Holocaust Survivor: Joshua Yehoshua Amsel

Born 1922 in Nyirbeltek, Hungary. There and in Budapest till April 1943. Forced-labor unit at Zombor, spring 1943. Bor, Yugoslavia, July. Changes in Hungarian command and worsening treatment of Jews, April 1944. March from Bor to Belgrade and massacre at Cservenka, September 1944. Labor camps at Mohacs and Szentkiraly Szabadia. Camps in Germany Uhrdorf and Bergen-Belsen till liberation. Zionist training camp in Hungary till move to Israel, 1948.

What life was like there

On November 25 we travelled to Uhrdorf. At that stage I already realized what was going on in the camps. I had been right in the Valley of Slaughter and still I had not believed that human beings were capable of such things. There was one positive thing about me: I didn't want to die. I may have that to thank for my survival. Already in November I saw the Allied airplanes. I reckoned that the war would soon be over. I told myself: "Yehoshua, we're going to try our hardest. You don't have to die." But how do you do this? At Uhrdorf, the Nazi command staff was helped to run things by prisoners assigned to various jobs as Blockaelteste (block chiefs) and Zimmeraelteste (room chiefs), and also as kitchen staff. Ukrainians and Russians worked in the kitchens. The Russians were comparatively decent. The Ukrainians were terrible. I think that group included some Jews. I knew of one Jew, a Communist, and several times I wanted to go over to him and ask for a job in the kitchen, but I was afraid I might be made a kapo, and people in that post were in the habit of hitting and harassing people, and sometimes even killing.

Every morning we walked from camp to the nearby town. From there we rode about 20-30 kilometers. We were laying a rail line. When we set out for work, we would be given a loaf of bread for every five men, and on our return in the evening we got two bowls of soup. The work was overseen by SS men who patrolled the area. There were two problems: hunger and cold. The cold was the more serious problem. We had cloth hats, like those bakers wear, one pair of pants, a battle jacket and a belt to protect the kidneys a flannel strip, to keep the cold out. That was all we wore.>

One day a Jew from Munkacs, who felt very cold, came over alongside me. We were working with pickaxes and the ground was frozen. He didn't work, and actually I didn't either. But as soon as I saw the SS man approaching, I would lift my pickaxe and let it fall. One day the SS man noticed that the Jew beside me wasn't doing any work, and he ordered me in German to show the man what to do. I explained to that Munkacs Jew in Hungarian how to do the job: "You lift the pickaxe and bring it down, lift and down," and I added, in Hungarian, "tov bb is," meaning, "and so on." At this the SS man drew his pistol from his holster and cocked it. "Why, Kamerad?" I asked as calmly as I could. "You're a Communist," he replied. "You said `tovarisch'" [the Russian Communist salutation meaning `comrade']. I explained that what I had said was "tov bb is," Hungarian for "and so on," and that he could confirm this by asking anyone who spoke Hungarian.

He returned the pistol to the holster. From this you can tell what little value life had there: nothing, zero. Such things happened. What could a person do at such moments, run away? There was nowhere to run. It's a good thing I was capable of asking "Why?" If I had tried to run, he'd have killed me.

back to top of page

back to Holocaust Testimonies Homepage

back to top of page

Previous Articles