Tag #135398 - Interview #101499 (Gotterer Borbala Piroska )

here was a canteen in front of the train station and we went in to eat; next to the station master there was a soldier. And our Jewish girls cried out from one wagon to the other: 'Come, let's go eat, wash ourselves a bit!' in Yiddish. And that soldier came, looked at them and went up to the one who cried out and asked her: 'How come you know Yiddish?' 'how could I not know, I am a Jew, I speak my people's language ', 'Are you a Jew? What are you doing on this train?' 'We are all Jews and we come from Auschwitz.' 'And where are you going?'. She answered that were going to Romania. The man didn't say anything, but asked who the leader was, there had to be someone to coordinate everything for so many people. The leader was someone we called Mihai, a Jew, but a Romanian, who knew Russian well. And he took the Hungarians' leader, a man Berger, as well, and asked them to write down everything they knew, where we came from, why, and where we were going. Berger wrote that, he knew Russian as well, and gave it to that soldier, and we stayed for one more night in the train, but after that we went on, not in the original direction however, we were told that we were going to Slucak, which is now in Belarus, 20 km away from Minsk. There we were taken to a large garrison. Italian prisoners were with us as well, an entire detachment, soldiers who had surrendered, they had to be sent home with the same train we were supposed to get home. We were told that everything would be all right, and we were given good food. That’s where we found out that because of that Ukrainian an entire train with SS soldiers got away.