Commander Csernisov authorized the shipment of food to the embassy.
It was seven thirty in the evening of February 13, when I took the very first train that left from the Nyugati (West) Railroad station. When I presented my papers at the station signed by Csernisov, they were quite impressed and I was seated in the officers' car, in the company of Soviet officers. The train went to Szolnok where we arrived next morning at seven o'clock. There was, no train to Debrecen that day. I had to spend the night in Szolnok. Szolnok's railway junction experienced severe bombing. The population fled from the town and had not yet returned. It was very quiet. Dezső (Desmond) Csényi, the railway man, put me up for the night. Dr. László (Leslie) Szatmári was travelling with me. He too was a lawyer. While we were in Szolnok, he looked up Dr. Zoltán Pécsi and Dr. László Radnai. We were all at the same labour camp. Pécsi was the director of Szolnok's legal council, Radnai was in charge of his father's law office. His father had not yet returned.
We were told that the castle in Buda had been liberated. Many German soldiers were taken prisoner, and now all of Budapest was under the Red Army. But past the Danube the battle raged on.
On February 15, (Thursday) early in the morning, we were at the demolished railroad station. As our papers were certified by Csernisov, the station master again assigned in the seats in the officers' car. A little Hungarian-Russian dictionary was passed from hand to hand and we learned that one of the officers was a math teacher in the province of Kazak. The captain sitting across from me took my lighter which I had at the labour camp and kept it as a "souvenir"!
It was late by the time we reached Debrecen. We were quite amazed when we got to the main street. There was absolutely no sign of there having been a war. After Pest, it was like an oasis - everything was clean and ship-shape...
We follow our orders and make our way to the city hail. We presumed that the I.D. check would be a mere formality. But no. We were treated with great suspicion as probable spies. The I.D. with photo and Csernisov's papers were no help. I tried calling Bandi(Andy) Wiener, Debrecen's mayor who had been my friend at the labour camp, but no one picked up the phone. We were kept in custody until morning. The next official on duty looked at our papers and sent us with an escort to the appropriate office. Our escort was a Soviet soldier.