It was a terrible time. The siege of Budapest was the longest siege of any European city during the war. I was in Buda. But the Zionist organisation that was helping people was in Pest. I went there 1 day before all the bridges were blown up. You couldn’t go, after that. We decided that we are going to go away from Budapest because it was still under siege. So we walked from Budapest to Szeged, about 200 kilometres. One of the most horrible winters. It was terrible. I had such frostbite. But I just wanted to get away from the front.

Partly walking & partly we got lifts from the Russians. Lorries. They had lorries & sometimes gave us a lift. The Russians weren’t very nice. It was quite dangerous. I was 18. Another girl was 15 & they were always trying to rape her. So it was terrible. You could talk yourself out of it. I could speak Russian quite well & tell them that I’m on their side, my boyfriend is a partisan & is fighting. You could always- you could talk yourself out of it. But it was- You had to be able to chat them up. It wasn’t always easy.”