Tag #152220 - Interview #92910 (Judita Haikis)

In September 1939 WW2 began. Hitler was taking efforts to involve Hungary in the war, but it had no intention to get involved. Then Hitler undertook provocation: in June 1940 bombers without any identification signs dropped few bombs onto the central part of Kosice. The central post office and few building across the street from it were destroyed. This bombing was so unexpected that an air-raid alarm only raised a howl after the bombers were gone. They announced that those were Russian bombers attacking Kosice. The Hungarian authorities had to join Hitler in the war against the USSR. Few weeks later my father and all other members of the communist party, who were on the lists, were arrested and take to prison in Kosice. The trial against them began. They were charged in actions against the state. They were tortured and interrogated. The Hungarians wanted to know the names of those who joined the communist party during the Hungarian rule and whose names were not on the list. My mother was one of them. She joined the party under my father’s influence in late 1938. My father was brutally beaten and taken to Budapest for interrogation where one policeman injured my father’s kidney. My father suffered from pyelonephritis for the rest of his life and finally died of kidney failure. Of course, my father didn’t tell them any names. The investigation lasted five and a half months and then there was a trial where my father spoke.  He acknowledged his membership in the party. The trial sentenced him to 7 months in jail, but since by the time of trial he had already served the sentence, he only had to stay in jail 40 days.