Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Larry Brenner - December 13, 1981

Deportation

Were these Germans now?

Not Germans, Hungarian Nazis.

Hungarian Nazis.

Hungarian Nazis, Hungarian Nazis with their... They were worse than the German Nazis.

Yeah, yeah.

We don't, we don't see anymore our officers because we looked up and down, we felt if we see them again, you know, there's still something, somehow. We don't see none of those. They were relieved, taken over. Taking us out to the, taking us out to the train station. Now again, as we marched by, I didn't know what happened. I wanted to escape and run, but I was having in my mind, if I escape I still have with me a rucksack, which I had my blanket in there, I had warm clothes on there. It's... We going into the winter. You know, for me to escape I have to throw that one down, you know, and to run out as a civilian, try to, try to help it look as a civilian. But I didn't know what happened because where should I go. Where should I go now? I thought that the whole city, if, because I thought that was the safest place where it could be. Now if I was taken like this, I was, I didn't know what my relatives what happened to them, to the Swiss Consula... Swiss in the Swedish protection. And I don't know if I could get there, in there anymore. And I, and I didn't know if, if they were surrounded the same as I was. And I didn't know where they taking us either. And I... To go to this Gentile fellow, I, I was scared because it takes, you know, if it's not everything planned then they just get you. It's no... It goes everything. And, and once they get you they shoot you. I mean, just, over there was in instant. But since these Nazis came in in power, the Jews were no trial or anything like that. Here it still felt like I'm among a bunch of a couple hundreds of people, somehow safety, so I didn't escape. So they take us to the station and they push us into cattle wagons. About maybe forty or fifty in one cattle wagon. And there's a little, only little windows, there is no, these cattle wagons are and they lock us up. Waiting, waiting, waiting. I thought maybe this was in the morning. All afternoon, all day, we were out somewhere in the evening, the train start to move. All night moving, we didn't know where we going, nobody says anything. And meantime people has to urine. People has to take care of their... have to go to the toilet. So, how they do it? So, some people had some bottles or with the thing what we ate from. We decided, we opened a corner and people would urinate there and try to throw it out the window, because there was a small window which had bars on it, but somehow to throw it out. I think for two, three... two days or something like that we're going. We didn't know exactly, we didn't know where we going. In the meantime, no food, no nothing. And, and, and the food wasn't so bad because everybody has something for emergency, we always packed up something for emergency. But water, water was a murderous thing, it wasn't nothing. And remember when the, when the train stop we didn't know where. It's then people uh, already were, I guess already they, they were uh, they knew when the train is stopping there and they knew they're transporting Jews there. And they knew that Jews have always something, a, a watch or, or, or, or a piece of gold jewelry, and they sold water, the Gentile populace, bottle of water, I don't know what a price is for a watch or for something like that.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn