Selected text
There were forced laborers who were brought there in 1941-1942. They were so ragged that when the Russian officers saw them they said: 'Now, you will go home immediately.
You will be liberated.' We were in such bad shape, and our facial expression reflected our condition. [But they couldn't come home though, but they continued the march.] After 21 days they put us on freight cars.
We continued to walk for six more days, and then we got to Zaporozhe. This town is situated on the banks of the Dnepr river, it is a large industrial town. We were almost ten thousand people in the 1st camp.
There we worked together with German, Hungarian and Romanian prisoners of war, and they made no discrimination among us. When they saw who we were and how we looked, they promised they would liberate us, let us go home, but they completely forgot what they promised.
From the end of July 1944, it was summer anyway, we worked in Zaporozhe in construction until 1946. They always told us 'skoro damoy' [home soon], which meant they would let us come home soon.
My master engineer was a from Kolozsvar, his name was Polifka. There was a large aircraft factory, the Russians blew it up when they retreated to prevent it from being taken over by the Germans, and we had to rebuild that.
We also went to work to a quarry, where we had to extract stones from the rock, mainly with an iron bar, we put it in the cracks and forced it open. We had to put these stones in mine cars, and the mine cars carried the stones to the stone-mill.
In Sepsibukszad we broke the stones into small pieces with hammers, here we had to work on the larger stones. But it was very hard. Especially pulling the mine car was very, very difficult, it was very inefficient. There was a Russian master, but he wasn't an expert, more of an outsider, he only saw that the work is progressing very slowly.
You will be liberated.' We were in such bad shape, and our facial expression reflected our condition. [But they couldn't come home though, but they continued the march.] After 21 days they put us on freight cars.
We continued to walk for six more days, and then we got to Zaporozhe. This town is situated on the banks of the Dnepr river, it is a large industrial town. We were almost ten thousand people in the 1st camp.
There we worked together with German, Hungarian and Romanian prisoners of war, and they made no discrimination among us. When they saw who we were and how we looked, they promised they would liberate us, let us go home, but they completely forgot what they promised.
From the end of July 1944, it was summer anyway, we worked in Zaporozhe in construction until 1946. They always told us 'skoro damoy' [home soon], which meant they would let us come home soon.
My master engineer was a from Kolozsvar, his name was Polifka. There was a large aircraft factory, the Russians blew it up when they retreated to prevent it from being taken over by the Germans, and we had to rebuild that.
We also went to work to a quarry, where we had to extract stones from the rock, mainly with an iron bar, we put it in the cracks and forced it open. We had to put these stones in mine cars, and the mine cars carried the stones to the stone-mill.
In Sepsibukszad we broke the stones into small pieces with hammers, here we had to work on the larger stones. But it was very hard. Especially pulling the mine car was very, very difficult, it was very inefficient. There was a Russian master, but he wasn't an expert, more of an outsider, he only saw that the work is progressing very slowly.
Period
Year
1938
Location
Zaporozhe
Zaporizka oblast
Ukraine
Interview
Mihaly Eisikovits