Alois Holub

"In the morning, in fact it was three o’clock in the afternoon when the Germans were gathering. And then at 5pm Germans were coming to see the executions. I would say, it was about half or one third of all of us who got killed there. The rest of us went to Pod Kaštany place on October 8th 1941. There were about fifty prisoners there. In the morning, it was about 3am, we got some soup for the trip. Then in the morning they took us to the train station. We took off not knowing where to. We went to Vienna and then around the Danube River, all the way to the Mauthausen concentration camp."

"I was looking at him and then I noticed: our capo named Wolfrat was running toward us from the upper gate accompanied by two other men. They checked by the gate and then turned toward us and called out my number and the number of another man. Both of us stepped forward. Those two other men took our places and we followed our capo to the workshop. While we were passing through the gate I turned around and saw the rest of the transported people leaving somewhere. But no one knew where... Once again I tried to tell Sepp that I want to quit the job - I was working there for three years already - he told me: ´Do whatever you want. But Bachmayer won’t ask you if he comes that he wants to make another cassette. He won’t care when you’ll do it or where. So you better...you have a nice spot there, you can work quietly under the roof.´ I knew what he meant though...There were also times when I stepped by the Lageraltester at noon and the capo came there and told me: ´Lojzku, (Lojzku=informally Alois - translators note) I need the cassette tomorrow in the morning. I prepared everything at the workshop; I hid some of the material under my pants. I was always afraid to pass through the gate, because they might have checked through us. But we always made it somehow. Then I had to work all night so I could finish the cassette by morning. All I have had was a cup of sweet coffee and that was about it."

"There were few women, or girls that were pulled out of the gas chamber before their bodies were burned out. I saw them there just before some people came to take the pictures of them. It’s stupid, that you actually dream about what you’ve once lived through. So I tell to myself, that someone who never experienced this can’t see it in his dreams... (Laugh) Sometimes my mind goes back to the past and I wake up completely distressed...I once had a dream: We all were going to be executed and on the way we met Lageraltester and I told him: ´Well, well, you always know how to get...´ (laugh) what a situations those were. You either prepared yourself for that or you just keep repeating yourself the whole time: ´So many people died, one day I would die to anyway, so what...it’s just a split of a moment. And if there ain´t nothing I can do about it, why should I worry about it now?´ Sometimes you really believed that the end is coming: ´I will die, well...´And then when you got back to the reality again you were thinking:´ Oh no, it would be such a shame!´(laugh)"

"The Jews traveling with us, who came from all around the Brno town, they got the most attention. In the morning when we went to give our approval for the cremation, these Jews were lined up and they were so...They might have been lawyers or some officials...their faces were swollen blue and green. I heard that the Jews didn’t live longer than three days in Mauthausen. The SS officers used to train themselves on them. Our transport was the last one with Jews. No other Jews were taken to Mauthausen anymore."