Mauthausen

Michael Horvath - Austria

“Sometimes they beat you more, sometimes less. But they beat you every day.“

1922 born in Oberwart, Burgenland (Austria); being a Roma he could not attend school, worked already as a child as farm labourer and later as unskilled labourer at road constructions

June 1939 arrested and deported to KZ Dachau; his family will be deported later to the ghetto Łódź and killed, only one sister survived

autumn 1939 transfer to KZ Buchenwald

summer 1942 transport to KZ Mauthausen and from there to the branch camps Gusen and Lungitz, forced labour in the quarry, on construction sites and in a bomb disposal squad

May 1945 liberation and after two months return to Oberwart

after 1945 works and lives two years in a stable, afterwards he works as farm worker and for the building trade; he marries a survivor of KZ Ravensbrück and has eight children

1995 two grandsons are killed by a bomb attack on the Roma living in Oberwart

At the time of the interview he was living in Oberwart, Burgenland (Austria).

Michael Horvath died on Jannuary 9, 2004.