Selected text
I didn’t even go for two full years to that school, because in the second year, on the 19th March, the Germans marched in. [see German invasion of Hungary [19th March 1944]]9. We were at school on Sunday morning -- we went in two shifts, because there wasn’t enough room for all of us at the same time: one week we went in the morning, and the other week in the afternoon. On Friday afternoon we couldn’t go to school because the Sabbath started, so we made it up on Sunday morning. I was on duty in the class that week. The children left the room during the recess, I opened the window overlooking the Danube. I looked out, and I don’t know how I knew, but I knew that the Germans were marching in and I knew that I had to hate them. I was watching how the Germans marched on the lower embankment, and I knew definitively that there was trouble.
The news that the Germans came in started to spread among the teachers in seconds, and they quickly sent us home. When they marched in, a serious army made its entry into the city, scouting airplanes flew up in the air in order to frighten or to protect the army. They were black as far as I remember. They flew close to the ground. It was so horrible that by the time I got home I was shaking! All along the Basilica to the Paulay Ede Street on foot, I can’t even describe that fear! My father was deaf, he sat at his desk, and the phone was next to him, but he didn’t hear the doorbell. I went home and stood at the entrance in the outside corridor, these airplanes above me, and I rang in vain. It is relevant to mention in this story that that morning my mother, the maid, and my brother got on a train and went to Kiskunfelegyhaza to take things to the relatives - to save I don’t know what kind of things from the bombing.
They left from the Keleti [Railway Station], as far as I remember, and they came back on the same day by train, but the identity checks had already started, they started collecting people. But somehow they got away somehow and made it home. But during the day they weren’t at home. I went down to the first floor where a family from Transylvania lived. At that time it was customary that a widow rented a big house and made a living by renting the rooms. I went there in despair and they called my father on the phone, because he could hear the phone. That’s how he let me in.
I told Dad that the Germans had marched in. Then he called one of his friends and he also told my father that they had really marched in. Then we worried until the evening, until my mother, brother and the maid came home. Then the events happened as quickly as lightning: they disconnected the phones in the Jewish apartments, we had to surrender our radios, and before long we had to go to a yellow star house. Paulay 12 didn’t become a yellow star house, so we had to move. They quickly issued the second grade report card at school, because this was an incomplete year, and there was no school afterwards. I remember that when it really started to be an awful world, my father took his gun, he had a gun as it turned out, and some communist books, he packed them in a small package, and we went and threw it in the Danube at the Chain Bridge.
The news that the Germans came in started to spread among the teachers in seconds, and they quickly sent us home. When they marched in, a serious army made its entry into the city, scouting airplanes flew up in the air in order to frighten or to protect the army. They were black as far as I remember. They flew close to the ground. It was so horrible that by the time I got home I was shaking! All along the Basilica to the Paulay Ede Street on foot, I can’t even describe that fear! My father was deaf, he sat at his desk, and the phone was next to him, but he didn’t hear the doorbell. I went home and stood at the entrance in the outside corridor, these airplanes above me, and I rang in vain. It is relevant to mention in this story that that morning my mother, the maid, and my brother got on a train and went to Kiskunfelegyhaza to take things to the relatives - to save I don’t know what kind of things from the bombing.
They left from the Keleti [Railway Station], as far as I remember, and they came back on the same day by train, but the identity checks had already started, they started collecting people. But somehow they got away somehow and made it home. But during the day they weren’t at home. I went down to the first floor where a family from Transylvania lived. At that time it was customary that a widow rented a big house and made a living by renting the rooms. I went there in despair and they called my father on the phone, because he could hear the phone. That’s how he let me in.
I told Dad that the Germans had marched in. Then he called one of his friends and he also told my father that they had really marched in. Then we worried until the evening, until my mother, brother and the maid came home. Then the events happened as quickly as lightning: they disconnected the phones in the Jewish apartments, we had to surrender our radios, and before long we had to go to a yellow star house. Paulay 12 didn’t become a yellow star house, so we had to move. They quickly issued the second grade report card at school, because this was an incomplete year, and there was no school afterwards. I remember that when it really started to be an awful world, my father took his gun, he had a gun as it turned out, and some communist books, he packed them in a small package, and we went and threw it in the Danube at the Chain Bridge.
Period
Year
1944
Location
Budapest
Hungary
Interview
Gyorgyike Hasko