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If they ask you how old you are, say 16!Imre Kertész was born at the end of 1929 in Budapest. He was a Jewish high school student and in the spring of 1944 was deported with thousands of others to Auschwitz concentration camp. He survived only because an older prisoner shouted to him upon arrival: "If they ask you how old you are, say 16!" 
Children up to 15 years old, the elderly, and the sick were immediately "selected out," and he witnessed some of them being beaten to death or shot, but all the others who were "selected out" were murdered in the gas chambers. He was transferred with many other able-bodied prisoners to Buchenwald concentration camp and from there to the Wille subcamp near Zeitz, initially with the first slightly over 100 prisoners to Gleina, later to the tent camp at the Brabag (opposite the later propane bottle reception area), and from December 31, 1944, to the Rehmsdorf concentration camp barracks. Because he collapsed during the hard labor at BRABAG on a daily march on February 18, 1945, an SS man wanted to shoot him. My grandfather, who as a chemical foreman had to accompany these marches, stepped in front of the boy and said to the SS man: "Don’t shoot him, he is one of my best workers! You have to shoot me first!" and stood in front of the boy, thus saving his life. Later, the sick boy was taken to the infirmary barracks in Buchenwald and survived again when the concentration camp prisoners freed themselves there just under two days before the arrival of the US Army. In the 1970s, he visited my grandfather at home and thanked him for saving his life. He also later visited the memorial site of the Wille subcamp in Rehmsdorf. There were further encounters with other surviving prisoners.
Author: AI-Translation - Arnd Eiert | 25.02.2025 |
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