Larry Brenner - December 13, 1981
Deportation 2
The civilians? Hungarians?
Civilian. Hungarians. Civilians. And always the train stopped not in the station, a little bit before or after so we, we wouldn't know where we are, we wouldn't know where we are. From, from the time as it passed by, we thought we are deep somewhere in Germany because of two days, how long it takes? But I don't know. You lose, you lose your judgment because you think that sometimes going for three, four hours and, and it's night. So anyway, and then in the meantime we see through the windows, wagons carrying dead bodies with Jewish stars on it. And this is actually the first time--well, I seen it in Hungary also, Jewish people on the street got shot and thing like that--but this was almost every place where we stop by transport and Jewish bodies with these little wagons. Boy. Then we knew that wherever we go it's no good. You know, wherever this place is, it's uh, we didn't know exactly what the situation is, but when you see this sort of a situation, you see yourself. It's not that you feel sorry for that person, you feel sorry for yourself. So anyway, anyway uh, we arrived in a place so-called Sopron, which is a Hungarian city by the Austrian border. And the welcome committee is German SS already, we don't see any more Hungarian soldiers. German SS. And the welcome committee was getting us from, off from the wagon with piece of wood, hitting us, get, get, get damn Jew, get, hurry, hurry, hurry. And they put us in... they put us in maybe about fifty, a hundred in a group, start marching. So, we march about for an hour or two and we arrive in, at a small town called Fert?rákos. F-E-R-T-O dash R-A-K-O-S. And then over there, it's a small village which exist of a main street, and on the front of the street is a peasant's quarters, right behind this all his other quarters, like a stall for the animal, a barn for his uh, for his uh, hay, what he feeds the cow or the thing, whatever. And there's about three or four other shelters, which he needs for his machinery, so on, in there. Behind of it is the field where he, it belongs to him and the peasant. So we were... Who were there in one of, a peasant's home like this, right behind it and uh, they put us there immediately. And this is already under German... We, we don't see anymore Hungarian officers. We see German uniform nurses. SA they called them, SA. Now, they, they, they, they, they were, instead of a SS uniform, they had a yellow uniform SA and they had a band with a Hakenkreuz on it. They were the over... they were overlooking the, the work for the SS, the work which has to be done for the SS.
Were these brown uniforms?
Brown uniforms, yes. And also they had... We--this was on the Hungarian Austrian border and they had, the populace was there, Schwabs, Schwabs. They were German Hungarian. They spoke German and they were Hungarian citizen, whatever it was. And they also got half-German uniforms. And they were under the Germans, practice for them whatever it was, but they, they were, they weren't direct over us, but they came in, controlled us some way. But they were worse than the Nazis. They showed 'em, they had machine guns and all that, outfit. And they were more free to do with us, because the Germans, as bad they were, they kind of uh, organized way they done it. In other words uh, it was seldom that one German soldier came and had fun with us and, you know, tried... It was ordered to be done. But these damn SS, these damn uh, Schwabs, the Hungarian Nazis, they were worse even than the Hungarian Nazis because they were under the German Army. They were Volks... Volks... uh, soldier they called them. Volks-soldier they called them. And they showed 'em how bad they are, they were meaner than the Nazis. But found out later certain things that they did to us.
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