Alexander Speiser

"One day they asked those who were weak and wanted to go somewhere where they would get more food and would work, to step out of the line. Me and my father stepped our, they gave us soap and took us to a gas chamber. We didn't know these were gas chambers and even if they had told us, we we wouldn't have believed. We stood there, waited and looked at the ceiling. They said we had to wash ourselves. We waited for water to pour down but water never poured down there, always only gas. Zyklone. And the gas failed. Suddenly they opened the door a told us: ,Get back, you are clean now.' We returned to the camp and didn't know we were saved."

"We returned on foot, dogs accompanied us all the time and whenever anyone deviated from the lines, dogs attacked him immediately. A car came and pulled up by us, with the Lageführer, Obesturmführer Jelinek. A Czech name of Slav origin. "Come aside. He took me to a car and then took me to his home. He had three sons. He asked them: 'From today... Do you want him?' 'Yes.' – 'From today you will clean and cook everything that my sons need.' So every morning instead of going to a BMW factory I was taken by an SS guard to Jelinek's house, where he had his family, and I cooked and cleaned everything. I reminded myself, I was the youngest boy at home and my mother, whenever she cooked, she told me, 'Come here, look at how I do it.' I responded, 'Mum, I'm not a girl, I'm a boy.' – 'You can never know what life asks of you.' So I cooked tasty things and boys liked it.

"My father was a month or a month and a half after a surgery and my mother... We sat together, the three of us, my brothers had already been taken to camps by the Hungarians, it was Horthy's policy that he needed workforce. My mother... My father laid a hand on my mum's hand, and my mother said: ,Son, I don't know what happens tomorrow, what happens the day after tomorrow, but wherever we get and you are with your father, take care of him. You must promise me this.' I swore, I promised to my mother that I would take care of my father. A promise was kept in our family. You said something and you had to do it. This was how we were educated."