This is my aid document I got in Budapest; I managed to come home due to it.
Auschwitz, Riga, Stuthoff and Danzig - these were the four big places where I was. Not to mention the labor camps. I spent one year in the camps and half a year in the hospital. I came home after one and a half year. I was away for one and a half year...
Five women came home from our group, but I'm the one alive. And there is Edit, who lives in Brasso. And we came home together. I'm keeping in touch with her since. I don't know anything about the other ones. I wondered so many times about what happened with them...
We started off in Poland in 1945, and we were taken off and put on trains quite often, our journey lasted quite long. We were three, my former inmate Irenke from Nagyvarad, who was heading for Kolozsvar, Edit and myself. We got on a bus in Budapest and the check-man came to sell us tickets. We told them we had no money. 'What do you mean you have no mone?' We told him we were coming home from the deportation. 'And how was I supposed to know that?' We got some Russian documents which included our names, but he told us he is not able to read it. Then one of the women told him: 'Look at them and you'll see. Just look at them.' (The Russians cut our hair, because we were nitty.) And he [the controller] went away. He wasn't too pushy. The woman was very nice, and we thanked her, and she even gave us some food, we suffered the pangs of hunger. There, in the tram she explained us where to go, because she knew where we can get some aid from. We reported there with the Russian document, and got fifteen hundred pengos. There, in Budapest, we were told at the station which school we had to go to. This was before September 15th, before the school year began. We were accommodated in a school. They gave us someblankets and we slept on the floor, but we were used to that, we had no problem with that. They gathered us there. I you had any relatives, you were allowed to go and sleep there and the next day you could return. We got some food. The Association of Jewish Deportees helped us, so we became human again. With the fifteen hundred pengos we were able to buy ourselves food, soap, toothpaste and toothbrush. This was the first thing we did. So we brushed our teeth... At the hospital the Russians gave us some 'stony soap', which didn't lather or rub, so we were quite dirty, we used soil. And all that dirt soaked in our skin. In Budapest we wanted to go to the Nagyatadi Szabo Street, my husband's elder sister, aunt and grandparents lived there. I looked for the Nagyatadi Szabo Street, but I wasn't able to find it. I am a person who asks many questions, and I asked everyone where should I go and at a certain point a young man came, I was leaning against the wall, and asked him: 'Can you please tell me where can I find Nagyatadi Szabo Street?' He looked at me, then over my head, looked at me again and walked away. He thought I was crazy. I asked myself I was insane or he was? So I looked up and I saw the plate for the Nagyatadi Szabo Street.
So I slept at my relatives. I was very happy. The first thing I did was to take a bath, I haven't had a bath in a bath-tub for one and a half year. And they weren't able to get me out of there: 'come out now, are you still alive?' they were shouting. I didn't take a bath for one and a half years... it was no use to wash up in cold water... anyway, enough of that. I managed to brush my teeth and they gave me fresh underwear, but the clothes didn't fit me so I had to wear the ones I got from the Russians. When we left the hospital we received skirts, a blouse, a jacket, a handkerchief, some stockings and other things. My relatives already knew my husband was at home. They gave me something to eat right away, and while I was there in Budapest I was together with my two former inmates. They were so happy they were cheering that they could eat so many delicacies without paying for them from those 1500 pengos. Edit was unable to find her relatives. We spent there three days, and then we went to the railway station. The relatives gave us money, they were really nice, and we managed to get on the train and each of us went her way.
