Believe it or not. 01. Believe it, or not Budapest, Hungary. Late November 1944 ****************************** A few days of my adventures as a holocaust survivor. *************************** We are the dying breed of yesterdays. Holocaust survivor Born Berlin Germany 1928. Take no responsibility for birthplace. If I could have had my pick and the time, I would have chosen same time span, different continent. Preferable the U.S.A Would have joined the US marines, and killed them all. Not kidding. ************************** Just came across it, in a Florida Magazine, NEW TREND. ************************* At my doctors Clinic here in Ocala, Fl. I discovered the above mentioned magazine, and after reading your and yours wife’s article I started to realize that there are more survivors then just one. I never received a penny of restitution for what those goons have done to me. Destroyed my education, My teenage years, beat the hell out of me, at the age of ten. It was a fair fight. Eight of them, all older, eight against one little Jew boy. We were evenly matched. I survived. There was more to come, though. **************************** Reliving the past? Experts claim that time will heal all wounds. Fact is, they never heal, they just lay dormant. A crust forms over a period of time, but as you get older the crust becomes thinner and thinner until a small remembrance, like an article in a paper can open a wound one thought had long healed. A small article in a paper proved that a survey held in Germany that after asking, of how people felt about the Hitler years? Astonishingly, 1 in 4 Germans see a plus side to Nazi rule. This article was printed in the St. Petersburg Times On Thursday ,October 18, 2007. *************************** 02. It sure set me off. ********************* Your conscious mind has the ability to bury some of the ugliness one encounters during a lifetime. Like death, accidents, Some of the negative decisions one makes, the hurtful remarks one makes. Those are the ones, one can bury deep within ones consciousness. Most of those, only you can forgive, learn from them and never put yourself into that same position. The unforgettable ones will stay with you forever. Like incidents in a war. I do not mean the killings one must do in order to survive in the name of defending your homeland, for this is justifiable. ************************* The butchery, the slaughter the eradication of a Race in the name of any Ism is reprehensible, inexcusable and should be punished by death. ************************* When retirement time comes, you have plenty of time on your hands, You keep busy during the days, It is the nights, especially towards early mornings, when the ghosts of ones past comes back to haunt you. This has been going on for the last ten years, ever since I told a fellow passenger on a plane who detected that I speak with an accent asked me, from where I originally came from? When I told him that I was born in Germany, and when he asked me if I had served in the German army? I told him, not exactly. I did some slave labor for the Nazis, without pay mind you. With little food, why feed a living corps? (Come to think of it, best diet I was ever on.) I recommend it for all those people who suffer from obesity. Best part of it, it is inexpensive and I guarantee that it will work. The secret? Whatever you decide to eat, put into your mouth, make sure to chew it well, then spit it out. If you should have a dog fine, if not, get one. It will eat anything you bring up, and will love you forever. ********************** To go on with me story. 03. After telling my fellow passenger a little of my escapades during the war, he asked me if I had ever entertained the idea of writing book? Which I countered with the question of, who would buy and read it? to which he said: I would. And that what started the ball rolling. ****************************** Here is one clip I liberated from the Internet This was one trip I was on, and it came close to killing me, amongst a few other times. ************************** On November 8, 1944, the Hungarians concentrated more than 70,000 Jews--men, women, and children--in the Ujlaki brickyards in Obuda, and from there forced them to march on foot to camps in Austria. Thousands were shot and thousands more died as a result of starvation or exposure to the bitter cold. The prisoners who survived the death march reached Austria in late December 1944. There, the Germans took them to various concentration camps, especially Dachau in southern Germany and Mauthausen in, northern Austria, and to Vienna, where they were put into slave-labor battalion and used in the construction of fortifications around the city, in order to hold the Russian army out. ************************** I walked that death march for about ten days, and those Nazis almost succeeded by having drained my recourses by using me and many others, (At the time I was not fully aware of all that what was happening around me. For I had a hard time focusing of all that, what went on around us. We counted by the thousands, age group from age, 12 to 65 years and by working us 16 hours a day, digging tank-traps around the city of Budapest, on very little food, a soup that had rat fur swimming in it, but at least it was hot, and a piece of dark bread. Yes it was rat, for I saw the decapitated head minus the meat in the pot. At least it was something hot in ones stomach, for time had stood still. All, sensations were gone except for the hunger and the cold, for it was December, all I had was a thin blanket. Nights were spent in an open field were people huddled as close together as they could to keep warm. Turning around to change position became a big affair, One started to turn and the rest had to follow. It got worse for some nights when it started to rain. Some of us slept right through. Some never woke up, especially the elderly. Just remembering and writing this makes me shudder and makes me choke. The dead ones were the lucky ones, for their suffering was over, they got picked up the next day by a slave labor battalion whose sole job was, to get rid of this human garbage. That was the name the Nazis tagged us with. 04. ( It took me many years to find out what really happened in those days, even though I was right in the middle of it.) I got to mention a subject you read very little about. There probable is, even though I have never come across one. Sanitation! None! No bath for month. Toilets, non existing. To take a shower? When it rained, and since the Danube river was not that far from were we where walking, some people dared to slide down the embankment right into the Danube, being the end of November the water was extremely cold, the current of the Danube swept them away and none of them was ever seen again. ******************** The world was our toilet. Leaves for toilet paper. ******************************** Imagine a place were you are forced to live and work long hours in the open, November, December. Weather: Cold to freezing. Up at 5 A-M walk till dusk. 20 minutes rest, that was the time you were supposed to eat that piece of bread you were given the night before. Most of us ate it when we got it. Seen too many who saved it for the next day save but never got to eat it, for dead people have a hard time chewing. Needless to say, that first come first served. Talking about those who went around in the early morning, checking of who passed on and did not eat that last piece of bread. I lucked out a few times. Lesson came in handy later on in the ghetto. Was able twice to save some bread that way. Split it with my Mother and Grandmother. ********************************** Menu for the day. Breakfast: Something warm to drink of un-identifiable origin, a piece of bread, size ¼ pound, and being told to eat it sparingly for it was to last till the next morning. Every second or third day an army soup kitchen would meet us at a predestinated site, and we would receive enough to make sure that we are going to make it to a destination that the Nazis had prepared to receive us. ******************************* 05. This happened 1944-45? Not sure. It took those Germans 67 years to finally acknowledge that The Budapest Ghetto was not a rest home and those years from 1933 till the end of the war was not a picnic either. Even if a wanted to, I have no idea of how to petition my case. Just about all the people I knew then, are dead by now I can almost guarantee it. After all it did happen 70 years ago. As far as the German bureaucracy works, I have no birth certificate. Therefore I did not exist. Ask any German. Getting to be the same way here. ****************************** This I was told by a German office worker after the war in Berlin where we ended up in a D.P. Camp for the purpose of emigration. ( That was also the time when I learned that all our papers were destroyed during a bombing raid.) We were advised to find a living person who knew us before the war and can testify under oath that we are the person that we claim to be. Needless to say we did find that living person. The truth and nothing but the truth, you have my word. ********************************* Good move by the German government. Very few of us left. Chances are none of us will receive a penny. For the Mills of Bureaucracy turn very slow. ***************** Time will tell. I shall inform, if and when I receive anything. ************************************** Should be interesting to meet the 200 year old man. ************************ Some people tell me to let it go, after all 70 years have passed. The war is over. Let the dead rest. For your information, the dead are alive and are very early risers. I know, for that is the time when they talk to me. Want to know more? Henry Stern, 2014.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 16:16:09 +0000
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