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family had lived in the region for many generations. The gendarmes said that they were simply following orders. My grandmother helped to pack food while my mother gathered other necessities for our departure. Whenthe gendarmes were distracted, my grandfather slipped my mother and Aunt Irene a handful of money. The gendarmes then walked us out of our yard; my dog Farkas had to be restrained by my grandfather.
    I was thirteen years old, Eugene was ten, and Alfred was six. We were now a group of five travelling into the unknown, and we felt frightened and powerless. My father and Uncle Eugene were still at the labour battalion in southern Hungary, hundreds of kilometres away, and they didn’t have any idea that this was happening. The gendarmes took us to the railway station, where some fifteen other families were being held with their bundles; there were approximately eighty people in total. We were eventually loaded into an open cattle car with two gendarmes who sat with their feet dangling over the edge. We were jostled about in the car and tried to make ourselves somewhat comfortable. We had no idea where we were going or how long the journey would take.
    The first stop was the city of Kassa, about sixty kilometres away. There, our cattle car was attached to another transport that already had several cars loaded with people. We travelled on, eventually arriving at a station called Szatmár-Némety in Transylvania. Some minutes after our arrival, several local Jewish men and women appeared to distribute fruit, bread, and water to us. This was a wonderful gesture on their part as we were in great need of food, and I wondered how they had learned of our plight. We remained in the car at this station all night. We had only two buckets to use as toilets, and when they were full, someone got off the train and emptied them. Being in close quarters with so many others was beginning to wear us down, and the sleep deprivation and other irritations began to show.
    The next day we travelled in a northeastern direction along the Tisza River, toward the Karpathian Mountains. At this point, after three days in the open car, the nights were feeling quite chilly. The older people were full of groans and aches and pains, and we all missed our home comforts and freedom of movement. We reached the next stop, a place called Máramaros-Sziget, in the middle of the night. Our transport was shunted to a siding, where we stood the whole of the next day without movement. I began to wonder anxiously if it would be better to get where we were going or stay where we were.
    That evening the train started up again, and we realized it was going back in the opposite direction. Eventually, we arrived again at Szatmár-Némety, and miraculously the Jewish citizens supplied us, again, with food and water. It was hard for us to understand the manoeuvring of our captors. We hoped that we might be returning home, and we were very disappointed when the train moved once more to Máramaros-Sziget. This time, the track beside us had a military hospital train loaded with injured Hungarian soldiers coming from the Russian front. I recall one heavily bandaged officer who hatefully yelled out to us in Hungarian, “You stinking Jews, you will be swimming in the Dniester River like fallen leaves.” His outburst was frightening and strange to me.
    The train continued its journey along the Tisza River beside the Karpathian Mountains and eventually arrived at a town called Raho. By now, we had been travelling for nearly six days, and we were eager to get out of the boxcar. The train continued on to a small station called Kőrösmező. This was the end of the line for us, and we were finally able to gather our bundles and leave the boxcar.
    There were eight hundred to a thousand of us milling about, and Hungarian military police officers soon took charge. They ordered us to start climbing a steep, rocky road. With great difficulty, we arrived at a