Charlotte Firestone - March 11, 1982
Escape
He was convinced? He didn't...
Yeah. He let us. You know, we was crying, all four of us and he didn't do nothing and he said, "If it's going to happen once more, he will kill us without, without, uh..." we cannot say anything anymore. So then, then we uh, uh,--he told us that he's going to be in the end, that SS--the Ukraine SS and one at a time should go to the woods and he is going to pretend he doesn't see us. So the three of us went and we start walking and we walking and we met with Emma Macha. And as I said, that um, that, that um that driver on the truck--and he put us on the truck. Emma Macha went away someplace and he put us on the truck and we was in the back of the truck and as he was driving, in the back of the truck and as we were driving, the truck driver stopped and he picked up four or five German women--the German. And they start asking us questions and we said that we are Hungarian nurses and she said, "No, you couldn't be nurses. I saw transport going by and you probably escaped from that transport and you are Jews. And because of the Jews, we going to lose the war." And we said, "No." And they start knocking on the window for the bus driver and I mean for the truck driver, that he should let us out. Because we are and if he's not going to let us out, then he's gonna--they going to report him. So he let us out and as we got off, he said, he is sorry, but he cannot do nothing, because if he's going to be reported, then they gonna shoot him. So it was already, you know, before nighttime and we start walking and we could hear the gunshots We were walking and walking, the three of us. And all of a sudden, we saw a little light, so we went in there and uh, it was cold and we went in and we sat down there.
There was a house.
A little house, Yeah. And as we were sitting there, SS--three or four SS came in and they said, they said, "Who are you?" And we said that we are Hungarian nurses.
Did you still have the uniforms on in Praust?
We had on a coat. A gray coat, but I think we still had on the, that, that dress, that stripped dress.
Where did you get the coat?
We got the coat from, from, um...we carried a skirt and um, had some kind blouse with us and we said we are Hungarian and one starts talking the Hungarian, in Hungarian language and we were lucky that we said Hungarian. And then he said to the Polish woman, "Give them coffee. They are Hungarian nurses." And she gave us coffee, black coffee and then he said, "Give them some--" She came and she said, "You want some more from that--" He said, "No, we don't want more. Give them." She said, "No, I'm not going to give them. They have enough. I know they are Jews." And she went in and she had a room there further and the SS was lying down and they were, they were, I don't know, sleeping or what and one at a time, we sneaked out from there, because we saw it is already dangerous and we went into a barn. We went and went and walked and walked and we find a barn and we took out our clo... off our clothes and we buried that thing, that stripe. I remember burying everything. We had a star, too, a Jewish star and we buried that, too, our service--shoes one of us burned it. And we start walking and as we walked, we came to a place, it was a city. I don't remember, I don't know what, the name of the city, but we saw some soldiers and they told at them--no, we were walking from there and uh, it was a little town and we went into a place that, it was a little barn, whatever uh, cows and there was goose and chicken and we went in there and we were sitting there and we were sitting there and there came in a soldier and we told them we are German--we were working with the German scientist company. You know that scientists--that doctors and nurses and we were working with them and one morning, they probably got a call that they had to go some place and we were sleeping outside of this camp and they didn't wake us up and we, we didn't know where they went and he and he didn't say nothing. Then we were so tired, we were sleeping and, and all of a sudden, with a flashlight, somebody came and was lighting in our eyes and the captain and he says, "Who are you? What are your doing here?" And we told him the same story. We made up that story good and he says, "Aren't you hungry?" We said, "Oh, we are starving." And he made it that soldier cook a coffee and he brung us coffee and the next morning, we were afraid. We went further--it was early in the morning, you know, that the chickens and the and the ducks woke us up and we went further and there was a siren all of a sudden and we went in that hou...in a house and we asked the woman if we can stay there, because the sirens. They said, "No, because we have a bunker and we can, just so many people can go into that, that place and we going in and you better go further. So we went further and I remember it was like a city, or there was where the soldiers are staying, I don't know how you call it uh, where the soldiers. Hungarian, it's kaszáryna and, and we wanted to go in there. We couldn't go in, because there was two soldiers standing out that nobody couldn't go in and we--I saw that they took out a Jewish boy. He had on that gray stripe suit and he was in the chimney. They took him out from the chimney and they took him--he was hiding in the chimney and they took him not too far and they hurt him. He got shot. And then we saw, even our girls, they took them someplace and we saw they got shot, too. You know, they weren't even...
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