Yosef Karoly Veis

Testimony of Yosef Karoly Weisz, born in Csonograd, Hungary, 1921, regarding his experiences in labor battalions in Hungary, deportation to Buchenwald and on a march to Berlin with the Red Army Family, the village, and Jewish community in Csonograd, Hungary. Labors with a Musz forced labor battalion, 1942; is drafted in Hodmezoevasarhely, and from there to Szeged; is stationed in Budapest in an engineering unit in the army with a group of skilled craftsmen; fair attitude of the army and civilian Swabian workers; German occupation, 09 March 1944; communication with his family is severed; little and unreliable information about the fate of the Jews; rise of Szalasi to power; evacuation on foot to Szekesfehervar, late November 1944; return to Budapest and Tattersaal, 06 December 1944; is put into stationary, locked, cattle cars for a week without food, water and toilets, 08 December 1944; travel via Wiener Neustadt, Sopron and Prague to Buchenwald; entry into the camp, 24 December 1944; prisoner number 36090; meets his cousin; transfer to Magdeburg, mid-January, 1945; repeated air-raids; Germans disappear during an alert, 15 April 1945; inmates scatter; Germans return and then leave permanently; mass wanderings to the East until 09 May 1945. Arrival of the Soviets; travel on foot to Berlin with help from the Soviets, via Dresden to Prague with a letter of protection from the Soviets; treatment of the sick in Prague; his sister is on the list of survivors; collapses in Budapest; return to Csonograd; reunion with his sister and those few left from his extended family; rehabilitation; aliya to Israel via Bari-Trani on the ship, "Galilah", 1949.