Holocaust Survivor: Shalom Reichman

Born 1919 in Mezokovacshaza village, Hungary. Jewish life in area. Conscripted into Hungarian Army cavalry, then to labour units. In Munkacs, Nagybanya, Sasregem. Discharged, re-conscripted at Margitta. Work in Budapest area. Assigned to east. In Scole region till September 1944. March toward Austrian border. Work at Nagykaniza till March 1945. Death march toward Mauthausen. Liberated at Gunskirchen. Return to Mezokovacshaza. Bnai Akiva religious Zionist youth movement training camp. To Israel, 1948.

The Liberation

We were liberated at Gunskirchen early in May. The first moments of the liberation that is a story in itself. I almost lost my life then. Right after the liberation my friend and I saw people helping themselves to margarine, synthetic honey, bread. My friend said that we should go grab some for ourselves, only whoever carried bread in the open was taking a chance. People pounced on you and everybody got filthy in the mud you, those who pounced on you, the bread, and nobody got to eat it.

A few days before the liberation I removed a knapsack from somebody who had died and found toothpaste in it. That was a good thing. I and my friend licked it several times a day, to have a good taste in our mouths. I made a deal to give away the knapsack in exchange for half a sugar beet, only the knapsack was taken but I never got the sugar beet. In the early days of the liberation my friend sent me to "get something too." I saw people attacking the warehouses and stockrooms. I took my knapsack and went foraging. I found a supply of sugar beet and filled my knapsack with it. Then I found salt. What a find salt! A very important item. You could get anything in exchange for salt. I filled both pockets with salt. In the stockrooms I found a German army coat and a duffel bag, which I also filled with pieces of sugar beet. As I headed back, some Jew came toward me carrying a gun. It seems that the departing Germans had left some weapons behind, and some of the Jews had helped themselves to guns. He came toward me: "What have you got there?" I said: "Here, you want it? Take it." I left him all my treasures. When I got back my friend yelled at me: "Everybody else brings margarine, sugar and you?!..." I went back for another try.

In the course of these searches I found sugar. There were stockrooms of sugar, mountains of sugar. I immediately sensed that it was sugar, as I had been a grocer in Hungary. I took some and tasted it. Sugar! And I immediately started eating. Suddenly I took hold of myself: "What are you doing? We've been liberated! Why are you pouncing on the sugar that way?" I found a small towel and filled it with two kilograms of sugar, and then I tied up the towel and hid it under the sugar beet, so no one should see it. My friend said: "That's all you brought?! Why didn't you dump the beet and bring sugar instead?" I went back to bring more sugar. This time there was a mob there, only the sugar sack wasn't open. It was like when a fire breaks out inside a house, and everybody charges the door to try to break out, only the door opens inward, so they can't open it. It was impossible to open the sugar sack, because nobody would let go of it. I said: "Get off the sack! Let's lift it up! Let's open it!" Nobody would budge. I was almost trampled to death. I said to myself: "To hell with the sugar, we're free! I don't want to die now!" There was no place for me to budge, but somehow I don't know how I mustered all my strength and managed to get out from under the mountain of people covering me.

The sugar I brought came in handy. We had something to eat. Only the next day we were very thirsty, and there was no drinking water in the camp. There was a filthy brook, but no water to drink. We traded a cup of sugar for half a cup of water which had to do for my friend and me.

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