Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Albert Fein - February 19, 2005

So you stayed in this--in these dormitories?

We stayed a couple of days only and there was another thing. The commandant from Kamenetz-Podolsk, he was only a colonel. He didn't have the right to allow somebody to cross the border. So with those papers what we, what we had, he couldn't accept this. This was only a paper who we are. Only what he is doing, he couldn't, he couldn't give the order to let us through the ??? the border. So right away we stay in Kolomyia. Uh, more--the most of the people, they went all the way to the border, only they didn't let them through so they had to come back. So we was staying in Kolomyia, and my mom, my daughters--my sisters, they went to the commandant. He was, he was entitled to do things like this, to send over. There was a lieutenant who was--you could talk to him. He was from Budapest, a very, very--a young person, so he did it. He did us a thing--another paper, you know, that we should go to the border. Only what--he send us to the border illegally. He didn't prepare us, you know. What was happen we came to the border in the night and they stopped and we heard around, you know, things. It was a truck, there as a canvas over us. We could stay--if I wouldn't stay up--I was a kid, you know, I want to see where, where we are only there was a German border guard, and a Hungarian. So anyway, he, he didn't wait to okay, the chauffeur, he just go through the border and left and this was it. We arrive to the city because this was overpass--the border was on the top of the mountain. We went all the way down and there the gendarmerie--Hungarian, already waited. Only what he did, the chauffeur, he didn't stop, he just went through and took us out of the city. He was accused that he's bringing in some contraband or some whisky or something, you know, so he left us and, and, and drove away. We didn't know what to do. See, only the, the Hungarian gendarmes they right away, you know, left on the whole border area and was looking for us. And in the morning, we didn't know about it. We start to walk out and go someplace.