Tag #156843 - Interview #78022 (mariann szamosi)

I was there in the hospital, laying on a bed with a gypsy woman, who died there next to me. That was about the middle to the end of April. And all at once, the Germans left. We stayed there for one or two days in complete stasis. The people who could walk broke into the warehouse, and found an incredible amount of Red Cross packages. They dumped the boxes into the main road; food, chocolate, milk powder, sardines, canned meats, and we ate that. I remember that I only ate chocolate, very carefully, so I didn't get sick. Two days later the Russians arrived.

It was miraculous! They came in two columns, hanging in bunches off the tanks, playing guitars. And those who were still in good shape, jumped up on the tanks. In an hour and a half, they had set up their goulash cannons [portable cooking vats], cooked soup and potatoes. They transferred us, those of us left, within a week, and turned the whole place into a Russian hospital. All at once, it was full of Russian doctors and nurses. They healed us. That was in the first days of May, and on the 22 of August 1945, they let us go. They healed the scar on my leg, I was still feverish, plus I had to fill out, I weighed 36 kilos [79lbs]. Then we left in Red Cross buses. We had no idea that we weren't going home. It never occurred to us that we're going somewhere else.