How tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews perished last month in an epic “march of death,” driven from Budapest to the Austrian frontier, was told here today by one of the “marchers” who succeeded in escaping to Switzerland. His eye-witness story, as published in the Swiss press, reads.
“In the early days of November, thousands of Jews – men, women and children were herded together in Budapest and driven affect toward the Austrian border. For seven or eight days we marched an average of thirty kilometers daily, sometime under heavy cold rain. Before we set out, Hungarian Nazis thoroughly searched us so as to prevent us from taking along any valuables. At the same time, our identity documents were taken away from us.
“The road leading from Budapest via Komaron to the Hungarian border town of Hegyshalom is more than 120 kilometers long. On our way we were accompanied by members of the anti-Semitic Arrow Cross party. Anyone who showed sings of a breakdown was immediately shot by the Arrow Cross guards. Wet through and through, our clothes torn to pieces, we had to spend nights sleeping along the roadside. Every two days each one of us received a plate of watery soup and this was all the food we were given.
“Of 100,000 Jews who started from Budapest only 75,000 reached the Austrian frontier. We were sent across the frontier in groups of five hundred at a time. The Germans on the other side of the frontier, however, selected only those who were absolutely fit for hard labor. The others were returned to the Hungarian side of the frontier. There they were driven into the woods where many died from disease, exposure and starvation. Thousands of corpses can still be found there as well as along the road leading from Budapest to the town of Hegyshalom.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
