Josef's Story

1) I was born on 27 April 1930 in Velicky Bockov, Czechoslovakia.

2) My parents had nine children; I was the only son.

3) In 1938, our teachers were replaced by Hungarian teachers who were trained in Nazi beliefs. Children who had been my friends would no longer talk to me.

4) In the spring of 1940, the Hungarian soldiers working under the command of the Germans, ordered us to leave our homes.

5) We were pushed, shoved, kicked and beaten in the direction of the railway station where a train of cattle wagons was waiting for us.

6) They took us to Poland where we were placed in a camp.

7) I was taken to Cracow-Plaszow concentration camp.

8) In late 1942 I was taken to Auschwitz.

9) Later I was transported to Dachau in open train wagons.

10) One day, people were rounded up once again and I was sent to Belsen.

11) In 1943, I was put on another transport to Gross Rosen camp in Lower Silesia.

12) By the end of 1944 about 5,000 of us started out on a death march.

13) We eventually stumbled into Buchenwald camp.

14) It was sixteen days before my fifteenth birthday.