Olga Adler - July 26, 1982
Running Away
Yeah.
You know, you just, you just go. And we, there was a, a big bunch of branches there and we were sitting behind the branches looking out when the train will come and we'll jump on the train. All of a sudden, a Hungarian peasant arrives there and says what are you doing here girls. So, we said well, we are going, waiting for the train and please—I remember I told him—please don't tell the authorities. Please, I'm twenty years old. I don't want to go out of Hungary because I will get lost. I don't know how to speak German. I just... I never had a chance to live yet. Please give us a chance at least just to get on the train because I don't know what will happen to us. Just please give us a chance. He said, okay. Ten minutes later—and we were hiding behind those branches—ten minutes later comes a Hungarian ??? was a Nazi Hungarian, we called him ??? with a bayonet, with a black uniform with a skull on the cap. Right. And he's there. It started to rain a little bit. Get up, go, put your hands up. I had here in my... That time I already had a pair of pants, one of the girls died or something. And he took off the pants and I had already a ski outfit on and a pair of boots. And under my ski outfit I had a grey sweater, which is very important where my father was in the First World War, he had a gray officer's sweater, like an angora gray. And as I told you I was very handy as a young girl and I took it out from the attic one day and I made a beautiful skating sweater up. I embroidered it. And I had that with me and I had that under that—that was the only major thing I had—under that ski jacket. So, I had some cards, as I told you my mother sent some card and my brother and my husband, my boyfriend, not boyfriend, my... I don't know what.
Okay.
And uh, I carried that all over because that's all I carried with me to the concentration camp and I had a, a diamond ring what my mother gave me when I went up to Budapest. I got some diamond rings and I had two beautiful earrings. And I had a, a, something uh, uh, with a picture, with a diamond. I don't know what happened to them. I just remember I had my ring. I took the ring on. And uh, I had them under my sweater and I was putting my hands up, my pictures fell out of my, of here and I wanted to bend down and the man shoved me with the bayonet in my back and he, he picked up the pictures and I didn't see the pictures. He took those pictures. And they took us into a stall, a, a horse stall, full of hay, the three of us sitting there on this side. On this side there was a big camp for girls. This labor camp they went out to work too. I was about five kilometers from that camp because we had to walk there. Uh, and we are sitting there and then there is a desk here and then and a, a Nazi is sitting there and he says to the, he says uh, "Now I want you to know... to come one by one and uh, tell us your name, your address, who should be informed after you're dead that you were shot because you ran away." You know, they would, I will think that they would ever send a, a letter to somebody because there was nobody. I mean, there was nobody to send a letter, but that was it. You had to give your name to send, to send it. So, this one girl gets up on her knees and goes and holds that Nazi around the leg and begging her. Give me your name. Not... Like it would be, I wouldn't step on air, I don't know about anything. Pushed her away. Give me your names. She gave him her name, who to inform after that she was shot because she ran away because if you run away you're going to be shot. You know this was... And then she came back and she sat down I looked at that girl and I don't know if you ever saw, the pupil in her eyes about like this, she just a big black mass, her eyes. And it went through my head...
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