A Farmer's Slave Laborers

Hardly two weeks passed in the ghetto when fifty young Jewish girls were taken to work on one of the big farm estates in Puspokladany. We received no pay, only meager food rations, just like prisoners. My friend Edith's mother volunteered to join us, to look after the fifty girls and to be with her daughter. She tried her best to feed vegetarian style, as the Christian farmer did not provide any meat. We worked in the green meadow from early morning to late at night, with only a half-hour break for lunch. We slept on the bare earth at night, in highly cramped conditions.

On Saturday afternoon, we were taken back to the ghetto to take baths in the community bathhouse. It was so degrading to be paraded atop horse-carts through the main street of Puspokladany on our holy Sabbath. To intensify the degradation, the parade took place at the busiest time, when the Puspokladany residents were out strolling following church services. Our spiritual and mental condition numbed so that verse from Psalms, "they have eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear", aptly applied to us. We just choked in the painful feeling deep inside our hearts, becoming more depressed. The farm work itself was bearable - under different circumstances it may have even been fun. If only we could forget that our own government stripped of us all human rights and our dignity, turning us into the slave prisoners of the twentieth century.

The hovering peril seeped deep into our senses. Its influence froze the blood in our veins, our destiny permeated with hopelessness. One brave girl used to sing to overcome the evil and elevate our mood. Her song expressed hope and a yearning to return to our Hungarian home. She sang with such intensive feeling - I do not know why, as it was the Hungarian government which exiled us.

An order to pack our belongings and return to the ghetto came suddenly one afternoon. We had to quit work and go right away. Some of the girls cried hysterically, fearful that we would now all be taken with our families to Hitler's death camps. I was scared stiff and overcome by tears, my brain stiffened by the worry. With great pain, we boarded the horse-cart.

Thus began our banishment from the land we were born in, grew up in, loved and honored. We were miseducated to believe that this was our homeland; and we really believed so - but not any more. The hour of doom struck like lightning.

Six horse-carts filled with fifty young Jewish girls made their way through town. Some of us cried uncontrollably, the tears streaming down our faces. The others just cried inside in their hearts. Starting at the outskirts of town, we passed by the Jewish cemetery. Two girls wailed bitterly at this point, bidding farewell to their dead - one to her late mother, the other to her late father. Then through the streets - Arpad, Kossuth, Hosok tere, Borskag. Many people stared at the pitiful sight. If they felt sympathy to the humiliated girl prisoners, none showed any signs.

© David Muskal, 2001