Packing Up

June 18, 1944, early afternoon - all the Jews of the ghetto stood by the gate in the schoolyard. Those of us who owned goats had to hand them over to the gendarmes - I still recall how our goat cried. Even animals have feelings.

A local Christian midwife had to undress all us women over 16 years old and check our bodies for hidden gold or jewelry. We all crowded into a classroom for this degrading event, but the woman did nothing to us. We just lingered there for a few minutes without being molested. Girls with long hair had to have their hair cut.

We stood in the courtyard with our meager possessions in the one backpack we were allowed to take. The gendarme officer asked if anyone still had any valuables - there were none. Then he shouted that if one person tried to escape, ten people would be shot dead. An old man, Mr.Schwartz, cried out, "someone please give me rope so that I can hang myself and die here. I do not want to go to a death camp to be killed by Hitler. I would rather do it with my own hands." Mrs. Grunfeld, a mother of four small children, quitted him down and asked him not to stir up a panic.

By now, some "good-hearted" Christian peasants came with their horse-carts to conclude the final act of our expulsion from our hometown. We stayed back with our mother toward the end of the long line, still not ready to digest the catastrophe unfolding before our very eyes. We tried to dream a miracle, that the Hungarian government would somehow withdraw this inconceivable decree before our turn came to leave the ghetto. But our turn did come. Our backpacks already heaped upon the horse-cart, our hearts bleed as heavy-as-lead legs carried us through the ghetto gate.

The Christian bystanders outside stared at our mournful procession. We had to march behind the horse-carts with our packs. It was like a funeral. Most of the people in the procession were, in fact, marching to their own funeral. As night fell, our future seemed darker and darker.

© David Muskal, 2001