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Oral history interview with Aranka Ferenc

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1994.144.1 | RG Number: RG-50.112.0001

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    Oral history interview with Aranka Ferenc
    Transcript
    --punishment.
    But she went to see her parents to make
    sure they were cared for.
    And she went to Budapest.
    And 50 years ago this March, the Nazis captured this young girl.
    And this lady, she went through a lot.
    And she will tell us about it today.
    She's here to tell us all about her life story.
    And I'd like to introduce, with no-- without any further ado,
    Mrs. Aranka Ferenc.
    She'll tell you her life story.
    Please welcome her.
    [APPLAUSE]
    Thank you.
    And hello to everybody.
    My name is Aranka Ferenc.
    I came-- I was born in Czechoslovakia,
    in a small country of 35,000 people.
    And my sister and my brother was in Hungary, Budapest.
    And my sister was working there and asked me
    if I would come over.
    Can you hear?
    Yes.
    So I said I'll go there.
    So I went there March 19.
    And the next morning, the German came in.
    So I want I go home right away because I
    left at home over there, parents, my parents.
    But my sister had a Gentile boyfriend.
    And he said, don't go.
    I will hide you.
    I said, no way.
    I left my parents alone.
    I have to go home.
    So sure, I went to the train station, and they got me.
    So they put me in a jail called [NON-ENGLISH] in Hungary.
    I was there six weeks in the jail.
    Just like you open a can of fish, this way
    we were one on each other, so no place.
    I was there six weeks.
    And from there-- excuse me.
    I'm diabetic.
    I have to drink if my mouth is dry.
    Then after six weeks, they took us
    in the concentration camp, Auschwitz.
    In the train, those were wagons.
    They put one big bucket to use if you
    have to go to the toilet.
    The people was one over each other,
    so many was in one wagon.
    That started in the morning.
    And we arrived to Auschwitz next morning.
    So all day, all night we're on the train.
    And we arrived in Auschwitz.
    Then the people there was Mengele called,
    who separated the people--
    the right then, the older people, the children, and they
    left, the younger.
    And I was on the left.
    So didn't take too long, we heard screaming.
    So they put them in a field.
    They throw-- not throw-- poured the gasoline on them
    and then a fire.
    So they burned there.
    The first thing for us who was on the left side, they took us.
    They take all those clothes, shaved all the hair.
    And next come they gave me numbers.
    They put the numbers.
    So the second day, we have to go to work, right away.
    That's the second day.
    We were standing outside the--
    the moon still was out, out early in the morning.
    We were standing two hours every day.
    Here they count the people.
    Went to work-- we were building highways.
    And those houses was bombed, have to clean up everything.
    We didn't get in the morning nothing to eat.
    But for lunch, we had a bowl, about a half a gallon,
    liquid goes in there.
    From that, six people had to drink.
    And we hit each other because, you see, you take it,
    you pass them.
    I take it, you pass them.
    You know?
    Then when we went home and had to stay like the soldier in one
    line, so they're counting us.
    That was again took two hours till they count all over.
    And-- and we came home.
    We get one toast, one bread toast, and a teaspoon jam.
    And that was the dinner.
    And then for lunch, that supper--
    that soup, [? bucket ?] soup.
    So it was very hard.
    We were living inside like the basic, like the soldiers live.
    You know, they have the bunk beds.
    We had also, but there was one side four girls
    sleep, other side, another four girl, and in one bunk, blanket.
    I am so sorry.
    We didn't have no pillow, no under, nothing.
    Then when we had to go in the morning to wash up ourselves,
    sometimes we couldn't wash because wasn't too much
    faucet and many people.
    Maybe we could wash our hand or face.
    That was all.
    And after a half a year, they took us to take a shower.
    So we were naked there and bathing,
    and cold was there and waiting.
    Then they let out the water, so just make us wet.
    They give soap.
    We put on the soap, and that's all-- no more water.
    So we had to go back.
    The water was on us.
    We had only one dress, no under, no stockings, and no shoes,
    even in the winter.
    We barely wore that.
    But that was it.
    I had a sister.
    She died already.
    She was already in the gas chamber.
    They put the others who are waiting.
    And they were waiting, waiting to open the gas.
    And suddenly, they came and all there stop it.
    This way she survived.
    I was there in Auschwitz concentration camp
    from '44 April, '45 May.
    We were traveling Bergen-Belsen, Malchow, here, back and forth
    on the train.
    Many people survived because open was the wagon, you know?
    So they survived.
    But we don't know if they survived or not,
    but they jumped out.
    I was afraid to jump out.
    I figured when I'm going, where I'm going to go?
    I don't know where I am.
    So we take-- they took-- the dead people
    we have to carry, and dig a hole and put them in there.
    And they-- nobody can be sick.
    Who was sick, they took to the doctor,
    but they never came back.
    So once I had a very bad toothache.
    And I said, I have to go to the doctor.
    So they took me.
    And we're sitting, and Mengele coming in.
    I don't know even till today how I escaped from them.
    But I escaped-- escaped.
    Who was dead, they were all in the this chamber.
    It was very hard, especially in the winter--
    no gloves, no nothing.
    You have to pick up those bricks and clean up
    those houses that were bombed, you know, pick up everything.
    We been hiding.
    They did everything to the girls,
    but you just can't imagine.
    So finally, the last couple of days, the Russians
    will come in but the German was still going.
    And I had a sister.
    And she said, I'm not going any further.
    I can't.
    So I grabbed her clothes by the neck and was pulling her.
    Who couldn't come, they shot right away.
    And the-- what else [INAUDIBLE]?
    My mind is still blocked.
    So it was-- it was very hard.
    Yeah, we were traveling about 160 kilometers, several hundred
    mile in the rain.
    And we stopped at night for two hours.
    We were sleeping on the wet leaves that was in the forest.
    But the Russian was behind us, so we were still going.
    So finally they came, so we survived.
    But after that was the same thing.
    The Russian took over.
    Oh, we were happy.
    We were free.
    So the people, from Hungary, from the Russia,
    from Poland, all over, so they got home.
    And I didn't.
    And I said, why?
    Because now after the war, where I was born,
    they belonged to the Russian.
    And they said, you are home.
    You don't need to go home.
    You belongs to us.
    So they wanted us to go to work.
    We didn't want that.
    And they said you volunteered for the German.
    So we didn't go to work.
    They didn't give any food.
    So I was there eight months more after the liberation.
    I think that.
    And I heard one man back from Czechoslovakia,
    from the government, a piece of paper
    that he can get from his family if he asked them.
    Oh, I'm talking like this.
    So I find that out, and I ask him
    if he could take me to his family.
    When we were going looking for food, I find a gold watch.
    And I said, here is that gold watch.
    I'll give it to you.
    I heard my brother is home, or a sister,
    and you will get more money.
    Just take me to your family.
    So he did.
    And this way I got home.
    Otherwise, I don't know how long we would be there.
    And then we were going to work.
    When we see a garbage can, we were looking for food,
    for rotten food, potato peeling, whatever we could get.
    We look for it.
    So it was very difficult.
    A thousand and million times I asked the Lord, please,
    take me.
    I can't take it anymore.
    Please, take me.
    I was 21 years old at that time.
    So it was miserable.
    And I am surprised that so many countries,
    they couldn't get rid of Hitler.
    And he put the--
    how you say what the-- excuse me.
    I'm not good in English.
    He could do everything, whatever he wanted.
    And that's the funniest thing.
    His wife was Jewish.
    Eva Braun, she was Jewish.
    But she died with him.
    So then they, after the war-- excuse me.
    After the war, so I came home.
    I heard my brother and my sister in Budapest, so I went there.
    But they said they can't keep me because they have nothing
    to keep me alive or something.
    They didn't [INAUDIBLE] eat or nothing.
    And I had a sister in Czechoslovakia with two boys.
    And she was hiding.
    One woman hide her, so she came home, her husband too.
    So I went there.
    So I was there.
    Then I met my husband then in Czechoslovakia.
    And in the concentration camp, I got TB.
    And we were going, and he said he wants marry me.
    You know, when you get married and then you get sick,
    you have no choice.
    But when you know ahead, you just
    take a sick woman in the bed.
    He said, never mind, I still think.
    I said, the doctor said--
    I didn't have money--
    I have to go in the mountain that the TBs go.
    You know, that the TB.
    So he took me there.
    And I was six weeks.
    He paid for it, everything.
    So we married in '48, 1948.
    And the [INAUDIBLE] for the situation
    there in Czechoslovakia, so we couldn't
    come in America, not in Israel.
    But somehow, my brother-in-law, he was a big man there,
    he managed it so we got to Israel.
    It's a beautiful land.
    I wish everybody would go there.
    It's gorgeous.
    The people, you say, very nice.
    My daughter, they're just going in November there, Israel.
    And the-- we were there.
    We had the living.
    But we say we couldn't get there or nothing, just the daily
    that we needed.
    So we want to come to America.
    My husband had here three sisters.
    Sure, they wasn't pleased that he married a Jewish woman.
    He was asking for a affidavit.
    And she said, I'll give you but not
    for your wife or your child.
    And my husband said, I didn't pick them up on the street.
    They belong to me.
    Then my brother because, he was also there too long,
    so he got somehow and he went there.
    He came to America.
    But he came first.
    And I had to stay 2 and 3/4 year in Israel along with
    my daughter because I had diabetes-- diabetes, no--
    tuberculosis.
    And they didn't want to take in, America.
    They didn't want.
    So then they-- they took everything.
    They sent the papers and the X-rays, is French, everything.
    And then they let out.
    But on the ship, we were the last ones.
    They didn't want let us in.
    I couldn't speak Hebrew.
    I couldn't speak English.
    I didn't know how to-- somehow I managed then and somehow came
    in my mind.
    I said my pictures, X-ray, they went to French, and they
    [INAUDIBLE].
    Oh, then good.
    So they let me out.
    Sure, we had a hard time.
    When you go in a new country, you don't know the language.
    But we managed it.
    My husband worked.
    He didn't let me work because he said, your work is done.
    That was in the concentration camp.
    He was a wonderful husband and father.
    He was sick 10 years.
    I take good care of him.
    And he died.
    And I was very sick.
    I was living in Chicago and my daughter here.
    And she said, Mother, I can't take care of you long distance.
    Or you stay there, or you move here.
    I didn't want far away from Chicago because my heart break.
    I left my husband there in the cemetery.
    But I had no choice.
    But thank God, I have very good friend in Chicago.
    They going out very often to the grave, to the cemetery.
    And they bring flowers, everything.
    I have Gentile and Jewish friends.
    Everybody's wonderful.
    So we came here.
    And the beginning, I was sad.
    But now I am happy that I am here.
    Thank God, my husband made a good living
    so I can live comfortable here.
    So I was living with my daughter six months.
    And now, last year, I became here
    in the country [? meadow ?] with [INAUDIBLE]..
    And that's my life story.
    It's been-- [LAUGHS]
    [INAUDIBLE],, can you tell us how you dealt with some--
    tell them how [INAUDIBLE] how [INAUDIBLE] about--
    how you deal with all that happened
    to you and your questions to God and all that.
    I have it-- I had to be.
    I think because all the pain.
    Anyway, you couldn't do nothing.
    So I took it everyday what it came.
    Does anybody want to ask some question?
    You've got to open it to [INAUDIBLE] the front.
    OK.
    Just [INAUDIBLE] and take a picture.
    OK then.
    Thank you very much for coming.
    And I wish and I hope and pray God, none of you
    will go through what I went through because was it a hell.
    It really was a hell.
    Even today, sometimes I'm thinking, how in the world
    I survived it.
    Thank you.
    Many, many people died.
    Many, many, many.
    It was miserable.
    When I came home, when I put under my pillow
    potatoes, the peel and potatoes, the next morning
    I slice it and put over the bread.
    So it was very good because of the [INAUDIBLE]
    Mother, tell them about how many of your family members survived
    and how many died and--
    My mother, my father, two sisters, and nieces, nephews--
    many, many.
    We were 13 children.
    I was the last one.
    So from that came back seven, six girls and one boy.
    I had two more brothers, but they died there.
    One brother, I heard that he shot a German soldier
    and they shot him too.
    The other brother who is alive, he
    said he was swimming, he don't know how far, under the water,
    over the water, under.
    So this way he survived.
    Tell him what happened to [PERSONAL NAME] daughter
    so they can see the cruelty of humanity.
    Who?
    [PERSONAL NAME] daughter.
    Oh, she went also to concentration camp,
    and they take her.
    Wasn't she boiled, put into a pot of boiling oil
    because that's what [PERSONAL NAME] had said.
    No, no, no.
    How old was she?
    She was 10?
    11 years old.
    11?
    OK.
    Well, that's what she told me.
    Every day, when we were marching [INAUDIBLE],,
    we heard the screaming because it wasn't--
    didn't go so fast in the crematorium.
    So they had to burn with the gasoline fire and burn.
    It was so many they did every day.
    And once I was working here and there's a gate.
    And they're working the [INAUDIBLE]..
    And we were crying.
    And we said, what are you crying?
    I just burned my father in the crematorium.
    On one of my trips to Germany, we went to Dachau.
    And we asked, you know, where is Dachau?
    And nobody would tell us.
    There are no directional signs on where
    Dachau is because people denied that it happened.
    Well, we did finally find it.
    And we saw the crematoriums.
    And the people around it said it was just a factory.
    It was never a camp.
    And people were not killed.
    But yet, the crematoriums were there.
    So they denied it.
    So if you go to Germany today, you will not-- no one will
    admit to where Dachau is.
    You have to find it accidentally, which we did.
    Yeah.
    The crematorium was burning day and night, day and night.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I can get [INAUDIBLE] Russian wasn't better than the Germans.
    They didn't tell us nothing.
    We have to go out, look for food.
    On the street was lying a dead horse.
    We cut the meat, and we cooked.
    It was good.
    Who were liberated with the Americans,
    they had a good life.
    But we had just the same [INAUDIBLE]..
    If you didn't go out to work, they didn't feed you.
    But even if they fed you, wasn't too much.
    They just said keep you alive.
    And I was about 70 pounds, skin and bones.
    Yeah.
    When you were working, how were they decide when you work?
    Did you just work as long as you could and then they--
    If you couldn't work any longer, they shot you.
    Oh, they shot.
    I was wondering how they decided who was killed and who wasn't.
    No.
    When you work outside and you couldn't work further,
    they shot you.
    Two times, two girls and two boys try to escape.
    And they got them.
    So the whole camp had to come out to see.
    And they were hanging--
    two girls and two boys.
    Later, when my family came out, they
    were lucky, those people, because they
    were one month inside.
    They didn't have to go work.
    But when I came, the next day, go to work.
    And once we'd be--
    be-- and we were living hidden or something.
    No, we nothing.
    When you had to go so long with almost no food and then
    once you were free and able to eat food,
    did it take your body a long time to get back to normal?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes.
    Did it do permanent damage?
    Oh, yeah.
    I had many damage.
    That's what I am feeling now.
    I have all kind of sickness, whatever you want to mention.
    I have everything.
    Where was the concentration camp you were in?
    I didn't hear you.
    Where was the concentration camp you were in?
    [CROSS TALK]
    OK.
    Where was the concentration camp?
    She was then Auschwitz, is in Poland.
    It was in Poland, yes, Auschwitz.
    It was a very, very big camp.
    And they had people in the Malchow,
    where I was still very, very [INAUDIBLE]..
    The 1st of May and November 20th, when I came out.
    So till that time, I was with the Russians.
    Yeah.
    Auschwitz was known as the death camp
    that you did not come out alive.
    Yeah?
    Auschwitz was known as the death camp.
    You did not come out alive.
    Oh, yes.
    That was the reputation.
    I came out.
    Yeah, because they were liberated.
    But the reputation was that you did not--
    you did not come out alive.
    No.
    No.
    Thank you then.
    How did you [INAUDIBLE].
    Oh, just got the order, so no more [INAUDIBLE]..
    She was-- no, she survived.
    OK.
    [CROSS TALK]
    Oh, they're put in the gas chamber.
    They put the gas line in the--
    You don't know how long?
    No.
    We just heard the scream as leaving.
    And when the transportation came, they had beautiful music.
    Oh, what a place we are coming.
    They played the violin and all kind of music.
    But every two months they change the people.
    And let's say who was playing today, and in two months
    others.
    And those who are playing today, they would be [INAUDIBLE]..
    Mother.
    Yeah, tell them why you received a tattoo.
    Put us in the number, so that my number, it's 80,374.
    That day was the time when I came in.
    And the--
    That was a way that they used to identify people.
    You became a number instead of a, you know, a person.
    So when they called roll, they said, OK, 85,000 blah blah
    blah.
    You know.
    All day, when we were standing us, standing in the line
    that they count us, they didn't go like that, 1, 2, 3.
    They called the number.
    And my sister, they put her where I was also.
    She had different number.
    And she was hard hearing.
    And when they called me number, and one time I forgot it.
    Why I got those--
    those, know, like when you go on the horse race and those things
    you're hitting because I forgot all this.
    And I was lucky.
    I had very small numbers.
    Some had one that's big.
    That's very small, you know, the number.
    But the-- it was very, very miserable.
    How did the number on your arm [INAUDIBLE]??
    They tattoo.
    Wasn't [INAUDIBLE].
    Sure, it hurts.
    But who cares what it says?
    No matters.
    It doesn't take [INAUDIBLE] have to do that.
    And that's all.
    All right.
    This is [INAUDIBLE] again for Mrs. Ferenc.
    [APPLAUSE]
    Before we give you a hand, I'd like to thank you personally
    for your coming.
    Thank you very much.
    I appreciate that for inviting.
    I hope they learned something.
    And I hope and I pray they won't go through what I did.
    Today there's much talk in the world about different heroes,
    who are people's heroes.
    Folks like you are our heroes.
    OK.
    Thank you very much.
    We would like to thank you for coming
    and your bravery in sharing, reliving some of that.
    I don't know if you travel and if you
    share your story very often.
    But for us--
    That's the first.
    This is the first time?
    Yeah, first time.
    For us to hear from you, we're not sure what questions to ask.
    But it shows a lot of bravery and a lot about your person
    to come and live that again and share it with us.
    We'd like to thank you very, very much.
    Thank you.
    I appreciate that also.
    Thank you very much.
    [APPLAUSE]
    Let's not make her cry anymore.
    Talking with her, I asked her about her feelings
    toward the Germans and her feelings toward God
    about all this.
    And one thing I really appreciate
    that she talked-- so she said to me, she said, I don't have any.
    I don't have any hate.
    I don't harbor any hate toward those people.
    She said, what would the point of that be?
    So I hope that, before I turn this back over
    to Mrs. [PERSONAL NAME],, I'd like you to remember everything
    that she said.
    And let's all pray, just as she said, and beg God
    that something like this never, ever happens
    again anywhere in the world.
    Mrs. [PERSONAL NAME],, shall I turn it back to you?
    Thank you very much.
    Thank you very much.
    [INAUDIBLE] should we break now, and then come right back.
    Then we'll go into the rest of our seminar.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Aranka Ferenc
    Date
    interview:  1994 September 30

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

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    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Ferenc, Aranka.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Aranka Ferenc donated the oral testimony to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in December 1994.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:13:27
    This page:
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