Lanka Ilkow - October 12, 1991
Hungarians in Auschwitz
Do you remember anything else at Auschwitz, other groups coming in? Did you watch the trains as they came in?
Well, no, we just saw they're coming there and we uh, you know. And uh, Hungarian soldiers we saw. So the Hungarians who came from Kisvarda and all were real honkies and they say, started to scream. "Magyorka--Hungarians, come and take us home, take us home!" You know, they start screaming. So I said to one woman, "You are so stupid. They brought you here. Who brought you here? The Germans brought you? They brought you here. So you think that they're taking you home?" I say, "you will never come home!" I told her. And, and uh, because, I, I told her it was so stupid. They said, "They brought us there, the Hungarians did everything. We didn't see no Germans." Like uh, they took away a cousin of mine to prison. And it's called ???. This was, she was sitting like in a chimney in the dark you know, alone. And she was just a pretty girl, but she maked uh, papers for the Slovak boys was coming into Hungary, and she make them papers that uh, they're born there, there in Hungary. She blot out the...
False papers.
Yeah, false papers she was making. So she couldn't make anymore. So one guy reported her. So they was--her mail they were cens...censoring you know, in the post office and they knew everything what's happening. So one day they come and took her away. Her father was already taken away and they--he wasn't home. And they took her away and she was in that prison and nobody--but my father went with her. And I wanted to go and he says, "Don't go." I said, "Well, I will go." So I got permission to go to see her. And three soldiers, I had one behind me and on each side one. And they brought her the same thing, with three soldiers. And I told her in Hungarian, that time I couldn't speak very good Hungarian, but I told her that Uncle Adolf is coming on Shabbos. Adolf is Hitler, you know. But they didn't know what I am talking, but she knew. And I say, "He's now in Budapest visiting with Yuri and--" her sister, "and he's in Budapest and maybe now on Shabbos he will come to us and he wants two kugels that we should make him." And uh, you know, everything I give her uh, to understand what's going on, you know. And uh, and they, the, the six uh, police which was standing there they didn't know one word what we talking. But it was not uh, allowed to speak Yiddish, only Hungarian. Well, she spoke a good Hungarian, but I didn't.
And what happened to her?
Uh, she's living. A multi-millionaires. They are in uh, you know, in Ottawa. And uh, but she had a stroke and wasn't worth nothing, the millions, you know.
The Hungarians--the gendarmes are the ones who...
Yeah.
harassed you and put you on the train.
Yes, yeah, they beat and....
But at Auschwitz, you must have count some Germans now.
Oh they had the Germans there.
Any, any...
No Hungarians, we didn't see. Just in uh, they was the Hun...Austrian and they was dressed as uh, the German--in German uh, clothing.
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