Selected text
Until the war they lived without any special problems. When the war broke out, during the time of the raid, when the oppression of the Jews began, then complications arose and my parents moved us to Szentes, thinking that it would be safer there.
While my brother was in gymnasium (high school), he joined a secret communist youth group. They were engaged in causing as much trouble as they could to the Hungarian occupation forces, and they threw nails under their trucks. It turned out to be a rather large group of Jewish youth, and they were all arrested and two were given the death sentence, the rest were given between three and seven years in the Csilag prison in the center of Szeged. This is how they survived the war and the deportations.
On strange fact is that the Hungarians running the prison allowed the boys to celebrate the Jewish holidays. After all, they were only children of 16-17 years old, and they allowed mothers to come and bring them food for the holidays. I went with my mother and the mother of Vlada Rodbart (they had a daughter the same age as me who was killed in Auschwitz) and we went to Szeged and brought food the big holidays.
This is an interesting detail: my brother had a rich stamp collection, postal, numismatics, which my mother took to Hungary thinking that it would be more secure there. She also took the family jewels, fur coat and that violin which was not a Stradivarius, but of very fine quality. She took everything to grandmother, considering that they lived in a house. Grandfather, not wanting to dig up his prize garden, did not bury them. Instead he put them in the attic behind a beam. While they were in the camps, drunk Romanian soldiers broke into the home which had been bombed, as were all Jewish houses, and all was burnt inside. When grandmother returned from the camp she found only the remains of the fire. For instance, the diamonds burned slowly and turned to dust when they were touched, because it is coal by its chemical structure, and the fur was like hair. The fire slowly smoldered because no one extinguished a fire in a Jewish house, it was not allowed or they did not want to. All the jewelry was destroyed. Maybe if it had remained here it would have survived. In any case, it was all destroyed.
While my brother was in gymnasium (high school), he joined a secret communist youth group. They were engaged in causing as much trouble as they could to the Hungarian occupation forces, and they threw nails under their trucks. It turned out to be a rather large group of Jewish youth, and they were all arrested and two were given the death sentence, the rest were given between three and seven years in the Csilag prison in the center of Szeged. This is how they survived the war and the deportations.
On strange fact is that the Hungarians running the prison allowed the boys to celebrate the Jewish holidays. After all, they were only children of 16-17 years old, and they allowed mothers to come and bring them food for the holidays. I went with my mother and the mother of Vlada Rodbart (they had a daughter the same age as me who was killed in Auschwitz) and we went to Szeged and brought food the big holidays.
This is an interesting detail: my brother had a rich stamp collection, postal, numismatics, which my mother took to Hungary thinking that it would be more secure there. She also took the family jewels, fur coat and that violin which was not a Stradivarius, but of very fine quality. She took everything to grandmother, considering that they lived in a house. Grandfather, not wanting to dig up his prize garden, did not bury them. Instead he put them in the attic behind a beam. While they were in the camps, drunk Romanian soldiers broke into the home which had been bombed, as were all Jewish houses, and all was burnt inside. When grandmother returned from the camp she found only the remains of the fire. For instance, the diamonds burned slowly and turned to dust when they were touched, because it is coal by its chemical structure, and the fur was like hair. The fire slowly smoldered because no one extinguished a fire in a Jewish house, it was not allowed or they did not want to. All the jewelry was destroyed. Maybe if it had remained here it would have survived. In any case, it was all destroyed.
Location
Serbia
Interview
Suzana Petrovic