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A Child's Story
I don’t remember the exact date, it was either the middle of March, or of April, in 1944. (Probably March 14th) I do remember it was Sunday, and Rozsi, my best friend (gentile), and I went to see a movie in the early afternoon. When we arrived home we walked into the apartment; into the dining room and there were suitcases and my clothes lying everywhere. The Germans had just occupied Hungary and I was to go to the country to hide. Our neighbour, Mrs. Mirth (Rozsi’s mother), just happened to have a cousin visiting from the country and I was to go back with her to stay with her and her family and Rozsi was to go along with me to keep me company (I think she was from Zalaegerszeg). While travelling--if anyone asked--we were sisters and I was to use Rozsi’s name and she her sister Ica’s. I took it very seriously as I was very much aware of the danger, but neither Rozsi nor the cousin paid too much attention to it.
On the train, during the night, people were talking about Jews and all the nasty things that were going to happen to them until I was ready to die with terror. Later we found out that that same Sunday night when we took the train, they arrested all the Jews at the railway stations in Budapest and sent them to concentration camps. Several of my mother’s cousins who were from the country and who, after hearing of the German occupation, immediately wanted to go home to be with their families, were arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Sending me away that day could have turned out very badly for me.
My main memory of my stay in the country is that I was afraid all the time thinking that everyone must have known that I was Jewish.
Whenever the cousin ironed my clothes if she came across any item that appeared a little bit small for me she would remark that it would fit her daughter perfectly. We disliked the daughter thoroughly, especially because she was much younger than we were, and always tagged along wherever we went so that we had no privacy whatever. Besides wanting the few things I had with me, this woman was forever telling me about all the things she was planning to ask from my father, such as materials, thread, money, etc. It was of course toward the end of the war years and clothes were hard to come by. Her greed annoyed me more and more as time went on, but the most awful thing this woman did was to tell me constantly, out of malice, that for every bomb that fell on Budapest ten Jews would be executed. I was only ten years old and although I knew I was in terrible danger, her stories and her greed upset me to such an extent that when I wrote home I related how she intended to ask for all sorts of things and that they should not send here anything because she was not nice. It was an extremely stupid thing to do for she got hold of my letter which I left in my suitcase--another incredible stupidity--and of course she read it. She confronted me with it and now I knew I could not stay there much longer but there was no way I could write home to say what had happened for she would always read what I wrote after that.
I was desperate; what to do? The next time I wrote home I had an idea. I did not expect it to work, but I had nothing to lose. I decided to write "come get us" under the stamp. Incredible as it may sound, when they received this letter in Budapest, Rozsi’s sister, Ica, had the idea to remove the stamp from the envelope to see if anything was written under it. They took off the stamp very carefully and saw our S.O.S. In the meantime I was living a nightmare with the situation getting more and more unbearable, when in a few days, like a miracle, Mrs. Mirth arrived to take us home. I can’t describe the feeling of relief that I felt. I am certain that if I had stayed on she would have handed me over to the authorities.
We arrived back to Budapest just in time to start wearing the yellow star of David—which had become mandatory for Jews to wear, 11-5 curfew, no movies or theatre, no going to the beach, in other words, no attendance at any public places of amusement. However, except for the fact that the fear of what was in store for us was always in the back of one’s mind, the summer passed. We children--in our apartment building--all ages and, strangely enough, including some Christian kids, spent our time playing ping pong, sometimes at my place, other times at some other kid’s apartment. We kept on playing day after day.
My father was called in to join a forced labour group. He came home for a few days just before we moved to Baros Ter, to the apartment building with the yellow star affixed to its gate. In these buildings--buildings that came to be called "starry houses"--the gentile tenants were not required to move out, only the Jewish tenants had to share their apartment with at least one other family. We moved in with a nice elderly couple and it was a beautifully furnished home, but I disliked living there. It was also right next to the Keleti station (Eastern) which made it a target during air raids.
I said earlier that the summer passed, but I was very unhappy, at not being allowed to go anywhere or do anything and I sent the saddest letters to my poor father in labour camp, not really realizing how much they would upset him.
When we were living on Baros Plaza for a while, there were wonderful news on the radio one day: Admiral Horthy (Hungary’s ruler) surrendered to the Allies and told his people to lay down their arms. The Jews could remove their stars and the 11-5 curfew was finished. I could hardly believe my ears but it was repeated several times. To celebrate this happy event I took off my star and my friend Rozsi and I once again went to see a movie. The joy was over by the time we came home from the movies. Szalasi, who was the head of the Hungarian fascist organization the "Arrow Cross" took over the government and everything was as before.
I don’t remember how soon after Szalasi took power that the following event happened, but it was not too long after. One day Bela, an uncle of mine--on my father’s side--came to tell us that they were rounding up Jews all over the city. They were being beaten and some were even shot. He (and we as well) thought that they were sure to come our way since we lived on a main street. My grandmother started baking bread as we had almost none and we started to get ready by putting on lots of clothes and by packing a few "necessities" in small suitcases along with whatever food we had. We had some money that we were afraid of taking with us and not knowing what to do with it, I suggested hiding it in the side of an arm-chair, between the arm and the bottom part of the seat. It was evening when they came. We had to go downstairs, in front of the house, and stand in line. There were Germans and Arrow Cross thugs. They collected all the jewelry: rings, watches, earrings, etc. that people had on them. By that time we had heard the rumours that if a ring would not come off by itself they would cut off the finger to get it. My mother stood there arguing with an Arrow Cross thug, saying that her brother had fought in the Hungarian army, which was true at the beginning of the war, not wanting to give up her wedding ring while I stood there begging her to stop. It was a miracle he did not touch her for afterwards we had seen people who had been beaten up.
We were taken to an old unused horse racetrack. It was cold, sometime in October. We spent the night sitting on the cold ground. If you wanted to go to the bathroom, you had to go to the open ditches by the side of the field where you had to squat down with the guards watching. Shy as I was, it was very humiliating. We were also hungry for we had only some bacon but no bread, as the bread was left half-baked in the oven. Mother offered to exchange bacon for bread but no one was interested.
Sometime during the night it was announced that those with children could go under shelter which turned out to be the stands where the seats for watching the races were. We decided that my mother, my aunt Ibi and I would go. Magda and Bela remained with my grandparents. When we got to the shelter there was another announcement that the children could have some cube sugar and that those who had their wedding rings taken from them could go and get it back. I don’t remember if I got any sugar or not, but I do know we were not going to go look for mother’s ring.
The next morning we were told to line up; thousands of people facing a machine gun. We had no idea what would happen to us, we just stood there for what seemed like an eternity. I had to go to the bathroom, but was afraid to get out of line. We stood staring at the machine gun for a very long time, almost all day, while they tried to decide what to do with us. I suppose we were too many to shoot; they did not seem to know what action to take. Late in the afternoon we were told we would be taken back the way we came and whenever the group came near a place that someone lived close by, that person just walked away and went home.
My mother, Ibi, and I arrived home without any difficulty. A while later Magda, my grandfather and my uncle came home too, but no grandmother. We were worried sick wondering what could have happened to her. She was with Magda and grandfather but apparently when they arrived to Baros Ter and started to leave the group there was some shooting which caused everybody to run and possibly she ran back to the group. Or she may not have heard when the others told her it was time to leave, as she was a little hard of hearing. In any case some people, realizing her predicament, asked her to go home with them for the night. The next morning she arrived home having walked during curfew clutching her handbag to her chest to cover her yellow star. We were much relieved to have her home. We finished baking the bread that was left in the oven half-done, and ate it as we were very hungry. During our outing to the race track the Germans took away some suitcases which we ourselves had filled with all sorts of good linens, etc, thinking to put them in the cellar, but which we forgot about so that all the bastards had to do was walk out of the house with them. Our visitors also cut some photographs that were displayed on the vanity, but other than stealing my brand new manicure set, they left the apartment much as it was. We even found the money we hid in the chair.
April 1979.
The next unpleasant occurrence that happened was the order that everyone, male or female, between the ages of 16-40 years had to go to certain round-up points to be taken away to work. This was the "great lie" for it was not to do work, but to concentration camps to die that they were being taken. It is by this promise of work that they got people to go quietly to their deaths. After all everybody thought they were going to so much trouble to transport them, if they wanted to kill them they would have done it right there. We were not aware at this time what a great problem it was to dispose of so many bodies and how well the Germans had solved this problem by the autumn of 1944. The only problem was to get the people to these special places where they were all ready to dispose of them, after degrading, shaming and humiliating them. I shall not dwell any further on this as I personally was too young and so, luckily, did not have to report.
Ibi, Magda and my father’s brother left as ordered. My mother reported along with my aunts, but Ibi made her come home, which she did. I guess it was to round up people they may have missed--like my mother--that they made house to house searches a while later. My mother would have been surely taken during this house to house search but for two things: mother was always, as long as I can remember, bothered by arthritic pain in her muscles. At this time it must have ached a lot for she took to her bed saying she felt ill. The other factor in saving her was our air-raid warden. I mentioned, at the beginning, that the buildings with the stars on the gates continued to house gentile people as well. The air raid warden of our building was not only Christian but a member of the Arrow Cross party as well. However, he had a son, a few years older than I, who was very fond of me. I guess the father knew this, for when the police came to get my mother she refused to get out of bed, saying they could shoot her then and there, but she was too sick to get up and go anywhere; this man spoke up for her and asked the police to let her stay. Later, after liberation, this worked very much in this man’s favour, for he was brought to trial and I believe it was my mother’s testimony that got him off.
It was during this period that the Swedes, the Swiss and the Vatican (for converts?) tried to give the protection of their governments to people who were able to go to the consulates and get visas, or some kind of official paper, that declared that the person or persons named on it were under the protection of those governments. These governments acquired certain apartment buildings and called them "protected houses", i.e. extensions of the consulates where the people with special certificates could move in thinking they would be exempt from the treatment the Hungarian Jews were getting, as Swiss or Swedish citizens would be. As my mother did not know how to go about acquiring these documents and we had no one else to get them for us, we felt very disappointed. We needn’t have worried for when it came time for us to move into the ghetto, those from the "protected houses" were taken as well as we were.
Our turn to move into the ghetto came around the 9th or 10th of December. It was a week before my birthday. As it was cold in December, we put on as much clothing as we could and packed the rest, along with some bedding, into suitcases. Because I had no slacks and was afraid of the cold, it was decided I would wear a pair of pyjama pants under my coat. It was kind of humiliating, but what was one more degradation…. Our belongings were heavy and difficult to carry. Just around the corner from where we were being taken, we stopped in front of a combined restaurant and tavern. This place was owned by the landlord of the apartment building where we lived originally. They must have seen and recognized us for they convinced the police to allow one of their horse drawn carts to carry our luggage. Further up the street we passed our former home and as we went by I looked up and saw our next door neighbour and her little boy Pityu (she was the landlord’s daughter and I used to play a lot with her son). She and the child were looking out the window and waving to me; my heart was breaking.
We were led to an old house in the ghetto--Kis DiÚfa ˜tca--and, along with some strangers, were moved into an empty apartment. Our family consisted of my grandmother, grandfather, mother and I. My uncle Zoltan had a woman friend who was not Jewish and she heard about our being taken away and came to visit us along with Rozsi’s mother, Mrs. Mirth. I have no idea how they found us, but they both brought us a little food. Margit promised to bring more food in a week’s time. It was the day of my 11th birthday when she came back loaded with all kinds of bread and cookies, but the authorities had just decided to close the gates to the ghetto and the police would not allow her to give me the parcel. There was a sequel to this that showed that there was still goodness and compassion left in some people, for weeks later, when we were actually starving, a young Jewish man came to us with some food, saying that Margit asked him to bring it to us. It was most welcome.
Starvation and the fear of what the Germans were planning for us were not the only things that made our lives miserable. The Allies bombed the city frequently and this necessitated spending a lot of time in the basement. It was a fairly small cellar and, as time went on, more and more people moved in. There were only backless benches with just enough room for people to sit. Our family, being one of the early arrivals, had a bench that was standing against the damp wall, thus providing some back support. Also, since my grandparents and mother spent a lot of time upstairs trying to cook some watery soup, I would lie down on the bench sometimes. Some people grumbled about my lying down even though I was only a child and was not taking anyone else’s seat. I spent a lot of time in that shelter for I was afraid of the air-raids to go upstairs. Another difficult thing to bear was that some people had more food than others. It was very painful to watch others preparing and eating food when one’s stomach was empty.
One night my mother convinced me to come and spend the night upstairs and be a little more comfortable, lying down on the floor where I could at least stretch out, rather than spend another night, all cramped, on the hardwood bench in the cellar. Just as we got settled for the night we heard airplanes and anti-aircraft guns, without the air raid siren having been sounded, and all of a sudden there was light and tremendous noise and air pressure all at the same time. The windows were pushed in and glass fragments were flying in all direction.. I became hysterical and wanted to run down to the basement. My grandmother held me back, for to go to the shelter would have meant going outside and there were all sorts of things flying around and she knew that I could have gotten hurt. I was terrified; the building diagonally opposite us took a direct hit. There were few survivors. From that time on I would not spend any time upstairs. The house next to ours also sustained some damage during another bombing, but our place was spared that at least. It can be imagined what it was like, in the middle of the winter, with the windows blown out and no heat. They managed to find some cardboard and cover the holes to at least keep the wind out.
I am sure I had lice in my hair, but there was nothing that could be done about it. My mother washed my hair once downstairs in the cold basement, but I don’t think that helped much. There was no heat in the cellar except for a small stove at the far end from us where, occasionally, there was a fire and some lucky people did a little cooking.
In the apartment upstairs there was a stove too and I think we found odds and ends of furniture with which to make a fire if anyone had anything to cook. At one point water stopped flowing out of the taps and one had to go for water quite a distance and come back. My grandfather often went for water for us, as well as some our of neighbours.
Three of my father’s sisters also lived in the ghetto, but I don’t know where they lived. I do remember the place my uncle Sandor and aunt Rozsi had. It was the most wonderfully safe place in the world. It was a heated cozy basement apartment that had table and chairs, as well as a most comfortable bed with an eiderdown on it. There was a stove and there was food. It was paradise. We visited them once and afterwards I spent a lot of time fantasizing, not about my normal life, but about being able to live in such a warm, safe place as that.
Time passed very slowly and we were hungry all the time. We had some figs, which were among the food stuff that Margit managed to get to us with the young man about whom I spoke earlier. My mother saved these figs for me only, and she gave me one a day while they lasted. I would eat it very slowly taking tiny bites. It was then that I promised myself that if I survived I should never again fast.
There were vague rumours that the ghetto was surrounded by mines and that it would be blown up. We knew the Russians were close, but not how close, until one day someone looked out of the basement window and saw Russian soldiers. At first we did not dare believe our eyes, but eventually we realized that it was true and started feeling relief and joy that we were alive. Slowly people began to venture outside. And what do poor starving people who have lived like prisoners do on their first free outing but go looking for food and end up looting whatever they can find. Some enterprising people came back from their expeditions dragging all kinds of junk with them. No one in my family went looking for things but one day a young man came back with some fur muffs and he gave me two of them. I guess they came in handy to keep my hands warm. My feet were in very bad condition, several of my toes had frozen spots on them which turned into open sores. I always did have bad circulation in my legs.
Now that we were liberated my greatest wish was to go home to our original apartment as soon as possible. My grandfather found some kind of a hand cart and we piled all our belongings on it and set out across town for home. We were worried about getting home safely, for by this time the shining reputation of our liberators was somewhat tarnished by nasty rumours. They had a way of stripping people of their valuables (not that we had any by this time), raping women and carrying people away (no one knew where or why). We made ourselves look as unappealing as possible, which was not difficult for we must have looked awful by this time, and started out for home. Walking through the bombed out city I kept my eyes more or less on the ground for I was terrified that I might see some dead bodies lying around. We arrived at our destination safely.
At this point I should like to add that I shall be eternally grateful to the Russians for having liberated us. If not for them the Germans and the Hungarians would have found a way to kill us. The fact that this liberation was achieved without any extra effort on their part, in spite of themselves, does not change the fact that we owe our lives to them.
When we arrived home we had a surprise waiting for us. A shoemaker and his family were living in one room of our apartment and a woman postal worker in the rest of it. We could not throw them out, but the postal worker gave us back our living-dining room and promised to leave very shortly, which she did. We had a much more difficult time getting rid of the shoemaker and his family. They stayed on for months and eventually my father had to find another apartment for them to move to. There were two girls in this family, one of whom was about my age. She was nice to me for she would steal bits of frying fat right out of her mother’s cooking pot for me. They had other food too and the reason for all this plenty was the older daughter’s occupation, she was a whore and went with Russian soldiers.
We continued being hungry even after we came home for we could get no food except a little cornmeal occasionally and once my grandfather brought home some horsemeat, which we cooked, but ate with great difficulty. I did not like the cornmeal either, it tasted like sawdust to me.
Since there were still some pockets of German resistance, especially in Buda, one could hear gun shots day and night. By this time most of the tenants in our building moved back to their apartments and the cellar was left vacant. This basement shelter was nothing like the cramped spare we had in the ghetto. Here everybody had a cot to sleep on and the whole place was arranged quite comfortably, rather like a large dormitory. As I was still nervous about the shooting, my girlfriend and I slept in the empty basement for several weeks to come. I felt nice and safe except for being hungry all the time. At this time we had no idea of the horror that had taken place and was still continuing until the end of the war, the spring of 1945, in the rest of Europe.
One day in February there was a great surprise: my father had come home. He was very thin and looked terrible, but he was home. Now everything was going to be all right. He had walked all the way from Poland. He did not really expect to find us at home and could hardly believe we were alive and well. He arrived carrying some food in his knapsack. He got the food in BÈkÈscsaba (my birthplace) and did not touch any of it on the way home, except to give some to a child somewhere, saving it all in case he found me alive.
Soon after my father’s homecoming, things became a little easier. We got back the part of our merchandise (textiles) that was hidden for us by our good neighbour, Mrs. Mirth, and my father bartered this for food with the Russians and with peasant women who were beginning to come to the city with all kinds of edibles to exchange for whatever they could get, especially textiles.
Because I was sent to the country as soon as the Germans marched into Hungary I did not finish grade 4. At the end of the war I got my report card anyway and was enrolled into first year Gymnasium. Since this was early March and I missed the whole year, I found it very difficult and needed a tutor to get me through, which she did. Actually I think the reason I was able to pass the year, even with help, was that the schools had been closed for several months during the siege and the authorities made allowances for the missed time.
It was during the spring that my aunt Magda came home from concentration camp. She had very short hair and was terribly bloated. Within a few months she looked much better. My other aunt, Ibi, my favorite, as she was everyone’s favourite, did not come back. She died near the end, having looked after her sister as best she could.
That summer we tried to enjoy our life and freedom.
This feeling of freedom was not to last for we began to see what direction the government was going, and having seen how Russian soldiers behaved, as well as my father’s experiences with them right after he was liberated by them, only to be taken away by them, did not make us confident of the communist system. Also knowing of the anti-semitism of the Hungarians, we felt we would be happier leaving the country and try for a new life, hopefully, in America. We had relatives in America, my grandmother’s brother lived in Newark, New Jersey, and we hoped he could help us emigrate. It was impossible to leave the country legally therefore another way had to be found. There were Zionists smuggling people out of the country to go to Palestine.
We did not wish to go to Palestine as we had first-hand accounts of the difficulties of living and getting a job there. My mother’s sister Ilonka had gone there in the 1930s and had written to us, as well as told us in person when she visited Hungary before the war, of the hardships they underwent. At this time she and her family were still living there. Having survived such harrowing times we were not heroes, we did not want to go and be pioneers and struggle and put our lives on the line just to get there. What we wanted was to be safe and live in peace. As the only way out was joining one of these Zionist groups, we had to buy our way into one and this is what my father did. We were supposed to be Romanians, my grandmother became my mother, Magda my sister, and my mother became a single lady. We told only very close friends and relatives that we were leaving. Because I was very concerned about my schooling and as once again I was not going to finish the school year, I wanted to get my report card, thinking I would need it to enroll in school in the United States. We decided to tell my school principal that I alone was going to America, which impressed him no end, and he promised to issue a report card for me, just as if I had finished the year. He was as good as his word and I received my report card later, in the summer, when we were in Germany.
One evening, early in June 1946, we took our bags and stole out of our apartment leaving everything there for my uncle Zoltan and his wife Margit, and went to spend the night some place from where we were taken to the station next morning for our departure to Austria. The trip was quite eventful, even dangerous, for there were several Russian soldiers in our compartment and one of them got drunk and took it into his head to throw out our luggage from the window. When my mother tried to object he started waving his gun around and scared us to death. Luckily some other soldiers came and removed him.
We crossed the border into Austria without further incident and reached Vienna where we were taken to the Rothschild hospital, which was used to house people in transit. It was here that our Displaced Person status began (it was known as D.P. for short)
July 6, 1979
I don’t remember exactly the sequence of our journey from Vienna, but I think we went to Linz, and from there to Salzburg. I remember Salzburg well, it was the only city we passed through that was not touched by the war. Built in a valley completely surrounded by mountains, it is a lovely city. We spent about a week there and we actually enjoyed it, even going on an excursion and to a swimming pool.
Our ultimate destination turned out to be Ulm in Germany, where we spent the next two years. Ulm is the birthplace of Einstein and has the tallest cathedral in Germany, which, by the way, was not hurt in any way during the war, although the houses around it were all bombed out.
We were brought to a former army camp called the Hindenburg Kaserne, which was located just outside the town. There was another camp inside the town also used by D.P.s called the Sedan Kaserne.
In Hindenburg amongst all the people, the dregs of humanity also collected. I never heard of Jewish criminals before in Hungary, but here there were crooks from Poland and Roumania who survived the war and who continued with their occupation which was picking pockets and stealing. Some of these people arrived to the camp with only the clothes on their back; within a year their wives all sported diamonds and dresses and shoes from France. I myself saw a handful of rings mounted with emeralds and diamonds that a man showed my father. Later on, there were serious fights between some of the men and also the women.
Our plans to immigrate to America were difficult to carry through even though we had relatives there. As time went on I grew anxious about my education and it was decided to enroll me in the girls’ school in the city, as the camp itself did not provide teaching at my level nor did I speak Yiddish well enough to follow it. Not that my German was any better and everything had to be translated for me into English which most of the teachers and some of the girls also spoke a little. My English was enough to communicate for I had taken English lessons before leaving Hungary. Here too I found the level of teaching very low: there was no Latin or algebra taught. I knew that to get into any decent school I would need these two subjects. I dropped out of school and instead went to a tutor to learn these two subjects only. The tutor was a retired minister who spoke English, so we were able to communicate quite well. He was paid in cigarettes and coffee, which was more valuable than money.
We spent two years in this camp, always hoping to leave soon. After a while it became evident that the U.S. was beyond our reach. Therefore, when there arose a possibility to come to Canada, we decided to take it as a stepping stone to the States. However once we got here we decided to stay.