning, because of, I speak already three languages and I come to a place
where they don't want any of these languages, they told me: "Please, talk Hebrew."
So it wasn't that easy.
And my mother got married immediately after we left
and in '56 after the revolution they lef.., they sh..,
she got her passport also and her husband's and they came to Israel to a Kibbutz,
where my sister was and ah my mother was 97 years old when she died
and my step dad was 79.
And they had quite a nice life, nice, old age actually
and my mother had 17 great-grandchildren and 13 grandchildren.
And my sister is still in the Kibbutz also with,
only one of the children is in the Kibbutz, the rest is ah around, somewhere else.
IV: And when, why did you decide to leave Israel and go to the US?
AG: My daughter left Israel ah went to, all my children were in the army,
so they were after they served the arms, serving the army, also my son-in-law,
they wanted to go to England for a while and for a while meant thirteen years
and then they got a job offer in the States and they went to the States.
And ten years ago, my daughter invited me to stay with them and to live with them,
so I left Israel and came for the States ten years ago.
And my son and her fams.., families stayed in Israel.
Both children had a boy and a girl and the, I have four great-grandchildren,
everyone of them has two and that's it.
IV: So, ah, I don't have anymore questions, so you are released.
But maybe is there anything you want to say?
Sometim.., sometimes people they have a message or something, ah
what they want to say to me, to us, to the people..
AG: {Breathing} One message, one last message, a fact is that it's not exactly the way it happened,
but because I am talking very much about it, I can't cope with more than I can tell,
the more than what I told.
Ah there were, ah, I, I had some hard times more than with my mother to tried to shield us,
not at, not always she succeded, but there are things that I am really unable to talk about.
I came to the conclusion that, if I don't have to, I can keep on doing what I am doing.
What I am doing is, ah, volunteering in the Holocaust Museum in Washington,
translating and speaking to schools,
to colleges, to Universities, not only in Washington, they send me to different states
and I couldn't cope with more than what I am telling.
The other thing is, if they ask me, if it is a school, what do I leave with the kids is
first of all the discipline to listen and listen and then do whatever the teachers or parents think they have to do
and languages, not to stay with one language.
To keep on learning languages and ah that I hope that I'll be able to continue doing what I do.
They have also a writing workshop in the Museum to make us write,
not our story, not from the first day till the last, to write episodes about some parts of what happened.
So I do this also very often and four stories were published already through the Museum.
And I find this gathering of remembrance what is going on in Flossenbürg
that I never dreamt of, never knew that, never thought that it's possible to do I find it beautiful thing,
to have all these people here and make them feel so good and important
and give back our self-respect and, and everything about it.
IV: Thank you for doing this work.
AG: Thank you for inviting me {laughing}.
IV: Ok. Camera out.