Anton Mason testiomony

Anton Mason, formerly Anton Meisner was born in modern day Romania, formerly known as Austria-Hungary on April 21 1927. His parents met at a friend’s house. His grandparents’ names were Gretel and Abraham Gotman, and they were Jewish. While Anton was in school, the teachers were not as anti-Semitic as the rest of the population though they were still strict. After some time the school was converted to Catholicism, therefor leaving only a small percentage of Jews allowed to remain there.

He first started noticing signs of danger in Hungary when the government fell and was replaced by fascists. The Jews had to wear yellow stars and abide by a curfew and were limited by their choice in food. They also had to go to the back of every line they were in, thus buying something as simple as stamps could take hours.

In May 1944 they were removed from the ghetto and told they were moving further inland due to the advancing Russian front. They could only take one change of clothes and food and water for two days. They were taken to a synagogue to sleep and there was no room for anyone to lie down to sleep. They were taken to the railroad station the next day where they were loaded onto cattle cars, and no one resisted because they were too weak from the lack of sleep the previous night.

He had to go on a death march from Auschwitz to Glievwitz, about 1500 Jews were shot during the march. The biggest reason he survived was luck, but he was also able to elude some of the Germans by hiding under the barracks as well as in a pile of dead bodies. He was lucky to survive the starvation, the death march and the war.

“We were ready to die. We said our prayers of the dead and did not care if we lived or died”

“My father was dead, and I was truly at the end of my rope”