Magyar News, 2001. szeptember-2002. augusztus (12. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2002-01-01 / 5. szám
Lagers -but in reality, the entire Soviet Union was one Gulag, concentration camps ~ one after another. Taj set was a distributing lager, here they separated the political prisoners from the criminal prisoners. I was a political prisoner. They numbered us, we weren't people, we were numbers. From Tajset they sent the prisoners to other lagers, to build the Baykal- Amur railroad line." Did you recuperate? "Very slowly. I became so weak, they first put me in a sewing center. It was relatively warm in that barracks. I was in a rather good situation. Not for Long. As soon as I regained my strength, they took me to the lager at Bratsk, to build the railroad line. The prisoners built everything. Japanese prisoners of war had started to build the barracks, we continued." Did they make women also do heavy work? "And how! We did everything, from road-building to quarrying stone. We cut down 20-foot trees in the swampy forest. The diameter of the trees was such that we could load only two or three on to a large truck. We got up early in the morning, we worked 12 hours. Can you imagine that it is possible to wash yourself in a soup-can full of water? Well, that's how much we got for washing ourselves every day. In the winter, we washed ourselves in the snow. The cold was awful. Although the lager was surrounded by forest, still we often had nothing to heat with. From cutting down trees, everybody brought back a piece of wood under his arm, but if the soldiers had no firewood, they would make us drop the wood in front of the gate, and we went into the cold barracks. The quilted clothes, the so-called 'pufajka', protected us somewhat from the cold, but the lice once again swarmed all over us." Did many die? "A vast number. Already on the way there, then the Siberian frost took many victims. They gave us food twice a day, bread in the morning. If we fulfilled our quota, then we got our ration, 750 grams (about a pound and a half). It was sticky, glutinous, like flour paste, but we usually wolfed it down, otherwise it would be stolen. Supper consisted of frozen liquid heated lukewarm, this just barely kept us alive. Those who didn't fulfill their quota got 400 grams (less than a pound) for the whole day." Did you hope you'd get home sometime? "We lost all hope, but we could not give up. Those who considered that this was the end, died. The last part was the most difficult. Zajarsk was the last lager. We were working on the farther shore of the Angara, there was no bridge there then. In the winter, the river froze nine feet deep. They laid the tracks on the ice, and thus transported the prisoners across to the quarry. That was awful. We blasted rock, we quarried, one week during the night, the next week during the day. They used us for everything, just as they did the men. In the summer, we emptied latrines, shoveled, in the winter, in 50 degrees below zero, we used pickaxes. We stank so badly nobody could stay close to us. I couldn't tell you what kept us alive, since we didn't even hope of ever getting home. Because those whose time was up were not allowed to go home, but were resettled in the Far East, in the area of Irkutsk." You were a young girl. Wasn't there any romance during those eight years? "After they separated us from the men, you couldn't talk about love, women didn't interest me. I first met my husband in the distributing lager, in Tajset, in the hospital. Then we didn't see each other until 1953. In those days, our attention was focused on how to get food, not on the opposite sex." You returned home to Hungary 47 years ago, on a cold winter day, December 13th, 1953. Why did they let you go? "Stalin had died. We were building a railroad line. Usually, they counted us when we woke up, they counted us when we went out the gate, where we were slaving away, and it went on like that, until we got into our bunk beds. The password of the one handing us over was: T hand over the enemies of the people,' and the one receiving us said, T have taken over the enemies of the people.' Anyone who stepped out of line was shot. Well, at one evening's count, they started to read a list of names -they never did this, because we were merely numbers -and strangely enough, they read Hungarian and German names. They called on us to get our things together and to assemble at an empty barracks. We told each other, they're taking us to another lager. But an officer came in, and told us we were going home. We didn't believe him, they had deceived us so many times. Next day, however, they didn't take us to work, we started to get better food, they brought the women from other lagers to us too. We started to hope. They let the Germans go sooner, they took me, a Swabian girl, to interpret for them, because the Germans had refused to learn Russian. Then we believed we would be going home. Finally, the train pulled into the lager, and it started out toward Lemberg." Did you go on from there? "So I thought. We arrived in Lemberg at the beginning of July. I was happy to be getting home for my feastday (July 22nd. Trans.). But it didn't happen that way. Meanwhile, hundreds of transports filled with prisoners came to Lemberg from various parts of the Soviet Union. The other nationalities traveled on, but Mátyás Rákosi didn't want to accept us. We waited for 6 months until -following Soviet orders -we were finally able to get home. The Soviets handed over the Gulag people to the Hungarians at Csap. We went from the frying pan into the fire. We were handed over to the ÁVO, they took 22 women and 1,500 men to Sóstó near Nyíregyháza in Szabolcs County. After being kept prisoner for a week, a man named Ledvánszky warned us: we must thank Comrade Mátyás Rákosi that we could come home, but we must not forget: we may not say a word about what had happened, or else we would find ourselves back where we had been. After this we went home." Who was waiting for you at home? "Previous to this, I had met my husband again in Lemberg, in the prison hospital. He was lying there with tuberculosis, but our love picked up where it had left off eight years previously in the hospital in Siberia. He got home sooner. As my train was late, he waited for two days at the Nyugati (Western) Railroad Station in Budapest. I received ten forints allowance, so we were able to take the streetcar to my parents' at Bartók Béla Avenue, but there we were told they had moved to Alkotmány Street. We didn't find them at the address we had been given. We combed the entire street, until we found the correct address. They lived on the fifth floor. We rang the bell. I had a scarf on my head, heavy boots on my feet, wearing the quilted "pufajka". My mother opened the door. I pulled back, my fiance stepped in; he greeted my mother, then asked her, what she would say if her daughter came home. Both my brothers were in captivity, one had already returned home, the other had been resettled in Germany, she knew nothing about me. She had thought I had died, she even had Mass said for me, so she asked this unknown man to leave her alone. Then I stepped forward. She had to be helped to a chair, she almost fainted. We cried for several minutes on each other's shoulder. I was twenty-five years old." When you think back on those eight years in the Gulag, what was your most harrowing experience? "The whole thing was harrowing, to this day I cannot come to terms with what had happened. I always ask why was it me that ended up there, when I had done nothing." If we consider the crimes against humanity, is there any difference between the people persecuted by Nazism and Communism? "There is no difference, but we experience discrimination in treatment. People are much more preoccupied with the victims of Nazism than with us. While they receive different types of restitution and indemnification, we get hardly anything. We are barely even mentioned, although more than one hundred thousand Hungarians suffered and died in the Gulag camps." Have you forgiven? "I have forgiven individual people, but not the Soviet authorities, not Communism: they ruined my life." The original article was published in January 2001, much earlier than the terrorist attack. Page 5
