Noemi Engel Ebenstein - July 22, 1996
Conditions in Strasshof
What do you know about Strasshof. I mean, apart from... it was a labor camp where your mother presumably did...
Worked.
...various kinds of industrial labor.
Yes. I know that she worked in two different camps. And, uh, the, the, the work itself, the labor itself was different in nature. Uh, in one camp she worked and I think that was Strasshof, um, she worked in camouflaging airplanes. So, like I don't know whether the material that they put on it, I don't know. In another camp where she talked about it in the interview much more, she was laying telephone cables. And I presume that was in Moosbierbaum. Um, let me read to you, I, I think that I, uh, summarized here. I wrote this down from, you know, because my mother and I were just chatting, just like you and I when we did the audiotape. Uh, and we, we reminisced and we gossiped. We did all kinds, it was a fun experience interviewing my mother, which was all my daughter Ruti's idea, who at the time was 16 and an aspiring journalist and she kept on saying to me, "You must interview Safta, Grandma. Because it has to be done in Hungarian and if you don't do it nobody else will do it and she will die with her stories, and I want to know the stories." And so she, one of the visits, and we go frequently to Israel. One of the stories she, uh, one of the visits she told me to interview her. She arranged the whole thing. And, and, uh, I sat down and I interviewed my mother. Should we stop now?
No, what's the part you're going to read now?
Oh I just wanted to summarize, um, the sequence of events.
Okay.
We were in the ghetto, the Bacsalmas ghetto, for about two months. From there we walked to the train. We were put on one side of the train. My, my grandmother with the sick and the old was put on the other part of the train. It was the same train. We--see this is where the direction--we went toward Miskolc, Hungary. In other words, I forgot. We were in Northern Yugoslavia. So the train was traveling first towards Hungary. Towards Miskolc. There the train stopped in Hungary proper. For 24 hours. Ah, okay. Here it, it says: "Mothers and children were put on the 'good' side of the train, which we later figured out was a good side." And I write here. "It later turned out, L'chaim--to..."
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