-I was born in Czechoslovakia, in a small town,
Nové Zámky,
which became Hungary in 1939.
I was ten years old in 1939.
I lived in this little town
with my whole family living on the same street practically,
my grandparents, my uncles, aunts, cousins.
Then came to Passover dinner,
we were 25, 30 of us around my grandparents' Passover table.
This started to come to an end after '39.
My father's business license was taken away.
He was a small businessman with a couple of horses
and flatbed wagon.
He was the moving man of this town.
He was forced to move out of town
and took the family outskirts of Budapest.
I stayed behind with my grandparents to finish my elementary education.
In 1943,
I said goodbye to my family in Nové Zámky.
I didn't know that was the last time I ever saw them,
because they all perished in the Holocaust.
I went up to Budapest and joined my family,
my two sisters, my mother and father.
My father got a job over there in a paper mill
and I went up to Budapest when I was 14 years old.
By the time I was 14 years old,
my father took me to a machine shop because he said
Jewish children were not allowed higher education.
He took me to a machine shop, I became an apprentice machinist
and with that I started learning the trade because my father said,
''You have to learn something to be able to support yourself.''
I became an apprentice machinist.
Things rapidly started deteriorating for Jews especially.
My father was taken into the forced labor camp
and my mother
and my two sisters were ordered to go into the ghetto,
which was established
by the biggest manufacturing plant outskirts of Hungary,
outskirts of Budapest.
I was living in the ghetto very shortly
after they took my sister to a factory,
where she was--
They put up barrack-like situation for Jewish workers,
so my mother and my little eight-year-old sister
lived in the ghetto.
We were there maybe less than a month
when a militia man with an arrow cross on his arm,
which was similar to the Swastika in Hungarian style,
ordered us to pack because we were going
to be taken away some place to work.
They didn't know when we will be coming back.
We packed.
What do you pack when they say
you might never come back?
We packed some of our belongings,
what we can carry.
I remember my eight-year-old sister grabbed her little doll;
that was very important for her.
Two days later, just in front of the ghetto,
we were taken to the railroad station
and we were taken to an abandoned brick factory,
where we spread out under the dryers
and everywhere that we can find space.
Then 4,000 people were assembled in this brick factory.
They were put in cattle cars
and we were ordered up on these cattle cars
with our little belongings,
a half-barrel for necessities in the middle of the cattle car.
The doors were shut
and we were on our way,
we didn't know what destination.
I don't know if you want me to go ahead with the story.
We were locked into this cattle car.
It was July 1944.
It was hot in this cattle car; we were changing space by the four,
a little barbed wire window for fresh air.
At night, half of us were able to squat down,
the rest of us standing and we changed.
This is the condition we arrived to Auschwitz.
We were ordered out of the cattle car.
Some of the older people never made it.
They started selecting able-bodied men, women,
children with their mothers and old people separately.
Between the railroad cars of Auschwitz,
between the railroad tracks of Auschwitz,
I saw my mother
and my little sister the last time.
I was pushed between the able-bodied man
and as I looked back,
my mother turned her head away and my little sister gave me
a faint wave.
That the last time that I saw them.
I stayed in Auschwitz because in one occasion
a guard came in and asked for workers.
I don't know why my hand went up
and, boy, I thought I lucked out.
For the next three months I was working in a kitchen
cutting potatoes into squares
and shredding cabbage for sauerkraut.
I was able to snitch some of the raw stuff that I can muster down.
It helped me survive.
April 29, the Seventh Army liberated Dachau.
It was my most glorious day of my life.
We laughed and cried at the same time.
Liberation was beautiful and almost unbelievable.
We got plenty of food.
I remember getting a small can of corn beef,
eating sparingly, a spoon at a time and a couple of spoons at meal times,
and that was my luck.
It's not because I was smarter or better;
I just wasn't sure if I'd get another one.
Some people who ate too much of the rich food never made it.
By this time the medics wised up and we were taken to Field Hospital,
this time a real hospital.
I went back to Budapest,
I went to the factory where my sister was encamped.
One of the fellows told me,
''Your sister was taken to the railroad station from here,''
and later when I was reunited with my sister,
she told me her story.
When they were taken by groups, walking towards the railroad station,
a street car came by and she jolted out of the line
and jumped up on the moving street car.
The conductor opened the door for her
and saw the yellow star.
He tore off her yellow star and pulled her up.
My sister went into Budapest
and put herself up as a bombed out country girl
with no papers
in served for a gentile family as a maid,
'til the end of the war; so she survived.
My father survived on the Russian front.
When the Nazis were pushed back, he hid and came back
behind the line.
He was back in Budapest by the end of January 1945,
I was still laboring in Landsberg on a big project.
We three of us survived.
Besides them, only two cousins of mine lived.
Reuniting with part of my family was incredibly beautiful.
In 1956 I met my wife and after a long courtship,
exactly 59 days, we were married.
That's when we decided that we want to raise our family in freedom.
When the revolution was going on in 1956,
Christmas Eve,
we crossed over to Austria in the deep snow with my father
and my stepmother.
My father remarried by then.
We crossed over to Austria.
They were shooting flares up,
the Russian border guards.
We covered ourselves with sheets.
This is how we arrived to Austria.
From then on,
we were able to get into the American consulate.
Because my stepmother's son came out of the camps in 1946
and settled in Portland,
we were able to come on his acceptance visa
to the United States and settled in Portland.
We have to live and accept each other,
no matter what is our ethnicity or color.
All our blood is red
and we have to accept each other.