Tibor Feuerstein

Born: Fegyvernek, Hungary, 1931
Wartime experience: Ghetto and camps
Writing Partner: Helena Adler
Tibor Feuerstein was born in Fegyvernek, Hungary, in 1931. Son of an Orthodox rabbi, Tibor grew up in a small town and had a good childhood, getting along with most of his neighbours. When Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, the German SS used Tibor’s family’s house as their headquarters.
Tibor and his family were taken to a ghetto before being deported out of Hungary. He ended up doing forced labour on a farm in Ebergassing in Austria, narrowly avoiding deportation to Auschwitz. After five months, Tibor and his family were taken to Floridsdorf, a forced labour camp near Vienna, before being marched to Gusen and then to Gunskirchen, both subcamps of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Tibor was liberated by the American army on May 5, 1945. Tibor and his family returned to Hungary, eventually moving to Budapest, where he met and married Vera. Tibor and Vera immigrated to Canada in 1957, where they soon had their first child and started a wholesale business. Tibor Feuerstein passed away in 2015.
Deportation
I was a young boy experiencing a crazy life. My mother, Ava, Erzsi, Ernie, Imre, Iboyl, Erna and me were in the ghetto for about five weeks. Magda, Aliz and Béla weren’t home when they came for us, so they weren’t taken with us. Erna, the youngest child in my family, was only about six years old at that time. I was thirteen in 1944 and should have had a bar mitzvah that year, but I never did have one. One of my brothers remembers that we were next taken to the city of Szolnok, to a sugar factory. It was here that we first saw people being killed. There was a child crying in its mother’s arms, and a guard told her to put the child down. She refused and both she and the child were killed. We saw people lying in the mud, dying.
I don’t really remember exactly how I found out that we were going to be moved. No one told us anything except that we would be taken somewhere and that we could bring a few things with us. We all took everything with us, clothes we wanted to wear, a little food. I took everything I thought I’d need. My mother didn’t know what to take so she packed some flour and salt. We ended up eating spoonfuls of flour and salt when there was no other food.
I wanted to survive. I wanted to live healthy and free. I was afraid, but I figured I wouldn’t let anyone kill me. I was very skinny when I was in Austria, I can’t even explain how thin I was. They didn’t give us enough food, but I was strong.
Forced Labour and Liberation
We worked on the Baroness’s farm around Ebergassing, and in that general area, for about five months. When there wasn’t any more work for us to do in Ebergassing, the Germans came for us. We didn’t get any payment or anything for the work we did. They told me to get in the truck with my family; Ernie was taken to another work camp. I didn’t know where they were taking us. We never knew where we were going and didn’t know if we would survive — we saw what they had done to other people.
We were taken to Floridsdorf in Vienna, which was a subcamp of Mauthausen, housed in a school building. Imre remembers us walking there, but I think we went by truck. My mother worked for the Siemens factory and Imre and I cleaned rubble from the bombings. Imre remembers that one time when we came back at night we heard the air-raid sirens and one of the SS chased us and took us to the shelter in the school. There was a Jewish man in charge of the shelter and the SS guy told him to punish us, so he hit us and locked us in the basement. I got out before they came to let us out and Imre almost got out too. Later, this man apologized to my mother and explained that he had to hit us because the SS guy was there.