Bert Dan - November 17, 1982
Being Imprisoned
It was about two hundred fifty miles away from there--from Kolozsvar. And uh, they want to confront me with those two gentleman because they have a lot of questions to ask after that. And I said, "I'm willing." "Good for you willing to go down." I said, I had no choice, whatever they told me I have to go along. And they took me down there and uh, those two men--they were talking a lot--I never saw them in all my life. I don't know who--I didn't know who they were. One of them had a brother that I had some connection with prior to this--must have been about six, seven months before that. I bought from them--from him something. And evidently that's how the whole, the whole thing started for me that I was involved in the black market. So they kept me under arrest and the other two guys were also taken. And they took us out to Budapest. And there was a trial. They kept us locked in for about six months without a trial. And there were a lot of people brought in from all over. One of them brought a pound of coffee or a soda--a pound of coffee and stuff like that, you know, and we were all locked in there. And I think it was the end of June and finally they came out with a trial. And they sentenced me to one year in prison and I was locked up in one of the most famous Hungarian institutions, it is called a ???. It is like--in Yiddish it's called a star. A star jail--they're, you know it's like Jackson prison or whatever, you know, the star. It was one of the most famous, you know, where they took all the criminals who were sentenced for life and in prison for murder and stuff like that. And that's where I was locked up until the 19th of November, 1942.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn