Eva Ackermann - December 6, 1982
Thoughts on the Arrow Cross Party
Was there a Judenrat, do you remember?
Uh, I really don't know. What I found out that uh, I even made notes here. Uh, from my experience, the Hungarians were worse. If it was possible to be worse than the Nazi's. That was my uh, it was, it was just uh, terrible, terrible experience because you lived among--that's why uh, it just, it hit me at the time. I never knew that I lived in a society that I was hated. Uh, well the uh, Hungarian Nazi's we called Nyalis. That's what, uh...
The Arrow Cross Party?
Pardon me?
Arrow Cross Party, do you remember that?
Well, that's what Nyalis is.
That was the arrow on the cross? Do you remember the uniforms?
No, there's no, there was no arrow, there was just uh, Hakenkruez.
Haken...
Yeah, that's what they wore, I remember. But uh, there were uh, they were uh, October twenty-third, when they were congregating from eighteen to forty, that's were I fell in. In that uh, category and uh, they took over and they were just absolutely uh, it was so unbelievable that you speak the same language and uh, yesterday uh, maybe you were uh, I mean to me that was--I didn't know where they came from. If they came out of the woodwork and I didn't know that, that's the way they felt because they said 'til now you ate uh, uh, goose liver was a, a delicacy in Hungary, like everywhere because it is so rare and so expensive. But he said that uh, "You ate the goose livers 'til now and we going to eat it from now on." And I--to me that was--I didn't know, first of all, I didn't have that much goose livers to begin with and I didn't know that whatever I had other people didn't have. I mean it was--I just thought there were poor and then the next class and the next class. Not so much uh, Budapest was a little bit different uh, then uh, if we talk about Munkacs or Ungvar, where everybody knew uh, each other. Budapest you didn't know your next door neighbor so uh, you really, all we had--the exposure for me was--the only exposure I had was secluded exposure so to speak, not, not exposed to a different classes of people. Or maybe it was my ignorance, I don't know. That's a very big possibility.
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