Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Bert Dan - November 17, 1982

Okay.

So anyway, that Kol Nidre night was the most touching Kol Nidre I ever had in all my life. And then a couple days after Yom Kippur we started walking again and now this is something uh, personal. It has nothing to do with thousands and thousands of others that I'm sure it happened to many others like it happened to me. We were walking day and night without stopping and without food and all of a sudden they told us that we are going to stop right here and we're going to stay over night. And they were so glad, you know, that we were so tired that we just couldn't take it any long...and I took my shoes off and I, I was--laid down on the ground and they didn't give us more than five minutes. They told us that they have to keep on going--continue going. And I tried to put my shoes on and I couldn't put them on anymore because evidently my feet must have been swollen or whatever. And I couldn't walk and I started--I tried very hard to walk and I just couldn't make it. And I told, you know uh, like, I'm sure that you have the experience, like there were all those thousands of people--there were four of us very, very close to one another, very, very close, like really brothers, you know, we were very close to one another. One of 'em lives in, in Los Angeles, one of 'em lives in Australia, one of them in Romania and I'm here. And the four of us we were very close to one another. And I told them that, "I give up, I just can't take it any longer." They picked me up and they carried me on their shoulder. They carried me like that all night long and then in, in the morning somehow I got strength and I put my shoes back on and uh, we kept on walking and we walked 'til late in the afternoon. And we were already still in Transylvania but it was already very, very close to the Hungarian border--to the old Hungarian border. Because this was Hungary at the time, you know, I'm talking to you about--we were very, very close to the Hungarian border and we knew it that this is the end regardless whatever happens they're not taking us over there just to--because they, they love us so much, you know.