Leslie Aigner

Harper: I’d like you to begin by you telling me your name, date, and place of birth, and if you can spell the place of birth. 
AIGNER: My name is Leslie Aigner, born in 1929 June 3. And the place I born in Czechoslovakia is Nové Zámky [Les spells it]. That’s the Czechish name of the town. And my family, and the whole family basically, lived on one street. My cousins, my uncles, aunts and my grandmother [unclear few words]. And we were, they were Orthodox Jews and we were very close family. When it came to Passover dinner there were 25-30 of us, especially if we had out of town guests at the Passover table. 
I went to school in Nové Zámky. Later it turned to Hungarian town, because the territory was attached in 1939 to Hungary. And it was Ersekujvar [same town as Nové Zámky]. Anyway I was going to school and going to Talmud Torah too. …My mother and grandmother was very religious orthodox and we kept a kosher house. 
And first time I really encountered antisemitism, it was in Ersekujvar, in Nové Zámky when I was going to school. Going to and coming home from school, I was chased and beaten many, many times, especially as the anti Jewish sentiment rose by the Nazi’s advancement. 

Harper: Can I back up for a moment? 
AIGNER: Sure.

Harper: Can you tell me who, again, who lived in your house? 
AIGNER: In my house we were five of us. Actually it was a rented duplex where we lived by a farmhouse. We were my father, my mother, and my older sister – she was a year older. And my younger sister and myself. My younger sister was nine years old. Excuse me, I have to back track too. She was born in 1935, so in 1939 she was only four years old. But when we were taken to Auschwitz she was nine. 

Harper: And did your grandparents and other family live in this town too?
AIGNER: Yes, they all lived on the same street at that time. My grandmother lived only. I never knew any of my other grandparents, only one grandmother, because I was too little when they died already. And so my grandmother lived with her oldest son on the same street as I said.

Harper: Were your parents born in this town?
AIGNER: No. My father was born in another little town, a very small town. And my mother was born in another town. They, somehow they got married and you know my grandmother lived most of the time in Nové Zámky. She wasn’t born in there either. So she was born in Czechoslovakia sometime, I don’t know the town. But somehow the family, well most of the family, not the whole family, got together in this town and we lived in one particular street. Then later on we moved around in the town but, but as I was growing up in my childhood we were living in the one street. 

Harper: Do you remember the name of the street?
AIGNER:       Hospital Street [gives the Czechish name of the street as well]. 

Harper: Do you remember what your grandparents did for a living?
AIGNER: As I say, I just knew my grandmother. I don’t know what my grandfather did. But my uncle, who lived with her, he was an agricultural expert and he worked in an office of a sort. A grange in the town, yes. 

Harper: What was your family’s means of support?
AIGNER: My father was a low-middle income self-employed man. He had two pairs of horses and a couple of flatbed wagons, and he was the transfer man of the town. He was transferring from the railroad station to merchants their merchandize. Or people who moved from one apartment to another. He was the man who they called on. With the flatbed wagon, and he had one driver and himself.

Harper: So it was like a small business?
AIGNER: A very small business, yes. But he supported our family well. 

Harper: And you said, did you say you were low middle class?
AIGNER: Low middle income, I would say, yes. Not class, just middle income [chuckles].

Harper: Were your parents active in the Jewish community?
AIGNER: To a certain degree. We had been going to synagogue at that time every Friday night and Saturday. Except when my father was out of town. But not particular activity as such. But, for example, I went to the mikvah every Friday before shul. We were counted as orthodox Jews. 

Harper: Can you tell you in more detail the full scope of your religious life, on a day-to-day basis? 
AIGNER: Well, as I was growing up, many times, not every morning, we went to shul, and used the, well at that time after I was bar mitzvah, I used the teffilin. And my father was a little bit more … not as religious. But my mother kept a kosher house all the way to the end. 

Harper: Was your family involved in any secular communal activities? Like politics or sports?
AIGNER: No, not really. It was just within the family if they talked about politics. Actually one of my uncles went to rabbinical school and moved to Israel before I knew him. I don’t remember him, but he disappeared in Israel in one of the fights. So we never heard of him after the war. Until then my grandmother was getting letters from him. 

Harper: Were you involved in any youth groups or anything?
AIGNER: I was involved after 1945 when I came back from the concentration camp with the Zionist movement in Budapest. 

Harper: But not before that?
AIGNER: No. Well, when Czechoslovakia was gave back the territory where I was born, Nové Zámky, to Hungary, the atrocities started already against the Jews. And it was 1939 I was 10 years old. I was not involved in any Zionist movement. But in the synagogue they had groups who came together learning Hebrew, learning the Torah. That was my involvement as a Jewish boy. 
Then in 1939, I [was] still finishing my school, living with my grandmother. In 1944 I moved to Budapest because my father’s license in 1939 was taken away. The Hungarian Nazi party, the Cross Arrow, was getting stronger. And as soon as they re-occupied that part of Czechoslovakia that was attached to Hungary, his license was revoked. And so it being a small town, he couldn’t get employment. And he did the same thing like my wife’s folks and he moved to Budapest. And we settled in outskirts of Budapest in 1944; they had settled in 1943 – in Csepel in outskirts of Budapest. And he got employment over there in a paper mill. 

Harper: Could I come back to your neighborhood a little bit?
AIGNER: Sure.

Harper: What would you say the population was of the town you grew up in?
AIGNER: Nové Zámky had about 28,000 population.

Harper: And do you have any idea what the Jewish to non-Jewish mix was?
AIGNER: Not really. I just can guess. We had two synagogues, one orthodox, and one the more modern [word unclear]. Probably 1500 to 2000. Just a wild guess. I can’t remember really. 

Harper: And your neighborhood, was it a Jewish neighborhood?
AIGNER: No. There was no such thing in Nové Zámky as Jewish, really Jewish neighborhood. We were scattered around the town. And, there were Jewish get-togethers, naturally. Holidays and all that. And presentations sometimes, speeches, and stuff like that. And we went to those. My folks went, to many of them, not all of them, but many of them. 

Harper: Were you friendly with your non-Jewish neighbors?
AIGNER: Well, with most of them, yes. But there always were some who resented being friendly with Jews. As I say, when I first experienced really antisemitism when I started to go to school. And on the streets; it was a Jewish school where I was going. And for the first three years I was leaning Czechish, even though that most of the town was Hungarian. So when we went to school and when we left the school we were talking Hungarian, on the next corner. But in the school we had to speak Czechish at that time. Then 1939 it turned around. And still my folks wanted me to finish school there so I stayed until 1943. Even though they moved in 1939 to Budapest. 

Harper: So you started school in a Jewish school? 
AIGNER: Yes. All my elementary education was in Jewish school. 

Harper: Was it a private school?
AIGNER: No no, it was a public. Well, it was public school but the state – it was a state school but it was a Jewish school. Probably, I don’t know how it was set up, I tell you honestly. It was supported by the Jewish community but it mainly supported by the state. 

Harper: Did you learn religious subjects?
AIGNER: That too. But mainly the regular subjects. In the school, after school, afternoon, I went to the Talmud Torah and that was totally just religious subject.

Harper: And where was that? After school, where was that held?
AIGNER: That was by the synagogue. The synagogue had the schoolrooms.

Harper: All of your schooling, your early schooling, was conducted in Czech? Is that right?
AIGNER: The first three years. See, I’m born in ’29. In ’36 I start schooling, until ’39. Then it was again Hungarian because the borders changed. So three elementary was in Czechish, and I learned, I was pretty fluent. I was fluent in Czechish, but I totally foget it by now. 

Harper: Overall, would you say the relations between Jews and gentiles in your town was good?
AIGNER: Was good until 1939. Very sparsely were anti Jewish happenings in town. But after that, the Hungarian Nazi party, Cross Arrow, took over and, and intimidated us. 

Harper: Before that, do you remember ever hearing of Adolf Hitler?
AIGNER: I did because my folks were talking about it. When Adolf Hitler came to rule. It was in 1937-38 when I was able to grasp. And I think they were talking, but many times they set me aside to, to, because after 1939 even that was dangerous, to talk about politics. And so they didn’t want me to blabber something outside the house. 

Harper: Do you think your family was concerned? I’m talking before 1939, now.
AIGNER: Not in, before 1939, it was, we were I think my family was pretty settled, and they were content with their situation. After 1939 things started changing rapidly. Actually my father looked into leaving the country. But he didn’t have the means to take the whole family. 

Harper: Do you remember ever meeting any refugees from Germany or Austria?
AIGNER: No, not really, not really. The only refugees we saw, after 1939, was Polish refugees. And I don’t know; it was some kind of conflict between the Polish and Hungarian Nazis. I don’t know. It’s, it’s, there were some refugees showing up, or, or prisoners showing up in Hungary, as I recall, vaguely. 

Harper: Why don’t you tell me when things started changing and how exactly things started changing?
AIGNER: Well in 1939 my life started to change because my fathers business license was taken away and he, in order to make a living, he moved his family, actually my mother, my older sister, my younger sister to, to the outskirts of Budapest. And I stayed behind because I said well you better finish your schooling and they just took my sisters along. 

Harper: So where did you stay?
AIGNER: I stayed with my grandmother until 1943. Then I finish my 8th grade elementary education, then I moved on to Budapest. And then, you know things started changing rapidly. At the end of 1943 we had to start wearing the yellow star. Jews couldn’t go, with the yellow star, to higher education, and many, many public places were out for us, closed for us. And so when I moved out to Budapest my father took me to learn a trade. So in the morning hours I was going to trade school and in the afternoon I was doing the shop work. 

Harper: Between 1939 and your move to Budapest, what was life like for you? Was there any anti-Jewish legislation at this time? Because the war was going on?
AIGNER: Not until 1939. Czechoslovakia was a republic, and, and it was fair. It was; we weren’t discriminated as much. There were antisemitism, but its not, very vaguely until 1939. But when the Hungarians took over, then it really started changing. There was a lot of talk, and I remember my uncle and my grandma talking about Hitler and the Nazi advancement of Hitler and Nazism advancing in Germany. And you know they heard about atrocities. I wasn’t supposed to hear these things at the time. 

Harper: Were you afraid for your personal safety in those years?
AIGNER: Not as much until 1939, no, no. We were fairly, treated basically, most people were OK. But still it was some antisemitism always around us. 

Harper: Now, I am interested in understanding in the years between 1939 and 1943, when you stayed back to go to school. 
AIGNER: Now that time, it increased. The intensity of antisemitism, that’s when I really were, as I said, chased and beaten many times, going to school or going anyplace, if I was alone. So we grouped up many times, and we walked each other home. And it was some atrocity during that time against the synagogue. Broken windows and stuff like that. So it started to intensify, definitely. Because of the Hungarian Nazi party was getting stronger, and were getting a helping hand from the German Nazis. 

Harper: Did you hear anything about what was going on in Poland?
AIGNER: As I say, I was very young, and just very vaguely here and there there was… Between 1943 and 1944, it was nothing major going on. Basically, we didn’t hear about Auschwitz and things like that in Poland, no.

Harper: So you had no idea what was happening to the Jews in other parts of Europe. 
AIGNER: No. No. That’s my know-how. But I don’t know how much my folks know because I know my father, in 1939, was deliberating on leaving the country. 

Harper: Where did he want to go?
AIGNER: Just out of Hungary, someplace more peaceful. He even considered Israel, but we couldn’t make it. They did not give visas out and, as I say, he didn’t have the funds for taking the whole family, and he didn’t want to leave alone. 

Harper: So you decided to join your parents then? 
AIGNER: Yes, in 1943. And that’s when I started trade school. 

Harper: Was it a state school?
AIGNER: The trade school was a state school, and in a private small factory I worked as a machinist, learning the machinist trade. And, then it really started, the antisemitism, and all that because of all that we had to start wearing. I went home to Budapest after school in June of 1943, and at the end of 1943 we were ordered to start wearing the yellow star. My father was ordered into the forced labor camp. And so my sister went to work for the paper mill. She was at that time 15, almost 16 years old. So she started supporting…beside, the state called in my father for forced labor camp, and there was some kind of a relief for the family. So I have letters my mother wrote to my father to the work camp that you should talk to the commandant that you have three children…So the, the relief money would be according to how many children you have. It is written in Hungarian so I don’t know what good it will be for you actually, but…

Harper: When your family had moved to the outskirts of Budapest, were you involved in a synagogue then?
AIGNER: Yes, in Csepel, yes. I was. We were going to synagogue; there was a small synagogue or small community. But not as often anymore. Because you know you didn’t want to be out in the evening hours. And if we went, we went in the earlier services, but not as often anymore. Especially not after my father was taken to the forced labor camp, because my mother and the three children didn’t want to be out alone. And you know, starting wearing the yellow star, and early 1944 they were talking about the ghetto so my father wasn’t home and with the help of some friends, we moved to the ghetto in 1943, I don’t know, May or, or early June. Something like that. 

Harper: Your father was arrested?
AIGNER: No he was not arrested. He was called in. It was just like someone being called into the army. But he wasn’t in the army; he was taken to the forced labor camp. You know, building roads and bridges and digging for the Nazi war machine. By then the Nazis were marching against the Russians. And so Hungary did not put up any resistance when the Nazis came in. Czechoslovakia, Poland, it put up some resistance – very little against the Nazi machinery. But Hungary they opened the borders and they just marched in, marched through Hungary. 

Harper: Do you know if that work camp had a name?
AIGNER: Oh yes, I have it. It was Ratosnya. And, depending on where he was, I have five letters that are readable. The others…I have a dozen of them, or a couple of dozen. But I brought five of them, which were written with ink, and so it’s pretty legible. But the others are hard to read, very hard to read. And I have the letters actually my sister wrote to my father, I think the last letters I have. And she wrote it from the paper mill where she worked because, when we were supposed to go to the ghetto in Csepel, she was working for the paper mill and she had to move into the paper mill. Because they kept the Jewish workers – evidently they knew what was coming – and they wanted to keep the Jewish workers and they made, arrangements, I mean barrack arrangements for them, and she had to live in the barracks of the paper mill, within the compound. And so just three of us moved into the ghetto. And my sister had a chance to come out to visit on the weekends. But she had to go back by Monday morning to the paper mill and live there all week.

Harper: Did you have to go to the ghetto before the Germans invaded Hungary, or after?
AIGNER: After.

Harper: Can you describe the German invasion, what happened? Do you remember?
AIGNER: I just heard my mother saying that the Germans are here, they are marching through the street. They were in mainly Budapest actually. The little town did not have any details from the Germans, but they were in Budapest and they were all around. The German, they have some headquarters someplace, and so they were visible all over the town, basically. 

Harper: You saw them?
AIGNER: I saw them too, yes. I was going to school and work, with the yellow star on my chest, and I was, you know, kind of turning around and away from them and I was walking. And being on the streetcar, for example. It was just a bad experience, walking.

Harper: This may sound like a strange question, but wearing the star, what was your reaction to having to wear the star?
AIGNER: Like marked, and you know, everybody just looked at you and you were known. But the thing is I don’t know if you heard about it. It was in Czechoslovakia or in Hungary that you were born and your birth certificate says you Jew. And if you moved from one apartment to the next one, next street or next town or change house address anyway, within 48 hours you have to report in the police station, filling up a form and the third or fourth question was what is your religion. So they knew all the time, where you are and who you are. And so, not wearing the yellow star, especially if you look Jewish, they said many, many times, they just pulled into the doorways people and wanted documents. If they were suspicious. 

Harper: Did you see Jews or did this happen to you? Were you beaten up by the Germans or harassed on the street or humiliated?
AIGNER: It’s been many, many times it happened. Even the Hungarians, they were such a big antisemitism, they kind of laughed at you wearing the yellow star, even if they didn’t do any atrocities. They pointed at you. 

Harper: So can you just tell me what happened next? 
AIGNER: Well we moved into the ghetto early June of 1944.

Harper: I’m sorry. Were you forced to go into the ghetto or did they say…
AIGNER: We [were] ordered to move. And the ghetto was set up like in a small town on outskirt of Budapest by the biggest manufacturing plant. That was the biggest manufacturing plant of Hungary. They made from sewing machine to trucks to ammunition to everything in that factory. And they set it up, I don’t know what was their thought, maybe they figured maybe the allies will not bomb or, or you know…but they bombed plant, and there was a lot of casualties. But we weren’t there that long anymore. As I say, I was in the ghetto probably less than a month, or maybe a month, I don’t know exactly. 

Harper: I am sorry to interrupt you, but I want as much detail as possible from the minute you heard you had to go to the ghetto, how you got there, what it looked like, and everything. Tell me everything. 
AIGNER: Well, we got the order that all Jews have to move to the ghetto area. And they emptied a certain area of housing, a couple of blocks. And Csepel did not have a big Jewish population. I don’t know, maybe a couple a hundred, if even that much. And so we had to move into that couple of blocks right around the factory. And my mother wrote to my father. I have that letter, too, that we have to move and she will let him know the new address. Actually she wrote down the address. These are the letters what my father brought home, because he survived. He escaped to the Russian side, and as the Nazis were retreating, he came home that way. And so we had to move and we had a friend who my father worked, a gentile friend, who my father worked with in the paper mill and he was working delivering, distributing paper goods for the businesses with a flat bed wagon. In that time not that many trucks were rolling and so he helped us move into the ghetto. And we settled in, as I say, our settling in, we didn’t even unpack. When in the ghetto came Nazi…it was called a special guard or the swastika or actually the cross arrow on his armband, with authority and order that we have to pack and be ready in 48 hours. My sister was in the paper mill so she stayed there and we just… my mother, my nine year old sister, and myself, we packed what we were able to carry easily and sure enough two days later they picked us up with the truck and took us to outskirt of Budapest in other town, other outskirt, other side of Budapest to an abandoned brick factory. Barbed wire around it, and they getthoed all the Jews from the neighboring towns and they had transport for something like 4000 people. They put us in the cattle cars in that brick factory. And we were transported from the brick factory, to at that time I didn’t know where, but we ended up in Auschwitz. Took us three days to get there. 

Harper: Ok, before we get to that, I want to know even more detail about the first ghetto. Was there…you had to move to a special section of the town?
AIGNER: Csepel, yes.

Harper: And now, how long were you there for?
AIGNER: As I say, less than a month. Maybe a month, I don’t know.

Harper: Were there walls, was there barbed wire?
AIGNER: There was no walls, no barbed wires. But you couldn’t go after dark out with the yellow star on your chest. So if somebody wanted to go out would have to take the chance without the star. And you were able to go about at that time, but you had to, had to be in, inside at night. I mean it was that after dark you couldn’t move around. And we didn’t. My mother was scared, and we were just two of us, I was not quite 15 at the time. Actually I celebrated (there was no celebration) my birthday in the ghetto. June 3rd of 1944. 

Harper: What did you do during the day? Did you mother work, or did you work?
AIGNER: I was going, even from the ghetto I was going to, but it was getting so that it was, the atrocities was, so that I maybe, when I moved into the ghetto I don’t think I went to school and actually the school ended, but the shop. School ended early June. And then I quit at the shop too, I just didn’t, wasn’t worth it to go in. It was too dangerous. So my mother just kept us home. 

Harper: And how about food? Could you get food?
AIGNER: Well at that time already started rationing. And we got our ration of food stamps and stuff like that. Not the food stamp like here. But you could buy just so much of everything – flour, or whatever. And so we were able to sustain ourselves. It was not really a big problem at June 1944. But then, you know, they picked us up and we left everything over there and that’s the last time I saw things what we left there. It was, as we heard later, most of these Jewish homes were emptied and put on the train and went to Germany, most of them, the better stuff went to Germany, as a gift from Hungary to the German bombed out population. So most of our stuff vanished. 

Harper: And in the ghettoized section of Csepel, were you living, it was an apartment?
AIGNER: It was something like a duplex. Type of a small houses. There was not too many big, big apartments there so the population of that part of town had to leave their homes. So they were sort of inconvenienced, but this was an order and there was nothing what they could do against it. And so this few blocks was emptied and all the Jews had to move into that area. 

Harper: Did you have to share the apartment with another family?
AIGNER: Not at this time, no. We just had a two-room apartment. A bedroom, and a small living room and kitchen area. 

Harper: And can you tell me again, in as much detail as you can, your transport to this next ghetto, or the next deportation camp?
AIGNER: Well, we were put on the cattle cars, 75-80 people. A half-barrel for necessities. They locked the door on us. It was early July, and the train started rolling. Three days before we arrived to Auschwitz they opened to the door twice. We emptied the barrel, they threw in some food. Half of the cattle car, the people were able to squat down at night, and the other half was standing. There was no room for all of us to squat down. And then we changed. And in the daytime the heat was so that we were changing space by the four little window in the cattle car, in the four corners of the cattle car, so we were just kind of moving around and let other people have some fresh air. And this is the condition we arrived, I don’t know, but a lot of them didn’t make it. 

Harper: I’m sorry; I want to interrupt you here. Before even your transport to Auschwitz, you said you went to another…
AIGNER: That was the brick factory, the abandoned brick factory where we were put up for less than a week.

Harper: Ok, do you know the name of that place?
AIGNER: Budakalász. It is on the outskirts of Budapest. Budakalász is a small town and outside of the town they had this brick factory, which wasn’t in use anymore. I don’t know what was the reason, wasn’t in use. The only thing it had the A-frame covers, and the oven area. And there were people scattered all over, just with a few blankets. Families huddled together, waiting for … they were distributing some food, naturally. 

Harper: Were you allowed to bring anything to that camp? 
AIGNER: Yes, very minimal, whatever we were able to carry. And we were allowed to take some change of clothes, and I don’t know what my mom packed, really I can’t recall.

Harper: Did they tell you what this place was?
AIGNER: No, they didn’t. They just ordered us and I just…I don’t know…we just went. We just were ordered to go, if we didn’t go you were hunted down. 

Harper: And so you just sat around for about a week? 
AIGNER: Yes. Walked around, sat around. Guarding our little belongings. Because they brought in, actually over there they brought in the gypsies. And this town where I was living there was a big gypsy population. And where I was born. But around Budapest they brought in the gypsies too, at that time. 

Harper: So you saw gypsies in the brick factory? 
AIGNER: Yes.

Harper: Were they treated differently by the guards?
AIGNER: No, no. Not whatsoever. 

Harper: There were guards at the brick factory?
AIGNER: Yes, yes. 

Harper: Were they German or Hungarian? 
AIGNER: Hungarian militia. With the swastika on their arm, yes. They had weapons and they were guarding the entrances and the compound, yes. 

Harper: Next I want you to tell me about your transport to Auschwitz. But before we start that, is there anything about your life before the war that you want to talk about or mention?
AIGNER: What I can say, it was, the family unit was starting to falling apart in a way because my father was taken away, and my mother was holding the family together and we were apart from our old… most of my uncles and aunts stayed in the, in the Nové Zámky, the town where I was born. And my grandma stayed there. So we were kind of new in this whole town. And we made some Jewish friends and that’s all we had really. 

Harper: Were you in contact with your grandmother?
AIGNER: Yes. By letters, writing letters, yes, all the time. 

Harper: And do you know what their situation was like?
AIGNER: I can’t recall anything about it. I know my mother was writing that they had to move into a certain area of the town. They were going through the same thing like we did. But I didn’t know, didn’t hear any specifics.

Harper: Do you recall while this was going on, being scared?
AIGNER: Oh definitely. Wearing the yellow star made me, you know, different. Marked. And being forced into going to the brick factory, with the truck they moved us. They stopped at every house, and they counted the people, they knew everybody, how many people had to be there, they put us on the truck and transferred us to the brick factory. And then the waiting over there, the yelling of the guards, and you couldn’t go close to the fence naturally. And just distributing the meal it was dehumanizing; it was a condition that we were lining up for meals for hours to get something. My mother was so cautious, she took a bottle of oil and some bread and that’s what she was eating until we got to Auschwitz. She didn’t want to eat any of the stuff what they give us. 

Harper: What sort of religious observance was there in the ghetto and was there any in the brick factory? 
AIGNER: In the ghetto the shul was still open and we were able to, would have been able to go. There was a lot, every week as it was passing, it was less and less people going to the shul. And so it was so that going to the shul it was dangerous because some antisemite groups were checking us out. They were actually around there to harass us constantly. 

Harper: Did you celebrate Shabbat in your house?
AIGNER: Yes. My mother had a candle lit every Friday night. 

Harper: Were there Shabbats in the brick factory?
AIGNER: No. Nothing like that. Some of the people I saw, they were praying, they had their prayer book and their teffilin. And they doing it but not organized, no. 

Harper: Do you want to take a break now?
AIGNER: It’s fine. Not necessarily. I’ll have a sip of water. 

Harper: So, I’d like you to describe for me in as much detail, your deportation to Auschwitz. 
AIGNER: As I said, we were put into – 75-80 people – to a cattle car, and I described already how we were transported. Arriving to Auschwitz, it was first part of July. I don’t know probably close to ninth or tenth of July, I don’t know the exact date. We were ordered out of the cattle cars and there were these kapos, which some were in the striped suit already, and they were ordering us and separating the older people, woman and children to a group, and the man in one group. I was put into the mans’ group. And we had to line up front of the Dr. Mengele – the chief medical officer in Auschwitz. And he was selecting us right or left and whoever went to the right went to the gas chamber right away. That’s where I saw my mother and my little sister for the last time. My mother turned away and didn’t want to see me going. My little sister wailed for me. 
I was led into the camp where we had the sign for the camp probably you heard about it already, “Arbeit macht Frei” your labor will free you. Which was not true. And we were led into this camp. This camp, as I learned later, was a Polish military camp and a barracks was built for horses, for stalls. And in the stalls were put up bunks, four high, bunk beds, four high, and we were eight to 10 of us sleeping on a bit of blanket on the bunks. When we were led in, we were ordered to, they cut our hair off and gave us a striped uniform – grey and blue cotton uniform.
And from Auschwitz they were always transporting people out. I stayed in Auschwitz for five months because I got into different work details. And I worked in Auschwitz, and one of them was working in the kitchen. And so that’s why I stayed for five months. Most people didn’t stay five or more months in Auschwitz. And what I saw is the crematoriums, which we did not want to believe its what it is. At first I thought it was the bakery. The chimneys were burning day and night and the burning human bodies stench was always around us. Well, we were constantly ordered around. We had to stand up for counting in the morning for a couple of hours. There were head counts, and that was going on till the winter months, too. The head counts, early morning, standing out. And you were backing against the barrack and we were changing, in the winter months, we were changing the first man off always so he can warm up against each other, their body, before the commandant, the SS guard/officer came around for the counting. 
And when, for example, it was so dehumanizing the conditions, that for example when we were lining up for food, the first man got a pot in his hand and then they counted down five or eight or ten ladles of soup, and they counted down so many person. And we were sitting around that pot, each of us his spoon in our hand, and we were eating, one spoon at a time, until it lasted. Pretty fast we discovered that food meant life and we were watching each other as hawks so that food would be dispersed evenly. 
Other thing I saw in Auschwitz, and then next encampment to us, was the Russian prisoners of war. The Nazis didn’t believe in the Geneva Conference of handling POWs, so they were sent to the concentration camp of Auschwitz. These were – many of them were flyers and they were working out in the field somewhere, I saw them marching out every day, to dismantle damaged planes for the Nazi air force. And one of these days, five of them escaped. They shot two of them; they brought all of them back within a day and a half. And the other three was hanged in the place, visible from both sides of the encampment, with a board on their chest “I escaped, here I am again.” It was in German, this is what I was told the translation is. 
On the other side of my encampment were the twins encampment. They were from child to adults, all the twins Mengele selected out, and they were doing experiment on them. And we were talking through the border of the barbed wire. They told us horrible things what kind of experiments they are doing on them. Was just vaguely, because we couldn’t even approach the barbed wire too close. I just saw them everyday going down in their physical condition. And then disappearing, the people who I talked to. Because you approach the barbed wire too close, the guards were shooting. It was like open season on us. 
And then the other episode. This is the thing which stuck in my mind because it was extreme. The daily beating by the kapos who were, who were wearing the blue and grey striped uniforms like us, but they were kapos. The kapos were put up from the ranks of the criminals. The Nazis did not have prisons at that time already. So the criminals were put in the concentration camp and they had this black triangle marking them, and they were put up to kapos, and the got a little bit of a better treatment for that. And so they did their job as, as brutally as they were ordered to.
And in Auschwitz, as I say, I was there five months and I saw a lot of things there. One of them was, another one was that one of the crematorium [unclear…that was under the comando, the so called…which was selected from (for) the ….]. This other commando was the group who pulled people from the gas chamber and took them to the crematorium for burning. Some of these people saw their own relations. They took some of their own relations in, finding their own relations in the gas chamber. So most of this [words unclear] commando wasn’t in work more than two months and then they eliminated them. They saw and knew too much and their nerves started to give up. And one time of the [words unclear] commando for a belt, got a hold of some weapon, probably they knew that their end was coming; they didn’t care. And they destroyed one of the crematorium. But none of them escaped, as I heard. As I say, this was in the distance from our encampment. But we heard the shootings and the explosion. I don’t know what they use, grenade or whatnot, but they destroyed one of the crematorium. 
After this, on one occasion I was in the wall detail taking all of the barrels from the barrack – at night we couldn’t leave the barracks. We put it in a small bag and these barrels, and had to take it out to the field. Which was about half a mile away from the encampment. They were digging big ditches, several of them. They were carrying in layer of wood, layer of bodies. The Nazis were missing the one crematorium. I think there were four crematorium working in Auschwitz. And they were not enough, the remaining three. They were carrying bodies into these ditches what they dug and they did open pit burning. Dose it with gasoline until its, I saw this what they were doing one time, as I say, as I was taking all, all these barrels. And then after I, ahem, thought I was the luckiest man I was ordered to work on the kitchen.
Working in the kitchen I thought maybe, “I am closer to food; I can sustain myself.” The hunger was always around us. I worked there for almost three months in the kitchen. Every morning I had to report in after we were counted, into the kitchen, and that’s where I was, cutting potatoes, and slicing cabbage for sauerkraut. So I was able to eat all the raw potato and cabbage I can muster down. And on one occasion I was working in the kitchen, and a German SS guard yelled, “Shut up!” And I didn’t hear it; I was talking to the next fellow. And he threw a pitchfork at me. It went through my ankle. It got infected. I couldn’t walk. 
It was dangerous if somebody was disabled, you know. The next inspection comes around you will not survive. So they put me into the hospital barracks. There was a hospital barracks in the encampment. There was thousands of people in there. So they had a hospital barracks but there were minimal medications available. So I got bandaged and I stayed in the hospital for a week or 10 days. And I remembered the name of the chief doctor in hospital. He was Jew from Prague, a Professor Epstein. And he came around one night and he pointed to several of us, “You, you, and you, you go out back to your barrack.” I didn’t want to go because I still limping, my feet wasn’t still well. I pleaded with him that I am not well, I can’t go out and go back to work. He was very adamant about it. He sent me back. “You go back to your barrack.” The same night, trucks rolled up to the hospital barrack and they emptied it. They took everybody who couldn’t walk out of the hospital to the gas chamber. So he saved my life. 
So I went back to the barrack and I couldn’t go still to work because I was limping. And I was just horrified for the next inspection because from Auschwitz if someone didn’t have a job inside the encampment, they had to go out with a transport to, to deep into Germany to man the factories, as we later learned. I couldn’t go in front of Mengele for inspection because I still was limping, and they were selecting the transport. They said we are selecting transport every so often. When the camp was full then they selected the transport and it went out. It was couple of times a week, as I say. If you didn’t have a job then you went into the transport. So I decided that with my limping I can’t stay around, that was my idea, I saved up a couple of portions of my bread, and when the transport was selected, I approached one of the young men, if he would want to change with me. The only difference between us in Auschwitz and the outgoing transport was that they got a flannel uniform, blue and grey striped. It must have been end of November or so, so they were getting flannel uniform, warmer uniform. They had their numbers sewed on their chest and they were tattooed. And so I approached this young man, with my two portions of bread, if he wanted to change suits with me because of my condition I cannot go into inspection and I have to get away from here. He agreed. He took the bread, and he said, “I would have changed with you anyway but the bread is better yet. My father is here and I want to stay here in Auschwitz.” So this is how I got into the transport and I was transferred again with the cattle cars out of Auschwitz to Landsberg.

Harper: I’d like to interrupt you here. I want to go back and get some more detail on what you just told me. Do you remember your first impressions when you arrived at Auschwitz? 
AIGNER: Well, it was barbed wire all around us, even when we were going into the encampment, the road, both sides, were all these encampments and it was dismal. It was, it was, we saw the towers with their machine gun guards on the corners of the encampments. It was just – we were horrified. Maybe, I don’t know, I probably didn’t grasp the intensity of the situation. Being just 15 years old, I was between older people – I call older people 35 and maybe 40ish, 45. And so, it’s, I don’t know; it’s just terrifying but you were herded. You couldn’t stop, you couldn’t go no place. You were trapped, felt trapped. Matter of fact in Auschwitz I saw many, many times, people we not supposed to get out of barrack in night, in the dark. In morning we go out, and countless times, people against the barbed wire holding the electric barbed wire. Because at night it was electricity turned on. I don’t think it was electricity during the daytime. But at night it was electrified. And countless times I saw people hanging on to the electric barbed wire killing themselves. So this is how it was the condition. It was inhuman, and, and terrible. 

Harper: Were you with your mother and sister in the transport to Auschwitz, in the cattle car?
AIGNER: Yes, always we huddled together. We didn’t let each other go. Even for a few meters. 

Harper: And your arrival, you were immediately separated?
AIGNER: Immediately, yes. Men have to go separate, and woman and children. And as we find out the oldsters were separated right away. 

Harper: And do you know what happened to them? Did they go to the gas chamber?
AIGNER: I’m quite sure that’s what happened. I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t see it. It was – well I just told – that first time I just didn’t want to believe that those were crematoriums in the camp. It sunk in later.

Harper: When you were separated that was the last time you saw…
AIGNER: That’s when I saw them last time. 

Harper: Do you remember – what did Mengele look like?
AIGNER: I don’t remember the face. 

Harper: Was he wearing a uniform?
AIGNER: He was in uniform, yes. He was in a white coat, a open coat, with a uniform and a belt on him. And a sidearm. It was so scary you didn’t look up. You didn’t look up and, and beside it was 50 years ago. I don’t remember the face. Even if I see it on a picture, I don’t recall the face. 

Harper: I want to know the exact order of things. Were you put into lines?
AIGNER: Right away we were out, and then these people were selecting out right away, these kapos, they had a stick in their hand, and my mother spoke German and when they yelled out that the woman and children [were to go to] one side and the man on the other side; my mother sent me right away in the mans line. “You have to go there because the woman and children has to stay here.” And I know, you know, she could not survive it because there was some woman who selected out for work too, but she wouldn’t leave my sister by herself. So I know she was taken to the gas chamber at that time, at that point. 

Harper: About how long were you standing out there in the first selection process?
AIGNER: It was very fast. Must have been 4000 people who arrived or something like that, I don’t know. It was a long cattle car. I was in the line, I don’t know, less than an hour. 

Harper: Were the gypsies with you at all?
AIGNER: They were all around us, yes. In the encampment too, yes. 

Harper: So were you standing at this time with just Hungarians? 
AIGNER: Yes.

Harper: And where did they take you to right away?
AIGNER: Right away into this encampment where there was I don’t know exactly how many barracks facing each other. It was a main street. And then a couple of barracks was for the latrine. Only one barrack for the latrine and one for the bathhouse, running water, and kind of cement tub. So that’s where we were able to go to wash off in the morning. And when, you know they, they took all our clothing right away before we got into this encampment. They took us to a place; we had to un-robe. And they gave us the striped uniform. 

Harper: When they gave you the uniform, did they shave you?
AIGNER: They cut my hair, yes.

Harper: Did they give you a tattoo?
AIGNER: No, no. The outgoing transport from Auschwitz were getting the tattoo. We who were inside Auschwitz, and stayed there, until we stayed there, we didn’t have a tattoo. We had a number on our clothes. I don’t remember the number. 100-some thousand. I don’t know the number.

Harper: Do you know if your encampment or your section or your barrack that you were in had a name? 
AIGNER: No. I think they had a number on it, that’s how we recognized the barracks.

Harper: And it was in the camp of Auschwitz. It wasn’t in a satellite camp or…
AIGNER: It was in Auschwitz. You are talking about Birkenau, the satellite beside us. It was very close. 

Harper: But you were in Auschwitz? 
AIGNER: In Auschwitz, yes. 

Harper: And how many people would you say were in your barrack group?
AIGNER: Hundreds. It’s… I can’t even get a number. 600 or so or something like that. 

Harper: It’s a lot?
AIGNER: It was a lot. It was a long barrack; it was I don’t know 70-80 feet long, and bunk beds facing each other with a little alley in between, and a walkway in the middle. And actually was a chimney, a laying down chimney along the barrack, and they used to heat with that laying down chimney. It was built from brick. They used to heat the horse stalls with that chimney. Smoke traveled through, heated up the brick, and that was the heat. But we didn’t use it. We didn’t have wood. And so both side of this brick was a narrow walkway and you were able to sit on the brick chimney when you weren’t in your bed. But see if we would have, if we all stood up we had to come out of the little walkway from the bunk beds, because there was four high, it was 40, 50, 60 people in one of these little…between the bank…I mean between the bunk beds. And so there would have to be 40, 50 people coming down, or 60 people I don’t know exactly – eight to 10 people on a level, four times on each side, that’s eight times – that’s 60, 70, 80 people. 

Harper: In your barrack, who were the people? Were they all Hungarians? Were they all your age?
AIGNER: At first, but then as transport were going out, it were getting mixed. They were bringing in Polish, Romanians, from all over Europe, as the Nazis advanced and they started brining in – so later it was mixed. As I say, I stayed too long in Auschwitz. From July until November or so. And maybe early December, I don’t know. And its ironic I don’t know what it would have been but Auschwitz was I think liberated in ’45 January, so I just left Auschwitz few months before liberation by the Russians. But I don’t know what happened who stayed there or what would have happened with me if I stayed there. 

Harper: When you say it was mixed, were they Jews from other countries, or …
AIGNER: Mainly Jews. But then as I said it was the criminals, it was the gays from Germany, and political prisoners from all over France. So it was, later on it was, that I hardly was able to talk to. Just a few people who I knew. And even though I don’t know them by name anymore, I don’t remember. 

Harper: Would you say they were friends, were you friends?
AIGNER: We were, well we were friends, but everybody we were looking out for themselves, especially when it come to food.

Harper: Did you have a circle of friends or like a support group that maybe helped each other look out for each other?
AIGNER: We all looked out for each other in a way. Like for example if a kapo or a guard came around we warned each other – you know, “He’s coming! Watch out.” But no, I didn’t have a group of friends. As I say, after the first month, all of the people, beside being taken from Csepel, even the Jews who were around me were strangers most of them. And not all of them came from the same transport, for example, from Csepel. They were picked up different times. 

Harper: On the bunks in the barracks, did you have an assigned place every night, did you have to go back to the same…
AIGNER: Yes, yes it was assigned place. And we were sleeping side by side, everybody having a blanket. 

Harper: Did you know the men next to, or above you, or below you?
AIGNER: Yes, yes vaguely. As I say, it was just temporary. I did not have my personal friends there and so I become really a loner. Actually it was that we, we kept friendship without names. Like one of the older fellow when one time I was washing gave me his shaver and said “you better shave off your fuzz from your face so you look older.” Because I was, you know, 15 years old. “You have a better chance,” and I used his shaver so I have some whiskers growing. That’s when I shaved first. There was some camaraderie, but it was such a horrible situation that we just didn’t build friendship there. At least I didn’t. As I say, I was a loner. It was too horrible from day to day. 

Harper: Did you notice – was there a difference in how different prisoners were treated? For example were you treated the same way as the political prisoners? Or did you notice a difference in the…
AIGNER: In Auschwitz it really didn’t matter. You were in concentration camp and you were ordered, you were ordered to move, you were ordered to stop or stand. It did not make any difference of any.  The triangle what we wear, mine was yellow. And I, you know, I tried to blend in. Not to be there when they start beating on the edge or wherever. And I just tried to survive for another day. 

Harper: Did you see people being beaten in front of you?
AIGNER: Yes. Many times. Many times. Scared me, that I would be the next one. And I had been beaten many times, but survived it. It wasn’t a true beating. I got hit several times by a guard on a work detail, didn’t move the way he liked it. And so it’s…I got hit many times, yes. But never got beaten up so to leave me maimed or something, no. 

Harper: Do you remember when you first heard about the gas chambers, the crematorium? Was it immediately, or did it take a while?
AIGNER: Shortly after, few weeks after…it was a disbelief first. It’s, it’s, “No its not happening, it’s not true.” And kind of hushed it behind our thoughts that its not happening. And we were hoping even then that it’s not true. But it sunk in later that…by then we were, at least I was…no feeling. No, no…there was no place to start crying. 

Harper: How about religious observance. Was there any?
AIGNER: I didn’t notice any. There might have been, but no, I did not myself, no. 

Harper: Did you ever have a discussion about religion with anyone?
AIGNER: Not that I recall. We just, if we were talking we were questioning, “Why us”?

Harper: What was your first work assignment?
AIGNER: It was the work detail I was taking all the barrels every morning, pushing the flat wagon. And then cleaning the camp area. And then actually I was in Auschwitz probably less than a month. I got into the kitchen or so, yes. And then I worked three months in the kitchen then what happened with my foot, I couldn’t, and then a month, a month and a half later I was gone from Auschwitz. 

Harper: How did you get the kitchen job?
AIGNER: They came around and asked people for work. And the this kapo came around and he says, “I need 10 people for kitchen work.” And I happened to be by him. I put up my hand. 

Harper: Would you say the kitchen job was a good job?
AIGNER: Well, it was OK until I got hit with the pitchfork. We were able to sit down and cut potatoes, and even talk between us. It was ok, yes. But as I say, the only food I got was raw potato and cabbage, so it was, and the regular meals.