Olga Horak

Olga Horak, born August 11, 1926 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), discusses her family background; experiencing little change in her situation until March 1942; fleeing with her family to Hungary; living in hiding in Budapest, Hungary for a year and a half; the lack of help from others; returning home to Bratislava as a result of a tip-off by a friend about door to door searches by Germans; being hidden by a friend of her mother; receiving papers to go to the United States; being taken to the town of Marianka, Slovakia and then to Sered camp for four or five days; being sent to Auschwitz; the selection; marching 250km from November until January to Gross-Rosen; seeing the German army retreat; going to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by British troops on April 15; getting sick and being transferred from the camp to a German hospital; being refused care due to their antisemitic attitudes; being transferred back to the sick bay at Bergen-Belsen where she stayed until August; being taken to the hospital in Pilsen (Plzen, Czech Republic); going back to Bratislava; fleeing the impending Russian occupation in 1947; going to Zagreb, Croatia and then to Zurich, Switzerland; and arriving in Australia in 1949.