Zsuzsa Merenyi's diary with drawings about the deportation

My sister made this drawing, too, in the camp. The drawing in the middle is called "The new setting of our comedy." This was made when they moved us to another barrack. I can't tell you why.

We weren't there, in Bergen-Belsen, for long, perhaps for half a year or five months, I don't remember exactly anymore. Liberation happened so that one fine day the gates of the camp were open, and we just looked at each other wondering what that was. Just like that. They didn't say anything. There weren't any Germans anywhere. This was the end of April or beginning of May.

There was a doctor, too. I don't remember whether we got any medicines, but it's possible that we did. We were lucky because we were deported quite late, so we weren't in such poor health that we couldn't have endured such hardships. We went to the courtyard of the 'Lager,' the French Jewish prisoners for example came in groups, buses had been sent for them. And I don't know who else. They were very nice, and they said, 'cheer up, go wherever you can, you're free.' I know French, so I understood what they said. Then there was a Hungarian man who said that he was going to Budapest, even on foot, and anyone who wanted could go with him. And my sister, our friends and I joined him.

And we set off on foot. That's how we later got to a deserted German town of clerks, to Trobitz. There was a block of apartments, and we could go into these clerk houses. We got a room, and my sister fell ill with typhus, which I managed not to get. I nursed her, and I didn't contract it from her. The Russians were very kind - because the Russians were already there at that time - and we got a big pot of chicken soup with noodles every day, and I could feed my sister with that. So she recovered.

Photos from this interviewee