RelatioNet AA BB 11 CC DD
Full Name (Survivor)
Interviewers:
Maya Bar-Lev and Yarden Cohen
Email: nimaaslimeod@walla.co.il
Address: Kfar-Saba, Israel
Survivor:
Code: RelatioNet AA BB 11 CC DD
Family Name: Bar-Lev First Name: Izhach
Mother Name: Elizabeth
Birth Date: 1930
Status (Today): Alive
Address Today: Givataim, Israel
Budapest
Budapest's recorded history begins with the Roman town of Aquincum, founded around 89 AD on the site of an earlier Celtic community near what was to become Óbuda, and from 106 until the end of the 4th century the capital of the district of lower Pannonia. Aquincum was the base camp of Legio II Adiutrix. Today's Pest became the site of Contra Aquinucm, a smaller sentinel point. The word Pest thought to originate from the Bolgar language, because at the time of the reign of the Bulgarian Khan Krum, the town was under Bulgar authority. The area then became a home for the Avars and some Slavic people.
The area was subjugated around the year 900 by the Magyars of Central Asia, the cultural and linguistic ancestors of today's ethnic Hungarians, who a century later officially founded the Kingdom of Hungary. Already being a place of some impact, Pest recovered swiftly from its demolition by Mongol invaders in 1241, but it was Buda, the seat of a royal castle since 1247, which in 1361 became the capital of Hungary.
The Ottoman Empire's capture of most of Hungary in the 16th century interrupted the cities' growth: Buda and Pest fell to the invaders in 1541. While Buda remained the seat of a Turkish pasha, and administrative center of a whole vilayet, Pest was mainly neglected by the time of their recapture in 1686 by Austria's Habsburg rulers, who since 1526 had been Kings of Hungary regardless of their loss of most of the country.
It was Pest, which enjoyed the faster enlargement rate in the 18th and 19th century and contributed the overpowering majority of the cities' united growth in the 19th. By 1800 its population was superior than that of Buda and Óbuda combined. The population of Pest grew twentyfold in the following century to 600,000, while that of Buda and Óbuda quintupled. The blend of the three cities under a single administration, first enacted by the Hungarian revolutionary government in 1849 but revoked on the subsequent restoration of Habsburg authority, was finally effected by the independent Hungarian royal government established under the Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich of 1867. The total population of the incorporated capital grew nearly sevenfold in 1840–1900 to 730,000.
During the 20th century, most population growth occurred in the suburbs, with Újpest more than doubling between 1890–1910 and Kispest more than quintupling in 1900–1920, as much of the country's industry came to be concentrated in the city. The country's human losses during World War I and the subsequent loss of more than two thirds of the former kingdom's province dealt only a brief blow, leaving Budapest as the capital of a smaller but now autonomous state. In 1930 the city of Budapest contained a million residents, with an additional 400,000 in the suburbs.
Towards the end of World War II in 1944 Budapest was somewhat ruined by British and American air raids. The following blockade lasted from December 24 1944 to February 13 1945, and major damage was caused by the aggressive Soviet and defensive German and Hungarian troops. All bridges were disrupted by the Germans. More than 38,000 civilians lost their lives throughout the fighting. Between 20% and 40% of Greater Budapest's, 250,000 Jewish inhabitants died through Nazi and Arrow Cross genocide during 1944 and early 1945. Regardless of this, Budapest today has the highest number of Jewish citizens per capita of any European city.
On January 1, 1950, the area of Budapest was drastically expanded: new districts were created from the neighboring cities and towns. From the severe damage during the Soviet blockade in 1944, the city improved in the 1950s and 1960s, becoming to some degree a showcase for the more practical policies pursued by the country's communist government from the 1960s. Since the 1980s, the capital has shared with the country as a whole in increased emigration united with natural population decrease.
Interview
My parents were married late. When I was born my dad was already 40 years old. He was a motel manager for the richer Hungarians of that time. My mother came from a family of musicians. We lived in a poor village, and I went to a public school. We weren’t religious. Later on, when I was about 9’ my parents sent me to my grandparents in Budapest so that I could have a better education. I was an only child. My mother came to Budapest almost every month’ because she couldn’t stay away from me for so long. I also lived with my aunt’ who had a big impact on my life, and until the Germans came’ I lived a little in the city and a little at home.
The Germans arrived. My father was very sociable and respected. Something typical of my father was that a German captain was very fond of my father. My dad’s name was Robert Bril. The German captain and my father went hunting together, and he said to him: “Listen Robert, the Russians are already here, The Germans are over.” He offered us to stay in his wine shelter’ but my mother was scared and instead we went into the ghetto. Before we knew it, we were kicked out to Auschwitz. The Germans came on March 44th, and my dad was still in the Hungarian army in January and February.
At the time we were in the village, not in Budapest. It was interesting that we were the only ones that weren’t picked to go away by the Germans. It was a very long and difficult time. My mother cried, and my dad was very upset. They glued the yellow patch on me, and I went to school with it. It was a very difficult time for me mentally as well.
The move to the ghetto wasn’t really traumatic. I was 13 years old, and I found friends very quickly. We lived with a few other families’ in an apartment, each family in a room. They had soccer there, which I loved, so I didn’t suffer any psychological problems. We didn’t miss any food. It wasn’t a ghetto like Lodz, but it was a rich ghetto. I was there for a month. We were on one of the first transports out of there and into Germany, because it went by alphabetical order. We only took basic things with us for food. We only took necessary items; we didn’t have any valuable possessions, because we had buried them. We were put into an animal coach, which contained approximately 50 people. We had a comfortable corner, dad always set everything up. There was one poor soldier there, who mostly slept (we could’ve thrown him out at any time, but nobody dared to escape. We finally got to the Poland-German border. It wasn’t a standard transport from Hungary to Birkenau.
We got there at day light. We got to a place that turned out to be Birkenau. We got off the train, and had to leave all of our belongings in the coach, when we got down, the Germans yelled: “stand in a line, women and men separately.” Than came one guy who was Dr. Mangela himself. We didn’t know his name, but we knew it was him because he was the one who divided us. Mangela asked my father to put everybody in a line, and he did as he pleased (He had a look of an army man). I was now almost 14 years old.
When we got to Mangela we had to tell him how old we were, so I said in German that I was 14, which was too young to work. But than my dad said (in German): “He’s my son.” Dr. Mangela smiled and gave me a sign to go to the right. It than turned out to be a life saving act. We left, got to vamp, were given a shower, shaved, got our possessions back and got the stripped prison clothes. It was very strange to have everybody tell you what to do and control you. I was in a room with all the younger boys (teens) and my dad was in a different one. I got there around May. One night they didn’t let us go outside. Of course they didn’t let us leave at night at all, but that night we heard gun shots, screams, cries, and the next day we knew that all the gypsies had been killed. You must have heard this story- Hungarians living and gypsies dying.
We still didn’t know what it was all about, but by than there were pretty strong rumors, because the Germans loved to be neat, ad the camps were extremely clean. There were men who went to the ladies camp to get grass, and my dad placed me in one of those groups. I don’t know how, but dad got letters from mom, who was in the ladies camp. It wasn’t easy to get a pen and paper to write, but when I was 14 I wasn’t aware. Retroactively I understand things differently. But at that time we were in a shack for kids, and we played ball by the shack. Even though we already started to suffer from lack of food, because the reserves we had brought with us started to dwindle, we still had enough strength to play.
I remember that transports came from ghetto Lodz. We were served food (of course we all stood in line like we were told) and everyone came to get the awful soup, which was something back than. Suddenly some young kids came, and they jumped on the pots, on the cages. They knocked them over and grabbed the liquid off of the floor with their hands. If they owned a hat, they would stuff it with sand and dirt, and than run off with it and eat. Afterwards the Germans came and started to batter them. That was the first picture I remember that I could call horrific, which was during the first weeks. This trick of bringing hungry humans to this place and watching them fight for food was a usual passtime trick for the Germans. After that we would take shifts standing in line, because whenever that happened we would get punished. It wasn’t a human sight, it was animalistic, cruel. Luck was on my side again, because my dad got another job, he was in charge of all of the utilities of the camp. It was an important job, for which he got in exchange for it 5 portions of food. We would give those meals to friends and relatives. The entire time that we were in Birkenau I wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t eat. We couldn’t get any of it to my mom because she had disappeared, and we didn’t know where she was. My dad told me that she was sent to work, but he knew that she was transferred to a different camp. He didn’t know which camp she ended up in, he only knew that she got onto a transport and was sent somewhere. It than turned out that she was in Theresienstadt.
I was in block number 11, which was one of the teen boy’s blocks. We didn’t work there. I was there, in Birkenau, from May until the end of August. There weren’t selections for the gas chambers, but for work. I stayed inside the camp territory, but I could’ve gone out and walked in between the different blocks.
I had a friend that who with me until the end of the war, but he passed away after the release. We somehow held on, we really went through a lot together and helped each other out. I once got beaten instead of him. He did something and got scared. They wanted to give us a collective punishment, so I said that I did it. By the time he wanted to move and say something, I had already got hit. But this happened later on, not in Birkenau. Over all I got through Birkenau, with all of the horrors around me, in a very “comfortable” manner.
My dad started to fear that the Germans would kill anyone who stayed. So he told me: “let’s go, get in and find a better place”. Dad got interested in where the transport was and found one that went to Austria. He took me on the transport and after 3 days of riding in animal train we got to Mauthausen.
Mauthausen was a very cultural place. First of all there was a structure, it was like a fortress. It was a beautiful place located on a mountain. When we got there and got off the train, I thought I was in a movie. It was very difficult to work in the quarry. I went down there once. Because my dad put me in the adult transport I was one of the few kids there. The captain of the shack somehow liked me, so he excused me from difficult tasks. He didn’t excuse my dad, but he did me. That was the reason that I only went down to the quarry once. I picked up a stone that was too big for me to handle. Whoever fell on the way got beaten and sometimes even stayed there.
At the entrance they made lists, everybody gave out their name, date of birth, and we each got a number. In Birkenau I didn’t have a number but in Mauthausen I got a number. The number was tied to our hands and when we got close they glued the number on our shirts and on our legs. We had a number and a yellow patch. I told them that I was born in 1927 in order to stay with my dad, but it was obvious that I wasn’t that old.
My dad and I were always together. At the end of August, beginning of September, it was already cold there because we were up on the mountain. So we stuck together like bees. We used to stand outside for hours, trying to get warm. In Mauthausen we stopped being father and son and became friends. We became very close. In Mauthausen we already started to get hungry. We got military marmalade and cream cheese, and we mixed them together for the first time in our lives. After that we decided that when we got released we would eat cheese with jelly and that’s what I eat until today.
Mauthausen was a place where they had selections. They used to select a lot of sick people. I was very skinny but I wasn’t weak or sick, so they didn’t take me. In one of the selections the shack captain put me in a “good group” which went to a camp that worked on planes, camp Gusen. That’s when I was separated from my dad. After the war, in Israel, I started working in a factory and until today I work on planes.
One day, at the plane factory, I was there working alone, so the minester told me: “get into the table!” The tables there were very big and had cabinet doors. I went inside and he threw me an apple. It was the first time I had an apple there. Once in a while he would throw me a sandwich, but that didn’t solve the hunger problem. In Gusen I was already extremely hungry. At the same place, I also went to an air strike: an American plane shot at us, which was interesting because he saw there were people there. Planes started shooting at the workshop, at the camp and at the train station. I stood there and watched. Then an S.S man came with a stick, he hit me on the head and yelled: “Lie down!” I think I blacked out. After that they transferred me back to Mauthausen.
When I got back to Mauthausen, I didn’t go back to the fortress, but to the tents that were set up under the fortress. People walked around there in civilian clothes. After two weeks there we were able to get a small sweater for ourselves and a little bit of food.
After that they started leading us on foot to Gunskirchen. They didn’t give us anything on the way. If there was someone who bent over to grab a vegetable, they were able to shoot them. They went like flies, and people also fell down because they couldn’t walk for 3 days without food.
When we finally got to Gunskirchen it was very cold and muddy. There were a lot of dead bodies thrown on the ground, so it smelled terribly. People got very sick there and many died. It was chaos and people would break into the storage rooms and jump on the food. They would trample each other in order to get to the food and many died on account of that. Whoever got to eat ate so much that the thing that they wanted the most became fatal to them and they died. I would stand on the side and watch the people as they would murder each other for a piece of bread. While they were fighting, I would take something quickly and run away. I was with my friend Rudy who helped me steal the food.
When the Germans disappeared completely and before the American soldiers came, we were already covered in lice. Rudy helped me get on to one of the trucks and that truck took us to Wels. I slept the whole way. At Wels, they again came and collected the sick. We helped each other, I could barley walk. We ended up in a hospital. That’s where I got an infusion for the first time in my life. My leg was so thin that it swelled up from it. Three days later Rudy died. When he died I didn’t eat for at least two days, so then an American nurse came and yelled at me in English. She yelled at me and said: “You will eat, you will eat light things”. Slowly, I survived.
Three weeks later I was moved to a rehabilitation house. After I was released from the rehabilitation house I was in a waiting camp on the way back home. I didn’t know what the situation was back home. By then I was already “normal”; I was in a lot of pain and depressed, meaning, my senses were starting to come back. I was only interested in getting home and being with my parents. I hoped that they would be there but I didn’t know. After a long time of walking, the Americans brought us to the Russians.
The Russians told us to walk on foot, which we did, for a very very long time. They gave us food. The Americans gave us some kind of a certificate that had our fingerprint on it, no picture.
We said that it didn’t seem likely that we would walk on foot to Hungary or Wien, and this was after we had already been walking for approximately 100 km. The Russians didn’t shoot anybody who got off track, so at one town, when the whole group turned right, a guy from Debrecen and I continued straight.
We got to a train station in St. Poelten, Austria. We sat on a bench at the train station while we were starving and freezing. After a while, a woman came, who saw us, with a baby carriage. We were dressed in German army uniforms. She asked us who we were, so we explained that we would run away from the Russians, so she took us home with here. By then, we were 15 years old. She bathed us, served us food and washed our clothes. The next morning, she served us a home made breakfast. She gave us a few Marks and took us to the train station.
We boarded the train and got to Wien. In Wien we walked around and ended up going the “Joint”. We heard that it was an organization that gave out food and clothes. We went there and got food, boarded a train to Budapest, and that’s where we separated. He continued to Debrecen and I went to my aunt.
When I got to my aunt’s apartment a neighbor, who had known me from before, just came out and said to me: “Richie, it’s you. Wait a second, stay here, I’ll tell your mother”. I then started to cry, because I understood my mother was alive. My grandparents weren’t alive; they died before the war started.
My mom sold cigarettes in coffee houses, but she couldn’t support me anymore, so I went to Koposvar, where I went to school and where they dressed me and kept me at the “Joint” for a year. In a year, my mom got organized so I went back to Budapest and continued high school there until I met the Zions. I became an activist in the Zionist movement.
I never talked to my mom about what happened to me in the camps because I knew it would upset her and she didn’t want to hear about it.
Through the Zionist movement I came to Israel in 1949. My mom knew that I would go to Israel. She didn’t know when I ran away; she just knew when she received a letter from me from Israel. I didn’t need permission to go to Israel, because I was already 19 years old. I lived in a Kibbutz near Beit She’an.
I joined the army and served in the armor unit. It was between the years 1950-1952. After the army I took a mechanics course, in which I excelled. It gave me the first job that I was ever paid for. I never studied Hebrew but I picked it up from what I heard on the street.
I married an Israeli woman from a veteran family in Tel Aviv. We had 3 kids in difficult conditions, meaning, health conditions, because with every kid she lay in bed for 9 months hooked to an infusion. But nonetheless, we have 3 kids and 9 grandkids. We were able to raise a very warm, nice and close family. I take that as my primary achievement.
posted by RelatioNet Katza @ 4:52 AM
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