Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Michael Weiss - October 7, 1994

This was--you were with your parents and...

That was my parents and grandmother...

Grandmother. What about aunts and uncles? Did any, any of them...

Aunts and uncles, they did not live in the city of Kascony. Yes. And uh, then we had five--four or five transports out of Beregszász to Auschwitz. I went in the last one. And we arrived ???

You put your grandmother on one train?

Yes.

And were your parents with you on the...

Oh yes.

train?

Yes.

When the trains--when they--when the trains arrived, did, did the Germans--was it--were they Germans or Hungarians who were...

There were Germans already. Well, professor, [pause] can--I can't even imagine... we were about eighty people in there. In a wagon. We took with us bread and that was the main, the main uh, food we had. And, professor, today, buy me a big piece of bread, it's so precious, so precious. So, we were in that wagon, about eighty of us...

The morning? Was it the morning?

Uh, we, we started out around two o'clock in the afternoon.

Any lighting in the wagon?

No, no, no.

You had no sunlight coming through?

There, there was many other things there was not in the wagon. There was like a little uh, iron bars on those wagons, you know, what you could see out. But on that wagon, first of all, there was no water. Nobody gave us water. Nobody gave us anything. Professor, on that wagon there was no sanitary facilities.

So what did people do?

They put up uh, a blanket. People went, and on that thing they tried to spill it out or whatever.

So there was a bucket?

Well, no buckets. Some people had a, a, a utensil of some kind. And they use that.

What else about it?

I remember those--we were there a couple of nights. It took about two and a half days.

What did it sound like?

It sound like crying; it sound like, it sound like--can't even, can't even describe it. Can't even describe it really. I was laying near my father and mother. And they were trying I should, I shouldn't hear their cries. And I just knew my friends, they were, I mean--we were a family there. That's what they were trying not to hear. We arrived there. The doors opens. And many things is blank. For example, how did we--okay, I was young but--older people got off that train. Has to got off, I mean that wagon. It didn't have no steps or anything. I don't know. And then, my--when we got down, my mother still had a piece of bread, she ask me if I want some. I said no. And this is the last time I seen of her. A big tumult: hollering, dog barking, everything what you want to think of.