Paul Molnar - July 24, 2002
Deportation to Auschwitz
So the safe houses really.
No, that was much later. Uh, so anyhow. Which, they encouraged us, we figured, well, you know, it won't be so bad. I mean, they were bringing us food, and I mean, you know, we were thrilled. The next morning came our turn and we were loaded in these cattle cars and uh, then they slammed the door shut and there was two little windows on top with the barbed wire. And, and uh, they packed us in, we were really packed uh, like sardines. I mean, you, wherever spot you were, that's where you stayed, you couldn't move around or anything. I mean, there were a hundred people, just-there's no room. And uh, older people, older people you know, it was just awful. I was fourteen years old. For me it wasn't very difficult physically beca.I was scared, but I didn't, I didn't, you know, I could handle it. But for older people it was very, very difficult and there were some other people who were sick and they were screaming and some of them flipped out and other people actually died on that train. And uh, we traveled for two days and two nights. And we didn't get any food or water. What we really missed was water. We were very, very thirsty. It was first week of July. This was the eighth of July that they took us. Uh, it was terrible hot. And, as I said, we were very scared. All along the trip, the train stopped, a number of times the train stopped and we heard all sorts of noises and languages but we had no idea where we were. The reason the train stopped was because whenever troop trains had to take over, then they shuttle us to a side and then they moved out of the way. Anyhow, morning-early dawn of the third day, this time the train stopped and it wasn't like before. This time we could tell that it really stopped. Before we didn't know whether it just stopped. They're going to let us off temporary-it was always temporary. This, somehow, we could tell that this was a permanent because we didn't hear any noises. We didn't-we were not in a train station. Uh, and they opened the doors and they had a big long ditch in front of us, wide ditch, quite wide, and they had all these German soldiers with their guard dogs and machine guns and guns and so on and pointing at us. And we had these funny looking creatures in front of us, they all had uh, starched uniforms on and starched cap and they were running up and down along the train and just was yelling at us. "Get out, everybody get out." Well, most of us spoke German because that was our second language in school, so. Plus, I had a Fraulein, I have a governess when I was a child, so I was really fluent German. Uh, and what they, they were saying, everybody out and we got out. And they said, "Throw your suitcase in the ditch, you'll get it later." We all jumped out and the older people, like my grandma, we had to lift 'em up because the, they couldn't jump off a cattle car, it was maybe ten feet or so to jump. And, and it was total chaos. I mean, with their screaming and yelling at us and we had no idea where we are and what we're doing here, what place we're in, nothing.
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