Adjusting to the Ghetto

The day after we entered the ghetto we were still allowed to walk freely outside. It was around noon on Friday, and my steps led me to our former home. I took a book with me and stretched out on the beautiful green grass, so wanting to recapture some of the old joy of home. But to no avail. Everything that had happened put an enormous strain on my brain. The pain choked deeply into the roots of my soul.

By Friday night, a tall fence surrounded the ghetto premises. We were imprisoned like criminals, all of us depressed. The darkness that struck our world kept intensifying.

Together with some other goat owners, we took our animals to graze twice daily, looking all around the ghetto for some green grass. This was one of my small pleasures in the ghetto. A jealous lady tried to chase us away from the area around where she lived, but we could care less - our animals had to eat!

Once we saw my old friend Vera with a bunch of girls. I approached her, but she turned her head away haughtily, so I just continued walking with my fellow goat shepherds. The memory of Vera's insulting behavior flashed back in my mind many times since then. Within a month, Vera perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. I don't know if she regretted what she did before eternal darkness possessed her, but, at any rate, I forgave her. I will always remember Vera as a very dear childhood friend. God bless her martyred soul.

Within a few days, eighteen-nineteen year-old boys were drafted to perform forced labor. They were served one-hour notice to present themselves at the schoolyard with a backpack. The group was composed of about twenty boys, including my brother Sanyi and his good friend - the one I dreamed I would marry since the age of ten. I escorted my brother and gazed at the object of my dreams, boding them farewell and a successful return. I was happy at least to have a chance to tell my chosen one that I prayed for him to return home safely.

The gendarme served notice to hand over valuables such as cameras, radios and jewelry. I decided not to give away the camera cousin Bela gave me and hid it beneath a low roof in a storage house. However, my mother so feared the official thieves that she handed over my camera. I was very angry, but did nothing about it.

My friend Edith, an only child, showed up one day at my place and invited me over. We walked over there, but it was too crowded for us to talk. Her family and two others - ten souls in all - shared one big room.

One afternoon, two gendarmes accompanied a representative of each family out the ghetto gates. As this "charade" continued, we were escorted back to our houses like criminals, with a list of the contents made and officially stamped, the keys then being left with the gendarmes.

The ghetto became even more crowded when Jews from Foldes and Hajdudorog, two smaller towns, were taken there.

Our father wrote us regularly. He was transferred to Debrecen, where he met his tragic death.

© David Muskal, 2001