Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Larry Brenner - December 13, 1981

So, start walking, walking, walking. And I don't know how or what, but we came to a city of Le... Leo... Leonding, this is next to Wals again. Leonding. Matter of fact, the city's same as that... I think Hitler's mother is buried there. No, I think I read it even something. So we, we, we step outside the city. There was an American uh, kind of headquarters. We walk in there, we said that we came from the hospital, please do something with us.

Is it Linz?

Maybe next to Linz...

Linz.

...maybe next to Linz. Okay, it maybe next to Linz. That's right, because Wals was a little bit, this was next to Linz. Okay, do something with us. So, he says, "Okay, we have a little camp inside the city of Leonding. Maybe about twenty or thirty refugees there uh, different homes. We give you uh, some cards, you, you go to the... these two restaurants. And we give you some certificates and then you will get three meal a day, morning, the afternoon and the evening. And then you go to that, there is a schoolhouse, that where quarters for you." And, believe it or not, we found our abandoned friends in that town. Reunited ourselves there with them and uh, we were given, as I said to you, every morning we... Three, three, three meals a day we get from a restaurant. Pretty good ones, nevertheless I was hungry like hell. And I don't know, I always my mind was food, food, food. How do you get more food? I mean, you don't want to, the... I cannot steal, you know, this... I, I don't know and I will not. How do you do it? So, came an idea in my mind saying that I remember when I came here I went to the American headquarters saying that I'm from the hospital and they told me. So, I'm going to pray that they not going to remember a week or two weeks later who am I. I'm going out of town, saying the same story with a different name. And they bought it. And they gave me another under a different name. So, there was two restaurants. You have a choice to go either here or either there. So, what I used to do in the morning run here, eat breakfast there, and then run over there and eat another one. But somehow they caught me. I don't know how it happened, it was a week or two week later they caught me, the Americans. And they called me over, and said, "Why the heck did you do it?" I said, "I was hungry, plain hungry. What do you want me to do? I done it. You're not supposed to. Say no. So, do something about it." I knew they not, what they going to do about it? Thereafter, what they told us, this is enough, you have to make your own kitchen. We're going to bring you raw foods and you going, you have about forty or fifty people in town and uh, you have to make, organize yourself. Which we did and we made the wrong food. Anyway, this is nothing uh, earthshaking happen to us. We came back to Hungary, they let us come back. Soon we arrive to Hungarian border. They put us in a... Hungarians in a wagon. The little belonging what we, which we, which we organize ourselves. As soon as we get in the train wagon, the damn Russians come up to the train. Everybody out, leave your belonging there. They took everything away from us and we come back again, the Russians.