"In May 1944, Olga Lengyel
went to the
Cluj, Hungary,
train station with her husband, Miklos, and their family. A prominent
Jewish doctor, Miklos had been accused by German authorities, who now
controlled Hungary, of refusing to use German-produced drugs in his
medical practice; he was told that, as punishment, he was to be deported
to Germany. Olga and her parents decided to join Miklos on the
deportation train; the couple’s young sons would come, too.
"But when the family arrived at the station, Olga found a
train of cattle cars, many already crammed with Jews from Cluj and other
Hungarian towns. Olga and her family were shoved into a car with ninety
others, confined to a space that would have held only eight horses.
The Germans had lied to them.
"During the seven-day journey that followed, the
passengers were given no food and almost no water. Half of the people in
Olga’s car had no room to sit. A few families had brought chamber
pots, and these became makeshift toilets in one corner of the car. When
they were full, the pots were emptied out of a small window—the only
window in the car.
"On the second day, a man died of a heart attack; when
the train stopped at the next station, the guards told the dead man’s
son to “Keep your corpse. You will have many more of them soon!”
"On the third day, a guard shouted through the window at
one station, “Thirty wristwatches, right away. If not, you may all
consider yourselves dead!” Olga’s
son, Thomas, gave up the wristwatch he had been given in third grade.
"The guard returned, demanding fountain pens and
briefcases. The third time, he promised that, if the passengers gave him
their jewelry, he would bring them a bucket of water, the first water
they had been offered on the trip. When the jewelry had been collected,
a bucket of water was lowered into the car. But many of the passengers
didn’t get a drop.
"During the next four days, more people died from
disease, from heat, from thirst, from hunger. On the seventh day, the
train reached its final destination. When the train door was finally
opened, the trainload of Jews had no idea where they were. Confused and
frightened, they were ordered out of the cattle cars by German soldiers.
Men were told to stand in one line; women and children in another. Olga
saw thousands of Jewish passengers standing on the platform. Nearby,
emaciated men in striped prison uniforms took their belongings from the
train. Then they removed the corpses from each car.
...
"It was only later—after she was shorn of her hair,
searched, disinfected, and dressed in old clothes—that Olga learned
where she was. She and her family had been taken to Auschwitz, a
concentration camp in German-occupied Poland that had become a death
camp for Jews and others that the Nazis considered undesirable. After
they left the train platform, Olga’s sons and parents had been taken
to a gas chamber and killed with everyone else in the left-hand line...."
