A Teenage Boy in Bergen-Belsen (Testimony of Emil Goldberger)

Testimony of Emil Goldberger (b. 1930) given in German in Budapest on 8 July 1945. Goldberger was raised in the village of Zápszony (Zapson) in Carpatho-Ruthenia. In the spring of 1944, the Hungarian authorities deported the 14-year-old Goldberger and his family to the collection camp in Beregszász, from where he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau with one of the first Hungarian transports in mid-May. The only way he could survive the selection was to lie about his age, as the Nazis sent everyone under the age of 16 to the gas chambers. As a slave labourer, he was first taken to Buchenwald and then to the concentration camp at Mittelbau-Dora. There he toiled for months in conditions that were very difficult to survive, before being sent to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated in the spring of 1945. Most of his family were probably killed by the Nazis in Birkenau, and his brother died in Mittelbau. (Source: Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives, DEGOB protocols.)