Our Quarters

Our group of over 15,000 also included a group of Polish Jewish whose barracks were somewhat separated from ours, at the rear of block ten. After a short while, this multitude arrived at block thirty-six. Here, too, the Polish Jews moved to the rear of the block. This block was surrounded with a barbed-wire fence, but it was open to a bigger courtyard. The barracks of block thirty-six were more dilapidated than our previous quarters.

We were herded into smaller and darker three-tiered bunk beds. My mom and us four children were again placed on the third tier - our nearest neighbor was a woman with three children. Two of them were her own teenage children, and the third was a younger boy whose parents had already been executed by the German Nazis. They were Jews from Yugoslavia. Her sixteen-year-old teenage girl would sometimes sing beautiful sensitive, songs. Our other very close neighbor was the Meisels family from Nadudvar - friends of my parents. This family was composed of grandma Meisels, her daughter-in-law and three boys - her grandsons. Her son, the father of these grandchildren, was taken to forced army labor.

This barrack, too, was fully lice-ridden. Each morning, before getting dressed, we would check for and destroy whatever lice we could find - mostly around our shirt collars. After dressing, my elder brother Bela and I would take our coverlet plaids to the courtyard each and every day, where we would shake out as much lice as would fall. But we never really managed to get rid of them completely.

Then I would go to the outside latrine - also located at the rear of our block - and sit for quite some time on one of the free holes. There, or while walking among the multitude in the courtyard, I would eavesdrop on conversations and try to here the latest false reports. On those false reports, we built up our false hopes! That helped us stay alive and bear the unbearable! Those false reports said we would go to Switzerland and the Nazis would exchange us for whatever they could - money, medicine or army trucks. In turn, I too would spread those false rumors to my fellow barrack dwellers - and give them some false hope to hang on to.

As was the case in block ten, in block thirty-six we were separated by a barbed wire fence from Dutch Jewish people who resided at the other side of our courtyard. Somewhat further down was the crematoria, ever belching out putrid clouds of smoke.

© David Muskal, 2001