Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Fred Ferber - September 11 & 25, 2001

I see.

Same one, I have to come up with the proper name for it. You know, that you carry your soup with it or whatever you have. When you get, serve soup, that's where you, that's where they give you the soup. So I sat on this particular pot. Now the situation was such that if you bend down a little, if you bend down with your back just a little, you cannot go back, because whoever is next to you is now lay, leaning, it, it was leaning against you when you were eh, s...sitting up. But now when you're leaning a little bit forward, that someone is leaning forward already. So, so there's no way to get up now. For instance there were people who were legitimate people who needed to go to the bathroom. What do you do? The people who were legitimate people who wanted to go outside. First of all, when you stoo...when they stood up, first of all they couldn't sit down anymore. There was no room! It was absolutely no room. Now if that someone was trying to find a spot at night, it was totally dark, there was no lights. If he was trying to find--pick up the leg and find a spot two, three feet further, he stepped on someone. And the someone said "oh!" A big yell, put up a big yell, "oh," whatever it is. What happened, that that someone or the two, three people someone's, took this guy and pushed him further. And then wherever he fell down again, another yell, "Oh, what you doing there!" A big yell because all of a sudden he was leaning on top of the people. They threw him out further. And by that morning, you find a lot of people like that outside the barrack that are dead. Not buried, but dead. Because after that, no weak, the, the weak. Everybody was weak and they'd been thrown around. They couldn't, they, they, they were through. They were through. Now I was fortunate because I had a big guy next to me, by comparison to other people. Now there was another problem in this camp. We were together with Hungarians. These Hungarians were strong, stand like bulls. Because they were in the war for a short period of time. And these Hungarians came from the German front. They were with the Germans, they were the one who were digging, digging ditches.

I see.

Okay. So they still were getting certain amount of food. They were strong. We were uh, totally exhausted, weak. And these people were very, very strong.

Hungarian Jews.

Hungarian Jews. That's correct. So it was very hard for us to survive because they were so much stronger. They could do with us what they want. So what I'm trying to say, I was very fortunate to have that strong fellow next to me. Because anybody who was leaning for me or against me or on top of me, he pushed them out. You see, he saved my life ultimately, pretty much.

Do you know his name?

I knew his name. I don't remember right now at this moment. I don't remember. I was looking for him. Supposedly he's some place in Toronto. I only had his, his last, his first name. It will come to me. It's a Jewish name. I, I, I don't remember at the moment.