Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Bert Dan - November 17, 1982

Escaping During the March

They are taking us there for a reason and we decided definitely not to go any further. And we stopped in a small little village and somebody spoke the language naturally. We had no difficulties talking to the peasants who lived there and we wanted to find out exactly what's going on. And they told us that--they advised us not to go any further because they heard that the Russians are very, very close to us and you should try and hide if you have the possibility. And they gave us directions how to go into the forest from like that and we spent the whole night in that uh, little village and had to be, what, about seventy of us decided that we are going to take off and go, thinking, "If they catch us, all they can do is kill us. That's the worse that can happen." So what if ??? sooner or later ??? anyway, so. And we went into the forest and to our biggest surprise--how it happened nobody ever knew--but, but four of the soldiers who were with us--watching us and they had their guns--were behind us and they came along with us. And they gave up the guns to us. As a matter of fact, I personally had one gun in my hand. They didn't want to keep it because they had--they were in uniform--we were, you know, in regular clothes, we had no uniforms or som...something like that. And they were all coming around with us and we were hiding in that forest for six days. This was already in October. And uh, that's when these soldiers told us that, that the, the Hungarians--there was a president or whatever you want to call him--the chief-in-command of the Hunga...Hungarian government was a man by the name Horthy--I'm sure you heard of the name Horthy--and that he is under arrest and uh, uh, Nyilas Guard--that was the most anti-Semitic group of the Hungarians--took over and uh, that this is the end of the Jews and they are murdering Jews by the, by the thousands. And uh, we were already in the forest hiding over there and we were there for six days.


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