That’s when I started a coffee maker course, an ice-cream maker course, a cook’s course and a business manager’s course. I was there for eight years, and I got from there to Szeged restaurant as a business manager. When they transformed it into a fishermen’s inn, I went to work in Kiralyhago restaurant, on 20-22 Boszormenyi Avenue, I was there for four years and I retired from there in 1972.
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Hedvig Endrei
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There was a band in Szeged restaurant, and Istvan Laki played in that band. He became my partner in life. We lived together 24 years, he died around 1982. He wasn’t Jewish. He had two children: Istvan and Andor. Andor became my stepson, because I didn’t have children of my own. Andor spent a lot of time in the shop, too. The other one, Istvan, was quite an autonomous boy. His father sent him to learn catering, he was a waiter apprentice. He became a waiter and he worked in Park restaurant. He became a very skilful, very honest waiter, and he defected from there.
My partner in life and I lived quite happily. Our relationship was a professional relationship and love at the same time. He worked at Szeged restaurant as a musician, until he retired. Since he didn’t raise his children from his previous marriage, we had quite a calm life, though working in the catering trade meant a lot of staying up at night. We often went to the Balaton for the holiday. We didn’t go abroad. Neither I nor Istvan dealt with politics, we weren’t members of the Party. This was quite a calm period of my life. I spent my time working in the catering industry. Since I didn’t have a child, I worked very much.
The present day political events make me think even more. I always sympathized with the liberals, I used to go to their tent on Madach Square before the elections.
It never occurred to me to immigrate to Israel. Perhaps because of my parents, I don’t know. I know that many acquaintances told me after the war that they were surprised that they didn’t find me on the list of those who emigrated, because they thought that I would also leave. I keep in touch with the Jewish community. I always send them 1000 forint, I contribute to their expenses this way. I subscribe to the paper called Eretz [Zionist newspaper distributed by the Sochnut in Hungary], I usually read that. At New Year’s Eve and on the Day of Atonement I usually go to the synagogue. I get compensation from the Claims Conference for having been deported.
On my 90th birthday, on 22nd May 2005, the inhabitants of the house congratulated me. I have lived in the house for the longest time, I don’t know whether there are other Jews in the house, but the company has changed a lot. The occupants of this building are relatively nice, but the house has split in two because of the present day political situation.
After graduating from middle school I went to the so-called bride school [household school] for a year. There we learned how to budget the money, the income. Besides this there was also a sewing and cooking course. We learned to bake strudel, and to cook, and we invited the children who went to school and the teachers, too. I went to the bride school with Theodora Palavicini, who had to be at home by 1 o’clock every day, by the time her father got home, so that the entire family could eat together. A car with a driver came to pick her up, but this didn’t bother us at all, we considered it a natural thing, we didn’t mock her for being so distinguished. She dressed in a simple way, she didn’t want to attract attention. I don’t know where they lived, perhaps around the Buda Castle, because they came by car. They were very wealthy. But she worked just like we did. I was 15 years old at that time, and then my first occupation was milliner.
I learned the milliner trade partly at school. The milliner school might have been about two years, but I don’t remember exactly. I also learned many things in my aunt’s shop, I learned the trade there for real. My aunt had a milliner’s shop on 2 Vamhaz Boulevard.
After learning the milliner trade I learned to sew for a year from a widow and her daughter, who was a spinster. I might have been around 17-18 years old at that time. They lived on Magyar Street and I used to go there to learn to sew. This was a seamstress who took on teaching time by time, but it wasn’t a course. I learned from her alone. My mother knew this woman from somewhere, that’s how I got to her. I learned to overstitch the dresses, to sew in the sleeve, to do needlework, in short, things, which couldn’t be sewed with a sewing machine. My mother paid for this sewing course, and I also got a snack there. I was there from 9 in the morning until 1 every day, then in the winter I went to the Markus skating rink to skate, then my mother came to pick me up. The Markus skating rink was on Rakoczi Avenue, across the Astoria, I used to go there with my friends.
I got married at the age of 26, and I went to the duvet making school right before that. I met my husband the following way: I worked at my uncle Jeno Reich’s on 17 Rakoczi Avenue, his hat shop was much smaller than Aunt Frici’s. His brother courted one of my colleagues, and he introduced me to my future husband. We were dating for seven years.
He was of Jewish origin but he was raised as a Roman Catholic. His father magyarized his name from Edelstein, my husband was already Endrei.
My husband was a professional seed examiner at the Corn Exchange. This meant that people brought wheat or some kind of produce to sell at the Corn Exchange, and he controlled the produce they had in their sacks. They put a long pipe with a hollow end into the sack, and a certain amount of the grain fell into it, and there was a hole on the upper end of the pipe, and he examined of what quality the grain was. He determined whether the produce was first class, second class etc., and how much could be paid for it.
I got married in 1941. I only had a civil marriage, because my husband was Roman Catholic and I am Jewish. We made an agreement that our children to be born would be Jewish. That’s how my mother was willing to give her consent to the marriage. She was terribly sad, because she would have liked a big wedding at the Dohany Street Synagogue [8], and it wasn’t possible.
My husband was called up right after our wedding. He had to go to Godollo. He was a cadet, but they had him change his clothes there and deported him from Godollo. One of my cousins met him at the end of April 1942 and gave him some underwear; we don’t know what happened to him after that. I have a notification issued by the Red Cross in 1943, saying that he was missing. Then I got the death certificate, he died in Zhytomyr [today Ukraine]. We didn’t have any children, because we didn’t live together even a year.
The 19th of March 1944 [10] was a Sunday. In the morning I went over to my mom’s for lunch. I remember that the city was very quiet, and people said that the Germans had come in. That’s when the war started for us for real. Soon after that they designated the yellow star houses. This house on Karoly Boulevard also became one, so my parents moved to our place, because theirs wasn’t [a yellow star house]. My mother, my aunt who had the comforter shop and my father moved here. Our house was quite unified, and in the evenings, since there was a curfew and we couldn’t leave the house, everyone brought his cricket, and we gathered here, on the balcony. We discussed the daily events here.
They introduced the wearing of the yellow star on the 5th April 1944, so on the 6th April we were only allowed to go out on the street with the yellow star [11] sewed up. That’s how we pulled through this period; it was quite difficult of course when we had to go out on the street with this discriminating sign. But one could get used to everything. At 5 in the afternoon one couldn’t leave the house anymore, and here on the third floor lived an Arrow Cross [12] chief and his family; he was the commander of the 5th precinct Arrow Cross house, which was on 6 Semmelweis Street. He was sentenced to 15 years of prison. I was at the court as a witness. After 15 years he was released and joined the communist party. His wife was so nice that when she went shopping to the market she came to our place and asked my mom what we needed.
This was a forced labor camp. We walked on foot for a week during the daytime, and in the evenings we had to sit or lay down where we were, and then continue on our way in the morning. Many times we woke up and saw that we had slept in the place of a cow herd. We couldn’t even wash our hands for a week, or take off our clothes or our coat. When I was taken away, my parents sent my neighbor, a dental technician called Imre Lukacs, who wasn’t Jewish, after me. There were yellow star houses on the banks of the Danube, which were under Swedish protection [16]. My parents got hold of a ‘Schutzpass’ [17]. This paper meant that I was under Swedish protection. And they sent this Imre after me, so that I could come home from there, but he didn’t find me.
In Kophaza they took us to work, to dig entrenchments, stepped entrenchments, the Hungarians thought that the Russian tanks would go into the entrenchments and wouldn’t be able to come out. At that time we didn’t know that we were digging the entrenchments for ourselves, too. There were some, who died there already. I had an acquaintance in Kophaza, the son of my mother’s girlfriend. I was already very thin and in a bad shape at that time. He came to visit me every day, because I had known him from earlier. One day we found him dead, down in the entrenchment. When I came back, my mother’s girlfriend always came, because she knew that we were together, and came to ask if I knew anything about him. My mother told me not to tell the truth. The woman kept coming. Once my mom had enough of it and told her not to keep asking me, because she made me remember things over and over again. She never asked about her son again. It was horrible. The woman was called Lori, I don’t know her real name anymore. They had been friends with my mother since their childhood.
From Kophaza they took us to Wiener Neustadt [today Austria], then to Lichtenwörth in Austria. We walked for one week. There wasn’t any possibility to wash ourselves. We went to the toilet wherever we could. In the meantime they watched us. In Lichtenwörth they took us to a factory.
We always sat on a blanket, and I had a cardigan, which we undid. I didn’t miss the undone cardigan, because I had a winter coat, at that time they didn’t really let us outside the building, and we weren’t cold inside. This was my idea because I could knit. I had been doing needlework since my childhood; I did such things with pleasure. We made a knitting needle out of wood; perhaps I had a pocket-knife, too. Everyone got a piece and we knitted. It was just an idea, it didn’t really have a point; we just did it for fun, to pass the time. In Lichtenwörth we didn’t work, only in Kophaza. We helped each other when we washed ourselves, too, when we stood in line to wash, comb ourselves and get ready.
The five of us wrote a cookbook in the camp. The cookbook was made because the five of us women, who became friends there, were all housewives and we regularly cooked. In Lichtenwörth we were very hungry already, we always talked about food. I took writing-paper along and envelopes and a pencil, thinking that I would write home. That’s why I had it, and they hadn’t taken it, and so we wrote the recipes on this writing-paper. Every one of us dictated simple recipes, which we had made at home, how much flour, how much of this, how much of that was needed. I didn’t know the proportions very well, because when I asked my mother she always told me: a little bit of this, a little bit of that. These had all been tried before, they were ‘tried’ recipes. We wrote all these off the top of our heads, we didn’t have a cookbook with us. We wrote this book daily. We wrote with very small letters, so that more would fit on the paper.
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During WW2
See text in interview
Many tried to escape through the latrine and run away. The Austrian people were very nice, they let them bathe, wash their hair, and they packed food for some, so that they could give some to others, too, if they came back. It’s unbelievable, but there were some who went back [to Lichtenwörth], because they had nowhere to go.
Klari became hysterical because her hair had to be cut, because she had lice, and they only allowed her in the hospital that way. She ran away from there several times. We had many fights with her. How could they imagine cutting her hair, how would she go to the saloon - she was at a loss. She was a model. That was a huge thing at that time. We told her that by the time she came home her hair would grow again. Then she kneeled and implored, but in the end she let them cut her hair. Eva didn’t contract typhus.
In April 1945 we escaped at the last minute, when the Russians came. When the camp was liberated one of the jupo asked a woman if she had a white sheet, which they could hang out at the camp so that they wouldn’t bomb it, knowing there were Jews there. That’s how we found out that we were liberated. I was there for six months.
We, who could move, gathered a lot of food and took it to those who couldn’t leave the camp. They died there, because they ate too much. And we left, all five of us, but three fell ill with typhus.
On the way back the Austrians were very helpful. We were so weak that we couldn’t climb the stairs. We begged everywhere in Neudorf: my friend had a pullover, and all the clothes we had we exchanged for eggs and bacon, and that’s how we got home on foot somehow. Of course they usually didn’t let us in the house, but they did let us in the stable, and we often slept there. The Austrians knew all too well who we were. We got bacon and bread at many places.
It took us two weeks to get to Gyor, and from there we went home with a coal train. On 17th April we sat down to eat in front of the Great Market Hall, because we had come from the Kelenfold railway station all along Bartok Bela Avenue, and we were so hungry that we couldn’t take it anymore. We came along the Danube banks, and I came to Karoly Boulevard through Kossuth Lajos Street. I first started wondering whether my family was alive, whether the house where I lived was still there, when I got to the Astoria. I came up to the gate and it was closed. The same janitor, who had been here when I left, opened the door, and I could only go upstairs on all fours. My mother was standing by the window, and she was speechless when I came on the balcony, and when she saw me she couldn’t help crying. My father didn’t look out the window, he just looked at her wondering why she was screaming, and only then he noticed that I had arrived. My mother took everything off me, because I was full of lice, and she bathed me and put me in bed right away. Many people had moved into the house, to who they had allocated the apartments.
While they deported me to Lichtenwörth, my parents were here in the [Budapest] ghetto [19]. They had to go to 2 Wesselenyi Street. The three of them could get hold of a small room. The ghetto was liberated on 18th January, that’s when they broke the gate down, and the day before there were bombings and my parents went to the cellar, and they didn’t come up until they were liberated. My father was the first one who came over to the other side. The inhabitants were still in the cellar here. A couple lived in my apartment. My father went up to them and said that he wanted the key to the apartment. They were so shocked to see my father that they handed him the key and never came back again. Then my father came here right away, that’s how the apartment remained ours.
The deceased has to be washed before the funeral service, because according to Jewish religion the deceased isn’t clean. This is a special thing. I have been at a washing of the dead once. I was at the washing of the dead of my aunt Eszti. She was one of my mother’s stepsisters. During the washing none of the immediate family members were allowed to go in. But a distant relative or friend had to be there, that’s why I went. The morgue consisted of three parts, and they did the washing and dressing up in two separate places. There was a separate place for the men, and a separate one for the women. The washing was done by poorer Jews. There were people who washed the dead, both women and men. The main tool of the washing was the table, where they lay the body with the feet pointing towards the door. They prayed during the washing, too. I remember that they washed her with a water hose with lukewarm water, and it was forbidden to turn her with the face down. After the washing they combed the deceased with a comb used only for this purpose, and cleaned the fingernails, too. Then they put on the so-called burial clothing. This was a white skirt and an apron, and also what was a regulation at the Jewish community. My mother bought these for herself ahead of time and made this package. My aunt got it from the Jewish community.
My mother’s step-siblings were all milliners. Frida’s milliner’s shop was on 12 Vamhaz Boulevard, my aunt Eszti had one on Klauzal Street, and Jeno had a hat-shop on 57 Rakoczi Avenue. I even worked for him later.