Stephan Virányi gelesen von Mercedes Echerer

Stephan Virányi: Von Bruck a.d. Leitha – bis zur Gunskirchner Befreiung [From Bruck an der Leitha – to the Liberation of Gunskirchen] from the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance in Vienna (inventory no. 3488) in Peter Kammerstätter: Der Todesmarsch ungarischer Juden von Mauthausen nach Gunskirchen im April 1945 [The Death March of Hungarian Jews from Mauthausen to Gunskirchen in April 1945]. Collection of material, Linz 1972. P. 13–21.

On 29 March 1945 – a Thursday – several thousands of deported forced labourers were still carrying out various digging tasks at the work locations in Bruck an der Leitha under the supervision of the German Organisation Todt, as they had been doing throughout four long, hard winter months. After finishing work for the day, though, we came back to the unheated barns that were our quarters earlier than usual as we had to wait for the orders to march off. So that evening we did not lay our sleeping rugs [note: rough woollen blankets or horse blankets] on the cold concrete floor as we would normally but placed them rolled up on top of our rucksacks. Several fellow sufferers of the Jewish faith – who formed the overwhelming majority – sat in a circle and recited the Second Seder prayers [note: ceremonial meal at the start of Passover]. However, they were unable to finish the ceremony as the order came to form up in rows of five on the road outside the barn barracks. We were given a 1 kilogram loaf of bread and 50 g of margarine per person, but we weren’t told how many days this was supposed to last us, so nobody knew.

The sick and those who couldn’t march stayed behind; they would be sent on after us and would travel by rail in cattle trucks.

Once we had been counted, the assembled groups marched off. The journey took all night and after marching around 20 km we arrived the next morning, 30 March, in the town of Deutsch-Altenburg on the banks of the Danube after travelling through Pakdorf [note: probably the town of Pachfurth] and Rohrau. Along the way, we stopped a total of two or three times for a short rest of a few minutes, but no sooner had we laid down at the edge of the road than the call came to line up again.

Many people struggled to manage the walk due to their weakened condition so chose to discard various items in huge quantities, things I’m sure they must have greatly missed and regretted later in the camps.

During our march, we were passed by groups of Hungarian soldiers crammed together on primitive farm carts (but naturally we weren’t allowed to talk to them). We of course never saw German soldiers travelling in such a miserable form of transport. They travelled exclusively and extremely comfortably in covered trucks.

Once we arrived in Deutsch-Altenburg, we were allocated a place to rest outdoors, where we spent all of one day and one night.

In the meantime, a transport of several thousand deported people had also arrived in Engerau (Pozsonyligetfalu) and they were in an even sorrier state than us.

No further food was distributed but instead it was announced that we would be boarding a boat and food would be picked up en route. But only the first half of this turned out to be true and so we had to manage a whole week on 1 kilogram of bread and 50 grams of margarine. But even that wasn’t possible because we had no idea where we were going and how long we would be travelling for, which made it completely pointless to try to divide it into tiny rations. On top of that, we were anticipating the promised delivery of food, which still hadn’t arrived.

The following day, which was Easter Saturday, we were directed onto tug boats pulled by a steamboat. The armed guards had appointed the steamboat for themselves with every comfort; the prisoners on the other hand were housed in some cases in the interior and in others on the deck of the tug boats. The people inside suffered from it being dank and musty while those on deck suffered as a result of the capricious April weather. People wrapped themselves in their sleeping rugs to protect them from the rain. But the hunger was the hardest to bear.

In Bruck, some of my fellow sufferers had managed to get hold of Burisch (hulled wheat) or tobacco. You didn’t get much benefit from the Burisch as our weakened guts struggled to digest it and many people suffered from explosive diarrhoea.

When the boats stopped briefly at a port, a number of people were able to exchange the tobacco for potatoes with some Hungarian soldiers who happened to be in the harbour (by throwing the goods to one another). They then cooked these potatoes over fires built from brittle pieces of wood. But only a very few people benefitted from this extraordinary piece of good fortune. The majority of us arrived in Mauthausen on the banks of the Danube on 6 April following our six-day journey by boat in a wretched condition and completely exhausted. Of course not everyone made it to the destination. There were many who did not survive this long journey of hunger and their bodies were dropped into the Danube as we travelled.

Once we arrived in Mauthausen and had disembarked, SS soldiers took over our supervision from our previous Organisation Todt escort. They immediately ordered us to form up in rows of five and set us off marching up the hill, to a concentration camp that had been built there and was surrounded by barbed wire and machine gun towers.

In the camp, we were housed in large tent barracks with floors of bare earth. The tents were designed for a maximum of 800 people each, but more than 2,000 people were crammed into a tent. It was only possible to lie down by putting your legs between those of the person opposite you. You can imagine the quarrels when people bumped into one another’s legs as they rolled over, something which was very hard to avoid.

There was no wooden or straw bedding available. The people who still had their sleeping rugs in addition to their blankets were fortunate as they could lay them on the bare earth – folded up of course. However, you had to keep your eye on them at all times as a momentary lapse in concentration could see them snatched by someone else.

The rations were really pitiful. In the morning we received 100 ml of what was allegedly black coffee, without any sugar. On top of that it was so weak that you could almost see through it when it was poured out.

At midday we received 500–600 ml and for supper 300–400 ml of potato or beetroot soup, and every second or third day 50 g of diced horsemeat sausage or dextrose or margarine.

Every day, each group of 10–12 people was allocated one kilo of bread, a large part of which was pure mould, which then had to be discarded from the 90 to 100 gram chunks the bread had been divided into.

It wasn’t easy to cut the bread into 10–12 equal slices and, as this of course couldn’t be done precisely, we came up with the following method to avoid arguments: one person turned their back towards the slices of bread that had been cut, then another person pointed at the individual slices not in any particular order and the person with their back turned chose at random who should receive the slice in question.

We were already heavily infested with lice in Bruck, but this increased in Mauthausen to the point where it was almost unbearable. Although these vermin would swarm back into our underwear and onto our bodies in two hours, we had to spend 1–1½ hours a day delousing, otherwise they would have literally eaten us alive.

For those of our fellow sufferers who couldn’t muster the necessary energy for delousing, their general weakness increased at a rapid rate, and with their mental strength waning, they soon lost their physical strength as well, and silently slipped away a short time later.

The death toll reached huge proportions in the camp.

In the mornings, we had to climb over numerous dead bodies to reach the outside where huge numbers of them were piled up in front of the tent barracks. The dead were stripped of their clothes, their belongings taken from them and [their bodies were] then thrown onto carts and carried away.

A small section of the tent barracks was separated from the rest of the camp by a simple wooden rail; this area acted as the sick quarters where the invalids were brought. They were treated by deported doctors, where this was at all possible as the dressing materials and medicines had gradually run out and there was no way of obtaining new supplies. As time passed, wounds were simply bound with paper bandages.

An even worse fate than that of the tent residents awaited those who arrived later than us from other labour camps. They couldn’t even be accommodated in the tents – which were full to the brim with people – and so had to lie down outside, fully exposed to the cold and damp rainy April weather. During the nights when it poured with rain, they sought refuge in the tent barracks but had to remain standing all night because there was not even a foot’s width of floor space free where they could lay down.

When we arrived in Mauthausen on 6 April, we were told that we would be transported on to Dachau the following day. We were all familiar with the atrocities of this camp from what we’d heard from others, so as you can imagine were none too pleased by this announcement. The next morning a small group actually set off, but fortunately they immediately came back again as the American advance meant they were no longer able to be loaded into railway waggons.

On 16, 26 and 28 April the several thousand deported people were set on the move again in three groups (but where we were travelling and for how long, we were once again unable to find out). The sick and those who were unable to march had to stay behind. But they were subjected to a terrible experience. First, they were herded to the boat landing station as there was a plan to sink the entire group along with the tugboat. Then the camp commandant considered the situation and the people were chased back out of the tugboat into the camp – this time into the wooden barracks further up the hill. All of their clothing and other items were taken away from them and they were provided with thin, torn, patched prison uniforms for the cold, damp and rainy April days.

In the barracks, they were packed so tightly together that there were two to every narrow wooden bed. In conditions such as these, there was of course a fair bit of noise and bickering at night. This was sufficient cause for the SS guards to come into the sleeping quarters and lash about blindly with their rifle butts and bayonets, often causing various life-threatening injuries. Given the lack of bandages, we were forced to tear strips of fabric off our dirty shirts and use these to bandage the wounds. One of my friends and fellow sufferers – a senior doctor – also suffered such a fate. Pus started to form in his wound and it looked like his whole arm might have to be amputated. Fortunately, following the liberation – in early May – an American military doctor was able to save his arm almost at the very last minute through plastic surgery using tissue from his thigh. I learned these terrible details from him later, in Budapest.

(I was initially assigned to the transport that departed on 16 April, but as I had belatedly attached myself to a group that had already been counted in all the rush to get us moving, I was unexpectedly given a few blows to the head from behind with a baton, cracking my skull and causing me to lose my balance and fall to the ground. A friend and fellow sufferer helped me – when I lay cowering on the ground behind some deportees lining up – to my feet and took me back to the tent, where my wound was bandaged in the separate part of the camp for the sick; this time with linen cloth. But the next day when they removed the blood-soaked linen bandage they only had paper bandages that they could use in its place. So I remained behind in Mauthausen until the next transport left, on 26 April.)

On our departure we received half a kilo of mouldy bread and 50 grams of margarine. Again, we had no idea of course how long this was supposed to last us. In two and a half days, we covered around 50 km – walking via Enns, St. Florian and Wels – to the Gunskirchen barracks camp. We were only given a few brief chances to rest. We spent two nights outdoors. On the second night, there was an enormous storm so we sought shelter in the bushes, but they weren’t much help.

Plagued by constant hunger, a few people dug raw potatoes out of the ground with their hands, which they then ate raw, but they had to be quick, because our SS escort would immediately push them back into the ranks with their rifle butts. During the short rest stops, we picked rape, lit fires assembled from bits of sticks and cooked small snails over them.

On the second evening, we came across a Red Cross convoy (something we never encountered again either before or afterwards), which gave each of us around 80 to 100 millilitres of warm potato soup, which was of course eagerly received. We had to take and eat it extremely quickly because if anyone stood still they were pushed forward with such force that they were lucky if they were able to save even a small part of the ‘liquid gold’ that was dished out. Another challenge was collecting our portion of soup in such a way that none of it was spilled on the floor.

During our exhausting march, many people left a huge proportion of their belongings by the roadside and those who were no longer able to manage the march and got left behind were mercilessly shot. As we walked, we saw many bodies of deportees with pools of blood by their heads and rucksacks next to their chests lying along the edges of the road (evidently they were from previous transports). I also saw with my own eyes fellow sufferers who fell down on the side of the road from complete and utter exhaustion shot and killed.

We spent a great deal of time plagued by thirst. In some of the villages, the Austrian inhabitants put jugs of water and glasses outside their garden gates so that we could at least quickly drain a glass as we moved past. However, only a few people managed to take advantage of this, because those that left their ranks to grab a glass were immediately pushed back in line with rifle butts. The inhabitants also threw apples into the ranks of our procession, but because we were moving so quickly only a few of us were able to catch one.

On 28 April, towards 2 p.m., we arrived at the concentration camp, which was located in a forest around 2 km from Gunskirchen. Like Mauthausen, it was surrounded with barbed wire fences and watchtowers with machine gun posts. When we left Mauthausen, we couldn’t imagine that things could possibly be even worse in the new camp. But it turned out that Gunskirchen surpassed even Mauthausen in terms of its awfulness.

Instead of tents, we were housed in wooden barracks, but the overcrowding was so great that we couldn’t even lie down in the least comfortable position – we scarcely had enough room to sit on our rucksacks. At night we had to doze sitting like that with our legs pulled into our chests – if we were even able to drift off to sleep. And if you wanted to stretch out your stiff limbs, then the only way was to alternate standing and sitting.

The helpings of sugarless ‘plum coffee’ we received in the mornings and the potato or beet soup at midday or in the evening were even poorer and weaker than at Mauthausen and the bread ration (one kilogram for twelve or even sixteen people) was even smaller and mouldier now too. The additional ration of 50 g of diced horsemeat sausage or margarine was something we received on a total of just two occasions. Those who had been appointed prisoner functionaries out of the deportees, the ‘Kapos’, received double rations, which they helped themselves to at the start of the rations being dished out. (Otherwise their conduct was based on how decent they were and their sense of solidarity with their fellow prisoners.)

The weather was constantly windy and rainy. The rain found its way into the barracks with their bare earth floors and the puddles it created meant there were even fewer free spots. The lice multiplied to such an extent that you had to spend hours two or three times a day delousing if you wanted to prevent these parasites drinking your last drops of blood.

The lack of drinking water and inadequate washing opportunities were even more overwhelming at Gunskirchen. In Mauthausen, we were still able to drink and wash using water from the taps installed outside, but there was nothing like that in Gunskirchen. The water was brought into the camp in containers transported by horse and cart. Each of us was given a maximum of one cup a day (and there were some days when no water supplies arrived) and this was supposed to be enough for drinking and washing.

So we mainly used rainwater to wash with, which we scooped up from the eaves and puddles. We suffered a great deal from diarrhoea – not just here in Gunskirchen but also earlier in Bruck and Mauthausen – and anyone who couldn’t make it to the disgusting latrines was shot from the watchtowers.

The main cause of the diarrhoea was the lack of attention to hygiene in the kitchens. So, for example, not much effort was made to peel or even clean potatoes – they were thrown straight into the cooking pot unpeeled and covered in mud.

The camp itself was full of dirt and filth. Corpses lay piled up in vast numbers. Deportees were used to carry the corpses on foot to a lime pit around 20 minutes away. (It is our understanding that the camp commanders planned to send those who were still alive there afterwards to kill them but this plan was hindered by the arrival of the American army.)

The only reason why we hadn’t all passed away as a result of the many hardships we endured was purely because we didn’t have to carry out any work at Mauthausen and Gunskirchen – unlike at Bruck – and nor would we have managed it either as everyone was at the very limits of their strength.

Finally, towards evening on 4 May, a car filled with German officers waving white flags drove into the camp, which was how we found out that we would soon be liberated. Shortly afterwards, we heard machine gun fire, so we threw ourselves on the ground as we had no way of knowing who was shooting at whom. The shooting lasted around ten minutes and then everything fell silent.

When we crept out of the barracks, we couldn’t see any armed guards. We then realised that we had been liberated.

The next morning, on 5 May, American troops marched into the camp in long lines. At midday, the troops gave out tins of food from the German stores, but most people’s intestines were so weakened by that point that they suffered long-lasting intestinal inflammation after eating the food (and I was among that number).

Many people suffered from spotted fever that they had caught from the scores of lice.

Over the course of a few days, all of the prisoners were removed from the camp – some to the Alpenjäger-Kaserne barracks in Wels and some to Hörsching. In Wels, a temporary hospital was set up in the city’s grammar school, to which the sick from the Alpenjäger-Kaserne barracks were transported (with me among them).

Immediately after the liberation, many of us were still dying from typhus or exhaustion.

We were deloused by American medics, for some of us while we were still in the Alpenjäger-Kaserne barracks and for others in the temporary hospital, which put an end to our greatest agony. At the Wels temporary hospital, we were treated by Austrian doctors and nurses (they had all of the washing and cleaning carried out by disarmed Hungarian soldiers).

There were not enough resources to treat us, though, as the American occupying detachment only provided the hospital with the food that they found in the German stores. It was also difficult to get any food from the local residents as they were also very short on food supplies. A strict card system had been introduced with a very limited choice and tiny rations.

So our food and drink consisted of skimmed milk, coffee substitute, oat porridge, instant mashed potatoes, dried vegetable flakes, tinned mince and crackers.

The main things that were missing from our low-fat diet of measly quantities were fresh fruit and vegetables full of vitamins.

Our poor diet significantly hampered and delayed our recovery and nobody managed to get back to their full strength in the hospital. That would take weeks and months back in their homeland.

Many of them carried the impact of their deportation their whole lives.

The deportees were transported to their homeland at various different times, in various different directions and using various different vehicles by branches of the JDC [note: Joint Distribution Committee; Jewish humanitarian organisation based in the USA]. There were even a few who – with some exertion – set off on foot.

Never again fascism!