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As we were walking there the old prisoners shouted us to throw them everything we had in our pocket, because they were going to take them from us anyway. We didn’t do it, we had no idea whether they would take it or not. We didn’t know what to think. But I didn’t have anything valuable on me. And when we got there they took off everyone’s clothes. I was wearing a winter coat and a nice pair of ski boots, even though I never knew how to ski. I was dressed properly, not elegantly, but the way the farmers from Zala dress: with boots, trousers and a sleeve-waistcoat. I had a pair of mittens, but the point is that they took everything, shirt, underwear, socks. I still had the Bocskai hat on my head, and they wanted to take it by force, aggressively. And I opposed it that they shouldn’t take it because it was my school cap and it wouldn’t hurt anyone if I had it. I realized it afterwards why I was so attached to it. Because that gave me the identity, that I belonged to that school, to Nagykanizsa, and to Hungary after all. But then they took it by force. And then they said ‘every Jew was made of a piece of shit’, and then I started bawling. I realized then that I wasn’t Hungarian after all, even though I felt so, I thought so. Then I realized that the way I lived and thought wasn’t real, and that I had to face that I belonged to another ethnic group. My original environment didn’t love me, they handed me over to the Germans who stripped me of my clothes, cut my hair bald, they even cut off me what was barely there, because at the age of 15 there wasn’t much to cut. I didn’t even shave at that time.
They took us to a shower, where there was water for about 2 and a half seconds, everyone had to wash quickly. They gave us soap with the inscription R.I.F. I found it out later that it meant Reine Jüdische Fett.[Pure Jewish Fat] It was made out of pure Jewish fat, so it was cooked out of humans. [Editor’s note: According to our present information soap made of human fat is a legend based on misinterpretation. In the Polish ghettos the German occupiers distributed bars of soap with the inscription ‘RIF’. The Jews in the ghetto interpreted it as ‘Rein jüdisches Fett’, namely ‘pure Jewish fat’, and that’s how the belief that the Germans made soap out of Jewish bodies spread. In reality RIF means ‘Reichstelle für Industrielle Fettversorgung’.]. Then cold water for a couple moments, then running across the free ground, to the supplier barrack, where they gave us each a pair of underwear, shirt, as it came. With striped pants and striped jacket. Nothing else. We didn’t get any shoes. But they did take ours. They lined up everyone, 400 of us stood there barefooted. The SS came and asked ‘where are your shoes?’ It turned out that they had forgotten to order wooden shoes for this many people, they had only ordered the clothes. He beat up the prisoner who was responsible for this in front of us, and then he said that everyone should put on his own shoes. My former schoolmate, a certain Gyuri Nandor took my ski boots under my nose. I was very angry because of this, but I got a pair of little bit smaller, but brand new boots. There were all kinds of shoes, good ones, bad ones, boots and high legged shoes and normals shoes, and everyone took whatever hecould lay hands on. I hung on to the boots, and the leather shoes were life saving, because the wooden shoe was something cruel. Those whose leather shoes wore out got wooden shoes, and very few of them survived.
In the bath we got a tattoo, too. The prisoners tattooed us, the old prisoners. By the time we got the striped clothes we were already tattooed. I got number 186889. So I don’t have an A-B number, because after the 15th May they recorded every Jew with A or B. They started with one and numbered until 20000. And when there were 20000 A-s, they started the B-s until 20000 as well. But they didn’t get to 20000, because in the meantime January came, and they evacuated us. I got very exasperated that I am not a cow after all, to get marked, but the one who tattooed me told me that I shouldn’t regret this, because it was almost a life insurance. Those who weren’t tattooed got to the gas chamber more often than those who were tattooed. Because that meant that they worked somewhere.
We lined up again, and they took us to the quarantine block, which was block number 44. There were 56 blocks, and the auxiliary buildings, the showers and toilet. In block 44 there wasn’t any bathroom or toilet. During the two weeks of quarantine they didn’t do anything but taught us how to line up for the roll-call. And they also taught us that if we saw a German we had to take off our cap five steps before meeting him, and after five steps we had to walk past him in stand-to, however faint we felt. And that at the counting there was line-up, and that lasted for a long time, because there were about 10000 people, and until they had counted all of them, none of the blocks could move. Everyone had to stand. They were obsessed with continual roll-call. And with the way we had to eat the food. The instructor, the block ältester [Editor’s note: German for block elder, the prisoner in charge of the block/barrack/] happened to be a German criminal, on his clothes there was a green triangle pointing down, which was usually the mark of the criminals. In our block he had such power, that he almost had the power of life and death over us. His and all block commanders’ superior was the Lager ältester [German for camp elder] –, who was also a German criminal, and always wore nice polished boots.
There weren’t any knives, there wasn’t any cutlery. They told us that everyone was supposed to get a quarter of a loaf of bread every day, half a loaf, which was oblong, twice a week. They made it out of sawdust, bran, and who knows what. It was terrible, but when someone was hungry, it was good. They also said that we would only get the ‘zulag’, the additional food, if we worked. This meant a spoonful of ‘hitlerbacon’, that is, marmalade. If not marmalade, then black pudding, and if not black pudding, then margarine. The margarine, and everything else was the size of a cube sugar. They gave these out in the morning, one ate it or not. That was everyone’s own business. They gave half a liter of coffee, made of caffeine substitute of course, and I think it was full with bromide. [Editor’s note: There is no factual evidence of administering sedatives (bromide), though many from different places affirmed that the prisoners were given bromide. But it is probable that bromide wasn’t even needed: the small amount of food, the beating, the cold or the heat, the little sleep and the terrible work exhausted the prisoners very quickly and bore down their resistance.] Nobody felt any lust, so to speak. And they strictly forbid drinking water. We were allowed to wash, but not to drink. It was placarded on huge placards that a ‘sip of water could cost your life’.
They made all the Hungarian Jews who arrived to Auschwitz write a letter, a preprinted German postcard. It was written on it ‘I am in Waldsee – this was resort in Switzerland – I am fine, greetings to everyone’, and we could sign it, address it, and send it home. [Editor’s note: They required of the deported Jews, many of whom the gassed immediately, to write home that they were doing well, indicating a place-name, Waldsee, made up by them.] Those who were in the gas chamber 5 minutes later also wrote it. But they gave one to everyone so that we would let people know that we were alive. In the Lager [German for camp] where I was they also distributed the Waldsee cards, and I wrote one to one of my neighbors who lived in Nagykanizsa, next to our bakery. And my mother also wrote from where she was, from the women’s camp. At that time they had taken her with her commando to the StammLager, she went to work from there. [Editor‘s note: StammLager: Auschwitz I, because the Hungarian deportees didn‘t arrive to Auschwitz but to Birkenau.] And the neighbors got these cards. They knew my father’s address on forced labor, and they sent him both versions in an envelope. Unfortunately I don’t have either one of them, because at that time nobody thought about keeping them. They would be historical relics now. And my father wrote a reply addressed to Waldsee, because when the neighbors got the cards they were told that if someone wanted to reply should write in German, put it in an envelope and send it to the address of the Budapest Jewish community. Because these cards were brought to Hungary with a German military van to the Jewish leaders appointed by the Germans, and they had to send them out. And they sent them out and collected the replies, which arrived. When the German car brought cards again, grabbed the replies, put them in the car and took them. And in the Auschwitz stammlager they brought out these letters one day at roll-call and distributed them after the list. My mother got the reply. I don’t know of anyone else besides her who got a reply. Because most of them had been killed by that time. In the letter it was written that everything was alright etc, and my father wrote in German that Feri had also written. From this my mother found out that I was alive somewhere, she didn’t know where, but that I was alive. She knew this already sometime at the end of June, beginning of July.
But from the end of August I also knew that my mother was there somewhere, because even though it was strictly forbidden to send word from one camp to the other, and they sentenced to death and hung those who did it, I also saw a lot of hangings, news still spread. They took the women prisoners from Auschwitz to work somewhere by truck in the morning, and brought them back in the evening, and that was to the east from our camp, too. So the women knew that there was a men’s camp. And the route on which we went to work crossed the Krakow-Auschwitz main road. A brave woman dropped a paper ball at the crossroad, and an even braver man bent down and picked it up. And he took the paper to the Lager and it went round. It was written in Hungarian, and among many other names it was written, I recognized my aunt’s handwriting, that Erzsebet Eisinger and Terez Leicht were looking for Jeno Eisinger and Ferenc Leicht. We knew out of this that they lived, otherwise any other news. But the fact that someone lived in August didn’t mean anything among those circumstances.
They took us to a shower, where there was water for about 2 and a half seconds, everyone had to wash quickly. They gave us soap with the inscription R.I.F. I found it out later that it meant Reine Jüdische Fett.[Pure Jewish Fat] It was made out of pure Jewish fat, so it was cooked out of humans. [Editor’s note: According to our present information soap made of human fat is a legend based on misinterpretation. In the Polish ghettos the German occupiers distributed bars of soap with the inscription ‘RIF’. The Jews in the ghetto interpreted it as ‘Rein jüdisches Fett’, namely ‘pure Jewish fat’, and that’s how the belief that the Germans made soap out of Jewish bodies spread. In reality RIF means ‘Reichstelle für Industrielle Fettversorgung’.]. Then cold water for a couple moments, then running across the free ground, to the supplier barrack, where they gave us each a pair of underwear, shirt, as it came. With striped pants and striped jacket. Nothing else. We didn’t get any shoes. But they did take ours. They lined up everyone, 400 of us stood there barefooted. The SS came and asked ‘where are your shoes?’ It turned out that they had forgotten to order wooden shoes for this many people, they had only ordered the clothes. He beat up the prisoner who was responsible for this in front of us, and then he said that everyone should put on his own shoes. My former schoolmate, a certain Gyuri Nandor took my ski boots under my nose. I was very angry because of this, but I got a pair of little bit smaller, but brand new boots. There were all kinds of shoes, good ones, bad ones, boots and high legged shoes and normals shoes, and everyone took whatever hecould lay hands on. I hung on to the boots, and the leather shoes were life saving, because the wooden shoe was something cruel. Those whose leather shoes wore out got wooden shoes, and very few of them survived.
In the bath we got a tattoo, too. The prisoners tattooed us, the old prisoners. By the time we got the striped clothes we were already tattooed. I got number 186889. So I don’t have an A-B number, because after the 15th May they recorded every Jew with A or B. They started with one and numbered until 20000. And when there were 20000 A-s, they started the B-s until 20000 as well. But they didn’t get to 20000, because in the meantime January came, and they evacuated us. I got very exasperated that I am not a cow after all, to get marked, but the one who tattooed me told me that I shouldn’t regret this, because it was almost a life insurance. Those who weren’t tattooed got to the gas chamber more often than those who were tattooed. Because that meant that they worked somewhere.
We lined up again, and they took us to the quarantine block, which was block number 44. There were 56 blocks, and the auxiliary buildings, the showers and toilet. In block 44 there wasn’t any bathroom or toilet. During the two weeks of quarantine they didn’t do anything but taught us how to line up for the roll-call. And they also taught us that if we saw a German we had to take off our cap five steps before meeting him, and after five steps we had to walk past him in stand-to, however faint we felt. And that at the counting there was line-up, and that lasted for a long time, because there were about 10000 people, and until they had counted all of them, none of the blocks could move. Everyone had to stand. They were obsessed with continual roll-call. And with the way we had to eat the food. The instructor, the block ältester [Editor’s note: German for block elder, the prisoner in charge of the block/barrack/] happened to be a German criminal, on his clothes there was a green triangle pointing down, which was usually the mark of the criminals. In our block he had such power, that he almost had the power of life and death over us. His and all block commanders’ superior was the Lager ältester [German for camp elder] –, who was also a German criminal, and always wore nice polished boots.
There weren’t any knives, there wasn’t any cutlery. They told us that everyone was supposed to get a quarter of a loaf of bread every day, half a loaf, which was oblong, twice a week. They made it out of sawdust, bran, and who knows what. It was terrible, but when someone was hungry, it was good. They also said that we would only get the ‘zulag’, the additional food, if we worked. This meant a spoonful of ‘hitlerbacon’, that is, marmalade. If not marmalade, then black pudding, and if not black pudding, then margarine. The margarine, and everything else was the size of a cube sugar. They gave these out in the morning, one ate it or not. That was everyone’s own business. They gave half a liter of coffee, made of caffeine substitute of course, and I think it was full with bromide. [Editor’s note: There is no factual evidence of administering sedatives (bromide), though many from different places affirmed that the prisoners were given bromide. But it is probable that bromide wasn’t even needed: the small amount of food, the beating, the cold or the heat, the little sleep and the terrible work exhausted the prisoners very quickly and bore down their resistance.] Nobody felt any lust, so to speak. And they strictly forbid drinking water. We were allowed to wash, but not to drink. It was placarded on huge placards that a ‘sip of water could cost your life’.
They made all the Hungarian Jews who arrived to Auschwitz write a letter, a preprinted German postcard. It was written on it ‘I am in Waldsee – this was resort in Switzerland – I am fine, greetings to everyone’, and we could sign it, address it, and send it home. [Editor’s note: They required of the deported Jews, many of whom the gassed immediately, to write home that they were doing well, indicating a place-name, Waldsee, made up by them.] Those who were in the gas chamber 5 minutes later also wrote it. But they gave one to everyone so that we would let people know that we were alive. In the Lager [German for camp] where I was they also distributed the Waldsee cards, and I wrote one to one of my neighbors who lived in Nagykanizsa, next to our bakery. And my mother also wrote from where she was, from the women’s camp. At that time they had taken her with her commando to the StammLager, she went to work from there. [Editor‘s note: StammLager: Auschwitz I, because the Hungarian deportees didn‘t arrive to Auschwitz but to Birkenau.] And the neighbors got these cards. They knew my father’s address on forced labor, and they sent him both versions in an envelope. Unfortunately I don’t have either one of them, because at that time nobody thought about keeping them. They would be historical relics now. And my father wrote a reply addressed to Waldsee, because when the neighbors got the cards they were told that if someone wanted to reply should write in German, put it in an envelope and send it to the address of the Budapest Jewish community. Because these cards were brought to Hungary with a German military van to the Jewish leaders appointed by the Germans, and they had to send them out. And they sent them out and collected the replies, which arrived. When the German car brought cards again, grabbed the replies, put them in the car and took them. And in the Auschwitz stammlager they brought out these letters one day at roll-call and distributed them after the list. My mother got the reply. I don’t know of anyone else besides her who got a reply. Because most of them had been killed by that time. In the letter it was written that everything was alright etc, and my father wrote in German that Feri had also written. From this my mother found out that I was alive somewhere, she didn’t know where, but that I was alive. She knew this already sometime at the end of June, beginning of July.
But from the end of August I also knew that my mother was there somewhere, because even though it was strictly forbidden to send word from one camp to the other, and they sentenced to death and hung those who did it, I also saw a lot of hangings, news still spread. They took the women prisoners from Auschwitz to work somewhere by truck in the morning, and brought them back in the evening, and that was to the east from our camp, too. So the women knew that there was a men’s camp. And the route on which we went to work crossed the Krakow-Auschwitz main road. A brave woman dropped a paper ball at the crossroad, and an even braver man bent down and picked it up. And he took the paper to the Lager and it went round. It was written in Hungarian, and among many other names it was written, I recognized my aunt’s handwriting, that Erzsebet Eisinger and Terez Leicht were looking for Jeno Eisinger and Ferenc Leicht. We knew out of this that they lived, otherwise any other news. But the fact that someone lived in August didn’t mean anything among those circumstances.
Period
Interview
Ferenc Leicht