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In the first week of March they told those who could move to go to Katowice [today Poland] with the local train and to have themselves registered according to nationality so that they could be transported home. I went to Katowice with my friend from Ungvar [today Uzhorod, Ukraine], with whom I had been together in the Lager and we had shared everything. He was more to me than a brother. He still lives, I found him after 38 years, and we continued our conversation from where we had left off. In Katowice we found a school yard, and 2 armed guards in front of it, who wore armbands made of Czech flag. He went in, we said goodbye, and I went to look for the Hungarian camp. The several barracks surrounded by wire fence was a former camp, not of the Jews, but of the prisoners of war. A guard was standing in the gate, I registered myself and I saw that they still guarded the people. I was very bored of life behind the wire fence, and I went back to the school where the Czech camp was, I asked my friend out and told him that I wasn’t going to go into the Hungarian camp. Then what should we do? On the one hand I said that I was one year younger, because I had heard that they were mobilizing the Czech young people from the age of 16, on the other hand I made up a name for myself telling them that I was from Csap [today Chop, Ukraine], I only spoke Hungarian and I had never learned Czech And besides that Yiddish, of course, because I had gone to Jewish school, but not to Czech school. And the Czechs hated me, but they received me in, if I was from Csap, I was a Czechoslovakian citizen. And I was there in the Czech camp until the 25th March. Then on Annunciation Day [Editor’s note: Catholic holiday on the 25th March] my friend, one of his cousins and I took our stuff what we had, and we sneaked out of the camp straight to the railway station. We waited for a train to set off towards the East and we got on a car in the back and lay on top of the coal. By the morning of the 26th March we arrived to Krakow [today Poland]. I had my 16th birthday then. In Krakow there was a market and we sold one of my shirts, I don’t even remember what the currency was at that time. I bought plum jam, we had brought bread from the Czech camp, and on the steps of the Krakow railway station I celebrated my 16th birthday with plum jam and bread. At that time hair started to grow on me, a hair then a long break, then another hair, and long break, and then I went and I shaved solemnly. For the first time in my life, on my 16th birthday.
By the time we arrived to Lemberg [today Lvov, Ukraine] the sores on my leg recrudesced. There were already about 50 Jews in Lemberg who had returned. There were 100000 Jews there before, and about 50 returned. They gathered in the synagogue, in an office. We told them who we were, what we were, and that we were trying to get back to Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. They gave us some food and accommodated us. We slept in the attic of the synagogue on the Torah scrolls, which had been gathered there from everywhere. We became lousy there, in Lemberg. I never had any lice before. But the sores on my feet restarted, so I had running sores and I needed medical care. Then the Jews from there told us that we could go to the Soviet military hospital, where a Jewish doctor was the commandant, and then we were in the hospital for about a week. Then we went to Munkacs [today Mukachevo, Ukraine] by train, there I said good-bye to my friends and the train took me nicely to Miskolc, from where it didn’t go any farther. I saw that they made everyone get off the train and lined everyone up. Jesus Mary, what is going to happen? It was delousing. They checked everyone to see who was lousy. I had huge lice, so I stepped among the lousy voluntarily, they disinfected me, sprinkled DDT on me, they put my clothes and shoes in some kind of a steam disinfection, because of which I could hardly put them back on, because they became as hard as stones. I had Soviet boots, which I had got in Lemberg from the commandant of the hospital.
In Miskolc I went to the Jewish community, which already existed. From my arm and the circumstances they could tell who I was. I arrived to Miskolc exactly on the 15th April, where I got a good dinner, but I don’t remember anymore what, some good food, and 100 pengoes. With the 100 pengoes I went right back to the railway station, because I had seen earlier that they sold pancakes with poppy seed for 5 pengoes. And I invested the 100 pengoes in 20 pancakes with poppy seed, which I ate after dinner. At that time that didn’t make me ill anymore, of course. On the next day I went to Budapest by train. The city was mere debris, it was terrible. The ruins of the bombed buildings were one story high. On the territory of the ghetto, on Akacfa Street 64 or I don’t know where, one of my father’s sisters, my Aunt Frida lived who didn’t have to move, but I wasn’t looking for her, because I had no idea whether any Jews had survived in Budapest, but I visited one of my distant Weisz relatives, who had a goy husband.
But before that I had to go to the DEGOB [National Committee for the Treatment of Hungarian Jewish Deportees][10] for registration. Those told me this, who distributed food at the railway station and asked everyone if they had been prisoners of war, where they had come from and what they had done. I told them that I was Jewish and I had come from Auschwitz. They told me to go to Bethlen Square 2, to the DEGOB and check in. As I found out one had to register there, because the names of those who had returned before me and knew whether anyone had escaped from the family were written on a board there and one could read ‘X. Y. lives’. On the other hand they wanted to ask me the names of those whom I knew that survived. At the DEGOB they asked my name, my number, what had happened to me. And I could enumerate 20 or 30 names, the names of those whom I knew in the Lager, some from Nagykanizsa, and some who weren’t from Nagykanizsa, about whom I knew that they were survivors. They wrote it on a long list, which they posted in several copies, that: ‘X. Y. lives, Ferenc Leicht notified us’. And for example the name of Feri Schnitzer, Etelka’s husband was written there, that he was a survivor. He had returned from forced labor or he hadn’t, but someone told them that he survived. Those who returned stood in line to register. And if someone rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and there was an Auschwitz number on his arm, they let him in out of turn.
From Bethlen Square I went straight to Visegrad Street 66, to my relative, where everyone lived to my great joy, and they told me that I could have gone a day earlier, because my father had gone home to Nagykanizsa on foot the day before. Before they took my father to Germany as a forced laborer, drove him to the Tattersal [11]- that’s what the racetrack from Pest was called. But in the meantime the Russians encircled Budapest, and they couldn’t deport them because of this and took them to the ghetto. My father was liberated there, among quite bad conditions. His sister lived there, so he could move there easily. And my relative also told me that my father knew that I was coming, because my name had been posted out on Bethlen Square, because a shoemaker from Nagykanizsa, called Kluger had come home before me from where I was, too. He told them my name, but I didn’t notice that I was written there. So my father knew that I had escaped, he waited and waited and waited, and he got bored of it and set off for home. He traveled for 4 days with all kinds of vehicles, he hitchhiked, traveled by horse carriage, and he arrived home to Nagykanizsa on the 18th or 19th April.
By the time we arrived to Lemberg [today Lvov, Ukraine] the sores on my leg recrudesced. There were already about 50 Jews in Lemberg who had returned. There were 100000 Jews there before, and about 50 returned. They gathered in the synagogue, in an office. We told them who we were, what we were, and that we were trying to get back to Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. They gave us some food and accommodated us. We slept in the attic of the synagogue on the Torah scrolls, which had been gathered there from everywhere. We became lousy there, in Lemberg. I never had any lice before. But the sores on my feet restarted, so I had running sores and I needed medical care. Then the Jews from there told us that we could go to the Soviet military hospital, where a Jewish doctor was the commandant, and then we were in the hospital for about a week. Then we went to Munkacs [today Mukachevo, Ukraine] by train, there I said good-bye to my friends and the train took me nicely to Miskolc, from where it didn’t go any farther. I saw that they made everyone get off the train and lined everyone up. Jesus Mary, what is going to happen? It was delousing. They checked everyone to see who was lousy. I had huge lice, so I stepped among the lousy voluntarily, they disinfected me, sprinkled DDT on me, they put my clothes and shoes in some kind of a steam disinfection, because of which I could hardly put them back on, because they became as hard as stones. I had Soviet boots, which I had got in Lemberg from the commandant of the hospital.
In Miskolc I went to the Jewish community, which already existed. From my arm and the circumstances they could tell who I was. I arrived to Miskolc exactly on the 15th April, where I got a good dinner, but I don’t remember anymore what, some good food, and 100 pengoes. With the 100 pengoes I went right back to the railway station, because I had seen earlier that they sold pancakes with poppy seed for 5 pengoes. And I invested the 100 pengoes in 20 pancakes with poppy seed, which I ate after dinner. At that time that didn’t make me ill anymore, of course. On the next day I went to Budapest by train. The city was mere debris, it was terrible. The ruins of the bombed buildings were one story high. On the territory of the ghetto, on Akacfa Street 64 or I don’t know where, one of my father’s sisters, my Aunt Frida lived who didn’t have to move, but I wasn’t looking for her, because I had no idea whether any Jews had survived in Budapest, but I visited one of my distant Weisz relatives, who had a goy husband.
But before that I had to go to the DEGOB [National Committee for the Treatment of Hungarian Jewish Deportees][10] for registration. Those told me this, who distributed food at the railway station and asked everyone if they had been prisoners of war, where they had come from and what they had done. I told them that I was Jewish and I had come from Auschwitz. They told me to go to Bethlen Square 2, to the DEGOB and check in. As I found out one had to register there, because the names of those who had returned before me and knew whether anyone had escaped from the family were written on a board there and one could read ‘X. Y. lives’. On the other hand they wanted to ask me the names of those whom I knew that survived. At the DEGOB they asked my name, my number, what had happened to me. And I could enumerate 20 or 30 names, the names of those whom I knew in the Lager, some from Nagykanizsa, and some who weren’t from Nagykanizsa, about whom I knew that they were survivors. They wrote it on a long list, which they posted in several copies, that: ‘X. Y. lives, Ferenc Leicht notified us’. And for example the name of Feri Schnitzer, Etelka’s husband was written there, that he was a survivor. He had returned from forced labor or he hadn’t, but someone told them that he survived. Those who returned stood in line to register. And if someone rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and there was an Auschwitz number on his arm, they let him in out of turn.
From Bethlen Square I went straight to Visegrad Street 66, to my relative, where everyone lived to my great joy, and they told me that I could have gone a day earlier, because my father had gone home to Nagykanizsa on foot the day before. Before they took my father to Germany as a forced laborer, drove him to the Tattersal [11]- that’s what the racetrack from Pest was called. But in the meantime the Russians encircled Budapest, and they couldn’t deport them because of this and took them to the ghetto. My father was liberated there, among quite bad conditions. His sister lived there, so he could move there easily. And my relative also told me that my father knew that I was coming, because my name had been posted out on Bethlen Square, because a shoemaker from Nagykanizsa, called Kluger had come home before me from where I was, too. He told them my name, but I didn’t notice that I was written there. So my father knew that I had escaped, he waited and waited and waited, and he got bored of it and set off for home. He traveled for 4 days with all kinds of vehicles, he hitchhiked, traveled by horse carriage, and he arrived home to Nagykanizsa on the 18th or 19th April.
Period
Year
1945
Interview
Ferenc Leicht
Tag(s)