Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000 & January 8, 2001

Return to Munkacs

Was there any discussion about what had--about the whole experience? At this point you're now...

Uh...

...healthy again, I assume.

You know what uh, discussion among us, yes, yes, of course. Then we started, we started already uh, thinking about not then food and, and, and uh, yeah. So we realized that there was no, no chance uh, very little chance that uh, uh we were hoping still that our mother, because I didn't have younger brothers, so, my mother is alive. Although we knew that, that she took the, the...

Child.

...child. But who, we, we, we didn't know that. Matter of fact--so, then we went, as I said, to Prague and from Pag...Prague to Slovakia. The trains they took a long time after the war. Slovakia uh, Bratislava, that was the route into Budapest, from Budapest to, to Munkacs that was the route. It took us several weeks you know, on the different trains on the top of the c...of the uh, wagons or something. And we arrived to Bratislava, I have to tell you that Bratislava, the Slovaks were different. They were not that rude, but the, the atmosphere was a little bit different. But we found the place, they told us where the place is uh, the Joint I guess or some UNRRA or somebody, they gave us some money and some, some help. And then they helped us to put us in the train, on the train, and we went to Budapest. But it took us a long time. Because you know, very--but Hun...Hungarian were the worst, you know. We sta...we, for instance we arrived to Hungarian village and sometimes we had to stay there for half a day because the train didn't go further. So we were walking a little bit you know, in the village and the Hungarians, they were very bad, you know. They look at us, "Oh, you came back? We thought that you died, everybody." Something like that, you know. Contrast to the Czechs. But in Budapest again there was Jewish organization, International Joint. They gave us...

Joint Distribution Committee?

Distribution and some others, you know. We, we found that, this special. They gave us also some money and some lodging, uh. And, and then...

Before that you traveled. Where did you get clothes and?

Uh, we got clothes from American.


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