I Survived The Holocaust and Then Escaped From The Soviet Army | Minutes With | @LADbible

we lived on the third floor of a block of flats and when the nazi party came around collecting all the jews my aunt who stayed with us looked out and saw what was going on she couldn't do anything about my mother who by that time was taken downstairs into the courtyard where they gathered all the jewish women [Music] why do you think the jewish people were singled out for persecution it's really very difficult to understand even now what made the germans the nazi party and hitler in particular zero in on the jews hitler of course was an animal he felt that the jews were not up to the standards of the german people and he felt that the jews had to be eliminated in order to create higher society a better society it's 1941 when it all started i was four years old and from then on life never really became anything like normal and i had to go through various stages and as a young boy i don't think i really understood what was going on around me however i do think that it must have affected me we lived on the third floor of a block of flats and when the nazi party came around collecting all the jews all the jewish women because by that time the jewish men were taken away they went from flat to flat it's a five-story block and they went from flat to flat so my aunt who stayed with us looked out and saw what was going on she couldn't do anything about my mother who by that time was taken downstairs into the courtyard where they gathered all the jewish women and she suddenly remembered that on the same floor there was a family or at least a man whom we knew and who were friends non-jewish and he took a hell of a lot of a chance and said john let's go she grabbed me and rushed me across to this flat just around the corridor and begged this man to hide us and of course it could have gone either way he could have said i'm sorry what the hell do you expect me to do i don't want to go to prison or get killed but no he has taken a chance a huge chance he took us in he closed he took us he closed the main door took us into a cupboard shot us into the cupboard said shut up don't say anything keep quiet see what we can do unfortunately the nazi party representatives didn't go into his fled because he was non-jewish they knew that because they knew everybody who lived in those places amazing the research they have done and so we stayed in this cupboard i don't know how long maybe an hour it felt much more it felt like a lifetime you can imagine how i must have felt disorientated frightened not really understanding what was going on while my mother was taken away the ghetto is a huge area it was just behind the hangar the budapest synagogue which is the second largest in the world after the one in new york and the choice was if you don't stay in the ghetto then you go to a concentration camp or you get you get shot as i said they were cramming us in as much as possible it didn't matter whether it was comfortable or not it was a very strange way of keeping jews together without able to do anything you couldn't there was no radios no telephones no entertainment no nothing all you could do is talk to the 20 people around you but you couldn't go out because if you went out you never know what happened to you you could have been killed or you could have caught the disease this entry typhus typhoid was one of the biggest problem there's no medication there was food was nothing you survived on hardly anything so the situation was dying how long were you in the ghetto for oh it was several months some people stayed there longer we stayed there for about three or four months and if you imagine we did not know that the ghetto was mined ready to be exploded by the germans so that all of us in the 290 building would be blown up and die fortunately for us unfortunately for the germans they did not have time because they had to retreat so fast because of the soviet army coming in so quickly that they didn't have time to blow us up so if you like we were very lucky when the russians came in everybody thought this is wonderful we have we have freedom at last but of course the russians are simply there to annex hungary as a satellite country to be part of the soviet empire and that was their aim and that's what they achieved and that's why they would not tolerate any opposition we realize sooner or later that this is a life which any young intelligent student or indeed adult could not live with the spies were everywhere neighbors were spying on neighbors you no freedom of the press you have no freedom of talking no freedom of the newspapers no freedom on the radio so you were living in an occupied country effectively and now moving ahead to the uprising in parliament square would you be able to expand a little bit on your memories of that our flat was five minutes walk away from parliament square and we found out from friends that there will be this demonstration and i said okay well two or three of us said let's go and see what this is about maybe this is going to be a new life starting so we just walk around the corner effectively which is surrounded by big buildings and the houses of parliament it's a big square as i said there's 20 000 i counted how many people i said 200 000 people were at the square and the whole idea was that this was orchestrated by the students but not only the students asking for a new regime for the new government for the new prime minister to make life better for the hungarian citizens obviously nobody realized that none of this can possibly happen under a strict soviet regime even though the soviets retreated making us feel as if we have freedom but in fact what happened was that they surrounded the square with tanks they were stationed on the tops of blocks of flats and they were just waiting for the signal and when i don't know why i said to my friends right we have been here we've seen it i'm not really feeling comfortable let's go and we walked back home and when we arrived in our flat we could hear the gunshots so i was very lucky to survive as far as i know around 300 people were gunned down that different reports uh different people have different stories it doesn't matter how many people whether 300 400 it was a massacre and that way the soviets proved that they mean business and nobody is going to stand up against them can you imagine the next day i went down and saw the blood and the clothes on on the square which wasn't cleared at that stage it's not a very pleasant sight if you think about it this is the second time i have been very lucky the first time when the ghetto wasn't blown up and now the second time when i for some reason didn't stay in the square what made you decide to escape hungary a friend of mine with whom we eventually escaped sat down and we said look is this life going to be what we want or is it worth taking a chance whatever that chance is and try to escape now you couldn't just take a luggage with you or a case because the bridges were manned by army or police and if they see you carrying anything like that say what are you doing where are you going and that's all you need to be immediately imprisoned so that's why all i could take with me was a bag of food and my teddy and simply lock the gate lock the door of the flat and forget that i live there and leave everything behind so we went over the bridge in the afternoon just walking across and stayed with a friend at a friend's house a flat near the railway station so that we could start our journey seven o'clock in the morning it was interesting because the train we took went towards austria now i had tickets because i worked on the railway as did my friend so we were able to present the genuine ticket to go on this journey and we found out that the train stops about 10 kilometers or so before the border and that was the stop we got off and then we found that there were many many other hungarians doing the same we were frightened because we knew that where we had to go was mined there were tanks going around nearby there were searchlights watching what's going on and we had a vague idea of where we are going but by that time it must have been about 15 of us or so trying to escape uh towards the border and then we suddenly found ourselves under a watchtower now if that watchtower would have been manned we would have been shot and that was the third time that i was luckier we were lucky that watch star for some reason wasn't manned and there was a bridge immediately under the watchtower which is in fact at the village called andao and that's where we crossed over where the austrians waited for us and welcomed us when you were greeted by the austrians were you suspicious or were you immediately met with relief absolutely no question of being suspicious this was a huge relief we knew that freedom is there waiting for us we knew that we are in good hands we knew that at last we have a chance to understand what freedom or life is really what really is about and i think as soon as we got across the austrian border we knew that we are safe and the relief was enormous in vienna we were looked after by the red cross they gave us a daily uh amount very small amount just to live with they allowed us to wander around and nobody knew what happens next and the rumor was that each embassy offered permits to go to their country uh the limited number of permits and the question then was where do we go and many people said oh well go to australia it's wonderful or south africa and then we said well do we really want to go that far away i think europe is where i want to stay i don't think i want to do that would i want to go to a non-english-speaking country and the answer was again no i've already spoken i already learned a little bit of english so i would have to stay in a country where english is spoken so that really meant that england was the right answer do you have any ideas about what allows people to treat other people in such terrible ways well it's all the same really isn't it whether it was the nazis whether it's the chinese whether it's what's happening in asia or what what the russians are doing for example it's all uh politics it's all grabbing power and there will always be people like that and there will always be situations which are just repeating history repeats itself and unfortunately there's very little one can do other than try to educate and this education is the word which i would use when i talk to schools i am very lucky to be here to talk to you and i just hope that this is just one step in the right direction [Music] there was a witch doctor who had laid this child down put herbs all around her body and was about to cut her before the security guard found her and rescued her and brought her to this baby's home where i was working

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Id: Z0Y5FynHXL4

Length: 14min 53sec (893 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021