Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Larry Brenner - December 13, 1981

Let me, let me stop. How did, how did you get? Were you on ration cards, is that how you were...

No, as I said to you, I was in the army. This was, this was...

So, you're still being fed and all that by the army.

Oh yeah, yes, I said, and we were fed by the army. Food...

Wasn't there rationing in Budapest now? Did you get ration cards?

I don't uh, I don't know...

You don't, okay.

...I don't, know, I don't know. Maybe so. I don't know. I real... It must be, it must be, I would think it must be. But anyway, food in there where I was, in that particular place, in that time, it was not problem. It wasn't the best, but it was adequate. And you always could somehow we could go out, even though we had to wear yellow bands, we took it off, we went to the store. And, and we, and uh, it wasn't, it wasn't... Food wasn't, it wasn't any problem starvation as such. Maybe not the best... Maybe we tried to get sometime canned food here and there but that wasn't a problem at all. And uh, uh, again going back. Now these Hungarian officers who were there, they were mean cookies. However, I think the meanness wasn't anti-Semitism. They tried to protect us from the outside populace. To show to those when we are... For example, from marching in the street, they were yelling at us like hell but as soon we arrive in the quarters, they were pussycats. They weren't bad. And we weren't in danger. Matter of fact we felt that it was a good thing what happened to us, because we felt that we're under the protection under the Hungarian army and we also felt that it's a need for us because since we done that type of work that it was uh, needed and we felt that we are, the Germans won't touch us. And uh, since the Hungarian army was protected us, we felt that we're better off than the civilian population. And things weren't bad at all, relatively speaking because, as I said again, food wasn't a problem. Maybe good food was a problem, but we weren't hungry. We had, they, they fed us three times a day and uh, we always could get more ??? it was lunchtime. Lunchtime was the big meal. We always could go get, for seconds, when it was and, uh...

You had meat.

Meat, yes.

Coffee.

We had coffee, bread, meat. Main, the meat was lamb I think, remember mostly lamb. And, and sometimes this lamb when it was cold it was so bad the, the fat gets yellow. Anyway, but that wasn't a problem.