On 6 June, the Gestapo in Győr ordered the ghetto to be evacuated street by street. Starting at dawn, 7 June, the inhabitants of the Győrsziget ghetto around Simor Square were marched to the slum on the outskirts of the city, to the very poorly maintained barracks on Budai Road. The barracks were wooden shacks without any comfort, on the opposite side of the city, in Gyárváros.
For more information on the evacuation, read the memoirs of Éva Quitner, then known as Éva Klein.
"We did not stay long in the ghetto... In the early hours of June 6, there was a loud banging on the front door, which startled me and the other people in the house... As my father opened the gate, the person outside roughly pushed aside the gate, and came in without a word... We children, still in our pyjamas, sat up on our mattresses on the floor, stiff as if bewitched, our eyes fixed on the formidable figure entering the room, whose every pore exuded authority. He was a gendarme who emphasized the nature of his mission with this dramatic entré. His huge frame filled the doorway, and a black, fearsome, sickle-shaped cock's feather dangled from his hat. No sooner was he inside than he towered over us, hia legs stiffly apart, his expressionless face as if carved of stone. His voice also revealed that he had a stone in his chest where his heart should be. By this time, everyone in the house had come down in their dressing gowns to hear the orders of this fearsome creature. »Everyone must gather outside the gate within an hour. Each person can take as much as they can carry.«”
- What do you think the non-Jewish citizens of Győr, who had lived in peace with their fellow citizens until 1920’s could have done? How do you think they felt about these events?
- What do you think made the difference between deciding to help or remaining a passive bystander?