Magda Fischer's demobilizing certificate

This document is from the time when I was a forced laborer. A gendarme officer was with us for a month, he was very nice. I don't know whether the camp was in Alag or somewhere else, but it's sure that the Russians were close. This officer gave a demobilization paper to everyone so that they would let us back into our apartments. During forced labor we went on foot, many times we even had to march 40 kilometers. One evening we arrived at a factory, where they had taken off everything, only the iron mounts were left there. I don't remember exactly where this building was, perhaps in Alag. Once a former opera singer called Erzsi started to sing the 'Yiddishe Mame.' The echo of that in the hall was something miraculous. Once the door opened and there stood the gendarme, a first lieutenant, and he was crying. He said, 'How can this be done to women? How?' And he asked us what we needed. And that night he had so much food brought with a truck, we hadn't seen that much food in our life before - bread, bacon, marmalade and margarine. The gendarmes gave everyone as much as one wanted. He asked how he could help each of us. I told him that I wanted to wash in warm water, because it was awful that one couldn't wash. So he told the guards that those who wanted could go and wash in turns. We could only wash in the presence of the guards, of course, but I can't tell you what that meant for us. Everyone got a demobilization paper from him, so that we would be allowed to go back to our apartments. This gendarme officer told us already in Alag, 'Look, I can't help you, I can only say that they are changing the cadre. Our men will take you from here to Budapest - I think the Petofi Bridge was still standing at that time, we crossed that - after the bridge the Arrow Cross men take over the company.' He told us to watch out, and that those who could should run away, and that we should be careful and use back roads because the Germans were still at the Royal. He told us not to take main roads, but walk on secondary roads. So from Alag we went on foot with the gendarmes until we reached the capital, and when the company arrived at the Petofi Bridge, where the Arrow Cross men would have taken us over, some of us ran away. No soul was on the streets. We walked on the side streets, and we arrived at Harsfa Street, behind the Royal. The Germans were packing already at that time. It might have been six of us there together and we were terribly scared about what would happen if the Germans caught us. But they didn't care about us, because the Russians were already in Vecses at that time and the Germans were running away. We made use of the demobilization papers because we went to Eotvos Street 32, where I had lived earlier, and even though the janitor was an Arrow Cross man and didn't want to let us in, the demobilization papers convinced him after all. The forced labor lasted until 6th December 1944. This is written in the demobilization papers, too.