Broken Silence 1. Eyes of the Holocaust (7 of 16)

Broken Silence

At some depressing moment I said to my mother: "If I were rich, I would take off my cap and bid farewell to Hungary."
"Where would you go, Son?"
my mother laughed.
"Germany," I said.
I made it.
"Entrainment: "People are crowded into cattle trains... and transported... to concentration camps... and death camps."
A few days later this freight train arrived...
and we could get on it.
I was delighted.
We could leave! Fantastic! They were cattle trains.

One of my most terrible memories...
a sound I can still hear today, was of that door being locked.
When, at the age of 13, I knew they had locked us in.
"The mass deportations took place... with active cooperation... of the Hungarian authorities. 437,000 people were deported... most of them to Auschwitz."
There were old people, pregnant women.
All I could hear was, "Water, water. Doctor, doctor!"
It rattled within me...
like the rattle of the train.
I was in a daze from hunger, from tiredness, from the heat.
I don't even know how many days we traveled for.
Little Gyuri wanted to sleep.
He asked for his teddy bear.
He was only nine.
"The bear, the bear!"
It was in his rucksack.
The jam jar in his rucksack broke.
His bear was swimming in jam.
I couldn't even give him his bear.
My last picture of that poor boy...
was of him asking for his bear.
My poor mother looked out and saw the green fields...