Tag #139089 - Interview #78255 (gertrúda milchová)

Margita, Mrs. Reichová, was my mother's oldest sister. They were living normally in their apartment, because for months someone had been hiding them. So we went to Trnava, and they took us in. One tried to find out who'd survived and how they'd survived. Right away I got in touch with some shomers. One evening I was telling them about my experiences from the concentration camp, and that lifted a burden off me. Then life began. I had to gain weight, because I was skinny. In the beginning we kept together, but then when the aliyah [emigration of Jews to Palestine] was being organized, they were trying to convince me to go with them. I didn't go, for one because of my mother, and for another because of school. They then renounced me; I was a renegade shomer.

My mother found an accounting job in Trnava. My sister didn't know how to fit in with the new conditions, and wanted to return to Budapest. She returned, too, and married there. My brother-in-law is also Jewish. His family had a different name at one time, but his father was already named Barabás, they Hungarianized [25] their name. My brother-in-law had been doing 'mukaszolgálat' [Hungarian for forced labor]. I don't know anything about the other members of his family. I know that his brother Tibor suvived, and two sisters, Alica and Berta. Their family wasn't overly decimated.