I finally got home to my hometown in the middle of the night.
It was about 2:00 in the morning at the rail station...
after weeks of really going from one train to another,
from one city to another, that I found my way home.
And there was a welcoming committee from the town...
of people who were really there for--
Every night a train pulled in, they came to welcome survivors.
Sure enough, they came and sang and were happy.
And when they asked me to go on the wagon to go back to town, I--
Here, I'm a 16-year-old boy-- a little over 16.
I refused to go with them, 'cause I wanted to walk on my own.
I wanted to go to my house.
It was crazy. So I walked until 2:00 in the morning.
It was quite a distance in the dark.
In the middle of the night, I get into my house where I lived--
Number 9 Mihaly Street.
I start calling out names of my family, like if I expected an answer.
"I'm home. I'm home from school."
And it didn't take me long to realize there's no answer, nobody there.
So I woke up one of my neighbors.
I asked him if he knew anything.
I told him I just arrived and, you know, "What happened to my family?"
So he was telling me that nobody came back, but one sister came back.
They told me where she stayed.
So I went there and I knocked on the door. I yelled out my sister's name.
This was Irene Hershkowitz.
This was my favorite sister...
that was three years older than me that took me everywhere...
that I adored.
I called up, "Irene! Irene!"
When she heard my voice, I heard screaming and crying.
She came down to meet me and brought me upstairs...
for the night to stay there.
It was really some reunion that I'll never forget.
The only one.
Then later on, I had two more sisters.
The one that was brought up in another town, she was in her own town.
She went back there. An older sister...
who was a year apart also came after that.
After I arrived, she arrived too.
So, me and two sisters left in the whole family.