Helen Lang - February 23, 1982
Escaping Again
Right away.
Walking with the people, walking with the people.
West again.
West again, with the people. We figured we can't do it, you know. We cannot do it. We tried and we cannot do it. Two incidents, the third one we didn't want to take chances. So we were walking. We arrived late at night. It was raining, I think. All of a sudden it was dark. I said, "You know what, let's bury our uniforms first." I had a Magen David. It, it was dark, we went under a tree. But it was so muddy there, you know, that we took off our dresses and I took off my Magen David. My sister somehow got it for me on my birthday from--somebody was hiding a Magen David and she give a plate of soup, so she borrowed for me on my birthday and I was carrying it then, you know. But it came this time, I took it off. I buried it. We all buried the dresses in the mud good and deep. And we, we had I think on a sweater we had and some kind of skirt, yet, luckily, you know. That's what we put on and we were going. All of a sudden we got so hungry already. We see some lights, it was something like a bunker or a house--a big house and we go in there. And here we hear already the fighting is going. We saw the fire, you know. You know, it was not far the front. But I don't know where we were. So, you know, we were afraid. So we went into this house. There were soldiers there. I don't remember if they were SS or the Wehrmacht. They were already tired, you know. They were exhausted. They had some black coffee and they asked us, "Who are you?" And we told them the story, "We're Hungarians, Gentiles. My brother and my father is fighting on the front with the Germans. And, and uh, uh, we, we went away--we escaped from the Russians because we lived close by--Budapest--and they were coming so we wind up on a ship and somehow we landed here. We don't know where we are," you know. They didn't say where we are. We didn't, we didn't ask. We didn't want to tell him that, that we are very anxious to know where we are. What's the difference where we are, you know?
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