Lucy wasn’t deported. She also lived in Budapest with her husband. She opened a shop right after the war, because her husband was a tailor. This shop didn’t last for long, for a couple months perhaps, because then she emigrated somewhere, I think to Chile, and she stayed there.
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Displaying 19951 - 19980 of 50826 results
Hedvig Endrei
The relatives in Bonyhad were very religious Orthodox Jews [1]. We spent the summer several times in Bonyhad when we were children; we spent quite a lot of time there. This must have been in the 1920s-1930s. They observed the holidays strictly, the Friday night for example. They stopped working on Friday afternoon; they cleaned the house, then cooked dinner. There was meat soup and beef with tomatoes quite often. We had to eat that almost every Friday. When we spent the summer there we went to the synagogue in Bonyhad on Friday evenings. And nobody worked on Saturdays. They managed a kosher household of course. My grandfather observed the rules of the kosher household strictly.
My uncle magyarized his name from Geza Weisz to Geza Vajda when he got married.
He learned the picture framer’s trade in Vienna [today Austria]. His parents must have sent him to Vienna. He had a framing shop on Brody Sandor Street, close to the Museum Garden. This shop was closed for a long time, for a couple years perhaps, because it didn’t really prosper. I don’t remember exactly when he opened it, probably around 1930. I remember that there were frames in the shop window; one could see from that what kind of shop it was.
My mother was a hairdresser. I don’t know when and from whom she learned the trade. At that time she didn’t work at a hairdressing saloon, but she went to houses. In the mornings she used to go to comb, because at that time, in the 1920s-1930s, it was in fashion that they put artificial hair among the hair and they combed the original hair on top of it, so that it would stand upwards. She even made a bun for those who didn’t have artificial hair. The women couldn’t do this alone at home, that’s why my mother used to go to them. ‘I am going to comb,’ she always said. This was a technical term at that time. Later she worked very much in the brothels of that time. She went there as a hairdresser, because they had money.
Later, when she got married, we moved to Vamhaz Boulevard and our apartment there had a big room and a small room. My mother furnished the small room as a hairdressing saloon. From then on the customers came there. Most of her customers were from the Great Market Hall, because 10 Vamhaz Boulevard was close to the market place on Vamhaz Boulevard. The wealthy goose merchants and the Jews who dealt with poultry came there from the market. It was very important for them to go to the hairdresser and to bathe on Friday. On Saturday they had to be clean. Only women came to my mother, men and children didn’t. Most of them were wealthy Jewish women.
The shop was on 15 Raday Street and we also moved there, to 18 Raday Street. From then on my mother was there. The four of us lived here, my mother, my father, my brother and I. I don’t know why we moved there, probably because of the shop. We had a big kitchen in this apartment and we also had a bathroom. Besides that there was a small room, a hall and a big room, so we had two rooms altogether.
Katalin Kallos Havas
When I arrived home I knew absolutely nothing about my brother. I first received news that he was alive in August. His wife worked in Auschwitz as a doctor right until the liberation. After that she was taken to another camp in Bergen-Belsen, and she continued to work there as doctor. When Buchenwald was liberated, my brother got a bike, and along with one of his doctor friends – who was also a Havas, Andor Havas – went to Bergen-Belsen. In the meantime my sister-in-law got typhoid, and my brother had to wait until she got better. His friend came home, though. I didn’t know Andor Havas, but when he arrived home he looked me up in Kolozsvar and told me my brother was in Bergen-Belsen and would come home in two weeks’ time. Andor Havas later died on a plane while flying to Israel. He had a heart attack when he was quite young.
Two of my father’s brothers were still alive, one of them in Galac, the other one in Arad. The one from Braila, Bumi, died of a heart attack before 1945. As for the others, they never returned from Auschwitz. After I came home they both invited me to visit them. I spent two weeks in Galac and another two weeks in Arad, and that was all the contact we had. They told me that after Kolozsvar was liberated, but before I came home, they tried to recover some of the things we’d left behind. They managed to rescue some bed-room furniture, a gas-stove with four burners, a large carpet and a commode. My brother and I split those between us. He kept the gas-stove and left the rest to me. My uncle from Galac, Jozsef, moved to Bucharest in the 1950s. I always visited him when I went to Bucharest. My brother kept in touch with them, since by that time he was living there, as well.
I went to our former house on Kiraly Street, but it was occupied. They weren’t at all happy when they saw me. They didn’t even let me in. I told them we had been deported from there and we’d left all of our furniture behind. They told me they had received an empty house. There was nothing I could do to claim it back, and no one to turn to. Those days nobody tried to reclaim anything.
The father, Uncle Friedmann, was of Jewish origin and his wife was Christian. Uncle Friedmann was a member of a sect called The Children of Jesus, and they even had a priest. Their objective was to rope in Jewish children and to baptize them. I think they were part of the Protestant Church, but I don’t know that for sure. He tried to convert us all, but he couldn’t convince anybody from the house. Apart from that they were very nice to us and we were nice to them, too, and when Uncle Friedmann was left all alone, without any financial means, all of us who had lived there helped him out, usually monthly with anything we could. We tried to thank him for having given us a home. We even called the house the ‘Friedmann hotel’.
We were all lost and didn’t know what to do. Those who were left all alone and had no place to go were accommodated in the former Peter-Pal villa [16]. The villa was on the banks of the Malomarok [the mill-course], almost on the corner of Pap Street. That was used as accommodation. The meals were given away in the same place, three times a day. I was in a lucky position because when I arrived there was a boy and his mother at the station. They were looking for the boy’s fiancée, who had been deported. They were asking everybody about her. I knew her by chance and told them I met her back in Auschwitz, but I knew nothing else. They then decided I shouldn’t go to the Peter-Pal villa, but to their house. They had a big house on Kossuth Lajos Street, with four or five rooms, but there were only the three of them staying there: the boy, his mother and his father. They asked me to ask a couple of decent children I knew to come there because they would take them in. It was in their best interests to do that, because this was in the house-requisition period, and any apartment occupied by too few people was taken away. Even if they did it in their own interest, they were very fair to us.
I traveled for three weeks. I arrived home on 4th July 1945. The local Jews were waiting for me at the station. How they came to be there I don’t know. Maybe they had been in forced labor camps because they had been sent home in 1944. They were closer to the front, so they were liberated earlier than we were. When I arrived home, I had nobody and nothing. From my family only me, my brother and his wife survived the Holocaust. There were some very poor people, but they all had a plate, a pot, a spoon, a fork, a sheet, a pillow and a blanket. When I came home, I didn’t even have those things; I had absolutely nothing. I had only the clothes on my back, nothing else. This is how I had to start a new life. I was unable to accept or imagine how I could continue with my life, so I decided I had to forget, and I blocked many things out of my memory. But this plan worked too well. I didn’t forget what I wanted, but many things from my childhood.
Everything going south-east was good for us. We got on a train, traveled somewhere and waited at the station for another train that would take us in a suitable direction. It was summer, it wasn’t cold outside, so we had no problem with spending the nights outside. We only had the Russian soldiers to fear because they were very aggressive. At each station there was a Red Cross unit, and they gave us tea or coffee, bread and food. The Czech people were very nice to us. On the train people saw who we were, stood up and gave up their seats to us. In Slovakia people treated us like dirt.
,
2045
See text in interview
It was extraordinary how the Czechs treated us. My hosts from Domazlice loaded us up for the trip with fried doves and a large loaf of bread. They even gave us a map of Europe, which later turned out to be of big help, for the destinations the trains were running to, were written on them with chalk.
,
1945
See text in interview
I set off for home with three other people from Kolozsvar – two women and a man – when the first trains left. One of the ladies was called Teri Hirsch, the other one was her younger sister, Ibi. The man’s name was Ocsi Schonberger. Even after we came home we kept in touch. They all remained in Kolozsvar. The Hirsches took some jobs, while Schonberger went to university.
The trains were still running sporadically in May. The railroads had been blown away, so there was very little traffic.
The trains were still running sporadically in May. The railroads had been blown away, so there was very little traffic.
,
1945
See text in interview
When we went back to the house, the woman said she had changed her mind and could only accept one of us. Bozsenna spoke Czech, so she chose her, but she recommended me to the neighbors, the Kicbergerovas. They spoke German, so we understood each other. Even in my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined taking a bath that same day, and, furthermore, in hot water! The family worked in the transportation business and they had a son and two daughters. The two daughters didn’t live there, as they were married. The son lived upstairs. He had a separate room and kitchen, but he ate downstairs with his parents, and he also used to listen to the radio there. He had a girlfriend his mother didn’t like because she was older than him and was using him. It took only a few days for him and me to become friends. He told me once there were no girls in Czechoslovakia one could talk with about books, literature or music, but that he could do it with me. His mother was very happy when she saw what good friends we became. She wanted to adopt me, and even inquired at the authorities to see what the procedures were for that. However, I wanted to go home to Kolozsvar as soon as possible. One day the woman asked me who I was, but I didn’t say anything. I told her I could say anything, because there’s no way they could check it, so I preferred to say nothing. The Czech family initially employed me to help out around the house, but they didn’t let me work. They were very nice people. I spent a month there.
The Americans came in on a jeep, with four soldiers on it. I don’t know what rank they were. They drummed up the people of the village in the center of the village. One of them stood up in the car and said in Czech, ‘You’re free.’ Two days later, on 8th May 1945, when the war ended, we went to the town, to Domazlice. The reception of the refugees was already organized there. They set up temporary accommodation in boarding schools and schools. The Americans supplied us with medication, as well. Bozsenna and I decided not to stay in the temporary accommodations but to go and look for a job in the town. We first looked for a house that had a barn. When we peeked into the courtyard, we saw a young person in a wheelchair. We thought this place surely needed some help. Bozsenna, who spoke good Czech, asked the woman whether she would accept us to work for her for board and lodging. She answered that she would, because she had a big garden and raised some animals, so she needed the help. Then Bozsenna and I went back to the boarding-school accommodation and announced to them that we had found an employer and we would like to give up our places, and told them to give them to others.
There was a girl from Munkacs who escaped with me, without any prior arrangement. Her name was Bozsenna. Fortunately she spoke perfect Czech, Russian and Hungarian. A single Czech lady let us in. I don’t know where her husband was. The women had all been left alone, there were only a few men in the village. They needed the labor. But I only weighed 36 kilo, so I wasn’t fit to work. She accepted us only out of mercy. It was astonishing to see that a simple countrywoman knew how to feed us, and keep us alive. Many had died after liberation due to exactly that reason – they didn’t restart eating properly. For example there was always a pot of white coffee on the stove, and she didn’t let us drink water. If we were thirsty, we had to drink the coffee because it was more nutritious. I put on 12 kilo in two months, so by the time I took off for home I weighed 48 kilo.
When the Russians were closing in – we could already hear the gunfire – they sent us off on foot. We walked for 2,000 km. We entered Germany in Dresden, then we set foot on Czech soil at Marienbad. This was the westernmost point of Czechoslovakia. Those who tried to escape were captured, brought back to the group and shot dead in front of us. When we arrived in the first town, Domazlice, the Czechs behaved in such a way that one could feel there was a chance to escape. By then we had had nothing to eat for six days, and we were starving. The Czechs threw food from the windows into the street for the groups, and as we went further into the town there was some sliced bread and apples put in the middle of the street. They put out any food they had around the house, for us to eat. Despite all this no one tried to escape, although there were opportunities to do so. Only one person went missing. In the next village I thought the captives would beg for food and I decided to try to escape then. I escaped in Nevolice. The SS soldiers who were escorting us were quite far from each other, and I went up behind the first SS soldier in line in order to be as far as possible from the next one. I broke out of line and ran away through an alley. By the time the next soldier arrived there and started shooting, I was already well away, and as the other captives spread out, they had to deal with them. This happened on 24th April 1945.
An organization called Todt [15] – I don’t know what this acronym stood for – came there all the time. It selected people for different jobs and sent them to different locations in Germany. I also got into such a working group. This happened in October 1944. They took me to Silesia to dig tank-traps. Digging tank-traps wasn’t really a job for women, especially ones in as poor shape, as we were.
There were Czech Jews in Lagerstrasse, next to us, also with their families. They were wearing their own clothing and their hair wasn't cut off. They were brought from Theresienstadt [14]. The Germans were showing Theresienstadt to the foreigners to see how they were treating the Jews: the inmates lived in houses and wore their own clothing. Their hair wasn’t cut off and they looked human. We watched as they selected people, men and women, fit to work. Then they took them away in one transport. The others were left there, and they threw their medicines and everything they had over to us – there was only a wire fence between us and them. They knew where they would be taken, so they didn’t need anything. The next day they were taken to the gas chambers.
The wife of Laci Farkas and I were Stubendienst [room orderlies]: we distributed the food. We were responsible for two or three bunk-bed groups. There were nights when the so-called Blocksperre or curfew was in effect, that is, we weren’t allowed to circulate between the blocks. We got out at the back of the block onto the car track because we were curious to see why it was Blocksperre. These were rare occasions. Then we saw three trucks taking naked gypsy children, screaming and crying, to the gas chambers. They knew where they were going because until then the gypsy families had been together. There were no other children in the camp because they were separated from their parents and taken to the gas chambers already at the initial selection. I don’t know whether those gypsies were from Hungary or Romania or from somewhere else. We didn’t know anything about them.
My sister-in-law was working in one of the barracks opposite, the Rewier. This was the barracks for the convalescents. I was able to go there just a few times. Even she, as doctor, couldn’t move around freely, she had to stay in the Rewier barracks. She was very pessimistic. After a while I didn’t even want to meet her because she kept saying, ‘Why are you struggling? Can’t you see there’s no end to this, nobody will leave here alive?’ But there one needed all the optimism one could get to try to live, and she always demoralized me. She became obsessed with finding my brother, and left slips everywhere she went and asked everybody about him who came to her for examination. Of course, he was nowhere to be found. There was an SS hospital corpsman who went from camp to camp, inspecting them; he was responsible for the entire district, including Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald. I don’t know if my sister-in-law and he became friends or what happened, but she asked this man to take with him some slips, which said, ‘I’m looking for Gyorgy Havas.’ My brother was working in Niederorshel, a smaller camp in Buchenwald. One day the corpsman found him, and my sister-in-law was beside herself with joy, and from then on she sent a package to my brother every month – because this corpsman made his tour monthly. So they knew each other’s whereabouts. I only found this out later, after we came home. By the way, a French man included this story in his book as an interesting case to prove that not every German was a murderer, even if they wore SS uniforms.
The most horrible thing in Auschwitz was that we had absolutely nothing to do. We sat all day long and recited poems or sang; everybody showed off with whatever they could, to get through the day. The most horrible thing was the idleness. There was no possibility of work. There was Lagerstrasse [Camp Street], some blocks and nothing else. There was no way out from Lagerstrasse. Even free passage between barracks was restricted, and going to the toilet was limited, too. Since we had no medication, many died of different illnesses, and diarrhea was the most dangerous one. Quite a lot of athletes, especially the big-bodied ones, perished first, even though they were sportsmen, because their organisms couldn’t take starvation.
In Auschwitz the Germans waited for us with dogs. They forced us off the cars, then they split us up: men and women were put in separate groups. There was no possibility to say goodbye to your family. Everything was driven by the element of surprise, leaving us no time for anything, neither to think, nor to say anything. They took us, the ones left alive, to the wash-room, the real wash-room. They stripped us naked, then took us to a room where they shaved all our hair off to protect us against lice. Slovak Jewish girls did this. I asked the girl who cut my hair when I would see my mother again. She pointed out the window and said, ‘Do you see that smoke? That’s your mother coming out.’ They were terribly angry with us because we were still sleeping under silk quilts while they were satisfying the needs of the German soldiers on the front, and then they were brought to build Auschwitz. They had already been in the camp for four years, so we found out immediately from them, what was to come.
They said they wouldn’t take us out of the country, but that we would be scattered in different regions of Hungary to work, everyone in his professional field, if possible. They announced that it would be better if the doctors and engineers went with the first transport, to take up their jobs. And since my sister-in-law, Rozsi, was a doctor, and my brother an engineer, my family went along in the first transport. They squeezed some one hundred people into a cattle-car. When we saw through a small hole, the name Csap [today Chop, Ukraine], we knew that was it; we were going to Poland, because Csap was past Hungary. The Hungarian gendarmes escorted us to Csap, where they handed us over to the SS troops. By the time we arrived at Auschwitz, many of us had already died. We couldn’t lie down, only sit or stand, and if one wanted to stretch a bit, another member of the family had to stand up. There was no water, no toilet, we only had a slop-pail, which was a tin can, in the corner. One had to get through to it to relieve oneself, in front of the others. It was inhuman.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Finally, in 1936, when I was 14, we moved to Kolozsvar. My older brother, who was 19 then, was already a student in Kolozsvar. There were no cars in those days, so we moved to Kolozsvar by train. My father remained in Des and only came to Kolozsvar in 1939. I think there was a conflict between my mother and my father. They never argued in front of us, so we, children, didn’t know anything about what was going on between them, but during the three years they lived separately, he very rarely visited us in Kolozsvar.
As our poverty grew we moved into smaller and smaller apartments. It was very useful for us that my mother knotted Persian rugs because from the 1930s until our deportation it practically supplemented the family’s income. In Des it wasn’t the thing for women to earn money, neither in the Hungarian, nor in the Jewish upper-class families, and my mother felt quite uneasy amongst her friends because she worked. Her friends began to turn away from her. They visited and invited her fewer and fewer times.
My maternal grandmother lived with us until the early 1930s. Due to the economic depression it became harder and harder to make a living. My father was the manager of a bank in Des then. The bank went bankrupt and with it we lost a considerable part of our wealth. My father then returned to his career as a lawyer, but he didn’t make enough money. Therefore my grandmother decided to move to Brasso, to live with her other daughter, Iren. I was around eight or nine then. Because of the difficulties we had to sell the most valuable things from our house: furniture, porcelain and crystal.