“Perhaps not even Auschwitz was as horrible as the Budakalász brickyard” (Testimony of Mrs Jenő Weisz and Klára Weisz)

The Jews of Budapest's suburbs were deported to Auschwitz in early July 1944, during the last phase of the spring-summer deportation wave. Mrs Jenő Weisz and her daughter Klára Weisz were taken from Újpest, together with thousands of others, by Hungarian gendarmes to the collection camp set up in the brick factory in Békásmegyer (Budakalász). Here many of them died as a result of the brutal treatment by the guards and detectives even before being deported to Auschwitz. Upon arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the two women were deemed fit to work by the SS, therefore they were left alive. The Nazis took them first to Bergen-Belsen and then to Aschersleben, a subcamp of Buchenwald, where they performed slave labour in a fighter aircraft factory. In April 1945, the Nazis evacuated the camp to escape the approaching front. The two women escaped from the column and were soon liberated. The following testimony was given in Budapest less than three months later. (Source: Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives, DEGOB protocols)

Cover image: The Békásmegyer (Budakalász) brick factory in the early 1960s. (Facebook)