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On 13th April 1941, when Hungarians entered Novi Sad [Hungarian Occupation of Yugoslavia] [9], a Jew was killed, some Lacika Cerni, a very wealthy man and a drawing-room communist. He was killed because Hungarians claimed that he had been a Chetnik [10] activist.
During the massacre [Novi Sad massacre] [11] they were very lucky since the military police didn’t come to them, only a police patrol came the third day. They were not that notorious as the military police. Brother Paja told him that their mother had kept, since the first day of the massacre, a huge pot with hot water on the fire. When the police entered the house, she immediately asked them, ‘Would you gentlemen, drink a hot tea’? The temperature outside was minus 32 degrees centigrade. The policemen happily accepted it, drank themselves fill with tea, stood up and left.
However the police was not bloodthirsty. The most bloodthirsty was the military police, then the soldiers who were drunk, but the police was mainly fair. It was a professional force. Maybe they were even traffic policemen.
In the Novi Sad massacre nobody, from Vlada's relatives, was killed even though he had only few relatives. After the massacre Vlada's family fled to Pest, more exactly to Ujpest where they rented an apartment. Paja there didn't continue the school but stayed at a locksmith where he studied locksmith trade.
About the Novi Sad massacre Vlada didn’t have anything else to tell me since then he was in the Csillag prison [12] in Szeged at that time. He could only tell me that on that day when the massacre had ended, or a few days later, a jail teacher visited them. The teacher told the guard that they had been lucky for not being there because they would have been all killed.
Vlada got to the jail because in 1941 he had been a member of some regional SKOJ leadership. The secretary of the leadership was Franjo Kardos, a Jew. Another member of the leadership was Ilza Zeilinger, a Jew. The third member was some Lacika Kuzmanovic, also a Jew, then it was Vlada and there was some Nada Kuzmanovic.
In Novi Sad there was a planned action for smashing Pifat’s store window. It also went down in history. Pifat was a Croat from Petrovaradin [a town in Srem, across the Danube, with considerable Croatian population]. In Novi Sad he had a tavern, that was full of anti-Soviet and mostly anti-Semite elements. The SKOJ organization decided to break it. Vlada was also anticipated for that team however he got sick and could not be present. In that action among others took part: Pavle Katic, a Jew, Nikola Timar, a Jew, Ivan Haker, a Jew, in addition two more people who were not Jewish. Kardos, as a regional chief, circled the place in order to see what was happening and according to him this company got afraid. They, in fact, delayed the action, because they had realized that an officer was coming, Kardos didn’t see that, he grabbed from the ground a half brick, hit the window. That officer ran after him. Kardos started to run and ran into a café bar. The officer follows him in, approaches a waiter and asks him who entered the last. The waiter points and Kardos together with a friend get arrested.
Kardos later on tried to commit suicide at the investigation by throwing a brick in the air and then stood under it. But the brick didn’t fall on his head but on his beard. From him they asked nothing else but to reveal the codes of his contacts. He had revealed the codes and then started the big arrests in Novi Sad and here also Vlada was arrested, 29th September 1941.
For two month he was on investigation in the department of Hungarian counterintelligence. That they beat him, they did. He lived through. After 2 months, together with a group, they transferred him to the prison in Szeged. There, in the month of June, they sentenced him to 6 years of imprisonment.
Vlada worked on 2 books from that period, one was: Ne zaboravi druga svog [‘Don’t forget the comrade of yours’] and is concerned solely with the Szeged prison. The second book: Jugosloveni u madjarskim zatvorima i logorima [‘The Yugoslavs in Hungarian prisons and camps’]. This one you find also in Yad Vashem. In 1941 in the month of June, when they also sentenced Vlada in Szeged, there were 12 trials. It was about groups of 20 to 60 people. From all of those verdicts he found only 3-4.
I would start with this that Vlada weighed 85 kilograms when he had arrived to the prison, and that he left it weighing 55 kilograms. He told me that the taste of the food was so awful that there they had a rule that if somebody faints goes for several days to the prison hospital. There they would revive him somewhat.
When he arrived to the prison, in the cell that was anticipated for one person, that is solitary confinement, they threw in 3 straw mattresses and five of them. The biggest shock they experienced was when they noticed that in the corner were 3 straw mattresses covered with 5 blankets, and in one corner there was something that looked like a big pot covered with a black lid. The pot size was about 20 liters. The guard told them that it was kibble. They didn’t know what kibble was, but he explained it to them. Nobody among them had ever before relieved themselves in front of others. They agreed that while one of them was on kibble the others should turn their back. Later on they discovered the system for sitting on the kibble. They found a broom and placed it horizontally and this way they could quite well use it as a toilet board.
While Vlada was, with others, on investigation they were under special order of Hungarian counterintelligence. This order included the following: in one big room, one meter away from the wall, there were some jammed straw. Prisoners were sitting on that straw and looked towards the wall. And did like that the whole day. In the evening at 10 o’clock, when it was time to go to bed, that straw was stretched a bit and they went to sleep. They were woken up at 5 o’clock in the morning and it was only to mistreat people that way too. They had to walk one after the other, with their hands on their backs. The walk would take about an hour. It had reached the culmination when they transferred them, the Jews, into the Aszod prison. [small town near Budapest] Then their section chief, sergeant Joska Birkas brought for everybody a box of 100 cigarettes and told them, ‘Kids, where they are taking you I can’t tell, but it will be better for you than here’. That Birkas was often asking Vlada to help him around some office work.
Entered once some Kolompar, a guard, into a cell and one of the convicts asked him directly if he wants to take out letters past the censorship. For all of them the letters were very important because in them they explained to their families how and what should be smuggled. Kolompar then, in front of some 30 people, took off his hat, took the letters, put them in the hat, and put the hat back on his head. He was sure that nobody among these 30 inhabitants of Voivodina [13] would betray him. Of course later on he liked it more and more so he started smuggling food too on the bases of fifty-fifty. The system was the following: Who wants to send to his relative in the prison food, must send to his daughter’s address Vera Kolompar the package. If, in the package, is 5 kg of goods, the prisoner will get 2,5 kg. It was functioning exceptionally, only he forgot too that in every post office there is counterintelligence.
Later on Kolompar was arrested. There was the original letter, whether from the Ministry of Justice or from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, I don’t know anymore. There is written that it is true that Kolompar was taking in food, but not for the reason of humanity but for the reason of greediness. Vlada, in his book, ended the chapter about this event this way, ‘If only there were more of the greedy ones’. For them he was suitable because there were far more guards who would report them immediately, and would not help them.
Later on they left that small cell, they got beds, but the food was worse and worse. Every week they got clean laundry. Then they were changing the laundry biweekly and then later on they left that small cell, they got beds, but the food was worse and worse. And they had the opportunity to wash themselves. And then somebody remembered, and they accepted, so they started cheating themselves by wearing shirts at the right side of the fabric for a week and for a week at the reverse side, and they had the impression that it was more clean this way.
I would like to say another thing about the packages with food. To Vlada and his Jewish friends it was not a big problem, because they shared in the prison everything with everybody. At the beginning they had problems with two Jews, who refused to join the group, because it could provoke anti-Semitism and then 3 or 4 Serbs declared that they would not take a crumb, until these two don't join the group.
The question of being informed in the prison is very important. For example, they in February 1942, before getting accustomed to the prison, had got some news about some big Russian offensive and that the Russians arrived to the place Ostrava. [Editors’s note: Obvious misinformation. Ostrava is in the Eastern Part of today’s Czech Republic. The Soviets were nowhere close to that in 1942] Why exactly to that place, Vlada didn't know, but a big enthusiasm overtook them. And wherever somebody would slammed the gate, they thought that the cannons were roaring.
They had regular visits. Those who were sentenced to imprisonment had visits every 2 weeks, those who were sentenced to hard labor, every 3 weeks. Once Vlada was punished with a ban for visits for some time because he organized a strike. Namely, they worked on, in a backyard, knitting reed mace. They knitted them into braids resembling girl's pigtails. Their norm was 50 meters a day for one person, and for that they would get a cigarette. For every additional 25 meters they would get another two cigarettes. The job itself, as Vlada told me, was not a problem, but the prison administration made a mistake and set up a low norm of production, and they hung on it for dear life (unyielding). The administration wanted to raise the norm, as all that was produced was for some private owner, so the prison manager would put that money in his pocket. He permanently pressured them to do more. Well now, in the morning they had an hour for walk, from the walk they would go to reed-mace, in the evening from the reed-mace they would go again for the walk. In order to carry out a pressure on them, they canceled the walks to raise the norm.
On the first day when in the prison the sound of the bell announced the time for walks for the whole of the prison and when they started walking, a guard started to shout that there is no walk for them. He warned them to go back, but nobody went back. And he continued shouting at them and asking them who wants to go for an interrogation to the guard commander. No one volunteered and he grabbed somebody and took him away. After some moments the guard came back and asked: who else wants to go for interrogation’? Vlada said ‘I do.’. So at the end 7 of them were in a cell for solitary confinement for 3 days.
In the Szeged prison they had only one nice person; it was Doctor Jeno Frenkel [14], the rabbi of Szeged. Vlada told at one time that the rabbi had been an exceptional humanist, exceptionally brave man. The first time they had to receive packages, they all received them except Vlada. The last day for receiving the packages the guard called Vlada. Took him into the room in which a gentleman was sitting. After his beard and cap and his suit he concluded that he was a Jew but not an orthodox one. The guard turned to the rabbi in Hungarian ‘Mr. Rabbi, submissively reporting, this is that’. And the rabbi says ‘listen son, your father phoned me and told me that his package got returned to Novi Sad. He asked me to bring the package for you. Tell me what you want me to bring’. Vlada, since he realized it was a good man, asks him ‘Mr. Rabbi, excuse me but I don’t know what you can get’. Then he offered to bring sausages, salamis, cheese… then he said ‘but listen I could get bacon too. I know what the situation is here’.
Once the rabbi told him that a group of Jews, communists, came from Pest and they wanted to meet with them and if it was not a problem for them they should come to the synagogue. The synagogue was a room with bars on the ground floor. He didn’t remember if they had had Torah or not. Here all the Jews from the prison would gather on Friday nights. Rabbi Frenkel survived the war and died in Israel.
When Germans arrived in Hungary [19th March 1944] everywhere except in the prisons, the wearing of the yellow star became obligatory. In the prison they didn’t wear them, because the prison was not considered as being a street. That day, when the star had to be worn for the first time, Doctor rabbi Frenkel in redingote, top hat, with the star on his coat, came to the prison, put his hands on his back and for hours walked in the prison’s backyard. With this the rabbi wanted to show to them that it was not a problem. After 5 or 6 days a new regulation came out according to which even those in the prisons were obliged to wear the yellow star.
Vlada arrived to a plan to cease wearing the yellow star. Every week they would get clean bed linen, so they would take the stars of from dirty things and sew them on clean ones. Vlada has suggested not to sew them immediately but only after a day or two, and if anyone asks them they should say that they didn’t succeed in sewing them. One day Vlada said that it is not necessary anymore at all to sew them, but to wear them in the pockets. No one noticed anything, or didn’t want to notice, that they were not wearing the stars. The manager held a speech for them in the sense that Horthy has asked for a truce, that they hope that the war is over, that they have to be patient and not to run away. [Horthy declaration.] [15]
On 4th April they tightened the regulation that Jewish prisoners must wear the yellow star. On 11th April the Ministry of Justice introduces a regulation that Jews, prisoners can’t receive from home any kind of packages. On 8th May 1944 the Ministry introduces an order that in the future the prisoners, Jews can get only 30 grams of sugar and 30 grams of cooking oil monthly, and weekly 100 grams of horse sausages. On 19th June of the same year a new regulation is introduced that said all the Jews had to be gathered in certain prisons and that minor Jews into prisons for minors in Aszod.
Vlada arrived in Aszod with another 8 friends. There were 6 of them from Szeged and 3 from Cegled [small town in central Hungary]. Here there were: Gavra Altman, Nikola Timar, Ivan Haker, Sima Epstajn, Egon Stark and Vlada from Szeged too. From Cegled came Pavle Sefer, Dordje Hajzler and Ivan Blum.
From Szeged to Aszod they traveled by train. 6 of them in a passenger train, all 6 of them tied on a chain. They could barely climb on the train. It was very difficult every time when somebody had to go to the toilet.
While they had a small break at a station, tied with chains and with the yellow star on them, near-by appeared a Nazi policeman, an SS. ‘Does anyone speak German here’? he shouted. Vlada then said ‘I speak’. He wanted Vlada to ask somebody something. Vlada stood up and the SS only then saw the yellow star on Vlada. ‘Mit einem Sau Juden will ich nicht sprechen’. (I will not talk with a Jewish pig). And Vlada said ‘you called me, I didn’t call you’, and Vlada’s five friends grabbed him and pulled down. Their 3 guards were more afraid then him.
When they arrived to Aszod they were very hungry and had been told that they would get food when they arrive to the family. It was not clear for them what family means while they didn’t see that there existed blocks in the prison and that 2 on each floor. A Block consisted of a room that was a dinning room and a living room then there was a bigger bedroom and a small supervisor’s room. The supervisor was always present. These blocks they called ‘family’. In the prison in Aszod, another unusual event happened. At the beginning of October 1944 the Russians were some 20 km away from Aszod. Later on Vlada read that the Russians had advanced very slowly because it had been the fall with the most rains. He told me that when the Russians approached them to about 4-5 km, they would watch them for weeks, and they could not get to them. And then at the beginning of October, a guard came for Vlada and told him that Toth, the assistant to the prison manager, was looking for him.
When Vlada went to him and he told him ‘Listen, you received from your brother from Pest a telegram’. In the letter it was written ‘I obtained for you a Swiss passport. Do you want me to send it to you or not’? Since the assistant to the manager has behaved nicely to him, Vlada asked him ‘Gentleman, tell me, if this could be of use to me’? And he replied ‘It is a smart thing, you only ask him for it. Nevertheless I can not let you out from the prison. He only didn’t tell him to run away, because as Vlada told me, from there you could escape, but they didn’t have where to.
Those were already troubled times and times of expectations. Unfortunately already the following day they heard new things. The Germans had requested from the manager that the whole prison and the Jews and others be evacuated and handed over to Germans to take them to Auschwitz. And they also threatened him that if they act contrary to the order they would blow up the prison. The manager wanted to hand it over to the Russians.
Then 9 of them agreed that everyone should provide for himself a place in case of escape, but they must not tell each other who would go where. Gavra Altman and Vlada, since they already had had contacts with the workers of the machine gun workshop, they went to their bunker. They had had quite of fun there for several days but a love affair revealed them, a love affair of an engineer's wife and a German lieutenant. Then they were all taken to Vac. It is a town on the left bank of the Danube, some 30 km from Budapest. They were not convicts anymore but suspicious citizens. From there Vlada and Gavra have gone to Gyor in a factory where the director of that workshop told them that the engineer's wife blurted out in front of her German lover that they were Jews.
They began to move towards the town called Papa, it was about 50 km away. On their way a German military car stopped beside them. The driver asked Vlada if he could wrap his cigarette, because he had been frozen. Vlada then took from his pocket a box of cigarette and gave it to him, but in return he wanted him to take them to Papa. Later on they went to the German airport and worked in some kind of beer cellar where they had to fill in bottles. After that they went again to Papa and then to a Hungarian village at the junction of Czechoslovak, Austrian and Hungarian borders. They have gone to Poland, South Germany, Munich, Nuremberg…
On their way they associated with different people from whom no one talked about their past. Vlada once told Gavra that if he ever writes about that, he would name the book ‘The division of people without past’. Even before their departure from Munich, Gavra Altman was added on to the company that was supposed go to Czechoslovakia in order to reserve an accommodation. Since Vlada was leaving for Nuremberg with his company here those two separated. On the way from Munich to Nuremberg Vlada taught the group in the railroad car the song ‘It’s a long way to Tiperary’ and different other songs.
Before Nuremberg they threw them out of the train. They were lining up to go to the town, when at once a huge explosion occurred. They were informed that an arsenal, with shotguns blew up into the air; the ones they had to get. Then they had to go back by walk from Nuremberg to Triol. The first sergeant and Vlada then tried to escape three times. Two times it was unsuccessful but finally at the third time they managed to escape and in a special way they arrived to Regensburg. They were hitchhiking. Vlada has changed very many American camps and at the end arrived to Marseilles, in the camp for repatriated Yugoslavs.
There he was arrested by American counterintelligence service under the charges that he was a Russian spy. Saved him a Subotica’s doctor A. Ivica, who told a story how he knew Vlada’s father as a good preference player.
On 18th August 1945 Vlada crossed the Yugoslav border and came to Zagreb. In Zagreb they were questioned by OZN [department for the people’s protection]. ‘What is your name?’ ‘Vladislav Rothbart.’ ‘Are you German?’ ‘No I am not.’ ‘Then what are you?’ ‘A Jew.’ ‘How come you are alive?’ He told them his story. In Zagreb he had stayed for two days in the prison, till, from Novi Sad, didn't arrive a confirmation that Vladislav Rothbart existed. In Zagreb, some time before he had to be released, a journalist appeared. He was looking for inhabitants of Voivodina. Two of them reported, and after Vlada had told him his name he introduced himself and told him that his name was Zelmanovic. Vlada's and his parents were on good terms. He had taken him to his place and showed him the list of those Jews who were coming back to Novi Sad. Since it was the month of August, those who were not on the list, mainly never returned.
During the massacre [Novi Sad massacre] [11] they were very lucky since the military police didn’t come to them, only a police patrol came the third day. They were not that notorious as the military police. Brother Paja told him that their mother had kept, since the first day of the massacre, a huge pot with hot water on the fire. When the police entered the house, she immediately asked them, ‘Would you gentlemen, drink a hot tea’? The temperature outside was minus 32 degrees centigrade. The policemen happily accepted it, drank themselves fill with tea, stood up and left.
However the police was not bloodthirsty. The most bloodthirsty was the military police, then the soldiers who were drunk, but the police was mainly fair. It was a professional force. Maybe they were even traffic policemen.
In the Novi Sad massacre nobody, from Vlada's relatives, was killed even though he had only few relatives. After the massacre Vlada's family fled to Pest, more exactly to Ujpest where they rented an apartment. Paja there didn't continue the school but stayed at a locksmith where he studied locksmith trade.
About the Novi Sad massacre Vlada didn’t have anything else to tell me since then he was in the Csillag prison [12] in Szeged at that time. He could only tell me that on that day when the massacre had ended, or a few days later, a jail teacher visited them. The teacher told the guard that they had been lucky for not being there because they would have been all killed.
Vlada got to the jail because in 1941 he had been a member of some regional SKOJ leadership. The secretary of the leadership was Franjo Kardos, a Jew. Another member of the leadership was Ilza Zeilinger, a Jew. The third member was some Lacika Kuzmanovic, also a Jew, then it was Vlada and there was some Nada Kuzmanovic.
In Novi Sad there was a planned action for smashing Pifat’s store window. It also went down in history. Pifat was a Croat from Petrovaradin [a town in Srem, across the Danube, with considerable Croatian population]. In Novi Sad he had a tavern, that was full of anti-Soviet and mostly anti-Semite elements. The SKOJ organization decided to break it. Vlada was also anticipated for that team however he got sick and could not be present. In that action among others took part: Pavle Katic, a Jew, Nikola Timar, a Jew, Ivan Haker, a Jew, in addition two more people who were not Jewish. Kardos, as a regional chief, circled the place in order to see what was happening and according to him this company got afraid. They, in fact, delayed the action, because they had realized that an officer was coming, Kardos didn’t see that, he grabbed from the ground a half brick, hit the window. That officer ran after him. Kardos started to run and ran into a café bar. The officer follows him in, approaches a waiter and asks him who entered the last. The waiter points and Kardos together with a friend get arrested.
Kardos later on tried to commit suicide at the investigation by throwing a brick in the air and then stood under it. But the brick didn’t fall on his head but on his beard. From him they asked nothing else but to reveal the codes of his contacts. He had revealed the codes and then started the big arrests in Novi Sad and here also Vlada was arrested, 29th September 1941.
For two month he was on investigation in the department of Hungarian counterintelligence. That they beat him, they did. He lived through. After 2 months, together with a group, they transferred him to the prison in Szeged. There, in the month of June, they sentenced him to 6 years of imprisonment.
Vlada worked on 2 books from that period, one was: Ne zaboravi druga svog [‘Don’t forget the comrade of yours’] and is concerned solely with the Szeged prison. The second book: Jugosloveni u madjarskim zatvorima i logorima [‘The Yugoslavs in Hungarian prisons and camps’]. This one you find also in Yad Vashem. In 1941 in the month of June, when they also sentenced Vlada in Szeged, there were 12 trials. It was about groups of 20 to 60 people. From all of those verdicts he found only 3-4.
I would start with this that Vlada weighed 85 kilograms when he had arrived to the prison, and that he left it weighing 55 kilograms. He told me that the taste of the food was so awful that there they had a rule that if somebody faints goes for several days to the prison hospital. There they would revive him somewhat.
When he arrived to the prison, in the cell that was anticipated for one person, that is solitary confinement, they threw in 3 straw mattresses and five of them. The biggest shock they experienced was when they noticed that in the corner were 3 straw mattresses covered with 5 blankets, and in one corner there was something that looked like a big pot covered with a black lid. The pot size was about 20 liters. The guard told them that it was kibble. They didn’t know what kibble was, but he explained it to them. Nobody among them had ever before relieved themselves in front of others. They agreed that while one of them was on kibble the others should turn their back. Later on they discovered the system for sitting on the kibble. They found a broom and placed it horizontally and this way they could quite well use it as a toilet board.
While Vlada was, with others, on investigation they were under special order of Hungarian counterintelligence. This order included the following: in one big room, one meter away from the wall, there were some jammed straw. Prisoners were sitting on that straw and looked towards the wall. And did like that the whole day. In the evening at 10 o’clock, when it was time to go to bed, that straw was stretched a bit and they went to sleep. They were woken up at 5 o’clock in the morning and it was only to mistreat people that way too. They had to walk one after the other, with their hands on their backs. The walk would take about an hour. It had reached the culmination when they transferred them, the Jews, into the Aszod prison. [small town near Budapest] Then their section chief, sergeant Joska Birkas brought for everybody a box of 100 cigarettes and told them, ‘Kids, where they are taking you I can’t tell, but it will be better for you than here’. That Birkas was often asking Vlada to help him around some office work.
Entered once some Kolompar, a guard, into a cell and one of the convicts asked him directly if he wants to take out letters past the censorship. For all of them the letters were very important because in them they explained to their families how and what should be smuggled. Kolompar then, in front of some 30 people, took off his hat, took the letters, put them in the hat, and put the hat back on his head. He was sure that nobody among these 30 inhabitants of Voivodina [13] would betray him. Of course later on he liked it more and more so he started smuggling food too on the bases of fifty-fifty. The system was the following: Who wants to send to his relative in the prison food, must send to his daughter’s address Vera Kolompar the package. If, in the package, is 5 kg of goods, the prisoner will get 2,5 kg. It was functioning exceptionally, only he forgot too that in every post office there is counterintelligence.
Later on Kolompar was arrested. There was the original letter, whether from the Ministry of Justice or from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, I don’t know anymore. There is written that it is true that Kolompar was taking in food, but not for the reason of humanity but for the reason of greediness. Vlada, in his book, ended the chapter about this event this way, ‘If only there were more of the greedy ones’. For them he was suitable because there were far more guards who would report them immediately, and would not help them.
Later on they left that small cell, they got beds, but the food was worse and worse. Every week they got clean laundry. Then they were changing the laundry biweekly and then later on they left that small cell, they got beds, but the food was worse and worse. And they had the opportunity to wash themselves. And then somebody remembered, and they accepted, so they started cheating themselves by wearing shirts at the right side of the fabric for a week and for a week at the reverse side, and they had the impression that it was more clean this way.
I would like to say another thing about the packages with food. To Vlada and his Jewish friends it was not a big problem, because they shared in the prison everything with everybody. At the beginning they had problems with two Jews, who refused to join the group, because it could provoke anti-Semitism and then 3 or 4 Serbs declared that they would not take a crumb, until these two don't join the group.
The question of being informed in the prison is very important. For example, they in February 1942, before getting accustomed to the prison, had got some news about some big Russian offensive and that the Russians arrived to the place Ostrava. [Editors’s note: Obvious misinformation. Ostrava is in the Eastern Part of today’s Czech Republic. The Soviets were nowhere close to that in 1942] Why exactly to that place, Vlada didn't know, but a big enthusiasm overtook them. And wherever somebody would slammed the gate, they thought that the cannons were roaring.
They had regular visits. Those who were sentenced to imprisonment had visits every 2 weeks, those who were sentenced to hard labor, every 3 weeks. Once Vlada was punished with a ban for visits for some time because he organized a strike. Namely, they worked on, in a backyard, knitting reed mace. They knitted them into braids resembling girl's pigtails. Their norm was 50 meters a day for one person, and for that they would get a cigarette. For every additional 25 meters they would get another two cigarettes. The job itself, as Vlada told me, was not a problem, but the prison administration made a mistake and set up a low norm of production, and they hung on it for dear life (unyielding). The administration wanted to raise the norm, as all that was produced was for some private owner, so the prison manager would put that money in his pocket. He permanently pressured them to do more. Well now, in the morning they had an hour for walk, from the walk they would go to reed-mace, in the evening from the reed-mace they would go again for the walk. In order to carry out a pressure on them, they canceled the walks to raise the norm.
On the first day when in the prison the sound of the bell announced the time for walks for the whole of the prison and when they started walking, a guard started to shout that there is no walk for them. He warned them to go back, but nobody went back. And he continued shouting at them and asking them who wants to go for an interrogation to the guard commander. No one volunteered and he grabbed somebody and took him away. After some moments the guard came back and asked: who else wants to go for interrogation’? Vlada said ‘I do.’. So at the end 7 of them were in a cell for solitary confinement for 3 days.
In the Szeged prison they had only one nice person; it was Doctor Jeno Frenkel [14], the rabbi of Szeged. Vlada told at one time that the rabbi had been an exceptional humanist, exceptionally brave man. The first time they had to receive packages, they all received them except Vlada. The last day for receiving the packages the guard called Vlada. Took him into the room in which a gentleman was sitting. After his beard and cap and his suit he concluded that he was a Jew but not an orthodox one. The guard turned to the rabbi in Hungarian ‘Mr. Rabbi, submissively reporting, this is that’. And the rabbi says ‘listen son, your father phoned me and told me that his package got returned to Novi Sad. He asked me to bring the package for you. Tell me what you want me to bring’. Vlada, since he realized it was a good man, asks him ‘Mr. Rabbi, excuse me but I don’t know what you can get’. Then he offered to bring sausages, salamis, cheese… then he said ‘but listen I could get bacon too. I know what the situation is here’.
Once the rabbi told him that a group of Jews, communists, came from Pest and they wanted to meet with them and if it was not a problem for them they should come to the synagogue. The synagogue was a room with bars on the ground floor. He didn’t remember if they had had Torah or not. Here all the Jews from the prison would gather on Friday nights. Rabbi Frenkel survived the war and died in Israel.
When Germans arrived in Hungary [19th March 1944] everywhere except in the prisons, the wearing of the yellow star became obligatory. In the prison they didn’t wear them, because the prison was not considered as being a street. That day, when the star had to be worn for the first time, Doctor rabbi Frenkel in redingote, top hat, with the star on his coat, came to the prison, put his hands on his back and for hours walked in the prison’s backyard. With this the rabbi wanted to show to them that it was not a problem. After 5 or 6 days a new regulation came out according to which even those in the prisons were obliged to wear the yellow star.
Vlada arrived to a plan to cease wearing the yellow star. Every week they would get clean bed linen, so they would take the stars of from dirty things and sew them on clean ones. Vlada has suggested not to sew them immediately but only after a day or two, and if anyone asks them they should say that they didn’t succeed in sewing them. One day Vlada said that it is not necessary anymore at all to sew them, but to wear them in the pockets. No one noticed anything, or didn’t want to notice, that they were not wearing the stars. The manager held a speech for them in the sense that Horthy has asked for a truce, that they hope that the war is over, that they have to be patient and not to run away. [Horthy declaration.] [15]
On 4th April they tightened the regulation that Jewish prisoners must wear the yellow star. On 11th April the Ministry of Justice introduces a regulation that Jews, prisoners can’t receive from home any kind of packages. On 8th May 1944 the Ministry introduces an order that in the future the prisoners, Jews can get only 30 grams of sugar and 30 grams of cooking oil monthly, and weekly 100 grams of horse sausages. On 19th June of the same year a new regulation is introduced that said all the Jews had to be gathered in certain prisons and that minor Jews into prisons for minors in Aszod.
Vlada arrived in Aszod with another 8 friends. There were 6 of them from Szeged and 3 from Cegled [small town in central Hungary]. Here there were: Gavra Altman, Nikola Timar, Ivan Haker, Sima Epstajn, Egon Stark and Vlada from Szeged too. From Cegled came Pavle Sefer, Dordje Hajzler and Ivan Blum.
From Szeged to Aszod they traveled by train. 6 of them in a passenger train, all 6 of them tied on a chain. They could barely climb on the train. It was very difficult every time when somebody had to go to the toilet.
While they had a small break at a station, tied with chains and with the yellow star on them, near-by appeared a Nazi policeman, an SS. ‘Does anyone speak German here’? he shouted. Vlada then said ‘I speak’. He wanted Vlada to ask somebody something. Vlada stood up and the SS only then saw the yellow star on Vlada. ‘Mit einem Sau Juden will ich nicht sprechen’. (I will not talk with a Jewish pig). And Vlada said ‘you called me, I didn’t call you’, and Vlada’s five friends grabbed him and pulled down. Their 3 guards were more afraid then him.
When they arrived to Aszod they were very hungry and had been told that they would get food when they arrive to the family. It was not clear for them what family means while they didn’t see that there existed blocks in the prison and that 2 on each floor. A Block consisted of a room that was a dinning room and a living room then there was a bigger bedroom and a small supervisor’s room. The supervisor was always present. These blocks they called ‘family’. In the prison in Aszod, another unusual event happened. At the beginning of October 1944 the Russians were some 20 km away from Aszod. Later on Vlada read that the Russians had advanced very slowly because it had been the fall with the most rains. He told me that when the Russians approached them to about 4-5 km, they would watch them for weeks, and they could not get to them. And then at the beginning of October, a guard came for Vlada and told him that Toth, the assistant to the prison manager, was looking for him.
When Vlada went to him and he told him ‘Listen, you received from your brother from Pest a telegram’. In the letter it was written ‘I obtained for you a Swiss passport. Do you want me to send it to you or not’? Since the assistant to the manager has behaved nicely to him, Vlada asked him ‘Gentleman, tell me, if this could be of use to me’? And he replied ‘It is a smart thing, you only ask him for it. Nevertheless I can not let you out from the prison. He only didn’t tell him to run away, because as Vlada told me, from there you could escape, but they didn’t have where to.
Those were already troubled times and times of expectations. Unfortunately already the following day they heard new things. The Germans had requested from the manager that the whole prison and the Jews and others be evacuated and handed over to Germans to take them to Auschwitz. And they also threatened him that if they act contrary to the order they would blow up the prison. The manager wanted to hand it over to the Russians.
Then 9 of them agreed that everyone should provide for himself a place in case of escape, but they must not tell each other who would go where. Gavra Altman and Vlada, since they already had had contacts with the workers of the machine gun workshop, they went to their bunker. They had had quite of fun there for several days but a love affair revealed them, a love affair of an engineer's wife and a German lieutenant. Then they were all taken to Vac. It is a town on the left bank of the Danube, some 30 km from Budapest. They were not convicts anymore but suspicious citizens. From there Vlada and Gavra have gone to Gyor in a factory where the director of that workshop told them that the engineer's wife blurted out in front of her German lover that they were Jews.
They began to move towards the town called Papa, it was about 50 km away. On their way a German military car stopped beside them. The driver asked Vlada if he could wrap his cigarette, because he had been frozen. Vlada then took from his pocket a box of cigarette and gave it to him, but in return he wanted him to take them to Papa. Later on they went to the German airport and worked in some kind of beer cellar where they had to fill in bottles. After that they went again to Papa and then to a Hungarian village at the junction of Czechoslovak, Austrian and Hungarian borders. They have gone to Poland, South Germany, Munich, Nuremberg…
On their way they associated with different people from whom no one talked about their past. Vlada once told Gavra that if he ever writes about that, he would name the book ‘The division of people without past’. Even before their departure from Munich, Gavra Altman was added on to the company that was supposed go to Czechoslovakia in order to reserve an accommodation. Since Vlada was leaving for Nuremberg with his company here those two separated. On the way from Munich to Nuremberg Vlada taught the group in the railroad car the song ‘It’s a long way to Tiperary’ and different other songs.
Before Nuremberg they threw them out of the train. They were lining up to go to the town, when at once a huge explosion occurred. They were informed that an arsenal, with shotguns blew up into the air; the ones they had to get. Then they had to go back by walk from Nuremberg to Triol. The first sergeant and Vlada then tried to escape three times. Two times it was unsuccessful but finally at the third time they managed to escape and in a special way they arrived to Regensburg. They were hitchhiking. Vlada has changed very many American camps and at the end arrived to Marseilles, in the camp for repatriated Yugoslavs.
There he was arrested by American counterintelligence service under the charges that he was a Russian spy. Saved him a Subotica’s doctor A. Ivica, who told a story how he knew Vlada’s father as a good preference player.
On 18th August 1945 Vlada crossed the Yugoslav border and came to Zagreb. In Zagreb they were questioned by OZN [department for the people’s protection]. ‘What is your name?’ ‘Vladislav Rothbart.’ ‘Are you German?’ ‘No I am not.’ ‘Then what are you?’ ‘A Jew.’ ‘How come you are alive?’ He told them his story. In Zagreb he had stayed for two days in the prison, till, from Novi Sad, didn't arrive a confirmation that Vladislav Rothbart existed. In Zagreb, some time before he had to be released, a journalist appeared. He was looking for inhabitants of Voivodina. Two of them reported, and after Vlada had told him his name he introduced himself and told him that his name was Zelmanovic. Vlada's and his parents were on good terms. He had taken him to his place and showed him the list of those Jews who were coming back to Novi Sad. Since it was the month of August, those who were not on the list, mainly never returned.
Location
Serbia
Interview
Vladislav Rothbart