Interview with Ann Klein, January 8, 1982

Mary Kate Tachau:

This is Mary Kate Tachau talking with Ann Klein on January 8, 1982.

M.T:

Ann is a friend of mine whom I have known for over 20 years, she's a survivor of the Holocaust. Early in our friendship she told me about some of her experiences, and I've always wanted to have them recorded or written down and so we're beginning today on January 8, 1982 talking about her life before the Holocaust and how she survived and whatever else comes up.

M.T:

Ann don't you think one of the good ways to start would be to begin at the 1:00beginning and talk about your childhood and the town you came from in Hungary and what you knew about what was going on in the rest of Europe.

Ann Klein:

I think this is very important really because I lived in a small town and the name of that time was Eger, E-G-E-R. It had about 30,000 of population, and I think about a thousand people might have been Jewish. I don't really remember exactly the numbers. I lived, I think a very sheltered life. I have gone to a Catholic school, to Catholic gymnasium where nuns were teaching. My father was the president or manager of a bank, which was the branch up in our home town. The main office was in Budapest. And my parents were older. I was born when my 2:00mother might've been about 40 years old. I was the youngest in the family. I had two brothers, four and eight years older.

A.K.:

If anything was going wrong in the family ever, if there was anything wrong, they never shared it with me. At least that's the way I remember like if my brother might have been sick, they didn't want me to know the details of it. They never wanted to frighten me, I think. I have lived a perfectly normal life without ever feeling any tragedies or catastrophe. I graduated from high school when I was... see, I missed this up. I graduated from high school in 1939. I was born in 1921 and I think that's important to know how old I was when all this happened.

A.K.:

In 1939 I was not able to go to college because no Jewish girls, in fact no girls were able to go from my home town because college or the university did not take that many people. Jewish people could not really answer. So that was just no question at all, no question at all To go to college. The university was in Budapest and most of the families wanted their children to do something or learn a trade. And I have learned how to sew.

A.K.:

I had a family friend who had a dressmaking business and my mother signed me up for that and I've gone for three or four years, learned how to sew, got a diploma or a certificate on it and that was so-called my profession. I was able 4:00to do a little sewing at home too. I could do things for myself, but that's what I did from 1939 to 1943.

M.T:

Can I interrupt a minute? What did your brothers do? I didn't realize that Jewish man could not go to the university either.

A.K.:

My brother, the older one actually in my home town has gone to law school, and men were able to do it more. He had a doctor degree, but it was a law degree.

M.T:

And he was a doctor there.

A.K.:

That's right. And he never practiced law, but since my father was the director of this bank and it was very customary for family members to do the same thing what their parents might have done, my brother has gotten a job, my older one who was eight years older in Budapest in the main office and he worked in the 5:00same bank. It was like a first national bank would be, it was in Hungary. And he was very good in languages, so he worked on the foreign...

M.T:

Desk or whatever.

A.K.:

Department because he knew German and maybe French and that was his job. Then when my younger brother graduated from high school. He also worked in the same bank but not in my hometown because again, I don't think it was very important or wise to work where your father was, and it was nice even in that time. Not many people got away from home, but in my family as the boys did and my other brother got a job in another time also with the same bank. So he also worked as a clerk in the bank, but he didn't have a chance to keep up doing this that much longer because then in 1941 my younger brother was called into the service and 6:00was in the so-called Hungarian army.

M.T:

He was drafted.

A.K.:

For a very short time and afterwards when the Germans came in, then they took the army uniforms away from them and then they had to just wear regular clothes.

M.T:

They took the army [crosstalk 00:06:26].

A.K.:

Army uniforms away from the Jewish.

M.T:

From the Jewish Hungarians.

A.K.:

From the Jewish Hungarians. And then he was working as a... it was called a labor...

M.T:

Battalion or something?

A.K.:

Something like that. They wore regular clothes and that was already 1941 and he disappeared in 1941. So after 1941 I never heard from him again. He was called out into to Russia and he just [crosstalk 00:06:59].

M.T:

Probably some kind of forced labor.

A.K.:

Nobody. Forced labor and nobody from that whole group ever survived. Do you want 7:00to stop for a minute now and [inaudible 00:07:08].

M.T:

You want to go back to where I interrupted to ask about your brothers and their education and their jobs. You had just been saying that from 1939 to 1943 you were sewing principally.

A.K.:

That was my job, and at the same time we stopped seeing our friends who we have gone to school with. In my class out of 30 classmates there were only five Jewish girls in that school. And it's important, for example, for you all to know that the tuition for example, for a Catholic girl was let's say $10 a month, and for the Protestant it was $15 and for the Jewish girls it was $20. 8:00The nuns, most of them were fairly nice and we had a pretty good relationship with except one who was our history and Hungarian literature teacher who has made our life absolutely miserable.

A.K.:

If I did not learn much of my history there or my literature, it's very easy to explain. We had a class we took every day. It was two wars, either the history class or the Hungarian literature, so we were together with this nun daily and she was anti-Semitic and in her lectures she brought up all the time how the Jews were the cause of the war and everything else, which of course it was very embarrassing in my generation to a high school student.

A.K.:

We did not live in an era where the kids can get up and speak against a teacher 9:00or form your own opinion on it. All we did that we were listening and I remember very clearly the moments that I would be looking down and listening, but the teacher would say and you feel like everybody's eyes out on knew, and that is no way that you can defend yourself. And so it was miserable our last year in high school because of that.

M.T:

Do you think the other students believed her interpretation of...

A.K.:

Some did. But then 40 years later, I have talked to a friend of mine, even in my last trip to Hungary about this, but I don't want to jump ahead of that about how did they feel during that time. But we did not discuss it. We could not ask them. We didn't want to, they didn't feel like that this is something they can discuss. So everybody was just quiet.

A.K.:

One day we went into school and that was a big swastika on every Jewish girls desk. And that again, we could not rebel. At least we were shy or we did not. There was no way to do it. It was just entirely different, the way things are now where young people would protest. So this was very uncomfortable. I did graduate from high school with a pretty good average B, worked very hard and got my diploma, and after that I learned how to sew and did that until about 1943.

A.K.:

The war and the politics was not discussed in the family as much as you do it now with your children. There was no television. The newspapers did not bring news the way you can now know about everything what was going on. We did know of course about Hitler. We would see him on the news in the movies and we knew the 11:00kind of things he was doing and it was a threat to everybody. But I'm just talking about my own self. I did not fear or did not worry that maybe something will happen to us. You just could not imagine that it would happen to you. It never occurred to my mind that I ever will be in Auschwitz because it just did not come up.

A.K.:

That were newscasts at nights in 1944, Voice of America, and I remember we had a big apartment and we had a priest friend live in one of the rooms because my brothers didn't live at home anymore, and he was almost like a member of a family. Like one o'clock at night we would call him over and we would say, "Come on in," and the shades would all closed and the doors were all locked up kind of because that was somehow illegal to listen to that broadcast. And then we would 12:00hear Hitler's speeches or what was going on. But somehow in my mind it just didn't appear to me that I was frightened that it would happen to us.

A.K.:

Then my father, we were not very, very religious but belonged to the Jewish community. And the oldest member of the community who was the president of the Jewish agency, let's say, he was maybe about 75 years old and too old and too sick to handle a lot of the problems which were coming up. And my father was the vice president, and so he was assigned to take his place. So when the Germans came in to Hungary, which was in 1944 about March, there was a five member 13:00committee of Jewish leaders in town.

A.K.:

This happened in every town and people have read about them, five members and the head of that committee was my father. The reason this is terribly important because it wasn't an easy job for him. By then he was retired from the bank. He worked 40 years there, and he had a very nice retirement and for fun he was taking care of a friend of his vineyards and apple orchard. He was not a Jewish person from Budapest and they were in very close terms.

M.T:

The friend?

A.K.:

The friend who owned the vineyards. And my father was really in very good terms with many people in my hometown through the bank. Everybody knew him, including the head of the police department. Everybody called each other by their first 14:00names. And so I never thought that anything could happen to us.

A.K.:

And so when the Germans came in and my father had to take part of the giving orders in town, what's the next step to do, he was the one who was talking to the head of the police department because they communicated with the Germans. So it wasn't the closed communication. He had to give orders now. All radios have to be turned in one day. I mean, I don't remember the dates. All paintings, all silver has to be turned in to the banks, for example. This was every day a new rule came out. Like for example, we had a lot of silver. You had to turn some in, but not all of it did we do. Because this friend who's vineyard my father 15:00was taking care of offered all his help in any way he could. And he had wine sellers in the city. And because they were worried about bombing or they were worried in Budapest about all kinds of other problems, he has brought a lot of his valuable things done to my hometown and hid done in the cellars.

A.K.:

So he offered that he would let us keep some of our things down there. So a few rags or maybe some of my silver, which I still own, out of a place setting for 24 people, we saved six because we gave it to him. We gave actually to him a place setting of 12 and they robbed his cellar, which is a true story because, right during the war, just some people [crosstalk 00:16:01], no, they broke in 16:00and he lost some of his things and ours too, but a place setting for six, we still have, and I brought it out with me.

A.K.:

So anyway, my father had connections, but that was nothing that he could do for the family. He never even tried. He never even thought that he should. And it didn't even occur to anybody that something could happen and that we should hide or we should get away. First of all, my father could not have done it because everybody knew him and everybody would have missed him the minute he would have left town. So that was just no way.

A.K.:

And all those rules came out, what you have to turn in. We turned in some of our silver, all of it. We could not imagine that they would believe us that we don't have anything. So therefore kind of but jewelry we didn't really have. Some of them be turned in and some of them we had, and then we just threw it away.

A.K.:

So then the last thing happened that the rule was that by a certain day, and 17:00maybe it was March 13th, I can't remember exactly the date, we had to leave our apartment. We had a nine room apartment and all the furniture and all one's belongings had to be put into one room and make inventory of it what you have, and that we were going to leave our house or apartment, everybody and moving into a ghetto.

M.T:

Had there been a ghetto in Eger before?

A.K.:

Never. Never. They just manufactured the ghetto, which was in the area of the town where the Jewish synagogue was, where the Jewish elementary school was, and they just kind of selected four, five streets and gathered everybody there, which means in little houses, maybe five families live because that wouldn't have been enough room for everybody else. By the way, in elementary school, I 18:00went to a Jewish elementary school for four years and after that entered this Catholic gymnasium. The only reason, because there was no other high school arrangement that one could have taken, and we had to go to school on Saturday, but my family wasn't that religious that they would never allowed me to go to school on Saturday. So that's where I went, and that's where I got my diploma.

M.T:

In this ghetto you were moved into, were you moved in on top of families who were already there or did they make other people vacate their house?

A.K.:

They vacated everybody. All the people there moved out and they gave them different [crosstalk 00:18:46]. The non-Jewish people from that had to be moved out. They gave them other arrangements and we all had to move in. By the way, every time I've gone back to my hometown yet, I took a picture of that ghetto 19:00house I lived in and my husband says, "Why do you take that picture every time?" And it's just something that I do and I have about three pictures of that house and I'm going to show it to you, by the way. Each time you go back it looks even worse. But it shows what a little house that was and there were at least five families in there.

A.K.:

In one room, seven men had to stay. They were family members like my father was in there, plus some dentists and different other people. In my little room, my mother and a young married woman whose husband was at that time in a labor camp already and myself stayed in one little room. And in one other room, there was three old ladies in their late 70s who were all very well to do before all this 20:00happened and they all treasured their little belongings what one took with them. You try to take all your personal things, what you could do and what you can take in, but you can imagine it wasn't furniture, it wasn't paintings and it couldn't be all your clothes because there was just not enough room for that.

A.K.:

In this ghetto, we stayed for three weeks. Nobody was allowed to get out of this place. I happened to have some permission [crosstalk 00:20:30].

M.T:

No one could go to work or anything.

A.K.:

I had some permission to get out just because I developed some sort of eczema on my body, which is important for me to say because I never had it before and it could have been a nervous reaction. Which I did not know, but I've gone for treatments to a doctor and somehow I got some sort of a pass that I could go twice a week out and then I had to be right back. My father also had permission 21:00in the past to leave and he was the only one because he had to go into the police department and had to make all the arrangements and everything has gone through him, what's the next step.

A.K.:

So about the first week of our ghetto time, there was a rumor and everything was always a rumor. Nobody ever knew exactly what was happening. That's why we couldn't figure from one day to the next what's going to be, that they were collecting some workers from the ghetto. They needed to go somewhere, but nobody knew where they were going. My father didn't know where they were going and I asked to be one of them because many of my friends were leaving at that time, and I figured I just as well go when they go so it would be better for me and my father said, okay, go ahead.

M.T:

Do you think your father had any more ideas of-

A.K.:

No, he had no idea. It was just that they needed workers to go somewhere. So we all got together like six o'clock in the morning, and as we left town, the county police took us over, and the County police is a very important personality in this whole affair because they were very dumb, unintelligent people who were taking pride in being able to be in charge and give orders to people who have been a lot more educated than they were. Because in this group, were not only young people but there were other older people, lawyers or doctors or whoever was supposed to be leaving. And the minute we left our home town and we were out in the county, they were very cruel. I remember the way they have 23:00given orders, the way they have made people go and walk real fast.

M.T:

You were saying that the county police were very cruel when we were interrupted by a telephone call. The way they treated these people.

A.K.:

So we went on a long walk and it was out in the country on highways and we did not know where we were going. And when people slow down they would give orders and they would rush people and especially, I remember the father of the young woman who was my friend and I was taking my sewing lessons from her. He was a lawyer and he was a family friend also. And he was in charge of this group. He was about 50-55 years old, and he was supposed to be in charge of our group.

M.T:

So he was a Jewish member?

A.K.:

Jewish member of the group and he happened to be, he was elected to be the in 24:00charge of this group. Except they were so cruel with him. They made him run fast. They made him get down in the dust and in the dirt and crawl on his stomach and just did all kind of ordeals with him in order to humiliate him. And that was of course very hard to watch. At the same time, there was nothing we could do.

M.T:

And this was the first time you'd experienced this kind of-

A.K.:

This kind of treatment? So we arrive to a place after let's say 10 miles of walking. It was a long, long walk. And we weren't quite sure where we were. This is why I'm saying that we never knew exactly what the next step is. It was a brick factory and the name of that little town is called Kerecsend. I don't know how important it is, but its historical event. And our job was to lay bricks 25:00around this brick factory and make a wall. And once in awhile there were rumors wondering why we were doing this.

M.T:

You're making a wall-

A.K.:

A wall around the factory. The factory was a big outside brick... It wasn't the building and we were just making-

M.T:

It was just in a little town.

A.K.:

It was in a little town out of the town. They were making bricks. It was a brick factory and we were enclosing it with an outside wall. And I remember along the assembly line where people were handing the bricks to each other and then building this wall. Well once in awhile the question arose, is it maybe for us or why we are doing this? If anybody ever asked a question from any of our so-called supervisors, nobody ever gave a clear answer. So we never knew exactly what was going on.

M.T:

You walked to this factory and you were put to work there. Then were you 26:00returned back to the ghetto every night did you stay at the-

A.K.:

No, we stayed for like two days. And there was like the governor would be here in Kentucky, there was a governor for that county and he was a tall looking guy. Very handsome wearing high leather boots. And I can see him very clearly. He was a maniac. Really, he was. He had a whip in his hand. He would come out every hour maybe to look over how the work is going, and he would let people stand up in a row and he would give orders and he would do this kind of treatment you wouldn't believe. That the whole group had to get down on their stomach, in the dust and in the dirt, and crawl 10 feet front then crawl back. If somebody 27:00didn't do something the way he wanted them, he would be using a whip on him. He was just cruel and he mainly was attacking again, the older people who he might have even known from a long time like this lawyer friend of ours, somehow to show how much power he has had.

A.K.:

And next morning a new group came. We did not know they were going to come after us, so it was the second transport from the ghetto in which I saw my husband's sister and some other friends who were arriving from Eger, who were arriving and were absolutely shocked by finding us there because the rumors were that the 28:00first group is not alive anymore.

M.T:

Already?

A.K.:

They were just scaring them and they had no idea of where they're going. And every time they ask a question, "Where are they going?" they said, "Don't wish to know because wherever you're going, the first group is not alive anymore."

M.T:

[crosstalk 00:28:26] volunteers the way you were. They must've been-

A.K.:

Well it was also, we didn't know either. But the idea is to scare the people. So that's the whole point. And they came to do the work and then next day, when the two days were over, we were all going back to Eger, to the ghetto, and the family members in the ghetto, were very excited and very happy and in tears to find that we all came back because the rumors in the ghetto was that wherever 29:00this group went they will never see them again. So this was just mental cruelty, I think. And this is the way they are trying to attack us. And that was the beginning of the whole ordeal, what I was going through.

A.K.:

So what really happened, we they were building this wall around the brick factory because the ghetto was going to be evacuated, which we also didn't know. And how much my father didn't know what was going on, it proves that the day before we were leaving town in the afternoon, the head of the police department with some other officials would come and look over the ghetto, which they did very often, and everybody had to go out of their houses and they counted people. This was already the beginning of just exactly what the Germans expected them to 30:00do. Because we had to get out and they counted everybody. So in case somebody would be missing, they would be able to find that person.

A.K.:

So I was looking out the window from this little house and I would see my father talking to this police officer and they were talking to each other by their first name because he knew my father from the bank. And my father was worried because the three old ladies in our house heard rumors that maybe the ghetto might be evacuated. And they were trying to find what to do with their little treasures, the pretty things that they had, maybe a nice table cloth and all their valuable things. And they asked my father to find out what the truth about that is.

A.K.:

So I heard him saying and asking, "What is the truth about it?" And the officer, 31:00the head of the police department said to my father by talking to him, just like he would be a friend, "That's the problem with you Jews, that you always imagine that some-"

M.T:

Anne Klein.

A.K.:

I was interrupted by the tape being finished. My father came back to the house and has told everybody not to worry about anything. There is no question about any of this foreseen problems. And we all went to bed. Four o'clock in the morning, bells and all kinds of noises woke us up, and it turned out that 400 carriages were ordered to the town.

M.T:

Carriages?

A.K.:

Carriages. Horse and buggies.

M.T:

For heaven sake.

A.K.:

Which they had to get from all over the county in order to get them. They were preparing-

A.K.:

In order to get them, they were prepared because the plans were that the ghetto is being evacuated and those carriages are there to take us to that factory where we were building the walls around. We had to get out of our house. The houses, they told us exactly how much one can take, which was another problem; first of all, it was a rainy day. Secondly, I don't think I ever worried about myself, what I can take, but I always worried about my parents, you know, they lived in a house for 25, 30 years.

A.K.:

They had all their things, they work for them... Naturally, it's not an easy decision to make what you should leave behind, your comforters or whatever.

A.K.:

But you were able to take just a certain amount, I don't know how many pounds, and the rest of it we had to leave. And then we had to get out in front of our house, and there were just sidewalks and everybody out on the street, sitting 33:00with all their belongings and people were going around to check to see what you can take, and who those people that I don't have any idea.

A.K.:

I know it was a very sad sight to see. First of all, it rain. Second, be for people to be sitting out on the sidewalk with all their valuable things moved out of the ghetto. It's something one cannot forget.

A.K.:

Then finally by about four o'clock in the afternoon or three o'clock, I have no idea what time it was... They did all this checking the luggages and people were able to take whatever they said you can, and they were taken to the carriages, but there was not room for everybody to get on it. So definitely older people, sick people, children, were among the ones who were able to use the carriages. I assume there were about a thousand Jewish people in town. I chose the walking 34:00distance again, and my father was in it plus many of our young people-

M.T.:

Your father was walking with you?

A.K.:

... also my father and some of his friends.

A.K.:

My father was about 65 years old at that time and he was very healthy, so it was my mother, but I think she was going in the carriage. I remember scenes that crippled people, people in wheelchair, were lifted up and they were put on the carriage. There was not one single person who could have been escaping from here.

A.K.:

Even Jewish ladies who were married to non-Jewish people; I happen to have a distant relative who was married to a Catholic lawyer, and she was not supposed to move into the ghetto because of that. But the last day they sent people out for her, and they got her in, and she was taken away.

M.T.:

How did they know who all were Jewish? We don't have lists of course, in this country, of what people's religion...

A.K.:

See, that's why this wasn't the Germans' doing exactly. This was the Hungarians' doing, because they have a record and I guess they know everybody.

A.K.:

There was a non-Jewish piano teacher. I remember her name well, whose son happened to be an opera singer and lived in Budapest, and never in my life knew that the grandparents of that lady were Jewish, and they got into her house that day and they took her away.

A.K.:

And those were rumors that we heard about, but we had no idea that they would do anything like that. So there was just no way to escape. I do have a story, but I don't want to go on and on, how two people really survived this and maybe this is the time to do it because I have met them later after the war and I heard it.

A.K.:

One young woman came home from Budapest to visit her parents, and they were also very good friends, her father was a lawyer, she had a baby and she had a nursemaid and they came to visit the parents and she was caught in [inaudible 00:36:18] when the Germans came in.

A.K.:

When people had to move into the ghetto. She refused to do it, and somehow she was brave enough that she found some sort of a peasant outfit. She put it on and with the nursemaid, and with the baby buggy, she walked to the railroad station and people didn't recognize her. She got on the train and she survived. She got back to Budapest and at this moment she lives in Washington D.C, I happen to know her.

A.K.:

The other lady who was also a friend of ours, daughter, who was married to a lawyer in Budapest, came down and was caught in my hometown and her husband was maybe living in the big city. You have heard more. He left message for her to go 37:00into the hospital and he sent an ambulance from Budapest for her, and on a stretcher they got her out of the hospital, put her on the ambulance, and they took her to Budapest and that's the other person who survived.

A.K.:

And my good friend Eby who you met, who also wanted to go home to my hometown and her husband might have told you...

M.T.:

She was in Budapest at this point?

A.K.:

She was in Budapest, and her husband might have told you that story when you met, that he decided, they weren't married at the time yet. He says, "Let's get married right now and your place is, with your husband, and not with your parents." He again might have not allowed or wanted her to go to a smaller town, because maybe they could see that in a big town, you might have not had the same problems, or maybe that foresight was different...

M.T.:

Is he Jewish?

A.K.:

He's Jewish, yes, he's Jewish. He didn't let her go home and as much as she wanted to see her parents, she did not go home, otherwise she would have been caught there too.

A.K.:

And ended up in Auschwitz maybe or whatever. So this is really our ghetto story. And then we arrived-

M.T.:

Only about two weeks, three weeks?

A.K.:

... three weeks, in the ghetto, and then we arrived to this little town. The name is Kerecsend where we stayed for two days in those big factories.

M.T.:

How do you spell Kerecsend, do you know?

A.K.:

K. E. R. E. C. S. E. N. D. It's not important, but we stayed in this place for two days, which was getting again much worse, because we did not have any tents. We did not have any facilities there, it seemed like it was just an outdoor dirt area. Just the way you would see, like, if you go to church [inaudible 00:39:03] 39:00and you see your horses in the little...

M.T.:

Pens?

A.K.:

Pens or something like that. And there were some sort of mattresses that we had, but I don't think that was even furnished. They had some blankets and people had little sleeping arrangements.

M.T.:

Do they have a fence around it?

A.K.:

Not even a fence. It was just in a long row, but it had some sort of a cover, a shelter. It reminds you of something like a circus tent, but it wasn't a tent. It had some sort of half roof over it, and maybe they fixed that up, but they still...

M.T.:

[crosstalk 00:39:41] ... it have a tarpaulin or what?

A.K.:

It wasn't even there because it was dirt floor, it was just outdoor. But there was some sort of a wooden cover over it. And each family had a little area, and I remember my father, mother and myself sleeping or having a blanket, or a... As 40:00you were going on a camp-out. It's just that you have never seen your parents under this type of a circumstance with very little belongings. And I cannot even remember, there was a big tent where supposedly they gave some food, but what we had, what we got to eat, did we eat much or did we not eat? I don't remember.

A.K.:

I do remember that there was a little creek with little water in it, and there were rumors that they're going to take the remaining jewelry or money or whatever you have... It'll be taken away anyway, and some people refuse to give it to anybody. So they kept on throwing gold necklaces, watches or whatever into the creek. And that absolutely surprised me.

A.K.:

I was 23 years old at that time, surprised me that the people just throw things like that away. But there was nothing else to do by then. The Germans were on 41:00the scene, we did not know...

M.T.:

You had direct contact with the Germans?

A.K.:

Yes, we had direct contact with German officers, because we were there only for two days, and suddenly again a new rumor that this place will be evacuated and not very far from this area. We must have been fairly close to a railroad station, there were trains waiting for us.

A.K.:

And there was a German officer talking again to my father, because he was still in contact with them, and I was standing next to my father and I think I might've asked, a question or might have said something, and he slapped me on my face. In front of my father. I don't know what I said. I don't remember exactly. But that again, it didn't hurt me, the slap, and I wasn't even hurt by me being slapped.

A.K.:

But I also remember again, that I wonder about how my father felt to see him do 42:00this to his daughter. That's the way I remember it.

M.T.:

There was nothing your father could do about it.

A.K.:

There was nothing you could do. That's what I meant. He couldn't; nobody could attack anybody, because you know they all had guns...

M.T.:

Or even reprimanded.

A.K.:

There is no way that you could do it. I mean it did not occur to somebody, to even do this.

A.K.:

So then we got on the trains. Next step.

M.T.:

What kind of cars were they?

A.K.:

They were closed up freight.

M.T.:

Like cattle cars?

A.K.:

Cattle cars, closed up. It had just those [crosstalk 00:42:44] sliding doors. And the book I was just reading about, describes her trip to Auschwitz, exactly the same van. Sometimes I show you that.

M.T.:

Tell me the name of the book.

A.K.:

The name of the book is "Inherit the Wind", and the second volume is "The War to 43:00Remember" or something like that? I have to remem... [crosstalk 00:11:10]...

M.T.:

But that description is accurate to what you've experienced?

A.K.:

Yeah that little part and that just appears in the second volume at the very end. But then I was reading that they described that so-called cattle car exactly the way what we were sitting in. In fact, she describes it that it had benches around it, which was true, and there at about 62-65 people in our car. [crosstalk 00:11:37].

A.K.:

It was very crowded, and my family was with me, and it was a tremendous shock. You can imagine there were old people and young people, crying people and sick people, and there was for example, an old man who needed to be [inaudible 00:43:55] and I just heard that after... Why, why this old man was screaming so 44:00tremendously, because he needed to have this done, and I guess till they got around to do it, he was in tremendous pain.

A.K.:

Also, I do not remember what kind of bathroom we use since there was no bathroom. But in this book I was reading, the way they were passing just cans around, and the smell and the filth what she describes, we did not get off the train for two days. So you know, this is the kind of things we had to use. And believe it or not, I do not remember in details.

M.T.:

And no privacy, of course.

A.K.:

No privacy, I don't remember anything about it except this old man crying. Not getting any special food. But once in a while they open those gates and they handed something in. But what it was bread...

M.T.:

Those doors?

A.K.:

Those doors. Yes. And again, for me to see my parents under this situation, it was very painful. [crosstalk 00:45:02] I did not know where we were going and 45:00they did give us some cards at one time that you can send messages to family members. I read this [inaudible 00:45:11] too, and some people threw them out the window, you know. But see they were all false. A false cause. You signed your name that you would know it was just a plain card, that we're fine or something like that. It was just absolutely a make believe message and I don't even remember who I would have sent it to since my brothers...

A.K.:

Oh yes! I must have sent it to my brother.

M.T.:

Your older brother...? [crosstalk 00:45:36].

A.K.:

My older brother was still in Budapest. My younger brother, we haven't heard of. I did not know that we were going to Auschwitz. I did not know where we going.

A.K.:

At the last stop, the German officers again open the gate, and they were trying to rob the people for certain valuable things. That was mainly robbery, because they asked for things; for people's wallets for this and that, and they kind of 46:00ordered people to do this, so some did. Whether I did give anything to them or not, I'm not sure, but they were just trying to take advantage of 60 people being there, and whatever they still had, they tried to get away. If somebody might have had a watch, they were doing it. I do not remember the details. So then this took two days of traveling and then we arrived to Auschwitz.

A.K.:

But again, Auschwitz didn't mean to me... And this is why it's unbelievable that one can be this naive, and if you listen to somebody else story, I would imagine they might have a different type of imagination, What this place was.

A.K.:

But in my mind I had no idea exactly what's going to happen there, but I tell you exactly what happened to us: they opened the gates, we got out of our cars 47:00and there were prisoners in striped uniforms who we did not know who they were, but it turned out that they were Polish Jews who might've been in the camp for like two, three years before us. They were already working at the railroads to wait for the transports. The [inaudible 00:47:25] will call, and tell people exactly what to do. We had to leave all our so-called "luggages". It wasn't a suitcase, but whatever you could take in one hand.

A.K.:

I can't remember what we were using, but I do remember that I had a gray overcoat and I put on as much clothes as I possibly could get on myself, thinking that in case, I won't find my luggage so I should have enough clothes. So I was dressed warm, my mother... We all did this, somehow in the bleak 48:00factory trying to put on as much as possible. Maybe this was the rumor: "wear what you can, you don't know exactly what will happen". So I put in my coat pocket, some sanitary napkins, my toothbrush, toothpaste, and clothes; whatever I could put on. So I had this; but when we got off the train...

M.T.:

The layered look, they would call that.

A.K.:

The layered look. But when we got off the train, they made us leave everything. And my father didn't have an overcoat on, and the men were put into one group.

A.K.:

And again, I said to my mother, "My father will be cold. He didn't have an overcoat on". And then other people said, "Well they'll get together with the luggages and everything". Yes.

M.T.:

So did he leave a coat behind on the train?

A.K.:

Yeah, he somehow left it with his, he just... I remember so bad. He did not wear it. It wasn't cold, you know, really that cold. So he might have had sweaters 49:00but he didn't have anything heavier. He left it with his package and somehow...

M.T.:

On the train?

A.K.:

On the train because we all were supposed to leave everything there, and then somehow we thought that they going to bring it us wherever we are going. So all I worried about my father being cold, maybe if he won't get his so-called "belonging" right away, but that...

M.T.:

What did your mother say when... do you remember?

A.K.:

They didn't not say anything but then [inaudible 00:49:30] made us walk in pairs, and I was walking with a young woman who lived with us in the ghetto, whose husband [crosstalk 00:49:42] was in the labor camp, and her name was Kati, and my mother walked behind me with another lady.

M.T.:

Another older lady?

A.K.:

An older lady and we were walking like that and it was on the railroad tracks, the way Auschwitz is described, we saw some big fences, but I do definitely 50:00remember that we walked and the men were in a different group and I never saw them again. And they got to a point where there were the German officers giving orders which way to go, and everything was going very, very fast, so you didn't have time to think, and suddenly I was going to the right, and I saw some people going to the left and I looked back to see if my mother was there, and my mother and that lady wasn't behind me anymore. See, there were other people. [crosstalk 00:50:34].

M.T.:

So they must have gone to the left.

A.K.:

And I looked, and they must have gone to the left and we were going to the right. Since then, this story was told so many times; the right meant to go to the labor camps, an the left, meant to go to the gas chambers.

A.K.:

All old people and all young people, kids at least under 12 or 13 or 14 years of age without any exception, were going to the left and the rest of them, they're 51:00going to the right. We of course didn't know what that meant, but if I may interrupt my story right here, which is very important, is that my two sister-in-laws, my husband's sisters, who were also on the trains, but they were not in my car, both were married before and had two children. One sister-in-law had a little girl about four years old and my other sister-in-law Ava had a little boy, six years old. And when they got off the train, and they had the children with them, the prisoners in the gray flannel suit, or outfits told my older sister-in-law who was very pretty and blonde, Ava, to let your mothers take the children.

A.K.:

That's all he said, and Ava told this to Julie and they also told it to another cousin who also had a little girl with them. And they thought that the older 52:00people, the mothers will be able to take care of the children and they go to a camp where, you know, they can take care of them, and since they are going to maybe doing harder work, it was a better solution and that's what they did.

A.K.:

The reason the prisoners do this to my sister-in-law because he knew exactly what will happen to do the younger people who would be holding a little child in that hand; the mothers, would also go to the left because they would not cut the child away from that younger woman, from the mother, but they would make them to go to the left. So his intention really was to save the young mothers, because they knew that the kids could not be saved anyway.

M.T.:

Anybody who was holding a child's hand...

A.K.:

Would have gone to the left anyway.

M.T.:

Even if they were young and healthy?

A.K.:

Yes, because they would not have been able to tear a child away or if a mother would be carrying a little baby. They're not going to tear the child away from the mother. So in order to make it easier, they would have... So his intention was to save my sister-in-laws, and he did, and this is the way they are still alive.

M.T.:

Because their mother held their children...

A.K.:

Held their children and they went to the left. We did not know what the left meant, we did not know what the right meant. I do know that by walking next to the fence areas, on a kind of a dirt road, behind the fences we saw prisoners, but we didn't know who they were. They wore really awful-looking clothes and they were all bald.

A.K.:

They had no hair, and they were all screaming, hanging onto the fences, 54:00screaming and yelling. And I thought... And my first impression was that in this camp wherever we are, they are some psychiatric patients, or so-called crazy people-

M.T.:

Could you understand what they were screaming?

A.K.:

... who are kept in a separate camp, and that's the way they keep them because they acted like they were, but they were really screaming. They wanted to know who is coming in this new transport. That became later on, very exciting. Who is coming in the next one? Where are you from? And what they were screaming, they really wanted to know where the transports were coming from, because they wanted to find relatives. They wanted to find friends and those people, were absolutely the same type we were, about another hour later because we also looked exactly like those people after we have gone through the procedures.

A.K.:

What they did with all the incoming prisoners.

M.T.:

You said they were bald, were their heads shaved?

A.K.:

Yes. Their heads were shaved, and they wore awful clothes. They look like, you know, if a person is bald headed and they're screaming and they wear clothes, which doesn't fit them right, they don't look very normal, so they really look abnormal to me. Then we arrived to... excuse me?

M.T.:

Back when they were sending some to the right and some to the left: when this prisoner told Julie and Ava to have their mothers hold their children's hands, did he speak German or Hungarian or Polish? Did you-

A.K.:

I did not hear it, but they might have... they were Polish people, and they could have spoken German-

M.T.:

... first he might have gestured-

A.K.:

... and my sister-in-laws, they both spoke German. In Hungary, a lot of people speak German, I'm sure since they were there for three years already.

A.K.:

European people speak many languages. They must have spoken German because 56:00Polish they don't understand. So I don't know. That, I don't know. And I didn't hear; this is a story I found out after the war, how they survived and how the children... I mean, I didn't know that at the time. In fact, I have lost contact with the people at the time. I didn't know who is behind me and I didn't know anything. We arrive to a brick building where we were going to go through the showers being disin...

M.T.:

Disinfected.

A.K.:

Disinfected, shaved, our hairs were shaved, and all our body was shaved from all the hair.

M.T.:

Who did the shaving?

A.K.:

The German officers.

M.T.:

Men?

A.K.:

Men or women? I do not... See, if I say that I don't remember certain things, certain things I do not remember. I could not pay you right now, I have no idea 57:00if it was a woman or was it a man? All I know that they did this.

A.K.:

Everything went so fast. You know, that you never had time to think. But I remember very well that after you were already shaved and they took all your clothes away, the only thing they left you, your shoes, you were naked, and you go supposed to walk next to a long table. Where there were some sort of German officers like judges looking you over.

A.K.:

And my biggest worry was I've never been exposed to anything of course like this, but it wasn't even the embarrassment that you go naked. My worry was the only one that I had this eczema still on my body and I worried very much about it, that if they see this, whatever it was, it was a rash.

M.T.:

Like hives, I suppose?

A.K.:

Something like that, and I didn't know what caused it and the treatments I get did not help it, but I thought that if they see it, they might think that it's maybe scarlet fever or something like that and they would want to take me away from this group.

A.K.:

I didn't know that they would maybe kill me for that, because I wasn't imagining that people will be killed, but I would have not liked to get away from this group now and I did not want to be put into a hospital, but I thought they would isolate me and luckily they did not pay much attention to that.

M.T.:

We are continuing with the interview with Anne Klein. This is the third side. She's describing her experiences when she first got to Auschwitz.

A.K.:

After we gone through this shower and we received some clothes. They just threw 59:00it at us, and of course nothing fit you right. I remember I have received a much larger size. It was some sort of a black long dress, and came down to my ankles or I don't even know what it looked like, and I don't know if I got an underwear or not. I can't even remember if I did. It's just one thing.

M.T.:

But not the striped uniforms?

A.K.:

Just clothes. What they have gotten away from other people. You know, it's just plain clothes. Just, yeah, that's exactly like you would go to the Salvation Army and somebody throw something at you whether it fits you or not.

A.K.:

But it's clothes they took off other persons?

A.K.:

[crosstalk 00:59:48] took off other people and it wasn't the stripe, not for us. So 10 minutes after this, we looked exactly the same way as the people we just saw going by, to this building. Then we were going to our first place in 60:00Auschwitz, which everybody knows who has studied the Holocaust, it's called Birkenau. And that was a larger, where there must have been many barracks, and I have talked to people who remembered the number of that better. I have watched the television show that a lady was taking her son back to Auschwitz just recently, and she seemed like she recognized, she knew this was her number was seven. I have no idea what the number of that barrack was. I don't know if I ever knew it, if I did, I forgot it.

A.K.:

The place was a big empty hall. There were no beds there. There were no facilities there. People just have slept on the ground.

M.T.:

It's just a barracks, but not...

A.K.:

It was a big hall. It was just...

M.T.:

Oh, well I went to Dachau, they have big, wooden bunks built in.

A.K.:

Okay, but not here, this was one great big place where again, was one of our worst time of the whole events that people didn't know exactly which place belongs to them. There were a few blankets there, but not everybody was able to get one, and when we were lying down at nights, we were in each other's way, and at night if somebody had to get up and maybe go out to a bathroom... There were, I don't even know... I can't even remember that all I noticed sometimes people started to scream at each other, because you would step on different bodies there, as you would be lying down.

A.K.:

There was just everybody had a little place for it, but once in awhile you would get up in the middle and you don't know, you want it to cross, go out, I assume you had to go to somewhere, and there were bathrooms, they would open-

M.T.:

Were they in separate buildings?

A.K.:

... No, it was outside. There was not a real bathroom. It was called a latrine and I get that they call it the latrine now. Yeah, see it was just... And that's where you had to go. So I assume that's the time that maybe one person wanted to go out...

A.K.:

I don't even remember any of that event that I really had to go, but I do remember that you had to leave the place sometimes, and if it was night and dark and you couldn't sleep very well, you can imagine that you would step on somebody accidentally and that person would just scream. So the place was a miserable situation.

M.T.:

Have you any idea how many, do you remember how many people, it was crowded?

A.K.:

Oh maybe a hundred! I mean it's just, it was so crowded that as I said, there was just practically standing room only, but it was just crowded. I can't remember if my sister-in-laws were in that same place or not. But again, other incidents that I remember, and I will describe that, and when I don't, I just [inaudible 00:30:58].

A.K.:

First of all, that was a creek again nearby there. Everybody was always terribly 63:00thirsty. I would see people lying down on the ground drinking out of the creek while somebody else would tear off a piece of a blanket to use it as a sanitary napkin for their menstruation, and they would rinse it out in that same water that other people would be drinking off. I just remember, I don't think I had been drinking out of it.

A.K.:

I also never, after I arrived to Auschwitz, never did I get my period. I wondered what I'm going to do if I do? But for some reason I did not. And that's still some sort of a mystery, whether it's psychological or whether they did put something into your food.

M.T.:

Well, and you're malnourished, of course.

A.K.:

Yeah. But you couldn't right away and you know, not right away. You couldn't. But I never did get my first one. Ever. When I came back then I had to get some...

A.K.:

Just one ever. When I came back then I had to get some shots and stuff, so there was no water. The food was something that every morning they would call you out. Every morning they had what they called a [inaudible 01:04:19] appell that was counting the people, and this is--everybody who was in Auschwitz would tell the same story--in five groups of groups of fives. You had to be standing out and that sometimes took hours and what time it was, we don't know because we never had a watch, but it was just when the sun came up and it might have been three or four o'clock in the morning or whatever. And it was always a very uncomfortable situation because it was very cold and we did not have warm clothes and be cuddled up and we were standing in fives and just hanging onto ourselves like that.

A.K.:

You could not leave the group because it took them forever to go around and 65:00count everybody every morning.

M.T.:

In the whole camp?

A.K.:

And you always had to wait that out. And that took hours. And if somebody was missing accidentally because people tried to escape because once in a while we would hear, "Why is it taking so long?" You know, they would ring bells and all this. They found you. They were looking for somebody until they found the person you did not... You're not supposed to leave your place. They would bring black coffee and that was your breakfast and it was a big can of coffee and they gave only the first person some and by the time it got to you it was... I never had a real coffee during that time. I always got coffee grinds. I remember that. And then you had a main meal, which was some sort of a soup. We called it soup, but it was nothing.

A.K.:

We never recognized potatoes or never recognize real food in it. It was just the liquid, sick liquid, and we had to get out again for that in fives and the first 66:00person got a dish. They filled up the first person, the first person this with this-

M.T.:

Glop.

A.K.:

Glop. Then that person... We didn't have utensils. The first person would eat out of this then pass it to the second one, pass it to the third one and pass it to the fifth one.

M.T.:

Now did the first person analyze how... This is one fifth or do they eat as much as they could eat?

A.K.:

We always got some. I wondered about that, but that's the way it happened. We always got some that were fighting, I guess, over this. I don't remember any special incidents about that. I do remember that I always ate everything I have gotten. I mean, no matter what it is that like it's this part of my survival, I guess because, you know, you just made the best of it and that was no point not 67:00doing you go hungry.

A.K.:

So whatever it was, you ate. And then in the mid-afternoon when you got one portion of a bread, which was just a about the three-quarter of an inch or an inch piece of bread. It was that real dark, black German bread, which Sandy happens to love. And every time I see that, but I think of it and-

M.T.:

Pumpernickel, or-

A.K.:

But very dark, the very dark bread, but it was very good. I mean it's, it reminds me of it.

M.T.:

But you don't like it now?

A.K.:

I don't mind it but... And with a portion of either a little piece of about an inch wide and let's see, three inches long of a piece of margarine or a round piece of meat, like a wurst.

M.T.:

A sausage or something.

A.K.:

Something like that. That was your supper. Now some people saved this and didn't know what to do but take a little bite of it and save it to the next morning.

A.K.:

My method was eat it while you have it and I didn't want to fool with it. And first I tried it that way, but then I was hungry all the time. As long as I knew that that was something to eat. So the way I did it, I ate it all and I knew that is no more and I was filled up enough that I could, you know, wait till the next meal, which would be next morning.

A.K.:

We stayed in this place for one whole month. The water supply was impossible. A big tank truck would bring water to the whole camp to Birkenau and they would tell us that if you want water and if you are able to get hold of a bucket, you have to go down to this big truck, which my sister-in-law Ava, who was very energetic and I didn't know at the time because she wasn't my sister-in-law at the time, but we were friends and her sister and myself, we were taking turns to 69:00go down and get water.

M.T.:

Where did you get the buckets?

A.K.:

Somehow he got ahold of one bucket and so this is a part of an important story again, that we would go down to stand in line for that water. If you stepped out of that line, then the German officers, and I can see that very clearly, they would have the German shepherd dogs, you know, and they were trained to-

M.T.:

Police dogs.

A.K.:

Police dogs, to go after any person who would step out of line. So I've seen it happening so I wasn't going to-

M.T.:

Get out of line.

A.K.:

Get out of line. We just stayed in line and have to wait our turn. Then we got to the truck and they give you one bucket of water. We took that bucket back to the barrack and out of that one bucket of water, we wanted to be very clean and we were trying to be as sanitary possible, and Ava and myself and about three, four other people and I don't remember who were in the group--I think Julie and 70:00then a couple more--we use that bucket,

A.K.:

First we took a little drink out of it. Then we had no toothbrushes, toothpaste-

M.T.:

When you realize you don't have any other liquid except this coffee-

A.K.:

We were very thirsty, very thirsty, all the time and we just drank out of it, and then whatever we had to wash out. We washed our self in that bucket but we didn't throw the water out; we kept it. That means five or six people use that one bucket, first to out of it, then to wash ourselves in it. Then not every day but whatever needed to be washed out, what we were wearing day after day we washed it out.

M.T.:

But of course you didn't have soap.

A.K.:

We didn't have anything, no soap. I mean it's just rinsing it out, but just to... And we did this in order to, I mean, there was nothing else to do and we were used to taking a bath all the time and it's very hard to, from one day to the next suddenly fall into a situation like that. So we were trying to keep 71:00ourselves as clean as possible.

A.K.:

And during the four weeks, once in a while, we would hear rumors that the transport would be leaving this place. Also, we would hear new people coming in and we were always doing just like the first people we are passing by, who is the next group. And I remember sisters maybe meeting sisters from another town or whatever, or friends meeting friends. I was-

M.T.:

This was all female.

A.K.:

This was female. But I remember there was an outer gate, a big fence. On the other side there were men. I don't want to go into details like this, but Julie met, for example, a second cousin of mine who happened to be in that group who was in love with her once. It's silly, but people would meet old friends. They were separate and people would ask, "Where are you from? Which town are you from?"

A.K.:

And Hungary is not that big and you would always know somebody. I don't have any 72:00interesting story about who I met. Or if I did, I don't remember.

M.T.:

But at this time the camp was filled with Hungarians.

A.K.:

They were only Hungarians in this particular Birkenau at that time and many barracks and from different towns. And the people who were in charge of us were Polish Jewish women. They're not men. And they will called Kapos. I mean they were the heads of... And they were also very cruel. We did not like them. They were mean. We felt like they were kind of almost envious that the Hungarian Jews arrived this late. When anybody ever tried to say something or complain, they says, "You should have been here three years ago."

M.T.:

Whereas they were rounded up in '30-

A.K.:

And if you think, what if this is bad, you should have been... And I believe it. And during the three years they have gotten to be so accustomed to brutality and 73:00only the brutal people survived in almost every situation. You know, they do.

M.T.:

Well, but that's not true of you.

A.K.:

They were fighting for their well-being or whatever. I'm not saying that everybody was like that, but they were trying to get out on us just exactly what happened to them three years ago. So transport-

M.T.:

What that reflects about human nature is really depressing.

A.K.:

Yeah. Then they were announcing that certain transports would believing Birkenau and they were collecting people for that. I have had a so-called tendency of not ever volunteering for anything. I was already dead. I didn't know what was going to happen. I always stayed put.

M.T.:

One time you did volunteer was to go to the brick factory, remember? You wanted to go.

A.K.:

I wasn't... Yeah, but I knew that, yeah, I wanted to go first with people, 74:00because I knew that-

M.T.:

People you knew.

A.K.:

People had to go. Yeah. And I didn't know it's going to be anything like... Yes, I said, let me go now instead of tomorrow, because we knew that that will be two transports going. So in this case, I never knew what's going to happen. Transports were leaving and they were examining people.

M.T.:

Did they ask for volunteers?

A.K.:

Not really. They were just sorting out people all the time. And you know, if I would have gotten into this I would be there too. But somehow I wouldn't push myself.

M.T.:

Right.

A.K.:

I should be among them and... Because I didn't know about anybody's going, I didn't know what's good, what's bad. And Julie and Ava and some other people from my hometown happened to be taken in one of those transports and they left Auschwitz earlier from Birkenau and we were selected and taken to another camp in Auschwitz, which was called the E-Lager.

A.K.:

At that place we were tattooed. We got our tattoo numbers and that was called the working camp in Auschwitz.

M.T.:

Now, the tattoos were on your-

A.K.:

On my left arm, on my forearm, on the upper arm right here.

M.T.:

Below the elbow.

A.K.:

Below the elbow on top. I have seen Auschwitz inmates and some people had them inside and I've seen it even not very long ago. I saw a woman, I says, "How come yours was here?" And she says, "I wasn't going to let them put it up there."

M.T.:

Where it would be seen.

A.K.:

But I would, I just would never think of this. That's what I see. Not everybody reacted-

M.T.:

It's like small pox inoculations, you know?

A.K.:

I mean, I-

M.T.:

People got shy about those and so they wanted them on their-

A.K.:

I would have never thought of that.

M.T.:

Whether it should be in the inner arm or outer arm.

A.K.:

It's interesting, but I saw somebody just recently. And that was going to be a 76:00working camp and we were staying in Auschwitz, whoever, and that's when I met my friend whose name is [Elush 01:16:14], who now lives in Israel, but not right away.

M.T.:

Where did, if I can interrupt, where did Julie and Ava go when they went on the transport?

A.K.:

Then that's another story and I don't want to... They went to Germany and then they were working in a... They were taken to a town and they were working in a factory and I don't want to go into it because I've heard the story many times and I-

M.T.:

Leads to depression.

A.K.:

Won't go into detail, but they went to the-

M.T.:

But they were going in a work group. I mean for once this-

A.K.:

Yes, and actually some of those people haven't had it so badly. Some people got away from that and after the war when we met, they might have gotten to a town, let's say Leipzig, and there were factories and they were put to factories to work where they were actually treated much, much better and they were getting... 77:00They might have had even a decent German officer to be in charge of them.

A.K.:

I know a lot of situations like that, which at the end of my story I will come to, but I don't want to talk about it because I don't know their details and that's... You have to talk to them about it.

A.K.:

So in the E-Lager we did get a barrack where there were bunk beds.

M.T.:

Like those that I saw-

A.K.:

Like what you saw in Dachau. The problem in that camp was that there were bed bugs, and it was very hard to sleep on those bunk beds because at nights you were beaten up by them and a lot of the people just got out of the bunk beds and slept on the floor. And if I could possibly do it... I tried to do it too because there's nothing worse than being bitten by bugs like that.

M.T.:

But they never... The people in charge never tried to fumigate it? As far as you know.

A.K.:

Well, they might have done it, but while we were there for two weeks that was the problem of that particular.

M.T.:

Were you still under the control of Polish Jewish people?

A.K.:

Always.

M.T.:

Always.

A.K.:

Always. But at one time--and it might have been in Birkenau yet--and I must interrupt this before I... No, I'm sorry, I think it was in that new camp, or in the E-lager where had some sort of bathroom facilities, which looked more like a bathroom. It was a long... It was a concrete building and there were little faucets in a long line, you know, it was like a big... Like cattle that cows would be drinking maybe.

M.T.:

Yes.

A.K.:

It seemed like it was very long, and you went there and in a row you could wash your hands and maybe 25 people can be in a long row and that's where we would go 79:00for getting water or drinking. So it was a much better... It was water that you didn't have to go to a truck and to get one bucket of water, so that was an improvement already. And one day when I was going to this so-called bathroom to wash my hands, I couldn't brush my teeth because I didn't have a toothbrush ever, during the whole year. I washed my feet and I was again cleaning myself. I don't know why I was so clean. I took off my shoes and I put them right next to wherever I was washing, and I lifted up my foot, I remember, and was trying to wash it like that. Now I looked down and my shoe was gone. Somebody stole my shoes, and those were my only belongings from my own hometown and out of my own clothes, because they didn't take the shoes away. They were hiking boots.

A.K.:

They were very good shoes. And I think I cried maybe the first time in my life 80:00during all this because this was the last of my own that was taken. And they left their old shoes there, which was about five sizes too big and an awful looking shoe.

M.T.:

Your shoes must have been uncomfortable for them then.

A.K.:

I don't know. I mean, people just got whatever they got. They were ugly and I don't know what it was, but that's what I was left with and it was very depressing to me. And then, I can't remember this-

M.T.:

And you never saw your shoes again.

A.K.:

I never saw my shoes again. But I met a young woman, and this is almost like from a story because I don't remember, but I talked to somebody years later and she said, don't you remember that you have met me in that bathroom where you were crying over that they stole your shoes.

A.K.:

It was a young lady from my hometown whom I haven't seen for a long, long time. And she was a violinist and she was playing in that so-called Auschwitz 81:00orchestra, what you have read about a lot. Which people heard, but I don't remember ever hearing. They say every single day the orchestra played and they played good music in order to make things sound like everything is so rosy. And this girl was in that orchestra and she came to the bathroom one day and somehow by talking or she recognized me, she discovered me because she knew my brothers.

A.K.:

She heard about my shoes being lost and she was the one, she said to me, way after the war, "Don't you remember I got your pair of new shoes?" And she did. And that's the way, I don't remember certain scenes. I do not remember that at all. So that's just what she told me.

M.T.:

Do you have any idea whether it's because she was in the orchestra?

A.K.:

She was able to get to things much better, so that's the way I got some shoes again in a couple of days. In the meantime, I wore the old ones. For two weeks, 82:00we had to go out every single day to work out on the fields and what we had to do was nothing else but dig ditches and the other group filled them up. It was just labor work-

M.T.:

Made work.

A.K.:

Made work, and the German officers were in charge of the police dogs were right there. If you did not work hard enough or if you try to just stop for a minute, they had whips and they really would have tortured you. I did not allow myself for this to happen. I worked like a dog digging with a shovel or whatever you had to do. It was labor work. But I have again felt terrible about the other young girl who happened to survive the situation with her mother. And the only reason that she did, because she was younger than I am. The girl might have been like, let's see, 17 and she had a younger looking mother, maybe 38 or 40-ish, 83:00you know, and they happened to be together and they both looked kind of young. And there were situations like that where a younger woman, with teenage girl survived.

A.K.:

I know two, three cases like that. And that woman, I still remember her name, she was beaten by those German officers constantly because she couldn't work as hard. And when I saw her in the so-called bathroom afterwards, several times she was showing me the welt marks and the welts. Her back looked awful. So people were beaten like this. I was not because I just... Every time I saw them looking at me, I just worked hard. I didn't stop for a minute.

M.T.:

What a strange exercise. I mean just to make this-

A.K.:

That's all because we wondered what the others did and you know there was nothing just you know, they had to do something with you. That was for two 84:00weeks. In the meantime they called you into the infirmary and they were taking all kinds of blood test, urine test, and they examined you completely and we didn't know what that was for.

A.K.:

We asked; nobody would tell us. We heard rumors that supposedly they needed people working the kitchen, but it was always just rumors. Nobody ever told you that. And again I've worried that maybe I still might have had a little rash and I wondered if the blood test will show this. Again, I didn't know if they are going to pull me out from wherever I was, you know. Because you know you keep on losing people but then you have again few others and you tried to stay with whoever they were. This friend of mine wasn't with me then; I met her in the kitchen. I can't remember who I was with them but probably still people from my hometown. And sure enough, after all the examinations and all the physical, 85:00that's what's so strange about it. They kill you in one place and then they did all this medical tests on you and they need it.

A.K.:

I was never part of any experimental...

M.T.:

Did they do a gynecological test?

A.K.:

No, they did not. They did not, but just lot-

M.T.:

But listened to your heart?

A.K.:

Yeah, just a good physical examinations, whatever. I would consider. We wondered why, and then they said that the test results will come back whenever and sure enough one day we were called. A hundred girls were needed to the kitchen because a hundred girls were taken away from the kitchen and taken on a transport to go somewhere else. And out of this Hungarian group, they just decided that they were selecting us and I did become a laborer in the kitchen.

A.K.:

There were two kitchens in Auschwitz and from the E-Lager, we were moving to 86:00another one, which was called the B-Lager. That's where the people lived, where they worked in the kitchen, and that's where the kitchens were. And we got a new barrack again, which was a lot better than the first one. So we were really in a situation which a lot of people might have envied us for it because working in the kitchen was very hard, but you were able to be in contact with food and what I think that saved my life, really, was the reason of working there till January.

M.T.:

I remember this part from when you told me 23 years ago, because what shook me up so much was that you said, "I was lucky I worked in the kitchen." And the irony of that being luck, irony isn't as strong... You said because you thought 87:00you were able to survive because you could get carrot peelings and things like that.

A.K.:

Yeah, okay. This is, yeah, so this is exactly... There were two kitchens in there: a kitchen that they were preparing the food and another kitchen where they were actually cooking it, where they had to feed lots and lots of inmates and lots and lots of prisoners. So therefore, this was a big operation. The work in the first kitchen that I had to be, it was hard, you know. You woke up, I don't know, three o'clock or real early in the morning. It was still kind of dark, and in groups we had to go to the place, whether they counted us that or not. I don't remember afterwards, this being counted every day. I guess by then they could account for us because we were always going there.

A.K.:

We were peeling vegetables. It was potato or carrots or all kinds of different kinds of things. I can't even remember.

M.T.:

Turnips.

A.K.:

Beets, turnips. So who knows whatever it was, but we were peeling the food. That was our job and then all day long and then that there would be carts where you put the peeling in there, and-

M.T.:

This is [inaudible], a week after the earlier interview with Ann Klein. We are continuing with the story of her survival of the Holocaust. When we left off the program, I had begun...

M.T.:

We are continuing with the interview that we began last week. Ann was talking at the end of the last tape about her experiences when she worked in the kitchen at Auschwitz. And I believe that we've been talking about my feeling of the paradox involved in her saying that she was lucky when she was having to do this very 89:00hard kind of labor. But she believes that it enabled her to survive, partly because she got things like carrot peelings to eat and [inaudible 01:29:13] all the starving, and partly, she said, because the work was so hard, so it built up your muscles. Do you want to tell us why?

A.K.:

Yes. I firmly believe that if a person is starving and is not [inaudible 01:29:30] has nothing to do all day long, they get awfully weak and there is just no way that they can survive the kind of situation that has happened after January and the cold and the [inaudible 00:25:48]. The idea that I had to work hard and was able to have the food because there's no way that you stopped to eat when you peel a potato. Even if it was a raw potato, we would eat it, and 90:00our portions that we would be getting for breakfast, noon, and supper was definitely a better portion than what we had before.

A.K.:

Also when the bread crop would arrive, and maybe our job would be to, in an assembly line, to unload the bread truck. I remember clearly we would be standing in a long assembly line and pass the big loaves of bread and by the time it would get to certain people, the bread would be getting smaller and smaller because people would be breaking off a little piece, which I also did.

A.K.:

But naturally, if you're really hungry and they cannot take you. That's because we [inaudible 01:30:48]. So really we really weren't that hungry anymore. So our condition had become a lot better and I definitely see that that was the reason why I survived. Working in the kitchen, as I said, was very hard, but we were 91:00also able to have other people with... I remember as part of my story and being very important. For example, I had an aunt and her daughter in Auschwitz who lived in that same town, but they were not fortunate enough to be working in the kitchen.

A.K.:

And I found out about them being there, so I was able to bring them some food. And the way that was done that the people who found their friend or their relative as a kitchen worker, they would find out what time do the kitchen workers go to the bathroom--whatever you call a bathroom or the john--or what time do they take the trash out? That is usually at certain time of the day, and I remember a long walk from the kitchen that could go in some sort of wooden 92:00container. Carrying the trash out was always done the same time of the day.

A.K.:

And we were able to meet people. As they were walking by us, we would drop whatever we wanted to bring out for them on the ground. And that person walking by us that moment would pick it up. So that's the way we took out of like baking the bread or a few, like the potatoes or anything that was edible to our relatives or friends if we wanted it to help them.

A.K.:

Or, another situation, which I was telling [inaudible 01:32:49] a little while ago, I had a young woman friend who I stayed in the ghetto with, she found out that she was pregnant. She didn't know at the time we were in the ghetto, and he 93:00was not in a very good condition. Hungry all the time, cold, and the first three months of pregnancy wasn't the ideal place for her to be. And so I tried to get her a sweater and the way you can do that, that the inmate who works in a barrack with the clothes and all the equipment, that the transport brought into Auschwitz. You got-

M.T.:

The clothes that were on the people who had been transported, and the clothes of the people who were sent to the gas chambers?

A.K.:

Gas chambers. Were all collected in one big building. I'd never been in that place but it was a barrack also. Just like we were assigned to work in the kitchen, they were assigned to work in those barracks. They had to put up the 94:00clothes, the children's shoes, might have been the piece that they found after the people that already got and then being there in the-

M.T.:

The crematorium.

A.K.:

Crematorium. So that was their job and they had to come to the kitchen to bring the food to their barracks. So the arrangement was almost like it would be a trade between those barracks and the kitchen barracks, which was easy to understand. People knew that we were doing this, but nobody could really forbid us from doing that. There's no money; nobody had a penny, but we would say we'd like to get a sweater and they would bring us a sweater for, let's say, five bags of potatoes. Or we would like to get something else, maybe a pair of shoes one of us needed, and they would bring us the shoes for a certain amount of 95:00food, whatever they wanted. And this was... Even the SS officers, I assume, knew about it because this had been going down now for probably like two or three years.

A.K.:

But that was the only way that we could get extra things and otherwise I couldn't have given my cousin and my aunt food when I had only one slice of bread for the whole day, but this way it was possible. So this is the away I was able to get a sweater for my friend, and I told them, "I'm going to pay it off in a week or two," which I did. I think she wanted five bags of potatoes for the sweater, and every morning I met the person in the john and I gave them the food. By the time I paid it off, but she had just had it before. Meantime, this friend of mine never survived because I assume that her pregnancy developed. I don't know what they did, but I'm sure they didn't believe the baby's dead, so I assume that she was also put into the gas chamber.

A.K.:

I assume that she was also put into the gas chamber.

M.T.:

Does that mean that people just disappeared all the time from the barracks? I mean there'd be one day you didn't see her anymore. And did you have any idea what had happened to her?

A.K.:

No, we would live with them and there were transports going away from Auschwitz all the time. It could have been transports into gas chambers or transports away from Auschwitz, to western Germany to labor camps. My sister in laws from Auschwitz, after the first four weeks, were taken away by transport and I mentioned that before. I didn't know where they went but if they survived I knew that they went to Germany and they were in Berlin, working in some factory. And I learned this then after the war was over, who went where.

A.K.:

But if somebody disappeared from there, you had no idea where they were and if somebody did not come back after the war was over... For example, this friend of 97:00mine, I had seen in Auschwitz, being pregnant or somebody was very sick, I know then they just put them into the gas chamber. That's what they did with the transports of the older people or the younger, the children.

M.T.:

When did you begin to wonder where your mother was. You said that at one point you thought there was perhaps a different camp where the older people were taking care of the children.

M.T.:

When did you begin to-

A.K.:

This is what we believed and this is what we wanted to believe, but inmates who there already for three years, Polish people or Russian people, if they wanted to tell us the story... For example, the smoke that you could see all the time from the gas chambers, which we could see, but we assumed it was an incinerator, 98:00or we always tried to tell each other there is so much trash in a camp like that, they have to burn it somewhere. If somebody wanted to tell us the truth, I don't even remember that we wanted to believe it. Once in a while, we would hear good news that somebody also as a make-believe story, might have have told us that there is a camp that the older people and the children are together.

A.K.:

So I didn't have a child who I was really looking for, but my sister-in-law. You can imagine were worried about their children, but they did not accept the fact that their children are not alive anymore. By the time we were freed at Auschwitz and left Auschwitz, before I ever got back to Hungary, I knew by then that I'm not going to find my parents alive. I believe by then, maybe we believed that part. But I'd never seen the gas chambers myself. I never got 99:00close enough to them there, so in my own eyes I never observed it. But we just heard this from the girls who had worked in the barracks, and I'm sure they told us the truth, but it took us a long time to really wanting to believe it.

M.T.:

How long did you work in the kitchen?

A.K.:

I first worked in the kitchen, where I described was the easier part of the work because it was the preparation for the food and then they knew that you would work for the second kitchen where they actually were cooking the food and people said that's the better job, or you get ahold of better food or cooked food. It was very appealing to us. But at the same time they also said that it was a very much harder work. But we did become workers for that kitchen, and I do remember 100:00that it was terribly, physically very hard because the big ovens that we were cooking the food, we had to step on something... It's a very high, it might have been three, feet high or no, no. Much, much bigger. [crosstalk 00:01:40:19].

M.T.:

I suppose this was an institutional stove? [crosstalk 01:40:21].

A.K.:

[crosstalk 01:40:23]. Probably there was five or ten, they had big wooden rollerboards, or the big paddle.

M.T.:

Oars.

A.K.:

Oars is what we used, and you know as we lost a lot of weight and we were not stone faced, it wasn't an easy job. Physically, it was very hard. It was hot around it and I remember it was very scary sometimes, to try to get to that hot food and stir it for little people like we were, but we... And we also had to carry this food out in these big heavy steel cans, but when the food was cooked we put them in those big cans, which were like, I would say-

M.T.:

Like a big garbage can.

A.K.:

Like a big garbage can, but very heavy and it was hot, and they had to take that out in front of the kitchen because then from other barracks, the people would come to pick up the food. And we'd have to carry them out and it was a really heavy work. But I guess-

M.T.:

There must have been some [inaudible 01:41:23] burning themselves?

A.K.:

Yeah, but they weren't getting their burns look for because everything was so bad anyway. But I know it was hard work, but we did it and I was able to do it somehow. [inaudible 01:41:38] when we getting into that second kitchen we got two barracks and [inaudible 01:41:45] thought is a little bit more interesting in that particular barrack once in a while the girls were cooking something which looked more like home food. Once, I remember I've never seen an egg in the whole concentration camp town, eggs they haven't seen, but they were cooking 102:00something with potatoes, you know like a pancake or something, and somebody gave us a bite of it. They had some little furnaces that ended up... And it seemed like that's a [inaudible 01:42:13] they have homemade food in that particular barrack, but that is a very important story that I have to tell you about that barrack just so that you shouldn't say that it was not much fun.

A.K.:

The place was full of rats.

M.T.:

[Inaudible 01:42:30].

A.K.:

For example-

M.T.:

[crosstalk 01:42:33] food being around like [crosstalk 01:42:34].

A.K.:

There's a lot of that, and the story I'm going to tell you now because it's also one of my highlights that we could get our portion of bread at night, and by then I wasn't as starved and hungry as I was in the first part of Auschwitz when my method was to eat the food right away. I think I told you because that's to be sure that I had it. This time I would save it for the morning because I wasn't feeling the need of eating it. So I would wrap it in a scarf, and we had 103:00beds, you know, bunk beds and mine was on the bottom, and it would have wooden boards and then a mattress and then a blanket, I suppose.

A.K.:

So I had the bread wrapped in the scarf, and I had it underneath the mattress. And in the morning the bread was half chewed up by the rats. So it was not so much that the rats were around, but I guess I was missing my portion of bread, and it made me really angry. And another time I decided I'm not going to keep it under the mattress, but I'm going to keep it next to my body, above the mattress under the blanket. And one morning when I woke up the bread was chewed up and three quarters of it was gone. But can you imagine knowing that the rats were next to my body eating the bread, and I didn't even wake up, what I didn't know. 104:00That's the idea, if I see a mouse today I'm scared to death.

M.T.:

[inaudible 01:44:06], ate your bread, [inaudible 01:44:08].

A.K.:

I guess, but it's just the idea that everything had an advantage and disadvantage, but I mean I didn't cry over it. I don't even remember that it has affect me that much, just that the bread was gone. But the idea that the rat was right next to me. That doesn't sound very, really, it sounds pretty scary now.

M.T.:

And some of time, we haven't talked about dates at all, but you said you went into the ghetto, was it in October?

A.K.:

No, [crosstalk 01:44:45] the Germans entered the Hungary earlier on in March. We went into the ghetto in May because we were there only for three weeks and... June the 13th or the 12th was the ghetto evacuated. So if I remember correctly, 105:00I could get actual dates. My relatives were in the [inaudible 01:45:11], they are much more aware of dates. I think it was June, the 12th, that we were... that the ghetto was evacuated.

A.K.:

So then two days in [crosstalk 01:45:23], the brick factory on the trip to Auschwitz was about two days. So we arrived around the middle of June to Auschwitz. Four weeks in Birkenau, two weeks at least in that other camp that I said we only [inaudible 01:45:45] had barracks, there we were tattooed. I don't know if I told you that, the first time, but we got our tattoo numbers in the Lager [A 00:09:53]. After Birkenau... Because that was a working camp of Auschwitz. Birkenau was really the gathering camp and from there a lot of people 106:00in all different directions, either to gas chambers or to Germany or other parts. And when they took us to the [alla 01:46:14] again that's where they gave us the tattoo numbers because they intended to keep us there. And so they did know at that time what we are going to be doing. It must have been August, so two weeks there and then I became a worker at the kitchen.

A.K.:

You asked me a little while ago, how long did I work in the kitchen? I worked there all the way 'til January. I stayed at either the first or the second kitchen in the meantime. When my aunt and my cousin did not come anymore for food. I don't know what happened to them. They did not survive. So I have no idea, were they taken away in a transport and they did not survive it [inaudible 107:0000:11:01], or there they put into the gas chamber for some reason in Auschwitz. But one day they just didn't come back... There was no way to look for people. I would have ask some people, "have you seen them?" [inaudible 01:47:13] and if they didn't they don't know. I mean nobody announced exactly what was happening [crosstalk 00:11:19].

M.T.:

How did they take people away from the barracks? [crosstalk 01:47:20].

A.K.:

They would transport, you know, they would select every time when you had to be... You were standing and called up every morning to come and then those decisions would be made. Only thing I remember that once in a while they would say a transport is going somewhere. But see, nobody ever knew it. And I told you earlier, I never volunteered for the transport and that was mainly in Birkenau. But even from the other Lagers it could have happened. But all we would know that a transport would be going somewhere.

M.T.:

[crosstalk 01:47:53] work group for a working group or camp?-

A.K.:

They never said anything, but then some groups would be leaving us. But I never 108:00knew exactly what happened to my aunt and my cousin because I didn't know anybody else who was with them. And one day I just had not seen them anymore. So I can't answer you that question. Because, I have no idea. Or to the friend of mine who was pregnant, and one day she did not come anymore and so we did not know what happened. There was nobody that you could ask. So I don't know what happened to her, but I do remember that.

A.K.:

So this is what made me survive the war. Because when I realized that I didn't have any decent clothes, then I was making it, and after I help my other people too. I needed warm clothes. So I would ask for the girls to bring me one woolen dress. I had one long pair of a heavy stockings. In the meantime I was able to get myself a pair of new shoes which was like a hiking... I'm not saying it was 109:00brand new but it was a heavy, a new high boots.

A.K.:

I had a Brown woolen coat. It doesn't appear to me that it was really heavy. It didn't have any special lining, but it was wool. I got myself a heavy scarf. It wasn't a thick scarf but it might have been wool or one of the big scarfs to tie it around my head. I think, I'm almost sure, I had gloves. Wintertime in Germany, or in Poland, of course there is cold. So I had just one of all those and probably warm underwear. But that's all I had-

M.T.:

[crosstalk 01:49:41] had to sleep in these things-

A.K.:

Or I pick up some. I did not have any knives, guns. I didn't have-

M.T.:

[crosstalk 01:49:46] underclothes or anything?

A.K.:

Maybe I might have had an extra one that I remember, but it was just nothing. We didn't have any closets. I must have, I must have had [inaudible 01:49:59] things up maybe under that, but as far as dress, I know I didn't have-

M.T.:

[crosstalk 00:01:50:04].

A.K.:

It was very interesting that we found some people that worked at the kitchens who [inaudible 01:50:12] lifetime from my hometown, they I remember they were from a very poor family. They were two sisters and one of the girls apparently enjoying the idea that they can get clothes easier here because they could for food. And she had several changes of clothes and I remember we were kind of looking down on that girl wondering why all this-

M.T.:

Must have seemed so completely [crosstalk 00:14:43]-

A.K.:

Hey, you know, I mean what... why do you need more? That is what I got, I believe was a necessity. Whether I had a change of clothes, like to wash... Because as I told you in the beginning, they're very worried about trying to keep clean. So we had to have probably on my [inaudible 01:51:00] another underwear, but really it's not that I remember of a stack of clothes, but I do 111:00remember then we left Auschwitz, I remember the color of the clothes.

A.K.:

It was a plaid woolen long sleeve dress, fairly nice. It fit me perfectly all right. It had red and blue colors in it. And the brown coat and the beige-brown woolens scarf, brown boots or shoes and one heavy stockings and glove. And that's all I had, but I was equipped for cold weather. The rest of the people who were not able to get clothes because they could not give up that food for clothes. There is no way, otherwise they'd starve, they had only what they were given in the beginning, which was absolutely nothing. We cannot survive a winter in Germany with lightweight clothes.

M.T.:

But they must have had all these extra clothes in the barracks.

A.K.:

Yeah.

M.T.:

That they were taking away from the people they were sending to the gas chambers [crosstalk 01:51:58] but they didn't give them to-

A.K.:

Yeah but they didn't, cause I don't know what they did but they send the Germans-

M.T.:

[crosstalk 01:52:03] found after the war very carefully labeled-

A.K.:

labels inside.

M.T.:

Yeah, I know.

A.K.:

So we stayed in Auschwitz until January. Then we heard rumor that the Russians are getting close to Auschwitz. We heard rumors that the camp will be evacuated.

M.T.:

Were you personally, and your group, more frightened of the Russians than the Nazis?

A.K.:

We were not, no. No way. We were not frightened by then of anything. We does live day by day, but the rumors were that Auschwitz will be evacuated. We also heard that there were some decisions made by some people. Would they want to stay or would they want to go with a transport? There's a lot of people in the infirmaries being very, very sick. Of course there was no way for them to leave the infirmary. I've never seen the infirmary. I've never been in there, but I knew of people who were.

A.K.:

So one day in January and I cannot remember the date exactly, the Germans are trying to get away from Auschwitz and they're taking all the people who were there and who were able to go, and willing to go. The kitchen workers were in pretty good shape. We were wondering whether to stay or not to stay, but again, nobody knew what will happen to us if they didn't know what the, what would be better to do to stay or go and it seems to me I've always done what everybody else is doing and we just gone. If I would have known what happened after that three months, I should have stayed in Auschwitz and then we would have been freed in January instead of in May. So four months of agony and more starvation would have been... I guess saved, but we didn't know.

M.T.:

You want to [inaudible 01:54:01]?

Speaker 3:

You didn't have any questions in connection with this?

M.T.:

This is side five of the interview. You were saying that in January, the rumors about having to evacuate Auschwitz and you left evidently. Wat happened then?

A.K.:

We left a by train-

M.T.:

In cattle cars as you had come?

A.K.:

In closed cars. That's little bit vague. I can try to remember to first part our trip, but then I... And I don't want to go into details. It was very cold and a lot of snow and I'm just going to tell you all the most important parts of that. I remember of two days of traveling by train, where we were in open cars.

M.T.:

Open? In the winter?

A.K.:

Open cars in the winter. And it was terribly cold and there might have been 80 or a hundred people on one of those cards.

M.T.:

So the conditions-

A.K.:

The conditions were impossible. That was one part of our trip there. We did not get any food. They were not able to give us hardly any food because there was no organization at all. They didn't know. The Germans, I guess, didn't know themselves where they are going. They left Auschwitz. They were evacuating as many people as they can, and they were wandering from one place to the other, and they had no idea exactly where everybody's going.

A.K.:

So out of... from January to May, I have a few very important stories to tell. 116:00This is one of them. Two days of traveling in this open cart was very cold. That was hardly any food. Once in a while, if the train would stop and if they would hand us some food, people are going practically wild to try to get that food, and they would be ready to murder each other for a bite. And I remember that I have gotten as close, at that moment, thinking that I now realize what people do when they go completely psychotic or crazy because everybody was screaming.

A.K.:

And there was no way to rest because there was not enough room, again, to your foot down. And if you did put your foot down then you stepped on somebody. If that was food on the train, then people were trying to take it from each other.

M.T.:

And of course you didn't know [crosstalk 01:56:58]-

A.K.:

The bathroom facilities, the bathroom facilities were absolutely impossible. 117:00They would pass a can around for people to try to use the bathroom. Details I don't remember, but getting very close to a hysterical point that I would think this was the limit.

M.T.:

Well you didn't know it was going to end in two days. [crosstalk 01:57:21].

A.K.:

Yeah. See, I didn't know. That's exactly right. We had had no idea where we were going, and I assume that this part was, again, one of the worst of the whole time I was gone.

A.K.:

Then the train arrive to a city called Magdeburg, which they stopped at the railroad station and Magdeburg was bombed at that night. And all I remember, again, that the German SS officers, ladies or man, whoever they were ran to their shelters on the station because they had all those fallout shelters. But 118:00naturally they didn't know what to do with all the prisoners, and they left us in those cars up on the station.

M.T.:

On the railway? Well, you were the target [crosstalk 00:01:58:11]-

A.K.:

And we were not even worried about the bombing. We were looking at the city going up in flames like fireworks, what would be here 4th of July? I remember not being scared of the bombs. I guess we might have thought of that, at least if it hits us, this would be the end of the ordeal. So that we were not frightened by the bombing. It was just a scene that one never forgets. You know, you could see the... You could hear the bombs, you could hear everything going up into flames. You could... and we were right there in the railroad station and the station at this point watching this. That's all I remember. Magdeburg, we 119:00couldn't go anywhere. They went into the shelters, and they left us there. And how long this lasted, and how long we were there, see that's what I'm trying to say.

A.K.:

I told [Mary-Kate, 01:59:11] and I'm telling it to you right now. I don't know who else I'm telling this story, but to you. I have no idea how I cannot remember how long we were there. I just remember the fact that we were there, and you will never forget that. See that's one part. Plus the two days of traveling, but this was part of it.

A.K.:

Then we arrive to a camp called Ravensbrück.

M.T.:

Is this near Magdeburg?

A.K.:

It wasn't vert far on the map. I could show it to you. And when I told you about this book, the war and remembrance.

M.T.:

Yes, you spoke of-

A.K.:

and this one character at the end was going through because she was in Auschwitz and this was exactly written down that in an open car, how many people were 120:00taken and they were going to this camp.

M.T.:

So you found the book accurate? In terms of their own-

A.K.:

that particular thing. Now this was a camp where we were for three whole weeks. Some dates I remember. Some part, I don't remember when you heard that. This all happened after January, but dates I couldn't give you. If anybody would like to have accurate dates on it from my friend from Israel, I could get it because she somehow remembers things a little bit more accurately. Plus she has met a lot of people in Israel who were among us and somehow they have discussed of that.

M.T.:

I don't think that they [crosstalk 02:00:44]-

A.K.:

This story, but I don't think it... We were in Raven... this was between January and May. The eighth is when the war ended and three weeks was Ravensbrück and then we were at other camps too. But that's again, one of the highlights of the story. This was a gathering camp. Originally it was a concentration camp also, 121:00but at this time of the... This was the end of the war, almost end of the war, and from different parts of the country they were bringing refugees. Just the way the Germans evacuated Auschwitz, I'm sure from different other camps they were collecting people over here. You can imagine a big tent, a giant tent with a barrack. We had bunk beds in a circular section. It was a tent. It had a cover but no sides. So it was cold.

A.K.:

Yeah, no sides. But so it was no heat there you can imagine that, but there were maybe be some blankets on the bunk beds. And the bunk beds were three story high, just completely the whole area was covered with beds. Three story high, 122:00back to back. So I couldn't begin to tell you how many beds were there. All I know, we got a section of this by then. During the kitchen I have become very friendly with a girl, who ever since have never forgotten, she now lives in Israel and I've seen her once since the war, became very close because in the meantime the transports going two different directions.

A.K.:

One always found out that somebody who you were close with up 'til now is now gone. So by the time this girl and I were so close now for a long time and working on the kitchen together, plus one more woman from my hometown who also worked at the kitchen, and we all survived together. So it was three of us that we decided we just kind of liked to stay together if it's possible. So anytime a 123:00transport was announced, you were practically holding onto each other hands. If you go, I go to. If I don't go, you shouldn't go either at if possible. Cause by then you just had to do this. So this friend of mine, and myself, and the one from my hometown and two other women, and I cannot remember from which part of Hungary they were, some are five of us have done things together by the time we got to this camp Ravensbrück.

A.K.:

I don't even remember the other girl's names. Really.

M.T.:

The woman who is now in Israel, she was Hungarian but not from your town?

A.K.:

No, she was not Hungarian. She was from Yugoslavia, but she just so happened that she was the part of Yugoslavia that she also spoke Hungarian. And she was a very talented girl. She spoke all the Slavic languages. She spoke Hungarian and she was an intelligent girl, a very brave girl. And we really became very good 124:00friends. So in Ravensbrück we had nothing to do. There was no work. It was just, again, a surviving camp and we didn't know how long we are going to be staying there. The part of this camp was that there was no food provided. It was very cold.

M.T.:

No food at all?

A.K.:

No food provided officially unless you went and tried to hunt for food.

A.K.:

Now we started out, we started out that we have heard, there were rumors, that in the town of Ravensbrück there was a little square. It's a little German town, with a hilly area. And I remember that very clearly. It's in my mind. There would be a square, and they said the middle of the square, if you go out at night, they're serving some food.

M.T.:

Well were you allowed... how could you get out?

A.K.:

We could, we were not tied to those beds. We were able to get up. It wasn't that 125:00kind of area anymore. Like, Oh shit, we go not in wired fence and-

M.T.:

[crosstalk 02:05:08] barbed wire fences-

A.K.:

No, not he could go. And so we would decide to go there. And all these different people started off and one time I did it too and it's high. I know what it looked like. It seems like it was a square and that would be big again, food buckets, but very high and heavy I guess.

A.K.:

But they had no idea how many people are there and they were just serving food. Whoever comes first would get it. But I remember we started out several times, sometimes one of my friends, sometimes I would [inaudible 02:05:42] friend to try to bring home in a bowl or some kind of a pot, whatever we could find, some food for the rest of them. And we would get to this mass of people, but to fight your way through the mass of people to get to the food, it was almost impossible. We tried, but you really had to be strong. You had to kick, you had 126:00to fight your way so you should be able to get there. And most of the time, none of us were that energetic that we could really get to the food. I mean to have a people who would be stronger, and they get to it.

M.T.:

And you're not very tall-

A.K.:

And we were not tall. And my friend, she's even smaller than I am, so none of us were really those fighting the real fighters. But once I think I remember that somewhere I got far enough that they put some kind of a soup into it and then come back with it. How long that took me to get back to the barracks, I cannot remember, but it was in walking distance naturally. And we tried, but that we might have done only once. We were really starving, and we were really hungry. And that's what really explain my story, how I stole a loaf of bread the first time in my life. This happened right in this barrack, camp, tent is really what 127:00it was. So what has happened that the bunk beds were back to back. And behind us, different people were sleeping, you have no idea who they were.

A.K.:

And one time those girls left. They were Gypsies, Hungarians Polish people, just all nationality. It was just like a complete the power [crosstalk 02:07:27] That's exactly right. So one day somebody said that right behind my pillow, not pillow behind my head, where the other bunk bed met, that somebody hid a loaf of bread. And they were after me, my friends, to try to get it. And they were really starved. And when nobody was there, I did get it because all you had to do reach back. I got the bread, divided it among five of us. We ate it right away and I really didn't even have any guilty feeling. I probably-

A.K.:

And I really didn't even have any guilty feeling. I probably did, otherwise, I won't remember this story as one of also my most important ones because when the girls came back, they were all just screaming. They were mad. What happened to their bed?

M.T.:

Well they must all have been starving or they would've...

A.K.:

I don't even know. I don't even know about nationalities were because we didn't understand what they were talking, you know, but we knew that they were looking for their bed. They were angry about the bed, but we hid it and there was no way that they could have found out that we did it and so, but we had to do it. This was part of the rival.

M.T.:

So you really had one meal and one loaf of bread.

A.K.:

It was just, we were there for three weeks and I really couldn't begin to tell you what we had. All I remember the fights going to that square to get the food.

A.K.:

It might have been more often. I shouldn't say that for three weeks we didn't eat, but he put...

M.T.:

These are the town's people feeding the prisoners right?

A.K.:

Yeah. I don't know who provided the food there. Could have been the German 129:00officials. It was in Germany, might to have been trying to feed all those gathered prisoners, you know, I mean they fed us.

M.T.:

They would have done it near the tents.

A.K.:

That's why I don't understand. In the tent, we did not get any food. Officially we were not supplied with any food. However, we could go and get it. That's what they did. That was one part of Robin's group. The other one was that this was the place where we picked up lice.

M.T.:

Lice?

A.K.:

Lice. And so in Auschwitz once the bedbugs and hid the lice. And in the kitchen camp directs, those were the three important...

M.T.:

Animal infestations.

A.K.:

Animal infestations in that year.

A.K.:

But the lice was so bad because see there were different people coming from all different parts of the country and that was just probably never to go to have it...

M.T.:

They had no washing facilities.

A.K.:

We had no washing facilities. I do not remember that. Any showers, any baths...

M.T.:

To bring 102...

A.K.:

But they didn't know what to do with everyone. No, I don't remember. Even when we went to the bathroom. I know. I don't believe that we have gotten into water. I don't remember anything else in that camp except fighting for the food, stealing the bread and licing ourselves. De licing ourselves all the time. Our main occupation was that day after day to sit around and again pick the lice off each other. Also for girls [crosstalk 02:10:40], he would turn if he could take off our clothes for a minute, you know, you just with your finger nails, you would just kill the lice. And that for us was very important.

A.K.:

The fact, again, we couldn't keep ourselves clean any other way and somebody somehow accidentally found a little comb, which was a very thin comb, you know, 131:00with the T's being very close to each other, if you remember that would be an name for the comb like that. Just very tight...

M.T.:

A fine comb.

A.K.:

Fine comb, you know.

M.T.:

With the teeth very close together.

A.K.:

Tight. Yeah, fine. And we use that one comb on each other like monkeys, like monkeys...

M.T.:

Yes, I've seen pictures [crosstalk 00:03:30].

A.K.:

You would see them in there grooming each other. That's exactly, you go to the zoo and you see one a monkey lying and the other one picking and that's exactly what we did. We spent hours of doing that and by doing it you were trying to eliminate it, but we couldn't completely get rid of it. People would go, everybody's had it and we're trying to get it.

A.K.:

And we're trying to get it out of our clothes and we would find some prisoners or some women accidentally who were just very disgusted with this and they didn't feel like doing it and we were trying to tell them that it's very 132:00important that you have nothing else to do anyway and you can give up, and we were trying to kind of push this as was part of our jobs [crosstalk 02:12:15] there. For three weeks, that's all we did. Then again, this camp was evacuated and we would be going by foot. By then it was spring time because the weather was, oh no, what am I talking about? Two days of the train you remember that, but then there were days and days of walking in February and January in Germany. See the only transportation we had that one time for two days on train.

A.K.:

The rest of it we were walking. [crosstalk 02:12:55] We had no other transportation, somehow, and we were walking and I always forgot. That's why how come I would forget this before Spring comes because it was freezing cold. We 133:00would be going from one place to there, miles and miles and miles and miles and at night. I don't even remember where we would be, we would be walking night and day. And the only reason I remember that because I have picked up a very bad case of laryngitis, naturally. And I couldn't talk, no voice would come out for weeks. So I don't know how long we go on the road. But this friend of mine, her name is [inaudible 02:13:39], they call her Elana now in Israel. She had a very good voice. She liked to sing. And in order for us not to separate, and we couldn't hold each other hands all the time.

A.K.:

And that's how I know that it was night and day because it was pitch dark. In order for me not to lose her, I couldn't call her name. So the only thing I 134:00could go after her voice, and she would be singing, she would be singing all the time, just so that I could know where she is. If we couldn't hold hands and we could then see really that people who weren't equipped with the warm clothes like we were, and they had horrible shoes, like shoes practically falling off their feet. They could not survive the snow and ice and we would just see them stop, sit down and we would see just completely frozen bodies on the road. And we would constantly push ourselves just like we did with the...

M.T.:

But the Germans didn't bother to shoot them or anything, they just left them there.

A.K.:

We could just the baby though de licing ourselves. Our other method was if a person was trying to sleep a little bit, we would hang on to that person, but we would make, we would walk, we would not dare to sit down and try to fall asleep.

A.K.:

First of all, because we would get away from our group, because the group was going all the time. But the group I didn't care about the whoever was leading us, but our so called little friends, let's say five people. So in order for us not to sit down and not to freeze to death, we were forcing ourselves to go all the time, you know? And if one person barely could make it, then the other one would just kind of hang on to them. But I remember we could not stop at night to try to take a rest because we could not have survived. It was just as so...

M.T.:

What were the minds of the SSR?

A.K.:

I mean they had not, see the Germans were trying to get away. They had no definite plans. They didn't know what to do. People there were no places, you know, Raven's place was a place that they could put up that many people as they put them up without any food.

A.K.:

But there were no camps where they could gather. They had no idea. I mean this was not planned exactly. By then. They had absolutely no organization. They couldn't shoot us. You know, if you died, I assume after, maybe I did not see people being shot. But I do know that I've seen people just around the edges of the road who just couldn't make it anymore. So whether they froze there or they died there, starvation or whether they shot them afterwards. I have no idea. None of my friends who I was with, those five people, we just didn't stop. So she saved my life by singing all the time. And as a result of that laryngitis, I tell all my son that that's the reason why I can't sing anymore. I didn't really lose my higher vocal chords. You know, I used to be in chorus in school and I could carry a higher tune.

A.K.:

I can go up just to a certain point. And after that, you know, I just cannot. 137:00But then I got better I guess. I don't remember, we never saw a doctor, you never see medicine, you know, but...

M.T.:

And they're still not feeding you on this march.

A.K.:

Do you know what they had? Of course, in winter time, I don't know. I don't know where we got food that's so unbelievable. Potatoes under the ground in winter time couldn't be. There were two marches that I remember in this horrible cold weather. Sugar beads, would that be out in winter time? Sugar beds? [crosstalk 02:17:41] You know, because the only thing that we survived on, sugar beets from the field and raw potato somewhere, you know. So the people who were going and they weren't afraid to get off the road, they ran to the right or they ran to the left and they would end up with sugar beets and that would be like a big 138:00turnip or something like that.

A.K.:

Now that was in winter time too, I assume.

M.T.:

[inaudible 02:18:10].

A.K.:

I don't. Maybe under the snow, maybe it wasn't. Because I don't remember any decent food. I remember it only completely down to starvation, eating sugar beets for weeks, whether it was more toward the Spring at that time, I don't know. But that's all we lived on. Now that, again, not everybody could survive on it because you know, you can imagine your stomach can just take so much. But I was able to. I ate sugar beets all the time as much as I could get, put my hand up. So that was in Winter time, the marching. Then the two days of the train and then seems like after Raven's group, maybe the weather was getting a little bit better. Then we were out walking just on fields, and the weather was getting a little bit better. Then we ended up again in a camp, which was a close 139:00to Leipzig, L-E-I-P-Z-I-G. And somehow there we arrived to a decent camp, which was a labor camp before. Jewish people live there and they walk into the city to work in factories.

M.T.:

Like Sandy's sisters and...

A.K.:

Somewhere else, yeah. So and this place we were for about two weeks, and this area was good. The German officers there were decent, the girls who went out to work to the factories were in pretty good shape. We didn't know anybody from there, but instead of not getting any food at suppertime, we were taken down to a decent...

M.T.:

Like a mess hall?

A.K.:

Hall, mess hall. And we got regular food there. Tables were set, don't remember what we got, but for us it was luxury, absolute luxury. And the barracks there were decent. We had decent beds and for two weeks that was getting close to, might've been in April, the beginning of April. And we were getting news from the girls so they were coming in from town and they were telling us a little bit that the war is getting close to the end. Then they were telling us different kind of of political news that looks like maybe this won't take forever now and they were having somewhat hopes to maybe survive or, that was the best place I've ever been. But that again, I did something that was something that happened in this area where we were so pleasantly relaxing on our bunk beds. We warm, we 141:00weren't cold anymore and we were fed. There was nothing to do but we didn't have to work. You know, we were just there. And we happened to, I got hold of a manicure scissor. Which I haven't seen.

M.T.:

I think we better save the manicure scissor for a minute. This is side six of Anne Prime's story. You just, you said in Leipzig, what you call a good camp. You'd found some manicure scissors.

A.K.:

Somebody, I got hold of it. They did not have toothpaste, toothbrush, soaps, any of that facilities for so long. So I got hold, I would find little manicure scissors. I was trying to fix my fingernails, nothing better to do. And I pricked my finger at one place, which you do all the time. But I was taught to 142:00hold my finger under hot water and get the infection off.

A.K.:

Or you can get some medicine. But since we were not exposed to any medical facilities, and I guess I did not have hot water to do this method...

M.T.:

You just put it in your mouth.

A.K.:

I guess I did whatever, it was this finger, you know, just a prick. And my finger got infected. So this happened in that beautiful camp, which we weren't starving here, but this was what happened. And as a result... [crosstalk 00:14:35].

M.T.:

You were in very poor physical condition, despite being..

A.K.:

My physical condition, no vitamins. So it was really not an unbelievable thing to have had to happen. But as a result then I had lots and lots of inconveniences after that. But this is where this happened. In this camp we heard news about the the war getting closer to maybe end. We had some hopes in 143:00here and the girls who worked in the factories would come in at night and we would be able to talk a little bit more what's going on.

A.K.:

They were in good shape. So this was really the highlights of our place...

M.T.:

How would they really know? Because they were really isolated from other people.

A.K.:

They were, but they would be going into town to a factory, and I guess they were... We never had any chance to be with the outside world but they were.

M.T.:

Did they work with civilians?

A.K.:

Civilians and they must have heard. [crosstalk 02:23:35] And so somehow they heard a little bit about the Russian get, you know, the advancing and then the Americans advancing from the other sectors. [crosstalk 02:23:48] So somehow we had heard that we are not going to be staying here too much longer. It looks that this camp is going to be evacuated, but things looked a little bit better. Of course one never knew what the last moment will be. We never knew what the 144:00Germans would do to us, but things were kind of rosy looking at this particular camp.

M.T.:

But there was no way to escape. [crosstalk 02:24:12] by the Americans?

A.K.:

We could not, again, because we didn't know what to do. And they have always just gone whatever we were made to do. And again this camp was evacuated and we were on the go again. After this, it was just...

M.T.:

Can I interrupt just a little bit. How long, you said two weeks in this?

A.K.:

Two weeks in this particular camp. It wasn't in Leipzig. It was in the neighborhood of Leipzig. I think they went into lactic. If before this, before I give my official finishing touches on this, it would be nice to know exactly if you want to know the names of towns. [crosstalk 02:24:45] In fact my good friend once gave me the name of that camp, because she remembered it. I wrote it down somewhere and then I couldn't find it. But there was the name to this particular little place, which was a better camp.

A.K.:

And the people that who spent their whole year that or maybe from the beginning, 145:00they didn't have it as bad. I mean, not everybody was in Auschwitz. Not everybody was in Dachau. So they were just so-called little bit luckier, you know, then us. So after this I was again, some laundering in the fields. It was still cold, but not winter time anymore. Again, no place to go. And we never knew exactly which way we are, never had any maps. We could not talk to civilians. We had no radios. That was no television. So we really...

M.T.:

And they were just driving.

A.K.:

Yeah, we just were walking. So we never really actually knew what was going on, you know.

M.T.:

You were not on the roads?

A.K.:

On roads, you know, I remember kind of dirt roads, not highways.

M.T.:

Did you see ordinary people living in their houses?

A.K.:

And we have gone once through a little town and that's exactly about the ordinary people.

A.K.:

That was terribly stated. If we were going through a town, and people looked out the windows, German people, and they were looking down and for us to see those 146:00people, it seemed just absolutely unrevealed. We got terribly homesick for the life that we had before, because they looked like normal civilians. Just looking down and being, watching, [crosstalk 02:26:20] living in their houses, and watching us going by. It was a terribly strange feeling and gave us home sickness of wondering about our family and thinking how lucky they are. They're looking out the window, it gave. But otherwise we never saw civilians.

M.T.:

Oh really? How many people would you guess were in these groups?

A.K.:

I also remember, I have no idea, but I also remember on our train ride when we were going, when we stopped at [inaudible 00:18:49], we were going through Berlin. We were passing by Berlin.

M.T.:

That must have been very bombed out.

A.K.:

And it was terrible. And I remember the outskirts of it and whatever we could 147:00see was nothing but ruins. And we knew it was Berlin.

M.T.:

Well that must have given you some hope that the war would be ended.

A.K.:

I looked at the maps a few times and figuring it out how from Auschwitz and the [inaudible 02:27:19] and going through Berlin, I had a pretty good idea about where we were. But you know, you could never talk to anybody. I mean it was just friends just among ourselves.

M.T.:

And you were being sort of driven by [inaudible 02:27:32] officers.

A.K.:

That's right. So there was no [inaudible] they didn't tell us.

M.T.:

Did they walk too?

A.K.:

They walked to, yeah. But then there is an interesting story I tell. So I was starting to tell you before that in our past times when we had nothing to do, there was not any labor camp anymore.

A.K.:

There's no work to do, no kitchen work, but we had three years of time...

M.T.:

You didn't have any work after you left Auschwitz.

A.K.:

Nothing, nothing after that. Just this wonderings in cold or snow and starvation 148:00and the delousing that was, and the conversation among ourselves, which was the most important thing day after day.

A.K.:

We were just practically waiting for the moment that we can start all over again. We would say well, picture yourself in your own home, you will wake up in the morning, what would you like to have for breakfast? And we pretended.

M.T.:

Did this make you hungry?

A.K.:

No, we pretended that we are in bed and we are asking somebody to bring us breakfast. It would be hot chocolate and [inaudible 02:28:34] all the time and little things. Then we would be discussing, let's pretend you're having a party now. You know, I mean in my home we had a lot of parties.

M.T.:

This is the five, if you were still together?

A.K.:

Five of us, but illusion myself, just all the times that we just talked about is constantly. We planned parties, we planned how we would set a table and what would be the menu, you know, and we would just pretend it's there. Or we pretend what we would have for dinner and we exchange somehow recipes. How would you 149:00serve it? Talked about food constantly and then we would be all finished. We were talking about it, when we would be all through, we just feel like we had something to eat.

A.K.:

[inaudible 02:29:19] You will say now let talk about all this. And we did this. This is almost like, you know, young girls would be talking about boys. No, we did not discuss any, we didn't talk so much about our family, you know, because that was kind of sad. We didn't know where anybody else was.

M.T.:

Or imaginary weddings?

A.K.:

Nothing like that. But just a planning meals and what would you eat and how would you serve it? And it would always be very rich in in chocolate puddings with a lot of whipping cream. [crosstalk 02:29:54] We always said, and we would just many courses and that was...

M.T.:Champagne?A.K.:Daily. That would be daily, we would just all the time. You 150:00know, we would be just lying down there, there was no place to go, no books to read, no radio to listen.

A.K.:

And you don't, you're not in the mood of all kinds of serious combat. What can you talk about when you don't know whether you're going to survive the battle. I mean just, I'm not saying all the time, but a lot of our conversation. [crosstalk 02:30:27] Yeah, in Auschwitz. We didn't in the kitchen, we didn't have that much time because we were working. And in the beginning when you're going through all this agony of trying to. No, but in those weeks, and we had nothing to do, just being driven and when we had rest periods, because we didn't go day and night, in the... On farms, or in a barns, or certain places, we stopped at times. I can't remember.

M.T.:

Were these hundreds of people traveling together, or dozens?

A.K.:

50, 60, or hundreds maybe. [crosstalk 02:31:02] They could. Now, I don't 151:00remember many barns. But I remember one incident toward the very end and that's going to come to almost the end of this, not the whole tape but ordeal.

A.K.:

So after they left this so-called nice camp, then it must have been already the end of April. Seeing the war ended May the 8th. So that again we had a few more weeks of where to go.

M.T.:

Would you have heard anything about Roosevelt's death?

A.K.:

I don't remember anything that at all, no.

M.T.:

Well it wouldn't have been the same meaning, of course.

A.K.:

But we did not. I mean I just just don't remember anything that, any interesting news that we would have heard.

M.T.:

Except, the hope of the war was coming [crosstalk 02:31:49].

A.K.:

So but this was very interesting among our wondering in the fields. Suddenly we arrive to a meeting place again, which was a big ground, flat. And we heard that 152:00there a lot of other groups of people on this very same spot.

M.T.:

Another collection.

A.K.:

It's a collection place, but it wasn't an indoor facility, it wasn't barracks.

A.K.:

So like Raven's group, just a tremendous big field. But we heard about this place that that are a lot of different prisoners arrived to this particular place. And I can see this again in front of me. It was a nature, you know, just like you would be going on a camping trip. Which would have been pretty because it was already Spring. And so right here you're talking to some people and you always asked the same questions. Who is that? Where are they from? You know, you expect to maybe meet people. So as we gathered at this spot, somebody says, "Oh, they found out we were..." There were a lot of Hungarians in that group, and they would find out that we're from a town called [inaudible]. So whoever we go 153:00talking to say, "There are lots and lots of people here from [inaudible]. Do you want to meet them?"

A.K.:

Of course we were wondering who survived, and we wanted to know who is it. So as we are talking to them, that is a girl with us who happens to be Sandy's sister.

M.T.:

Oh and you hadn't seen her.

A.K.:

I'm sorry, not Sandy's sister, Sandy's cousin. And in the conversation we find out that her sister...

M.T.:

Listeners who don't know us, Sandy is Anne's husband.

A.K.:

Yeah. But this cousin of Sandy was very terribly run down, and we accidentally met her somewhere and she was in our wondering group by now. She then later became a medical doctor in Budapest. Her name is also Elizabeth Klein. As she gave us her name. And in this group we find out that her sister is among the 154:00other people who are way back on the field. You remember I told you that we found out that there are more people from [inaudible 02:34:08] and we were wondering who. And we found out that this girl's sister is among them.

A.K.:

So that was terribly exciting because they have not heard from each other. They had no idea that one is living, or the other. And this meeting was taken place and this person whoever told us about it says, "Well let's get them together." And I remember the scene that they met and it was very moving and we met a lot of other people from my hometown and by then I was only with my friend [inaudible 02:34:43]. [crosstalk 02:34:45] And the other two we don't know but, the third person from [inaudible 02:34:49] was still with us, at that point. I think she was still with us and they said...

M.T.:

But the other two had gone with you to this camp near Leipzig.

A.K.:

Yeah, they were still there and then I don't even know where they were from, and 155:00I completely lost track with them. I didn't feel that close to those people.

A.K.:

By then, my most important thing was with this [inaudible 02:35:13] and that other person from [inaudible 02:35:16] who was a seamstress in [inaudible 02:35:19] and on one of our train trips and that was at the very end. And I don't want to get ahead of my story. She sewed me something on the train, you know. So this group of girls they have a...

M.T.:

Do you have any idea where this place was, where you came to this new gathering place where Sandy's cousin met her sister.

A.K.:

It wasn't very far from [inaudible 00:27:48]. [inaudible 02:35:49] was the town where we were freed by the Americans. This was about almost our last few weeks of before May the 8th. And I cannot remember exactly what city we were close to, 156:00but the group we met had a German officer, the commander was a much more decent guy than anybody I have ever run into and kept this group in very good condition.

A.K.:

They worked in factories before and he provided them with food. So they were in good shape. They...

M.T.:

I didn't know there were any humane [crosstalk 00:02:36:24].

A.K.:

He happened to be because they told us there that they wanted to ask him if they can take us in. So we would have a group to go with from here on because we were...

M.T.:

You must have been pretty peculiar. You still had only the clothes you taken from Auschwitz.

A.K.:

Yeah, we were in horrible shape. We were hungry and starved because this was all from January and we were already in April now. And they ask us if they wanted us to join them and...

M.T.:

Now did they have their head shaved too by this time?

A.K.:

By then we all had some hair, you know. Yes they did because they were out. Everybody went to Auschwitz first. But they left Auschwitz after four weeks.

M.T.:

On one of those transports.

A.K.:

On one of those transports. [crosstalk 02:37:04] Yeah, but one wouldn't know.

A.K.:

And some groups had it better. Some groups didn't have it as good. And we said we would love to, but I said, "I'm not going to unless my friend can come with me too." And since those people who are from [inaudible] they would have naturally invited me. But I said under the circumstances, only the two of us. So they talked to this officer and he says, "By all means, it's fine." So we kind of rejoined them there. Well there were no beds to have to sleep in. It was just the group and it was a good feeling to be under some sort of a supervision and not just the wondering around.

M.T.:

Well some type of humane supervision and [crosstalk 02:37:50].

A.K.:

And so I remember the scene that it was a big field and it was lunchtime and he was able to provide food for this group.

A.K.:

How he did it, I'm not sure, but they were getting regular meal, among the ones which I remember they were. They were, it was cooked potatoes, boiled potatoes, and we were sitting under the tree and the some of the people I was sitting with, they were friends I've known way back from my hometown and my good friend and I were in very bad shape. And they were throwing away the potato peel just like you would do maybe in this country. And without any hesitation. We just picked up the potato peel and we ate it. And the gentleman officer was sitting with the other German uniform guy under the tree, not very far from us and I didn't watch what they were eating, but they happened to see what we were doing. So the officer called me over to to him and I went over there.

A.K.:

And with my poor German, I understood some of the things he said. He was eating a sandwich and he seemed to have apologized for all this, what going on. By saying that. How sad it was that we had to pick up the potato peels from the ground and he gave me half of his sandwich.

M.T.:

For goodness sake.

A.K.:

And so I walked back to my friend and then I divide the half of the sandwich with her. But that was real food. It might've had cold cuts in it. I don't even know what it was, but it was a sandwich. What somehow the kind of food we hadn't seen for practically a whole year. So it was a very touchy situation and the guy really seemed to be nice, and the girls said that he was like this all the time during the whole time that he was their commander. [crosstalk 02:40:01].

M.T.:

And they had been under his authority...

A.K.:

So much.

M.T.:

And they had been [crosstalk 02:40:01]-

A.K.:

So much, so much for months, so much that supposedly when the war was over, they were trying to save this guy. They felt that he would deserve it. So that's the only contact I ever had with any German officers, especially somebody who would give me half of his sandwich.

M.T.:

Any good contact.

A.K.:

Where you saw some sort of good contact at all. So from this moment on, we stayed with this group and we were provided with some food because somehow he saw to it that, I'm not sure that he has gotten it, but at nights he would have some sort of food for the people. And I mentioned, before I became the member of this group, we were completely on our own and the only food that we were able to get what sugar beets.

M.T.:

From the fields.

A.K.:

From the fields and how our stomach was able to take it, I don't know. But for a 161:00while we with this group but that wasn't the end of it yet either, because it just so happens that people, somehow accidentally, would be separated, but it was getting so close to the end of the war that one night we were staying in a barn and the group wasn't that big anymore, again, because see not everybody could keep up. I mean the space was so that they were walking fast and not everybody had that much energy.

A.K.:

And I remember that it was the last few days before we arrived to Wurzen, that one young woman who was very energetic, had a fairly good year, and she was strong and very outspoken, has decided and told the German SS officers, there were some ladies at the time in charge of us. We'd by then gotten away again from this guy. And that was the last few days of our wandering. But she said, 162:00"This is it. We are not going to go anymore with them. This was all the suffering we are going to take, because we heard rumors that the Americans are a few miles away and we already heard rumors that it's almost the end." And the gentleman officers, the women were trying to get our clothes, they were trying to shed their officer uniforms.

M.T.:

They wanted to trade their uniforms [crosstalk 02:42:34].

A.K.:

And they were trying to escape by then, and if somebody would have deserved it, they would have even done it. But I don't remember. I don't recall remembering any of the women because we were always under some other supervision. And this young lady, I never forget it because she did say it in front of me and that's why I remember it, that she said, "This is all we want to take and we're not 163:00going to follow you all anymore. We know that the Americans are close and this is it." And it was a reverse conversation.

A.K.:

You're not going to give us orders anymore. This is it. And then I remember a scene.

M.T.:

What happened then?

A.K.:

That was a little walk, not very far. It's all wilderness, countryside and we see a horse and buggy and a white flag on it.

M.T.:

For goodness sake [crosstalk 02:43:32].

A.K.:

At a very close distance. We started to yell to those people and we were asking how far, how far we are from being liberated or freed? And some of you heard that the town is very close and that the Americans are already there. It wasn't the Russians. We were close to a town called Wurzen.

M.T.:

Were you afraid of the Russians?

A.K.:

No. We were not. No. No, not at all. No, we were not afraid of the Russians. We 164:00did not know. We didn't care exactly. See they were kind of circled, in one way the Russians, in one way, the Americas. But we were closer [inaudible 02:44:12] the Americans. We left the officers by then. [crosstalk 02:44:18]

A.K.:

We left this woman and a few others, my friend. And so by then we walked over where this carriage was with a white flag. And those people told us that maybe 10 more miles or five more miles or whatever, we were very close to a city that Americans were already in.

A.K.:

So we had all the energy. But this was again two weeks of wandering outside, sugar beets or whatever. Because that incident where we provided some food was again, didn't last forever. But it was just a little token. It was nice. And the last two weeks was, again, we were on our own, but if he had hope. By the time my finger has gotten so infected that it was just absolutely all up to my elbow.

M.T.:

You mean you had blood poisoning?

A.K.:

I had blood poisoning. I didn't even pay any attention to it. I know it hurt very much. I had a scarf and I tied up my arm because it was up to here, just completely swollen.

M.T.:

Up to your elbow?

A.K.:

All the way up to my elbow.

M.T.:

How dangerous. You might've lost your arm.

A.K.:

So it was terribly painful because you know, if you just pick your finger and it gets infected, that's already painful, and this was all the way up there and we walk into Wurzen. It was a city, a hilly street, and we see some American soldiers coming down on horses.

A.K.:

I was thinking of Sandy at the time. I did not know anything about Sandy from 1941. I didn't know that he entered the service and Sandy-

M.T.:

So Sandy had come to the United States in 1938?

A.K.:

1938. And we were writing to each other up to 1941. 1941, I guess, that's when he entered the service. And from then on, I never heard from him. So from 1941 I never heard a word from him. And this was 1944. I didn't see Sandy there, but-

M.T.:

No, but here were Americans on horses.

A.K.:

Suddenly I started to think of Sandy. I said, "Wouldn't it be strange, you know, if we met." I mean, I had no idea about it.

M.T.:

The world had been so strange. [crosstalk 02:46:30].

A.K.:

I mean I had no idea. All I know that, as we were walking up the hill, we went to the first Red Cross station because they had Red Cross services all over, and I was showing him my arm and an American soldier took me into a German house and he was trying to clean this up.

A.K.:

That's the first time I'd been in a house. There was a kitchen and there was running water and it was a German family, but I did not seem to remember the 167:00family. He just took me into a place and tried to clean up this mess, but he really couldn't do much about it. He washed up the dirt and the filth, which you can imagine was just all mixed up with it.

A.K.:

I mean, we had no running water. We didn't see anything, and he advised me that as soon as I can, I should go to a hospital and he gave me all the informations where to go to. I said fine, but it didn't seem that I could lose my arm. It didn't seem that this worried me. It was painful. But see, after all that-

M.T.:

After all you'd been through-

A.K.:

It was just, it didn't seem like it was such a big deal, but he just told me that I have to get to the hospital as soon as possible. I mean he knew, I guess. So we arrived to a center place in Wurzen where we were gathered together and 168:00they were trying to decide what to do with us.

M.T.:

Why don't we stop there at Wurzen for just a minute?

A.K.:

Yeah.

M.T.:

This is January 22nd and this is the third interview with Anne Klein about her experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust. When we ended last week, she had just described how she had met an American soldier who washed her infected arm and told her that she needed medical attention. What happened next?

A.K.:

I don't want to repeat myself, but I said it didn't seem to me that it was such a dangerous situation. It was painful, but it wasn't the first thing that I thought has to be taken care of. We arrived to a large square where we were 169:00gathered and-

M.T.:

You mean you didn't go to an American doctor?

A.K.:

No, no, I didn't that day, no. We were just all gathered in a large place and from different areas. Refugees were brought over there, and we didn't know what the next step is going to be. We were in a so-called free country under the Americans, but they had no idea exactly what to do with all those people and everybody was tremendously hungry. So the first thing was to look for food. And I remember as we were waiting that for some sort of organized attention, some girls would be coming back with one large bag of sugar.

A.K.:

It was powdered sugar, but more crystallized, you know? In this country, we 170:00don't have this type of sugar, but it seemed like crystal.

M.T.:

But it'd be the kind of thing you'd cook with [crosstalk 02:50:09].

A.K.:

Sugar, but it's not powdered. Yes, and we just ate them by the handful. I mean it was just something that, whatever we were able to put our hands on, because I also told this on the last tape, that during this last few weeks of wandering around in the fields, there was absolutely nothing to eat except during that one time when I got the sandwich from the German officers, but sugar beets was the only food that I can remember that we were eating, or raw potatoes, because the braver people from the group were running off the highway, whatever that was, or the dirt roads, and it was springtime already, so they were able to gather this 171:00type of food. And people would just eat on empty stomachs sugar beets and how we didn't get sick, I really don't know.

A.K.:

But I do definitely remember that a lot of people got diarrhea and maybe never made it after that, but somehow my stomach was able to take it. And then this handful of sugar, then somebody suddenly was coming with a big bucket full of pickles.

M.T.:

Pickles.

A.K.:

Then we would eat sour pickles. It was just whatever we were able to eat on an empty stomach and it is really an awesome puzzle how one can survive anything like that. Then we got some orders that we were going to be placed to some German army barracks, so it was a big fort, like-

M.T.:

You mean given housing?

A.K.:

Housing in the old- the Germans, of course, in the meantime, escape from there. 172:00So imagine Fort Knox or... It was a almost a small town. We were taken to this place and we have gotten some quarters there, which became our home for several weeks. At this place, we had of course bunk beds and again-

M.T.:

Was it clean?

A.K.:

It was fairly clean. Anything is better than what we had before, so it didn't seem like we ever complained, "This is not good." We were already out of German hands, so anything is better than that, but there was no way that they were able to provide food. You have to imagine so many people suddenly arriving to a place like that. And again, that was no organization at this moment. So the most 173:00important thing was, in everybody's mind, how to get to some food. My arm was, of course, hurting me very much so my best friend, Elush, said we just got to go to the hospital. So we would start out next day to go, and instead of arriving there we would see on the streets a big mass of people breaking into some sort of a warehouse.

A.K.:

We wanted to see what was going on. It was, of course, again, food or clothing, but we weren't that interested in clothes at all. But we had to run over there and see what we can find, and whatever we could find, maybe bread or again, pickles, or just food we would take back home to the barracks for the other girls.

M.T.:

Was this an area where the Americans were in charge or... I guess nobody was in 174:00charge. It's so confusing.

A.K.:

Nobody in charge. I mean, they couldn't suddenly make arrangements that we get three meals a day. I mean, eventually I guess they might've. I don't even remember that part, what kind of food we got later. All I remember that the first few days, we had to provide the food we could, which was finding places where they broke into. It's just right after the war. That's just the way things go. They were warehouses or stores or wherever we saw a big crowd of people fighting for getting into-

M.T.:

You knew there was food.

A.K.:

We knew there was something, or food there. So we have repeated this at least three times. Instead of going to the, which now I know it was an emergency, but that wasn't the first thing we thought of. So about the third day finally-

M.T.:

We were interrupted by the phone. About the third time you set out...

A.K.:

My arm was really painful and we decided nothing will interrupt this trip and my friend Elush and myself went to the hospital. Somebody gave us direction how to get there and-

M.T.:

Now was this an American field hospital or a German hospital?

A.K.:

It was a German hospital.

M.T.:

A regular hospital.

A.K.:

A regular hospital and I remember the operating room. I also remember there was a hallway and my friend Elush was waiting for me and she said she'll wait, and I was put to sleep. I assume it was really a very, it was a surgery because my arm all the way up to my elbow was completely inflamed, all red. So it was blood poisoning, so they had to put two incisions in my arm. One right here on the top 176:00of my hand.

M.T.:

Right.

A.K.:

And then the next one was above my wrist and they had to-

M.T.:

Drain it?

A.K.:

Drain out the-

M.T.:

Poison or whatever.

A.K.:

Poison. There's a name for it. I forgot now what it's called.

M.T.:

Yeah, well I can...

A.K.:

But anyway. And they bandaged my arm and I had to go back there again, maybe a couple more times, to-

M.T.:

Did they give you antibiotics or do you remember any of that?

A.K.:

I don't remember any of this, but from that moment on I had no use for that arm. Of course I didn't have use for it before either because it was painful. I had it tied up, but after this I wasn't even able to use it and they bandaged it up and I had a scar over my shoulder because it was easier.

M.T.:

So it was in a sling?

A.K.:

I don't know if it was in a sling, but it was all bandaged up. So that took care 177:00of it. I didn't worry how it's going to heal. Really it wasn't my main concern, but it had to be taken care of. I remember a German doctor operating on me.

M.T.:

Did that make you feel nervous?

A.K.:

It seemed terribly strange that I am now under the hand of a German surgeon, but he seemed nice and nothing more that I would remember about that incident. So we spent about three weeks in the army barracks and after, we didn't go for food, some of the other girls did, so we weren't starving anymore. But I am not quite sure when we have been getting regular meals. But it was of course a lot better than what we had before.

A.K.:

Another incident during that three or four weeks that we were there, that we 178:00have met some English soldiers, younger men who somehow accidentally maybe in town ran into us, and heard our stories and we were under-nourished and looked, we were in very bad shape. They were very nice and they were trying to help us. This was really interesting. We didn't look at them as they were boys and I don't think they really looked at us as we were girls because we weren't very attractive.

M.T.:

Well, but that's been, in all the stories that everybody tells, I mean sexual attraction was just unthinkable then. I mean, it was just survival.

A.K.:

So they were awfully nice and some of them that had a little apartment, seemingly, and once they invited us for dinner, and that was a tremendous big event because it was some sort of homemade food again in a little apartment or kitchen.

M.T.:

And this was only the second house you'd been in for...

A.K.:

It was an apartment and they were trying to give us all kind of offers. They didn't know what our plans were and they didn't really know what our plans were. I didn't know anything about my family. I didn't know if I want to go back to Hungary. I didn't really know where I was going to go. Again, there were transports, I guess, eventually going to different places because I know of people now who did not enter, who did not go back to Hungary, but maybe ended up in Sweden or in different places or in some of the refugee camps all over Germany who was taking care of the people.

M.T.:

The displaced persons?

A.K.:

The displaced people. So those young men, I don't remember names, I don't remember faces, but they were very, very nice and they decided that they were going to take us out to England, because that time was about over and they were going to be leaving Germany.

A.K.:

And one of the guys said that he talked to their commanding officer, and that he allowed them to do this. And they had real definite plans and we said, "Well, how could girls be going and admitted?" They said don't worry about that, that their commander officer knows all about it. They're going to give us some uniforms, that we're just going to disappear in the cloud and they're not going to question us and they're going to just get us out there and then we can start from there to see what we want to do next.

A.K.:

And that was very exciting and very interesting. And I remember so well that at 2:00 we were supposed to meet those people. By then they had everything worked out and we had to make our final decisions on it. And just when we were ready to make a decision about this, by 2:00, somehow that morning we heard some rumors 181:00again that a transport, a train would be leaving this area and we didn't know exactly where it's going, but it seemed like the way the transport might have been going, it could have been a way for us to go back to Hungary.

A.K.:

So we were wondering. Elush was planning on going back to Yugoslavia and I thought that, even so, that I didn't have any hopes that I might find my parents alive, but I had two brothers and I was absolutely sure that I could find them.

M.T.:

Or at least your your oldest brother.

A.K.:

Yes. I didn't know. I was even hoping about my younger brother because I didn't know at the time, during war you don't hear news and I could have found him, that some way he survived just the way I did. So definitely when we heard this, that there is a possibility for us to go to Hungary, we decided to do this. And we had to be at the railroad station by that afternoon, so we had to quick make 182:00a decision and we have decided not to go, and not to accept the that offer, and they were going to pick us up or we were going to go there. I don't remember.

A.K.:

But I know that we wrote the thank you note for all they have done, because they really were bringing us food and they were trying to take care of us, and for the offer and a message to the commander officer that thanks, but no thanks. We just decided to go on. And so that was-

M.T.:

But that's so reasonable.

A.K.:

That was the end of that. And we went out to the station where we heard about this transport and the transport didn't leave right away, and that's of course expectable but somehow for hours, or maybe for days, we were waiting around. But after all this waiting, we have left Wurzen with this train going supposedly toward Budapest. But that was again about two, three weeks of wandering around, 183:00all around Czechoslovakia and different places, because everything was confused and nothing was organized.

A.K.:

So I think the transport, that train didn't really exactly know where it was supposed to be going.

M.T.:

No, and I suppose the tracks had been bombed and-

A.K.:

So we just really don't know exactly where we were. But during this two weeks-

M.T.:

Two weeks?

A.K.:

About two weeks we were on trains. We had been traveling at different areas and it was in Czechoslovakia. I do know that for sure, and again, we had no planned meals or nobody was taking care of us as far as food, but the people in the cities, as the train was going by and the trains would be stopping, I would look 184:00out and naturally would hear and see what kind of people were on the train and they were giving us food.

M.T.:

Oh, really?

A.K.:

Now some incidents, I do remember the railroad tracks being way up high on some sort of a mountain top and the village was down below and the train was stopping. It didn't stop only at railroad stations. It just stopped when it couldn't go any further. And at one time I remember, and I can see this in front of my eyes, that from the little houses people were coming up with food to us, bringing us food. And my friend Elush, who I've met since the war, we were talking about this and I said to her, "I wish I would remember the little towns we were going through," and her memory might be better because she tried to recall the places. She said, "Don't you remember that in one of the houses we went down, and they gave us and fed us over there." I do not remember this, but this is the way we were surviving this two weeks of traveling. But that was 185:00already then, good food, bread and who knows, maybe.

M.T.:

Now is this part war damaged or do you remember that?

A.K.:

No, we didn't see war damage at all. We never got out of the train except when-

M.T.:

To get food.

A.K.:

Maybe to get food or people would bringing it up to us, but we weren't starving there anymore. This again was pretty nice to remember that we were heading toward supposedly something better, naturally.

M.T.:

But it was not like the trip to Ravensbruck where you'd gone through Berlin and you'd seen this tremendous [crosstalk 00:25:42].

A.K.:

No, we did not see any.

M.T.:

So this must have been an area that wasn't-

A.K.:

Wasn't bombed. It was in Czechoslovakia and it was countryside. Now out of this two weeks, I remember two interesting things. First of all, that one of my friends who was a seamstress way back in Hungary has gotten hold of a German 186:00flag, which was red, and she was sewing on the train. For me, she made a blouse, a very pretty blouse.

A.K.:

Of course, hand-sewn out of the red German flag. And we got hold of, in Wurzen, of an army uniform, an SS uniform, a woman's outfit, which was steel blue.

M.T.:

Oh.

A.K.:

And that became my outfit in Wurzen. And then the blouse was made afterwards. I don't know what I had before, but I had a steel blue skirt and the jacket what goes with the uniform and the red blouse. And I had a low shoe. It wasn't a hiking boot by then and I think we organized that. You used to call, they said in those days, to let's go and organize, organizing men to find things, you know.

M.T.:

Or liberate something.

A.K.:

To be organized. Organization it's called, really, to get the food, to get clothing, and those are the things that we were trying to get. And again, I did not have a change of clothes. I happened to have a brown bag, which was made out of my brown coat.

M.T.:

Oh, yes.

A.K.:

The one I had, it had a drawstring and whatever belongings I had was in that little bag. So that's all I had. Plus now this army uniform with the red flag. So this was one of the interesting things, and now we were talking about future maybe, and past, but it was not a terribly unpleasant situation, except we, again, didn't know when it's going to end. We had no idea where we're going, how long it's going to take.

M.T.:

Of course, the irony of wearing an SS guard's uniform. But it was clothes.

A.K.:

That's what, it was clothes. The other thing was really interesting, that at one of the gathering places as the train was taking us, it was in a little village and somehow we ran into some people who by talking, where are you from and where are you from, it turned out that I met a woman who I knew very well from my hometown, whose father was an admiral in the Hungarian Army.

M.T.:

Navy.

A.K.:

I am sorry. Let's stop this.

M.T.:

This was a general, because Hungary is landlocked, it wouldn't have had a Navy.

A.K.:

They don't have a Navy. It was a general. The general's daughter, and the reason I knew her very well, because her grandparents lived in our house where I was growing up. From when I was born up to the age of 13 years we owned a house and 189:00it was a very nice house. One part of it was our section with, I guess, maybe 10 rooms, bathroom and that was long time ago, from the time 1921 to 1932 or 33, and one section of the house, which was on the other side of the courtyard, was an apartment, two rooms and a bath and a kitchen. And this girl's grandparents lived there. So she used to come and visit us all the time. And her younger sister in those days was one of my best friends.

A.K.:

She was older. She was about my older brother's age, so about maybe eight years older, and there she sees me and I couldn't believe it. I've seen people-

M.T.:

And you recognized each other?

A.K.:

She must've recognized me or I did. And the interesting thing is because her father was a general, right after the war, those people had to leave Hungary.

M.T.:

Oh, because they cooperated with the Germans.

A.K.:

They were trying to escape, also, and they became like displaced persons. They left Hungary, and I've known a lot of people like that, who had to fled. Now usually those type of people, you could have imagined, they were Nazis or I would have not liked to speak to, or they had a reason to leave Hungary, but she just so happened to be, she might have had those feelings. I don't know. But-

M.T.:

She was not Jewish, though?

A.K.:

No, not Jewish. No, no. No generals. No Jewish people would have had generals in their family. It was a non-Jewish family, and they were camping in the countryside there in the woods, they had big trailers and this whole group and a lot of army and officers, families would leave Hungary.

M.T.:

For heaven's sake. So they're leaving Hungary, meanwhile you're going back.

A.K.:

That's exactly right. They were leaving and they were somehow, maybe they had to 191:00or they were escaping or the records were not good. Of course, I did not ask any questions like that. All I know, that I knew her family and her sister and her grandparents very well, and she invited me for dinner to their trailer, and that was tremendously strange. It doesn't even seem real. But it was in a big trailer where the had cooking facilities and it was in the woods, it seemed like in in the country. And she must have picked me up. I don't see otherwise how I would have gotten there. But that's the first time that I have had Hungarian food. It was noodles and something really Hungarian. It was terribly strange because-

M.T.:

Did Elush go with you?

A.K.:

I don't remember that, if I took it or not, but it was just-

M.T.:

Now I wonder where they were going to escape to, because they couldn't go to Russia.

A.K.:

No, they were just spending time away from the country and-

A.K.:

Spending time away from the country and we have heard this kind of stories after we went back that certain people are not that anymore. They have left and what happened to [inaudible 03:12:10]? I have no idea, but her older sister was also a teacher at our high school. She was a nun. Her older sister became a nun, and she was our art teacher in my last year of high school. So-

M.T.:

Now, when you've gone back to [crosstalk 03:12:30] since then, you've never heard whatever-

A.K.:

No, I never-

M.T.:

[crosstalk 03:12:32] family?

A.K.:

I never did and I never wanted to find them. They weren't that close to me. This was childhood [crosstalk 03:12:39] friend and [crosstalk 03:12:40] they, that's exactly-

M.T.:

[crosstalk 03:12:41] rounded you up. Yeah.

A.K.:

Yeah. I never saw them. I never wanted to see them but, on our reunion...

M.T.:

Your high school reunion.

A.K.:

High school reunion, her sister happened to be there and I would have liked to say hi to her. I don't even remember her... anymore really. But I know the name 193:00very much and I will say that because it's an interesting sounding name. Macasey was the family's name and her little sister was Maria, who I played with. And this woman who invited me to her trailer, her name was Mitzo.

M.T.:

Mitzo?

A.K.:

That was a nickname for Margaret maybe. So those are the only things that I remembered out of this two weeks of wondering till one day we heard some news that we're getting closer and closer to a city, which I knew very well. And that was a border of Czechoslovakia and Bratislava is the-

M.T.:

Oh, yes.

A.K.:

I was trying to find it on the map. I know exactly where it is. It's under Danube on the way to Vienna and Budapest, but it's at that, and it's a very big city and in Hungarian it's called [foreign language 03:14:01] in Czech, 194:00Czechoslovakian and languages called Bratislava.

A.K.:

And I don't know exactly how-

M.T.:

Bratislava is what I've always heard.

A.K.:

You heard that too. So we arrive to this city. The next step was from here to go to Budapest. By then, we did hear that trains are beginning to go in [crosstalk 03:14:27] fairly decent schedule, but it was still, of course right close to war. This was already in June. [crosstalk 03:14:35] We are now by June. I forgot to give the date exactly of the day we arrived to [inaudible 03:14:41] , which was May at eighth and that's when, officially, the war ended, so from May till the middle of June we were in [inaudible 03:14:50] and again on this the [crosstalk 03:14:53], we arrived to Bratislava. Now I have a very important story here to tell. Again, we were waiting for a train to Budapest, which they 195:00said it might leave at midnight. Eventually there was a train which supposedly was going to be leaving around one or two o'clock in the morning.

A.K.:

We were waiting for the train, it arrived, we got on the train, and the five of us [inaudible 03:15:21] was one of them and three other girls that we were together with. I don't remember the names anymore. I don't even remember if this Hungarian friend of mine who [inaudible 03:15:29] that I'm going to write to her, she's still alive. She lives in Germany. I'm going to get this official news from her just to see what she [inaudible 03:15:39] at that time or not. I like to know it for my own information. The train arrived, they got on the train and it was completely empty and we were waiting for the departure.

A.K.:

Suddenly a big group of Russian soldiers... Sounding somewhat drunk and very 196:00loud, entered the car, the train and it didn't scare us on anything. It was just that they decided that they didn't want us to be on that same train.

M.T.:

You mean the Russians?

A.K.:

The Russians and it was a whole group. There must have been like maybe 25 people.

M.T.:

We need to go to the next tape. This is side eight of the interview with Ann Klein. You were just saying that now at last finally you had gotten on a train at Bratislava that was to go to Budapest and suddenly all these drunken Russian soldiers come on the car. I presumed the whole train.

A.K.:

So they were getting ready to make everybody leave the train. There were only five of us, as I said before. When they got to me, they put their hands in front of me and- [crosstalk 03:17:00].

M.T.:

They outstretched-

A.K.:

They outstretched arms and were trying to hold me on the train and made 197:00everybody leave.

M.T.:

Oh, you mean they sent the other four somewhere else? [crosstalk 03:17:09]

A.K.:

Other four girls off the train. [crosstalk 03:17:12] And they were going to keep me.

M.T.:

That's a little alarming.

A.K.:

And again, that really scared me.

M.T.:

Yeah.

A.K.:

I mean I wasn't crying, but it really scared me. I was completely as thin as skeleton. I did not think of beauty that they wanted to keep. I just was scared, and I could not use my left arm. It was still in a bandage, and I wasn't able to use it at all for a long time. But I do remember that's the first time, I guess during the whole year that I felt like I had to fight my way to get off that train and how I did it, I still don't remember how I even had the strength, but I do remember kind of screaming, kicking them with my feet and with my hand and 198:00heading toward the steps to get off.

A.K.:

And by them seeing that I must have been hysterical. I just could not stay on that train. I ended up climbing up the steps that I headed down headfirst. So I wasn't really walking down the steps, but somehow I climbed, and they were trying to hold me back, but I somehow was fighting my way down, and I got down the station. By then, there was nobody on the station because the other girls have gotten up on some of the other cars. That was nothing they could do. It was pitch dark, and I did not want to be left all by myself on that-

M.T.:

Station. [crosstalk 03:18:47]

A.K.:

Station. At the same time, I couldn't get back on this particular car. So I ran into another car, which was of course all filled with people because this must have been one of the first trains starting, going toward the Hungary.

A.K.:

I got on the last step of this train, was holding on with my right hand, because my left I could not use, and was standing on the last step in the train just about then started to leave. So-

M.T.:

Before you're into the car?

A.K.:

No, I was almost-

M.T.:

On the step.

A.K.:

On the last step. The very last step. The train started off slowly and I couldn't move up any higher because every step was taken by people.

M.T.:

Oh.

A.K.:

And I was standing on the last step and holding on with one hand, and going through my mind many times during that trip that it was a lot that I have survived and now supposedly heading to Budapest, what if my hand will not-

M.T.:

Hold it?

A.K.:

Hold it or accidentally it will open and I would see those sort of nightmares that I cannot hold that anymore. Or my hand would get a cramp and I would fall off because I was on the last step.

M.T.:

Even after the train moved, people didn't move?

A.K.:

Did not move for a while. But toward the end of this, that's a long trip. Might have been four hours, four or five hours of train ride. I had been able to work my way up a little bit higher, as people are pushing into get in more so that by the end of the trip I was standing on the very last step up right out in the hall. You know.

M.T.:

Yes, right.

A.K.:

I never got in on the platform. But anyway, I was by then, see- [crosstalk 00:08:33].

M.T.:

Within a few hundred miles or less- [crosstalk 03:20:37]

A.K.:

And that was- [crosstalk 03:20:38]

M.T.:

And maybe getting killed.

A.K.:

That was terrible. And I did think about it. I said I wanted to see my brothers and I just would see all those nightmares. I guess I was so strong in my mind. Physically I wasn't, but apparently I was strong enough because if I was too weak, I [crosstalk 03:20:55] couldn't have been able to do it. But I did. And I arrived to Budapest [crosstalk 03:20:59] and the railroad station... I never saw 201:00my friends again after that because you know, the train was long and I don't know on which car have they been [inaudible 03:21:10] [crosstalk 03:21:11] but I-

M.T.:

You're all alone now?

A.K.:

Yeah, I was by myself.

M.T.:

[inaudible 03:21:15]

A.K.:

Everybody's gone, but Budapest is... I had some relatives living in Budapest. So I arrived to this railroad station, which I have known Budapest somewhat. And I knew that this station was close to where my aunt and uncle lived. My aunt and uncle, my aunt was my mother's sister and they never had any children and they were really close to us, to the nephews and nieces, so I used to spend vacations there, or they would come to [inaudible 03:21:44] so I knew exactly where they lived.

A.K.:

So instead of me going through as other refugees would have right there. That's why I didn't get even a certain kind of a certificate because I just was using my own head. I did not report to anybody. I didn't go through the delousing 202:00procedure because I just left everybody that I didn't say, here I am now. What's my next step? I just-

M.T.:

Took off.

A.K.:

Took off. I knew exactly where they lived and it... About 20 minutes of walking distance. I went to my aunt and uncles house.

M.T.:

Oh, that must have [crosstalk 00:10:19].

A.K.:

See other people would have just stayed there, and what's the next step? They might have gotten certificates, they might have, I don't even remember any of this. I just didn't say hi to anybody. Nobody knew me really. I just left. And I was walking in my army uniform with my red flag shirt toward my aunt's and uncle's house. So that was a little [crosstalk 00:10:44].

M.T.:

[crosstalk 03:22:45] Did you recognize where you were?

A.K.:

I Recognized where I was, I don't remember any of this. I just knew exactly where I was. I happen to know that part of the city better if it would have arrived to another station, Budapest has several railroad stations. One of them is closer to where [inaudible 03:23:00] lived. [inaudible 03:23:02] but this was 203:00a, Budapest really had four railroad station in those, and this happened to be closer to my aunt.

A.K.:

So there was a little grocery store in that house. And I knew the lady who owned that grocery store before, but I didn't know if it's the same person in one year. I don't know what has really happened. So I walk into the grocery store. I know the lady's name. Mrs. Bokor was a name B-O-K-O-R, and of course she probably didn't know who I was and I just ask if my aunt and uncle, their name was Kovesti K-O-V-E-S-T-I, if they still live in this house and she says yes, their home.

M.T.:

Oh, how strange.

A.K.:

So I walk into the house, and they lived on the main floor, so you could go through the courtyard. You didn't have to go up the, you know, how about Hungarian houses look like? You know, this was about a four story building and 204:00courtyards in the middle. [crosstalk 03:24:08]

M.T.:

Well, actually I never was in a Hungarian house. [crosstalk 03:24:10].

A.K.:

They're all closed up. You know, you have a big door that you go in and then there's a courtyard in the middle and usually every floor has some kind of a gate-

M.T.:

A balcony?

A.K.:

Or a balcony around and that the kitchens face the courtyard and then so on, that's the way most of the houses in- [crosstalk 03:24:26].

M.T.:

I never was in one.

A.K.:

Hungary are built. So I go through the courtyard and go to the kitchen and my aunt's cooking dinner.

M.T.:

She must've been astounded.

A.K.:

And she looks out and there I'm standing, and I can't imagine the shock that she has gone through.

A.K.:

And my next statement was, I cannot go into the house till I take all my clothes off because I still was full of lice.

M.T.:

Yes.

A.K.:

I just could not get that out. And so I somehow undressed right maybe at the door. I'm not saying I did it right on the yard, but I told them apparently to 205:00just burn my clothes or whatever, that I just didn't want to, infect the whole house. I don't know how much of the lice we had, but I do know it wasn't safe to take it in. And so then my uncle came, who loved me dearly, and so they were very happy to see me and my uncle [crosstalk 03:25:23].

M.T.:

Took a bath and somebody gave me- [crosstalk 00:03:25:25].

A.K.:

I guess I don't remember [crosstalk 03:25:29] the details, but I do remember that my uncle was coming down from somewhere with a little Scottish skirt with suspenders. [crosstalk 03:25:40].

M.T.:

Tartans.

A.K.:

It was a summer material. It had a red and green and yellow plaids was a gathered skirt and it had suspenders. And she says, "I bought this for you because I knew you're going to come home."

M.T.:

For heaven's sake.

A.K.:

And she was... this is really [crosstalk 03:25:59].

M.T.:

And she, of course, had no idea that you'd survived- [crosstalk 03:26:01].

A.K.:

No, he had no idea no. But anyway, he just really loved me very much. And then a lady from the second floor who used to be my dentist's wife, she came down, I know [inaudible 03:26:14] name to very well, and she brought the white blouse. So for a long time this was my outfit, the white blouse and that little Scottish skirt. And I was...

M.T.:

Better than the SS uniform.

A.K.:

Terribly skinny or [crosstalk 03:26:27] really skinny, I must have been under 90 pounds or 85 I can't to my remember that.

A.K.:

After that I stayed at my aunt and uncle. I did know of course that my parents didn't survive. I was trying to trace my brothers down. I knew they will not there. I had been eating and eating and eating unbelievably much. I have, I remember my aunt is a good cook and I remember meals, like for breakfast I could eat eight to 10 slices of buttered bread and I just didn't-

M.T.:

Well, you were starving.

A.K.:

Seem to fill out and she would fix some kind of potato or really homemade dishes and I could see the plate in front of me now that it would be filled up to the rim and after I would eat one plate full, I would want more and [crosstalk 03:27:17] I would want more. I just be-

M.T.:

Now, could your digestion take [crosstalk 03:27:21].

A.K.:

Yeah, maybe not right that moment. That's what I said. I don't ever remember besides that laryngitis [crosstalk 03:27:30] that I had really stomach illness-

M.T.:

Well you must have an iron constitution.

A.K.:

And I don't remember that I even got sick. If I did that wasn't [inaudible 03:27:40] the most important thing, it's not one of my... All I remember the food I would eat for breakfast, just slices and slices of good homemade bread and potato dishes. You know, it's just... Of course probably dessert too, but I just not whipping cream and not this, the kind of food, we really dreaming of at the time. Just good hearty soup and and real food. So I- [crosstalk 03:28:05].

M.T.:

Did they have meat? Protein? I guess so.

A.K.:

Yes. So I've been... This is that day they took me in-

M.T.:

Oh, you survived a lot.

A.K.:

This would be another story. They lived, they survived the war, which is a very interesting story. More like the story of the Anne Frank diary.

M.T.:

Oh yes. Hidden.

A.K.:

Hidden because Budapest was too big for all the Jews to be taken away, but they had to move into so-called Jewish houses, which would have a star on, they had to move out of their houses. They were taken to places and it would have been like a ghetto over there too. But lots and lots of people in Budapest survived differently. They were able to get false papers. They were able to get passes to the so-called Swiss houses or Swedish houses as in history. One knows, and I 209:00cannot go in now [inaudible 03:29:04] some people who were trying to save the Jews and would give out the false passports and false ID cards in the underground.

M.T.:

And that's how they survived.

A.K.:

A lot of... But they were in a Jewish house.

M.T.:

Oh.

A.K.:

And a good friend of mine actually, who now lives in the United States whose father was a good friend of my uncle. They had a pharmacy and my uncle was selling pharma-

M.T.:

Pharmaceuticals.

A.K.:

Pharmaceutical goods and he would take food to my uncle and aunt who were living up on a top floor somewhere. Hidden in a way that nobody knew anything about them and they were not supposed to leave the house. They could not go out for food, but there were brave people who would be taking care of situations like that. They survived it there and got [crosstalk 03:29:57] back to their own apartment-

M.T.:

Two or three months before you showed up they'd been able to get back in their own place?

A.K.:

They were already back and everybody in Budapest, my girlfriend and anybody I've 210:00met ever since have a different story and I don't want to go into that right now, but I have very serious and interesting and very sad stories about that. How they survived the war in Budapest and how some people did not make it.

A.K.:

So I stayed with my aunt and uncle and I had no intention to go back to my hometown at all. I tried to trace my brothers down and I found out that my older brother was called on.

A.K.:

My older brother happened to live in that same apartment in the beginning of the war that I came back to my aunt and uncle. He got married just before the war and with his wife he lived in that apartment. Again, it was because people had to move out from their old places and... I don't remember the circumstances.

A.K.:

The Germans by then would be going around at certain times of the day, certain times of the week and call everybody down from those big buildings because they had to account for every single person, every single Jewish person in the building. So they had a pretty good record of who is there and who is not there unless you [inaudible 03:31:24] escaping or hiding or had false paper.

A.K.:

My brother since in his high school year had pneumonia and was seriously ill but recovered completely. Did I say that he, I told you something about where he has worked, [crosstalk 03:31:42] he was working in a bank, you know, it's on the first day he has gotten some papers that he was not supposed to enter the army and he felt safe. He would go down to some of those...

M.T.:

Line ups. [crosstalk 03:31:57].

A.K.:

Line ups, whatever it was. My uncle warn him, don't go and he says he had 212:00certifications that he's not, he's wasn't worried that he would be called in, but I guess he could not hide the fact that he was Jewish. And the one of the mornings when he had gone down, he never was able to go back to the apartments. They just gathered them right there, took them to a camp in Budapest where they were gathering the people. And so he became the victim of being deported from Budapest, but naturally not to Auschwitz anymore. This was more like...

M.T.:

Like a word camp?

A.K.:

It was a work camp and they were doing labor work. So I heard exactly the day this has happened. And I was reading the newspaper where people were trying to find their relatives. So at one time I was... I had a newspaper in my hand where a family member was looking for another member of the family who was taken away 213:00the day when my brother was taken away. So few days later there was answer in the newspaper about that particular member and the telephone number given who replied to the article in the newspaper.

A.K.:

So I looked up this young man. I told him that my brother was taken away that very same day. Do you happen to know anything about him? He, I don't know whether he really knew him or whether he did not. The story he told me that he happened to know him. They were in Hamburg, Germany working on a shipyard, on boats and ships as laborers and he was doing pretty well, although he wasn't healthy, very healthy, but he wasn't used to physical labor since he worked in a bank all the time. And he did fine. And when the war was over he became ill and 214:00on the train, just like my train travelings during this year, he did not survive the train ride anymore. [crosstalk 03:34:10]

A.K.:

He must have gotten one of the one of this a virus, stomach virus, [crosstalk 00:22:16].

M.T.:

Everything-

A.K.:

Just all kind of diseases. But his, he could not survive and the way this young man told me that, [inaudible 03:34:27] on the train, he was among the people who died. Of course, I did not question it any further. I don't know which part of the... that was all. I mean I couldn't have gone and look him up and I what they did to the bodies there and what happened. I have no idea.

A.K.:

In the meantime, I also found out that my younger brother who was, who left Hungary in 1941, out of his group, nobody survived, so I realized that none of my brothers made it. Then of course by then I knew what happened to my parents, 215:00so I was going to stay in Budapest. Then my girlfriend who I was very close to and who survived the war in Budapest because she got married, they had a furrier [crosstalk 00:23:12].

A.K.:

They had a furrier business and she offered me a job in her place. So I decided to work and some other relatives, not relatives, friends have given me an opera season ticket cause I used to like opera. And I would go to the opera or as I cannot remember now. My whole year in Budapest is tremendously vague. I can't remember who were my friends. I knew I went into work every day. I learned how to make patterns, and I ate a lot. I met a cousin of mine who bought me some clothes afterwards, some the most necessity. And I was just going to stay there and I had no special plans.

A.K.:

People were trying to introduce me, a young man and friends and I... wasn't 216:00really in a very good shape mentally I guess. But no special problems. I didn't go to the doctor. I had to go to a physician because my period has never been, [crosstalk 03:36:20] never been on it. And then I had to get some shots for that.

A.K.:

Then I decided I'd go back to my hometown, which was in August. I had to go back and I think I started to work after I came back from, from [inaudible 00:24:33], but I had to go back to my hometown to see what happened to our apartment and my uncle, my brother, my father's brother, right after the war, who already gotten back in January and survived the war in one of the labor camps but not in Auschwitz, moved into our apartment and he knew some of our... furniture or some of our belongings and somehow gathered things back as much as possible. 217:00Different families lived in our apartment during the war, who out moved out by then.

A.K.:

So when I went back to, [inaudible 03:37:11] I went into my old apartment, my uncle lived there and I was trying to start from the beginning and I decided I'm just going to have to clean up the place and whatever. [crosstalk 03:37:24] And they get-

M.T.:

For example, I remember one of the early tapes you said that there was a friend of your fathers who owned a vineyard and some of the family silver had been stored there-

A.K.:

Yes.

M.T.:

[crosstalk 03:37:35] Nobody would have known that except you.

A.K.:

I don't remember. I'd have anything people were hiding for me. Like I had a friend who was in the same sewing class. She was, she took some, a little [inaudible 03:37:52] porcelain, some of my own little belongings. She gave that to me, which I have right now on the shelf. Some of them were my old, then I remember somebody was... had my camera.

M.T.:

Oh.

A.K.:

And somehow I got that back. So, a few things that people had, I got back out of the silver. I got back, set up a six and-

M.T.:

Because- [crosstalk 00:26:15].

A.K.:

One out of [inaudible 03:38:16] was stolen and I don't remember I've ever seen that friend again. I don't know whether he lived or survived the war. I don't remember him. I have gotten it back and maybe if he would be alive now, he would say, "Don't you remember it?" I can't. It's just an absolute... it's like an amnesia. I just don't. But I did spend about three weeks in [inaudible 03:38:40] met some old friends who also, were coming back and-

M.T.:

Jewish friends?

A.K.:

Everybody had different stories. Jewish friends. Yeah, just Jewish friends. Not many people, but 50 people survived from my hometown, the whole Holocaust and there were over a thousand Jewish people. Yeah.

M.T.:

Goodness.

A.K.:

So I have spent a few weeks there took care of my apartment. The apartment was 219:00still there, but I didn't sell anything. I, my uncle stayed there and I, he lived in [inaudible 03:39:16] anyway, and so he lived in my apartment and I went back to Budapest. I started to work in my girlfriend's-

M.T.:

Furrier-

A.K.:

Furrier place.

A.K.:

And now comes the last part of my story. What I had done during those few months, it's not that interesting. People tried to entertain me. People tried to buy me certain things and I was okay. I stayed with my uncle and aunt. I had a cousin that also, on my mother's side, on my mother's sister's side who survived. And I had some contact with her.

A.K.:

And it was in the middle of winter that I was coming home from work one day. It was a Wednesday. And as I arrived to my apartment, to my uncle's place, that was 220:00a letter waiting for me. I opened it and it was from Julie and Ava who were friends before the war too, I did not know whether they survived or not. I had not heard anything from them. [crosstalk 03:40:17].

M.T.:

Auschwitz, and then- [crosstalk 00:28:18].

A.K.:

Auschwitz [crosstalk 03:40:29] And I never did know anything about them. And they were, they are, [inaudible 03:40:42] my husband's sister's. So I got a letter from them, I open it in which they write how happy they are that I'm going to become a family member.

M.T.:

This is something you didn't know about.

A.K.:

I didn't know anything about it. And then the whole thing is how happy they are that Sandy decided to marry me. And-

M.T.:

Where were they at this time? Casa Blanca?

A.K.:

It came from Casa Blanca. I had no idea of, when this letter came that somebody in Casa Blanca, I didn't know anything. It was a complete surprise to me and that I'll be their sister and so on. So next morning I go into work- [crosstalk 03:41:01].

M.T.: