Alexander Ehrmann - May 13, 1983
Hungarian Families Deported to Poland
You mentioned earlier that there was some um, Hungarian families who were deported to Poland.
Yeah, the Polish Jewish families who settled in our area.
You had told me earlier that there was um, a friend of yours who brought his family back from Poland to Budapest.
That was a family who uh, were our neighbors and uh, the two boys in the family and two girls, they were all the ages of my sisters and my older brother. Uh, we were very close with them and they were taken, they were deported to Poland.
When they came back, did he relate any specifics, things that he had seen there?
We didn't see the family when they came back. They were taken to a different town and uh, they lived under assumed names. We didn't see them anymore. Uh, we did talk to uh, this son uh, he was a frequent visitor to our house. He was in the labor force of the army uh, when his parents were taken away and he was born in Czechoslovakia, so they couldn't touch him. But he was telling us where he found them, how he found them, how he tracked them down, and where he placed them, of course, when he came back he needed help and we were in communication with the parents.
What did he tell you was going on in Poland?
He was telling us uh, stories about these people who were let loose on the other side of the border and the Polish authorities were hostile, they uh, rounded them up, some of them were killed. Some of them were made to dig their own graves and then shot on the uh, perimeter of the, of the ditch uh, and then fell into the ditch. Uh, he was telling us about some more fortunate who made it into towns and they were trying to find their ways to uh, uh, settling uh, and the resistance they were encountering from the Polish people--we already at that point heard how hostile the Polish population was to Jews, period. Very few of them were willing to extend any kind of help. Some did.
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