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Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000

So they got fascists to do it.

Some, from other areas uh, they brought some other police becausethey were afraid that these police, they were, they're not going to do a goodjob as to the cruelty-the government. So they had some new faces in the police.This small city, we, we knew practically everybody.

Was there any talking going on when-now it's getting fairlyserious, violent, serious. Was there any talking among your family about whatwas happening or where you thought you might be going?

Bef...in the ghetto or in the brick factory?

When they, when they-in the brick factory, when they tookyou.

Brick factory you know, we were afraid uh, you know. The, thesecond or third, already they organized transports. You know, there was fouror five transports from the...

Train transports.

Train transports, okay. And they told us they're taking us toHungary to work. You know, because most the men and their-these are the infront, in the, in the army. So they need workers in the, in the agriculture.That was uh, summer almost, they need a lot of work. And we didn't want uh,we wanted to believe. We wanted to believe that we-they are not taking usto Poland or to Germany.

Like your father, you wanted to believe.

Oh, for my father believed. He wanted everything to be...most,a lot of people didn't believe, but what could we do?

At what point do you-did you realize that this was not...

When we passed-we didn't go to Hungary and we passed Košiceand Slovakia and through the Slovakia and then we arrived-I remember we, we,we were in Polish cities we saw that, so we knew that they're taking us somewherein Poland. But we didn't have much knowledge about Auschwitz. You know what,I-we never hear the word Auschwitz. I don't know why. I was listening-we werelistening to the, to the western radios and they didn't mention Auschwitz,I don't know. Now, they mentioned a lot of other things, but no Auschwitz.

Yeah.

And-so when we arrived, we saw that they stripped us all andthen they opened the door and we already saw that, that-we didn't know thatuh, we saw that the people are, in the camp they're working, you know. Sowe, we still thought that okay we arrived to work somewhere, you know. Wedidn't know that was Auschwitz. Into the-did you put? Okay, no...

You spent three days-four days in the brick factory?

Approximately.

Okay. And then...

They put on us in the, in the uh, cars and...

The police came.

They were always there. The gendarmes and police. They put usin the cars.