In the morning hours of May 15, 1944 we reached Auschwitz.

I didn't know it was Auschwitz.

To put it cynically: the deportation train was a birthday trip, Auschwitz was my birthday present.

I turned 15 that day.

The train came to a stop at night on an apparently open route and did not go any further.

It was only much later that I learned that our train must have been one of the first transports to stop at the new selection ramp inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, which was to open on that very day.

Father kept staring out of the train, but as so often recently, he hardly said anything and instead hugged me.

At least I can't remember any of his words.

In retrospect, it seems to me that he finally fell silent.

Whether he knew that we had ended up in Auschwitz, whether he even knew what Auschwitz was, whether he knew what to expect here, I will never find out again.

As head of the Jewish community, my father had a lot to do with the local authorities, the Hungarian fascists and the German governors.

He knew more than he told us, but how much actually?

Did he know that Hitler wanted all Jews to be murdered?

Did he know that there was an extermination camp like Auschwitz in which mass murder was to be planned and implemented with military precision?

And if so, was that why such great sadness settled over his once bright eyes?

I never asked him that, and I couldn't ask him now - it was already too late.

Don't forget the feeling of thirst

We had stood there for hours, but the car door was still locked.

We were still alive, but the feeling of thirst that set in during this time of waiting is never forgotten.

The parched mouth that stopped producing saliva, the chapped, dry lips, the scratchy feeling in the throat like choking.

When I drink water today, I take a deep breath, put the glass on, and while I'm drinking my thoughts are back in the morning hours of May 15, 1944. Today I almost always have a glass of water in front of me or a water bottle with me when I'm out and about.

The feeling of great thirst, of unquenchable thirst, accompanies me throughout my life.

Half an hour, not drinking for an hour, maybe still under stress, and immediately my lips become furry,

and that existential thirst is back.

When we got on the train, most of them only had some bread with them, but nothing to drink.

A mistake that some of us paid for with death.

They just fell over.

They died like animals, there is no other way to put it.

When the sun on the horizon squinted through the car's viewing slit, the noise level outside increased significantly.

We heard people stomping around the train, heard individual commands in German, the tangle of voices and noises grew denser and denser by the minute, until suddenly the iron bracing that blocked the wagon door was released and it creaked reopened for the first time in days.

The men got out

It wasn't quite open when the SS began to roar.

An attendant in a striped jacket and black pants jumped into the car, armed with a flashlight and a truncheon, throwing slashes left and right, making his way through us.

We must have been a sight of misery for him.

In those four bad days in the van, people had become cattle that only did what they were told.

Frightened, half thirsty, deprived of dignity, free will is only a chimera.

The man ordered only the men to get off the train first, so the men got off.

What else could they have done?