Naftali (Juraj) Fürst

“Our mom managed to quickly stitch all kinds of tools into our coats, as small saws and screwdrivers. She put small cushions into mine, my brother’s and her coat, so that we looked stronger. Obviously they exactly knew, what was happening there. Before we knew the exact date of our transport, we were talking with our parents and dad explained us, that we were about to face a dreadful journey and we should do everything possible not to get to the final destination. Thus we decided to jump out of the train. He explained us what it would look like after he managed to open the door. Me as the youngest should have gone first, then my brother and my mom were supposed to jump and dad should’ve been the last one. This is hard to be explained. People cannot understand how it feels to say to own kid to jump out of the train. It is also situation which as an adult now I cannot comprehend. But back then, being just eleven years old, I found it a great solution for us. I was quite stupid back then because I thought it was easy to jump out of the train; that it was as sport, fun. Thus I wasn’t so afraid to do that.”

“When we got to the bigger road, we realized that there were buried thousands of people before us. On both sides of the road, in ditches there were people lying dead, wounded, crying, shouting… It was like if you passed through the door to hell. The picture is impossible to describe. Blood, weeping, corpses. No words for that.”