Olga Adler - July 26, 1982
Politics
Did you believe them when they told you that Jews were being taken and killed in concentration camps?
We didn't know. That time we didn't know. We just knew that Jews were taken. I didn't know about my parents, what happened to my parents, that they're taken. But you had to know um, the history too, that the Hungarian Jews in Budapest especially, they were bar... somebody was bargaining for them. You know, I am sure you know about that, that certain uh, uh amount of uh, trucks have to be given and uh, money for this Jew and for that Jew. That this little, this Budapest, they took the Jews from all over the country, from Hungary, from all over. But the Jews were still staying in Budapest. Just some of them were taken who were unfortunately at the wrong place and the wrong time.
Mhm.
If you were outside and somebody came whether it could have happened to me hundreds of times, but it just didn't.
Yeah.
You know, it just didn't happen. So, then it came one day that the war is over. I mean, the, the war is not over but Horthy was our, our uh, ??? [Asking her husband] Governor? Yeah. The governor, he didn't want to uh, he didn't want to do what. This is politics already, I don't know. Just say it with two words, please, Poffi. What was with Hitler before Szálasi came, I mean with um, with um, Horthy before Szálasi came, when the Proclamatio came, Horthy's Proclamatio? Well, what happened, what was it, just with two words, just tell me.
Husband: ???
He, he ??? Horthy.
Husband: Oh, he was arrested.
All right. Our governor was arrested and then we thought that this is it, the war is over and everybody was standing out in the balconies, everybody was happy. And next day, Szálasi was the worst, the worst, the worst ever you can imagine who came into power. And no more bargaining with Jews. No more doing nothing. The Jews are going to be concentrated in one place. And we have no more trains anymore because things were not very good in the Front any more. No more trains. We are going to concentrate them and by foot they are, we are going to take them out of the state of Hungary toward uh, Germany through ??? which was a border town and they are going to take them to concentration camps there. So, by ten o'clock in the morning ??? you have to be at the horse racing tracks, it's a huge, like a football field. And, and I just went nicely because there was no way, no way to go, no, nowhere to go. There's this lady, she was taken to a Swedish house. You know, you know about the Swedish and the Swiss houses that they have designated there that they are under their rule. That they can't... But I went. I thought to myself, I am going to go because I just can't take it anymore. I'll go and I'll do what the other ones will do.
You could have gone to the Swiss house?
No, I don't know if I could have gone to the Swiss house. I don't, I don't remem... I don't know. I just know that I went.
Yeah.
How it happened, an order came and you had to go and that's it, and I went. And uh, we went by, by train or whatever to that place and we were staying there for hours and hours and hours until they made um, transports and by foot we started to go. We started to go and there were Hungarian—Hungarian soldier, not German—Hungarian soldiers with the bayonets and guns taking us, hundred and hundreds of people, young and old, and we went.
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