Alexander Lowy

Born 13 October 1921, Filakovo, Slovakia

The Nazis occupied Budapest on the 19 March, 1944. 

The next day my father went to buy rail tickets so we could leave.  

He never returned. 

Only many years later did we find out what happened to him. 

He was eventually taken to Auschwitz. 

Being a deeply devout man he would not part with his prayer shawl.

This was a means by which he expressed his devotion to God.

When a guard threw aside my father's bag, he twice tried to retrieve it. 

A guard then began to beat my father with his rifle butt.

He was left to die there, beside his prayer shawl.

He put his devotion to God before his own life.

I was to spend time in the camps.

In May 1945, I was one of the living dead. 

When the Americans arrived at Gunskirchen, I was too weak to stand. 

There were so many corpses lying in the gutter.

I lay among them. 

As a jeep approached I tried to wave my arm. 

A soldier saw me and picked me up.

He was an American Jew.

"Yiddele, kum mit mir", he said to me in Yiddish.

"Come with me..."