‘How many people from your hometown survived the war?’

That is a question that cannot be answered. Those who survived spread to the ends of the world. There were not many who returned.

We were 3007 men, women, and children who were loaded onto the train on the morning of 15 May 1944. When our group of women was counted after the selection, on the night we arrived in Auschwitz, 17 May, there were 486 of us. The number of men could have been similar. If we suppose that the same was true for the subsequent five trains, it means that a third survived the initial selection. How many of them died later, no one knows.

In my own family, 10 of the 31 who lived in Sighet survived. Those who wanted to return faced great difficulties. There was no functioning transport network after the war, so most people walked on foot, hitched a ride in a car, or jumped on board a train when they happened upon one.

Sanyi, my father’s youngest brother, made it. He had worked in a bakery in Auschwitz, and so had had access to bread. He hoped to find his wife Helen, and when the war was over he set out for Sighet on foot. Then something incredible happened. When he had made it as far as to Prague, and was just walking around in the streets, he suddenly ran into Helen. She, too, had been freed from a labour camp and was on her way to Sighet, hoping to find her husband.

It was one of few happy reunions; most people found no one when they finally reached Sighet. In many cases, not even their houses remained. Sanyi and Helen were lucky once more; their house was intact, and they could move in and start a new life. They did not stay long, however. Sighet had been liberated by the Russians in the autumn of 1944, and now the population lived under a strict communist regime. Sanyi and Helen left Romania as soon as possible, and finally settled in Los Angeles.