Tag #136261 - Interview #78490 (Katalin Kallos Havas)

I traveled for three weeks. I arrived home on 4th July 1945. The local Jews were waiting for me at the station. How they came to be there I don’t know. Maybe they had been in forced labor camps because they had been sent home in 1944. They were closer to the front, so they were liberated earlier than we were. When I arrived home, I had nobody and nothing. From my family only me, my brother and his wife survived the Holocaust. There were some very poor people, but they all had a plate, a pot, a spoon, a fork, a sheet, a pillow and a blanket. When I came home, I didn’t even have those things; I had absolutely nothing. I had only the clothes on my back, nothing else. This is how I had to start a new life. I was unable to accept or imagine how I could continue with my life, so I decided I had to forget, and I blocked many things out of my memory. But this plan worked too well. I didn’t forget what I wanted, but many things from my childhood.