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Emery Gregus
Occupation and
Liberation 1944-1945
Aftermath: The Postwar Years
Remembrances
Chapter 12
My long days flowed thus, and this was my existence and my way of life in Budapest during this time. My Christian friends, in whose rooms I could on occasion find refuge, were by now called into the army and therefore the option of finding a night’s safe haven was no longer an option for me. I continued to stay in touch with Szemenyei, who, with his wife’s papers, had arranged for my sister Nelly and her daughter, Panni to spend the summer months at a provincial resort of Lake Velence, where they remained in relative safety. Szemenyei was the prototype simple folk Hungarian, who partly from bravado and partly from humanitarian goodness, and maybe in part as well, because he, too, saw the tide of the war turning, remained faithful and ready to lend a helping hand even in the darkest and most dangerous Arrow Cross period.
I
still had my rented room off the Lenke Plaza, but I felt very vulnerable
and uneasy and I was doubtful as to how secure I was there. I had little
faith in this arrangement. One day, Szemenyei mentioned to me that an
acquaintance of his, a factory worker, an old-time social democrat,
was willing to offer his home as a place to hide. The friend lived in
Kispest in a little house surrounded by a quaint garden. Szemenyei and
his friend felt that no one would suspect he was making use of his home
to shelter a Jew. Szemenyei brought us together, and his friend made
a positive impression on me. I instinctively felt I could trust him
and the two of us made plans to meet a few days later at the railway
station on the outskirts of the Budapest from where he went home by
train every night after work. He instructed me not to greet him when
we met and to pretend that we were complete strangers. Once we arrived
at Kispest, I was to wait until he disembarked and only then to follow
him at a respectable distance. When he reached his house, I was to wait
a until after he entered so as not to arouse suspicion, and, only then,
ring the bell of the garden gate. He would let me in and hide me there
until the end of the war. I talked this possible plan over with my sister,
Nelly, and we both felt that this arrangement would be an excellent
solution for me.
A
few days later, the agreed upon plan was carried out. We settled on
the day and the time. It was by then November and quite dark after 6
o’clock and yet again I found myself on a railway station. I once
more took the risk to have my identification checked on embarkation
and I followed the factory worker’s instructions to the letter.
I rang the bell at his garden gate, and he let me in. Once again, I
was in a stranger’s home, and was earnestly hoping that maybe here
at last, I would be able to survive whatever onslaught lay ahead. His
wife, a simple, well intention peasant woman, prepared my bed and fed
me a large bowl of delicious bean soup for dinner. They didn’t
count on money, and as I had none with which to compensate them, I tried
to convey the possibility of some later payment from monies I was hoping
to procure from an American inheritance. However, I am convinced that
they did what they did only out of compassion for a Jewish youngster.
I often wondered whether I, in their circumstances, would have done
the same and would have taken the same risk for which they exposed themselves
for my sake.
A
few days passed like this--when one day the bell from the garden gate
rang. I looked out the window and saw two gendarmes standing by the
gate. Without a moment’s hesitation I ran to the back of the little
house, yanked open the back window, jumped over the ledge, and ran as
fast as I could across the open field that lay behind their home. I’m
not sure whether this move might not have been riskier than remaining
in the house--but I was instinctively driven to survive. Whenever I
saw a policeman or gendarme, I always ran in the opposite direction.
The neighbors, or worse still, the gendarmes, could have spotted me.
A young man, dashing across the field, presented a fairly suspicious
scene in those times. But miraculously, no one followed, and when I
had run quite a distance, I turned back with a major detour to the direction
of the train station and within the hour I was back in Budapest. I had
no idea as to what course to follow next. As it turned out, but this
I found out only later, the gendarmes had not come on my behalf, but
naturally I could not have known that at the time.
I reluctantly returned to my rented room where I was so fearful to spend either the nights or the days. I continued my aimless wanderings of the streets of Pest. The danger now under the Arrow Cross regime was even greater than before.
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