Olga Adler - July 26, 1982
Punishment for Running Away
You said she was shot and then she came back?
No, no. She, as she was interviewed about who to inform.
Okay.
It was in a room. Just desk like that and then she said go sit down and then she came to sit down into that, in the hay. And I looked at her and I thought myself, this girl, this girl is, is going to die, I am not going to die. It's impossible. I can't. I haven't, I have, I haven't lived yet, I can't die. I don't know what told me, she's going to die. I just... And I, just this one, the other one I don't, I don't even remember as much as this one because I looked into her eyes and I can never forget them.
[interruption in interview]
Okay.
So uh, they interviewed the other girl too, and then, uh...
You said, you mentioned that you took off your ring.
Yeah, I took off my ring and I put it, I had to say about the ring in the, in the hay there. Because we were not supposed to even have a pen. You know, nothing...
Ah.
a hairpin...
Yeah.
nothing. That would have been enough to kill you, a ring like that. Uh, so uh, then they, then one comes in, the door is here and one Nazi comes in and tells this Magda with the dark eyes to come after me. So, she goes out and all of a sudden I hear a shot. And I ask the Nazi who was sitting in front of the desk there, what was that? And he was very kind and he said they are shooting birds. So, if you want to believe it, you know, you want to believe it's birds. So, they are shooting birds. And then comes... Yeah, well, and I didn't tell you, but when it come, came to my side they were asking me who to write and I stood up and I said, "I don't have nobody to write to. I am not from Budapest, I'm from Beregszász, from a small town. There's nobody that you can uh, inform after my death." So, they asked me what I was doing, what are you doing in Budapest. So, I told her I was a model in Budapest, I was working, my parents lived in a small town and I can give you their address but I'm sure that they took them away already, so it's no use. So, that was it. So, when the Nazi came back for the other girl, I stood up. This is all a lunatic, I don't know how I did it because I'm not that pushy, or a pusher, I am not, there are just certain things, certain sixth sense tells you what to do. In all this, it's a sheer accident that I'm sitting here. No way, I said, I did anything about it ever. Um, so he pushes me down and he takes the other girl. And then other shot, out from... So, didn't take the whole thing must have been like... I would go to the, to the end of the, my block there. Um, then comes for me. So, I go. The girls are standing there in that camp, you can see the faces in the window watching what's going on. And the way when I see the Nazi coming, I see all the clothes what the girls were wearing on her arm, on his arm. The Nazi was coming back, taking the clothes and throwing it down and taking me. So, I arrive into a big field—so, I want you to know that this is in November already—a big field, empty, no trees. There is a hole in the middle and I see bodies moving in the hole. The girls are not dead yet. So, he's standing in front of it with a gun and he tells me, now you take off your clothes because there are lots of children who have no clothes to wear in Budapest because of the damn bombing, so they have to send clothes there. And I'm taking off slowly my father's sweater. And uh, you know, it was windy, naturally windy, end of November. And I, like uh, like I would have heard something. I don't know. Very slowly I'm taking off my sweater and I'm looking back, backwards because I had a feeling that something is coming in the back. And all of a sudden, I see uh, a skull and I think to myself well, I died already, it was nothing, I died already, I didn't feel nothing, it's fine, I just slipped over. It's fine.
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