Tag #156789 - Interview #78659 (Vera Szekeres-Varsa)

Back in the summer of 1944, my father was persuaded to convert. It was a tough family battle, they blackmailed him with me. So my parents were baptized in the Lutheran church on Deák Square, where my uncle had made some contacts, and I was to learn a few prayers in order to be accepted as well later on, but history swept that away. At the same time, they bought two authentic evangelical birth certificates. My father was István Vágner, my mother's name was Margit Stettberger, and I was Veronika. The story goes that they did not accept money for the false papers, but asked for objects. I remember mainly those that concerned me, namely a gramophone I received for my tenth birthday with four English Linguaphon records and my bicycle. The only thing I remember of my father's belongings is the typewriter.59 My mother saw conversion as a life-saving gesture, who would care. She is a Hungarian who is also Jewish. My father suffered. Additionally, we had a Swiss passport, we had a Spanish passport, a Swedish passport, and there was a Vatican passport in the pipeline. But we didn't use any of them.