Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Albert Fein - February 19, 2005

Here, Hungarian military was concentrating and they supposed to go back to Hungary. They came from the front. They have cattles with them, only they cannot take them back--live cattle--so they were slaughtering their cattle so they give us meat. They give us uh, a quarter of a, a cow only my mother--my father says, "We cannot eat this. It's not kosher." So we, we took this, this meat and carry it to, to a small town on the way and exchange it for potatoes.

Exchanged the meat for potatoes?

Yeah. And we get there to Mikhal'che. In Mikhal'che there was--I think this was Rosh Hashanah.

So maybe September.

Yeah. And, yeah, the guy, he used to be uh, owner of a Biergärten. ??? this is where they drink beer and whisky, you know, in town. Jewish guy, he had one daughter, a beautiful girl. Uh, he doesn't have any alcohol anymore because he had to get rid of it before we arrived there. Only he says, "You can stay here for a while, at least after about--through the holidays," and we were staying there.

So he was Jewish?

Yeah, he was Jewish. He knew...

He knew that you were Jewish.

...that we were Jewish. Sure, he knew. There was another family and--in the neighborhood--asked from where we came. So we told them from where we came and we had to go back to Kolomyia. And he says, "I have there an uncle," there and there, you know, so he want to--he thought we were going to take the train or whichever thing. We couldn't take any, any transportation. What we had, we had connection.