"My mother told us not to run or hurry, so we were slower. We probably got on the last wagon or the one before last. The others were probably at the front."
Holocaust survivor Peter Rosenfeld Span
From mid May 1944, trains packed with Hungarian Jews headed to Auschwitz-Birkenau; some 430,000 Jews were deported in only eight weeks. Shortly after arrival, the Jews passed a selection and 80-90 percent of them were sent to the gas chambers.
Nevertheless, during the last days of June 1944, not all the deportees aboard the trains that left the Szeged train station in southern Hungary reached the infamous death camp. On 27 June, one of the trains had some of its rear wagons detached and attached to another train. Those in the front carriages of the train arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau as originally intended, but those in the rear wagons found themselves at a transit camp in Austria. Among them were Elisabeth Rosenfeld Span with her three children, Ivan (12), Pablo (9) and Peter (6). They, together with other Jews from Subotica, a town in the northeast of Yugoslavia that had been annexed by Hungary, had boarded a train at Bácsalmás. They were not aware that their carriages had been redirected, but after their arrival at the Strasshof camp, they and their fellow prisoners were sent to work as forced laborers in different places across Austria.
In the documentary film, Peter Rosenfeld Span describes his terrifying experiences on the cattle car and when he was separated from his mother in Strasshof. A few days later, the family was sent on to Ulrichskirchen, to a slave labor camp based on a farm. Each morning, he and the other children were made to carry water from a source some 200 meters away to the kitchen, and afterwards were free to play on the farm. In the evenings, exhausted from laboring in a field 1.5 kilometers away, his elder cousin Eva would teach them so as to keep up their education and development.
But the question remains: Why were the young children and the elderly among the deportees from Bácsalmás allowed to remain with their family members? Why send them to forced labor camps instead of the usual process of selection and deportation to the death camps of those "unfit for work"?
In the year 2000, Peter's oldest brother Ivan came to Yad Vashem to try to unearth some clues to his family's unusual history. It turns out that the answer probably lies in the negotiations between the Nazis and the Hungarian Zionist leader Rezsö (Israel) Kasztner, founder of the Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest.
In the spring of 1944, the head of the Niederdonau region in Nazi Germany had requested to receive Hungarian Jewish workers to labor mainly in agriculture and in the war industry. Thus, at the end of May, the first batch of Hungarian Jews were sent to the region as forced laborers.
With this precedent, on 7 June, the Mayor of Vienna, SS-Brigadeführer Hanns Blaschke, wrote to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Head of the Central Reich Security Office, requesting slave laborers as well. Kaltenbrunner agreed to the request of Blaschke to send Jewish forced laborers to Vienna and its environs.
Understanding that they were likely losing the war, by supplying the much-needed labor force, the German leadership probably saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate "good will" and keep prospects of future negotiations with the Allies open. These prisoners were colloquially known as being "laid on ice" – i.e., their ultimate murder put on hold for the time being.
At this point, Kasztner was aware of the approaching Allies and with them the hope for the end of the war. He and his fellow Committee members understood the efficiency and urgency with which the Nazis were operating in Hungary and, following the presumed success of the “Working Group” in Bratislava in bribing the Germans, began to believe that the best way to save Hungarian Jewry was to negotiate with the German authorities.
As part of this plan, Kasztner came in contact with SS officers, including Adolf Eichmann. On 14 June, Eichmann offered Kasztner the lives of 30,000 Hungarian Jews – 15,000 from the provinces and 15,000 from Budapest – who would be sent to work in Austria, in exchange for money. (Deportations from Hungary were halted in early July by Miklös Horthy, and the Jews from Budapest were ultimately not included.) Arriving at Strasshof, these Jews did not go through a selection process.
Based on Rosenfeld Span's eyewitness report as well as other testimonies, it may be surmised that Kasztner requested that those sent to Austria in exchange for money would include the children and the elderly. It is estimated that around 70-80 percent of these "Jews On Ice" survived. An academic paper is currently being prepared on the topic.
Yad Vashem's Survivor Testimony Film series currently comprises over 60 films in which survivors recount their life stories at the locations in which the events transpired or interviewed at their homes. The series, select films of which are available in up to 15 languages, has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, including educators, students, and public officials.
The author works in the International School for Holocaust Studies. Her father was Peter's older brother, Ivan.
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 96.
