Olga Adler - July 26, 1982
Transport to Budapest Ghetto
Which officer was this? Was this...?
This, this, there are more officers...
Yeah.
that, who I helped. He was a doctor, a young doctor, was supposedly help the people there, but there, there was no medication, no help, no nothing. It was just that he was a, a, a doctor in the army and he was there. Uh, one day it was no way that I could stay there. I was taken. I was taken a few miles away when all of a sudden I see a young officer there. This lady who had the gar... the, the, the girdle salon had a son who was a Hungarian officer. And when I visited her home with this, with her very good friend the lady who I lived with who took me as a daughter, I saw his picture in the living room, a big picture, a Hungarian officer, very debonair picture and I see this young man standing right there. And I go to him and I tell him that I was in your home a few months ago and you are Aunt Louisa's son and I know you and I know your wife. And he took me out from that transport and he sent me back. He sent me back with a transport who, who the people who were very sick. They could not walk. That time already started being the end of the, end of the war and people knew that they lost and everything, so they were trying already. As a matter of fact, a lot of Hungarian officers and we were going and walking and walking and it was so bleak and so nothing, it was just like zombies, said please don't let yourself go, please hold on, the Russians are not far, it cannot last longer. You took that much already, take a little more. You know what it gives you, how much it gives you? How much, it just, new life would be uh, given to you. All right, I'll try to push another day, I'll try to push another day. They were human beings. Even sometime Germans came with the, with trucks and they were throwing down candy or whatever when they saw this, this, this sea of people walking. It was just, they didn't, they didn't know what to do with us anymore. They were just, just, just walking us and walking us and walking us. Unfortunately who got to the end of the road, they were taken to the concentration camp. But if you stayed in Hungary some way there was always a way somehow. So, this young man sent me back and I arrived and I don't remember how and what but I remember a train station that we were waiting for a train and by train I got back to Budapest. I got back to Budapest to the, to, to uh, it was Teleky Street, under Teleky Street. Four, there were woman concentration camp and there was Teleky ??? Six, there were men in there. There were...Whoever was taken back or whoever wasn't taken out of the city yet, the Jews concentrated in one building another one concentrated in the next building, but don't think that they didn't come and they send new transports constantly.
Oh yeah.
They did send new transports constantly. And they were, they were examining your health. If you were healthy they were taken out, if you were not healthy they were sending you to the ghetto because already they were, it was, there was a ghetto established, which we didn't know because we were taken away before there was a ghetto yet. So, I was there, he was examining me. He said, "What's wrong with you?" I said, I said, I don't know what kind, what I said, some heart business. He looked at me and he smiled and he gave me a, a white uh, uh—now what you wear—with a Red Cross mark on it.
A band.
Band! I'm sorry. White band with a... And he said you are going to take two old people out to the, to the uh, truck outside and you are going to take them into the ghetto. So, it looked like that I am a nurse...
Mhm.
and I was helping out two old people and we were sitting on a truck and they sent us back to the ghetto. So, at least there in the ghetto there wasn't that, that they are going to take us out to the...
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