They came at 12 noon because they knew it was the main meal of the day, and everyone would be in their homes at that time.

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1 Abraham Judah Samet Age: 77 Birthplace: Debrecen, Hungary Birthdate: February 5, 1938 Religious Identity: Jewish Holocaust Story: My story starts in 1944 when the Germans invaded Hungary, Eichmann came into Hungary with the gestapo and they started to round up the Jews and there were several thousand Jews there. We lived in a Jewish town. They came at 12 noon because they knew it was the main meal of the day, and everyone would be in their homes at that time. They told us to bring Only a change of underwear. They gave us 15 minutes, and we all assembled outside and soon they started to drive us to the railway, it took several hours to get there, and they were already rushing and shoving and pushing, these people could not go fast enough they beat them with clubs. Several thousand Jews came from the countryside, maybe 6/7 thousand people were with us. My mother volunteered to cook, even though she was a business woman, they gave her one or two bathtubs, and we acquired some vegetables from the nearby farmers and a little bit of meat and some bread that we paid for, of course. We still had some money, the Germans asked us to bring money with us. I don t exactly know how many days or how many weeks we were at the rail station, the first transport arrived, each could handle 2300 to 3000 people. My aunt with her 6 children started to move towards the train and my mother begged her not to go. My mother knew where we were going. My mother begged not the children, but my Aunt said she can t take the crying of her children anymore and needed to do something. Her oldest and their father were taken immediately to a labor camp, and the 6 left with her had already started to starve. The food was not enough, she got on the train with the children, and we never saw them again. Later on in Brooklyn I met the old cousin, he was half crazed, and he asked to see his father and he was institutionalized because of his experiences, losing a wife and 6 children is enough to make you crazy I guess. The cars were cattle cars, the walls were made of planks that were not straights, just enough so that the cattle couldn t run out, and this allowed for the wind to blow right through the walls.

2 My mother spoke a very High German; she became the translator for the Germans. She noticed they were bringing two little buckets and one was for water and one was for toilets for the cattle cars. My mother addressed the commandant and the sergeant the gestapo man, he had the 2 lightnings and a skull on his cap and the gestapo was chosen for their brutality. My mother addressed the officer, and he was dressed so nicely that he impressed me. She told him in High German and that we know where we are going and that bucket of water is not going to be enough. The gestapo pulled out his pistol and put it to my mother s head because a Jew was not allowed to address a German officer. This was what happened, they would shoot you. The other German office said, If you kill her we don t have an interpreter, and this was what kept her alive that day. There was only standing room only on the cars no one could sit down, and the train started we were on our way to Auschwitz. The Czech partisans blew up the railways, and so we diverted to Austria, and we were divided among different manufacturing plants to work in the meantime while we waited for them to figure out what to do with us. Worked our parents 12/14 hours a day, the Jews were fed worse, the French and the Italian were fed prisoner of war rations. One night my mother went to a nearby farm, and she told them she would knit clothing for their little children. She brought back to us cheese, eggs, bread, milk. One night she didn t come home and we were very worried, and the orders from Hitler were any Jew who comes in contact with anyone has to be shot on the spot. A few days passed by and we really panicked, she was the heart and soul of the family, she was 4 10 but she stood 10 feet tall. She was a genius, she started our business. We thought that she was probably shot, and we thought we would probably die; she spread her wings and protected her family. One day she did show up and we asked her what happened and she said that someone squealed and they sent a German Lt. who was very young and handsome, she was in jail, she shared a room with an Austrian girl who was very beautiful. Hitler ordered all young girls to be entertainment for the German coming home from furlough. This girl wouldn t do what Hitler wanted, so they put her in jail and hung her. We never asked her questions about how she managed to get out of the prison; at the age of 82 we buried her with a secret. But we were back together and in a few days transportation arrived and picked us up. We were on our way to Bergen Belsen, 300 miles from the northern sea, parallel to northern Canada maybe Alaska we arrived there in June I cannot tell you about dates, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, those things I don t remember. The first thing we noticed was that at the gate there was a pile of corpse s corpses high. They came at 4am to recount the new pile of corpses. The situation in Bergen Belsen was very very bad, because we were on the starvation diet, my siblings and family. My mother never raised her voice, she was very convincing. She was a brilliant woman, she was the disciplinarian. We were afraid to disappoint her, it was the biggest punishment we could have ever had. While in Bergen Belsen, we were give a hard black bread that was very small and was supposed to feed the 6 of us for the rest of the day, and we were given some flavored water called soup that was supposed to keep us alive. This is what really killed, when you starve, it kills your immune system, and when that goes, two things happen to you. You have dysentery, or typhoid which are both killers, the situation was so bad hygiene wise, in the camps. There were no clean bathrooms; the whole camp was like a big toilet.

3 Some people just lay down and died, we were all so weak we tried to do shortcuts, by just walking over the corpses, by the time I was 7 I had seen more death than life. I did meet in the camp another little boy my age, there were 275 kids my age there, and we used to go around the camp all the time looking for any food to eat. We found out that if you stood by the mess hall for the officers, they would always chew on something and when they dropped it on the ground. We jumped on it. I remember his face a little bit but not his name. There was a Hungarian guard, and he started talking to us so we went towards him and he started shooting at our feet. We were seven years old. We spent 10.5 months in the camp, the war was almost over, and the Germans came in and they wanted 2500 people, and my mother wanted to get out of the camp because the situation was so bad there so we got back on the train. It stopped every few days; we noticed there was a German soldier on top of each car with an anti-aircraft machine gun. The bombers were not sure about what was on our train, so they were not releasing bombs. The Germans were looking for a place to finish us off, the train would stop to unload the dead, and there was an elderly man right beside me and when we went back to the train he was gone because he died, and I was angry because he was my pillow and my cover from the wind, shielding me. There was not one single building standing in Berlin, all the windows were blown out and the buildings ruined, the doors of the train were opened and we went out, there were no soldiers. It was only the Hitler youth, the teenagers, we were in a forest, there were trees on each side and we thought this was where we were finally going to be finished off. When the tank came out the gun was not aimed at us, a soldier came out and he did not have the Nazi uniform, my father who was studying English yelled Americans! We had been saved, the man who came from the tank was a Jewish American man. He came from Brooklyn; he gave us candy, a lot of prisoners died after the war from over eating. It was dangerous to eat. My father died of typhoid shortly after the war ended. On our way back, we noticed that the bridge was bombed out where we were headed, the plan was to push us into the river with the doors closed, this was the German plan to liquidate our train of prisoners corpses were found on the ground of Bergen Belsen. I remember a woman threw a bundle at a British soldier, it was her dead baby that had been dead for a few days, and she asked him to give the child some milk. The soldiers who came were numb by what they were seeing in the concentration camps. When did you first come to the U.S? 1961 What was your first job? Worked for my cousins who were also in the camps, arrived in 1961 the age of 25. Worked in my Uncles coat factory, my father was one of 7 children. My uncle s son had his barmitsva and my uncle took over this hotel in New York and he invited everybody, now my father in law was a cousin of my aunt. They lived in Canada, they all came to that barmistva, we had all the Canadians and my father in law here and my step mother and they convinced my future wife to come who was working on her master s degree and teaching second grade. My mother

4 said she already took care of everything, and I didn t want to come and they sat us at the children table, the oldest child was 5 years old. I was very impressed with my wife s English, I had a very bad accent, she said I cannot hear you why won t you come sit next to me, we decided to take a walk on the boardwalk. I saw that she had high heels, I said your feet must be killing you we went back to the hotel, and they went home to Pittsburgh after the party. She told her father that she met the guy she was going to marry, she came to visit about two weeks later, and within 3.5 months we were married. I was a teacher for 35 years here in Pittsburgh. I went to Duquesne University and was 7 credits short from graduation, and now I run the business, and turned it into an engagement ring center, on Saturday sometimes I could sell 12 engagement rings. How many children do you have? 1 daughter, 2 grandsons. Both red heads.

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