Albert Fein - February 19, 2005
Life Under the Hungarians
Well, tell me, here you are in Uzhorod, and the Hungarians occupied Uzhorod in 1938, I think...
Yeah, '38. This was--or '37 in the late fall. Some...
Of '37?
Yeah, of '37.
So what did people think when the Hungarians came in?
First of all, it started, you know, the Hungarian, uh, police and gendarmerie, I know you saw it on the movie, there is a thing...
Like a feather...
...feathers? This was the gendarmerie. Those was taking us all the way to Kamenetz-Podolsk. That was low, low style police with, uh, tanking up World War I, you know, how policemen supposed to be rough, tough and you know. So the Czech, the people who are living in Uzhorod, there were some people who stayed, who was in the Czech police, and they retired from the police and they stayed there. I remember there was two families, uh, ??? and the other--they was cousins, and they took a fight with the police, because what they do--they couldn't write--they used, uh, people were used to, you make--you commit something illegal, they write you a, a thing--a ticket, and you pay a fine. They didn't know how to write so they took 'em in a doorstep, you know, in a yard, beat them up, and let them go.
These are non-Jews?
Yeah, non-Jews. Non-Jews.
So the Hungarian police came in to just beat people up.
Yeah. So, people organized themselves, you know, those two families, you know. They was--and, and prepare themselves from this. They bring them in, you know, in the door, door side because there, there was yards, you know, big...bigger yards, where you know that...
Were they in storefronts?
Yeah, yeah.
In the doorways of--yeah okay.
Door fronts because they were not direct to the houses. There was like a big, big uh, big yard and more houses. And there was like a hall, you know, to go in so they take them there in and beat them up, so. They was preparing to meet them in a thing like this. So they beat up the police and they took away their, their guns and they was begging for giving back the guns, because, you know, so this type of things was going on, in short, after the Hungarians came in. They was not used to, to disorder, just that they can do whatever they want, beat up anybody, you know, the people. Only this is beside the point. This has nothing to do with the Jewish people. Jewish people, you know, if this--oh, you have a very small tape.
No, no--it's a little disc.
I know this is a small tape.
Uh-huh.
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