We all spoke Hungarian as our native tongue in the family. My mother's line knew German and Hebrew. The Pollak grandparents spoke in 'Polishi' [i.e. Yiddish]. I sometimes heard them talk in 'Polishi' but I didn't understand it, I didn't speak that language. I heard it from them but I didn't pick it up. And we didn't study it either. We learned German in school and everywhere. It was very good for us pupils.
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Koltai Istvánné
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There was a swimming pool in Eger. It was unthinkable that someone couldn't swim; we all knew how to swim. I learnt to swim at the age of 3; I was taught by a swimming instructor. Mom was standing next to me and was having kittens that I would be thrown off from the spring-board and would drown. And the instructor took me up the spring-board, threw me off and that's how I learnt to swim. We loved the swimming pool, we used to go there the whole summer. We went there in the morning and waited in the courtyard of the swimming pool until it was opened. When it was opened, we ran in like a bunch of puppies and we got into the water and out and in again - it went on like this the whole day. We didn't have any food because we didn't take lunch with us, but we had fruit because Mom always bought a whole basket of fruit and distributed it among the children in the morning. They didn't have to worry about us, we had a great time and Mom was free, too. We, children, simply loved the swimming pool.
I went to the Jewish elementary school. I was accepted to elementary school before I reached school age [age 6].
All my sisters finished the four classes of middle school. My oldest sister Piri also finished two years of commercial school. This was a commercial high school, where nuns taught. And it was very expensive. If someone wanted to work in an office then she, like my sister, finished two years of commercial school and then she could become an employee [in an office]. There was a car dealer in Eger - there was only one at that time, there were hardly any cars; we went everywhere on foot, it was a small town, we could walk from one end to the other in two minutes - and Piri worked for this car dealer. My parents had more money for the education of my older sisters; by the time it was my turn, the money was gone. Sewing was almost the only trade that one could always do for a living for sure. So, they decided that the girls should learn sewing.
Girls didn't really have the possibility to learn any other trade at that time, especially if they were Jewish.
Girls didn't really have the possibility to learn any other trade at that time, especially if they were Jewish.
When I finished school, I also wanted to continue studying, as Piri had done, but I couldn't because the nuns didn't offer a commercial course that year. My parents tried to place me in a lawyer's office but business was running low - the lawyer was a relative of ours and he did my father a favor by employing me, but I didn't earn any money. After this job, I decided to learn how to sew. My parents apprenticed me to a man, also a tailor, who was an acquaintance of my father, but I didn't like it there at all. He was a Jewish tailor from abroad, not from Hungary. He was a women's tailor. I was there for only a very short time because I kicked up no end of a racket at home about not liking to be there. But I still learned how to sew, since we all knew this trade kind of instinctively because Dad was a tailor.
The Greiners, my husband's family, lived in the same street as us. I went to work for Dora Greiner. Three or four of us worked in her workshop. Dora was our boss. She was very strict; she used to upbraid me all the time before she became my sister-in-law. After her brother married me, I used to tell her, 'You were such a nasty boss, it was horrible'. I worked there as an apprentice for a couple of years and I didn't get a salary; we were happy that they took me on in the first place. After I finished my apprenticeship, I got a salary for my work. But we didn't have set working hours. We were told at what time we had to start in the morning. I can't remember what it was any more. I guess it must have been 7 or 8 in the morning. And in the evening we had to stay until we finished the fancy work on a piece or whatever we were doing. As long as the Greiner girls lived in Eger, I worked in their workshop.
My husband came from a religious family. His father was a Torah teacher at the Jewish community of Eger. There was a school and the more religious Orthodox children used to go there every morning. The old Greiner was very quick on the uptake. He was very original and smart. He had a beard and payes. (My husband and his brother also had payes.) But he wore a suit like anybody else. These Orthodox didn't ware a caftan any more. They were kosher and I remember when my poor father-in-law put the fish in a vat every Friday and scaled it. He had to do it because he was employed by the Jewish community.
My husband was born Izidor Greiner. Then he magyarized his name to Istvan Koltai in 1946. [The pet name of Istvan is Pista.] They had lived in Kolta and when he was asked after the war what he wanted as a surname, he said Koltai. [Editor's note: In Hungarian the letter 'i' is added to a place name to refer to people from that place, so koltai is a person from Kolta.] He was often asked if this or that Koltai was a relative of his and he always answered, 'Yes, if he had been called Greiner before'.
My husband and his brother didn't go to a regular public school because there was no Jewish school. They went to a yeshivah. They went to a yeshivah somewhere in Upper Hungary. Later my husband told many stories [about the yeshivah], he could tell them in a very funny way, but I don't remember any of them. I can't tell you for how many years they attended the yeshivah.
My husband was a member of the Social Democratic Party. He was even imprisoned for four months in the 1930s. He was arrested in Eger. The gendarmes arrested him in Kostya - that's a quarter of Eger where mostly peasants lived - for distributing illegal literature: pamphlets and books but I don't know exactly which ones. He was in prison for four months; he spent two months in Eger and two in Pest.
We got married in Budapest in 1937. He had already got this job in Cece, otherwise he couldn't have married me. The rabbi married us in Dora's flat. It was quite natural at the time. Most communists were Jewish. And since our parents accepted that we were modern, we accepted that they weren't. So we did all we could for their sake.
Our house had two rooms but I couldn't furnish both, I only had enough furniture for one. We had some animals, geese, ducks and so on and we also had a garden. I was always very active, and I learned about gardens and gardening as well.
Cece was a shitty little village. The Jews there weren't religious. We didn't observe the Jewish holidays either. In the village we were friends mostly with the Jews. All in all there were four or five Jewish families in the village, merchants and an ironmonger.
Pista was drafted to forced labor for the first time in 1942 - he was taken to Tokaj [wine-growing hilly region in the north-east of Hungary], and to other places as well, I can't remember where any more. As soon as he was back, he was always drafted again; always for a few months at a time. So I had to learn everything [at the lumber-yard] because I took over and ran it when he was drafted to different places. And everything went smoothly. Nonetheless we had to be very careful because there was a lot of open anti- Semitism already at that time. But I don't remember any particular incidents because the whole thing became so natural toward the end.
Pista didn't join any party activities in Cece; he couldn't have done so anyways because he was there undercover. Toward the end of our stay there the notary discovered us. They didn't know who we were until then. Actually, we were hiding there in Cece. It seems, however, that the police had a long arm. And they found out that he was a communist. Pista was called in and the notary told him that we had to leave the village within a week, and that was it. He didn't give any explanation whatsoever. The same happened to the other Jews in the village, they also had to leave. Everybody was kicked out of the place they had lived in. Pista had had quite a good salary, so we had bought all that we needed and could get there. And then this scum of a notary kicked us out of the village. We had to sell everything. We had to advertise it and the villagers came and took everything, all our belongings, apart like madmen. It was horrible!
We never thought that things would degenerate to this point. It really took us by surprise. We read the anti-Jewish laws in Hungary 7 but we would have never thought that such things would happen. We were so naive. In our previous life, so to speak, we had never experienced that we would be told that we were crap, the lowest of the lowest, just because we were born Jewish.
One could never really be prepared for what was to come. The Germans occupied Hungary on 19th March 1944 8. I went home to Eger twice - the first time a week before the Germans arrived and the second time on 18th March. At first I just went on my usual visit and then I just decided to go again. Somehow I felt that I had to go once more. At that time I was already living in Pest and our Julika - my parents' only grandchild - was already living with her mother Bozsi in Eger, and we agreed that I would go to see them again the following week. Well, did I go?! By that time the Germans had already occupied Hungary and we couldn't move at all. Whoever set a foot outside their building was caught by the Germans and off they went.
The forced laborers were taken away, some came home from time to time, others didn't. My husband was in forced labor, he was drafted, then sent home, then drafted again. This happened several times. When they felt like it, they drafted him. Those who were clever and smart did something to avoid it. But one couldn't really evade it. It was too well organized.
We received postcards from the Jewish community, which said that my parents were alive and fine. Everybody was 'fine', only they were no more alive. They were exterminated on 7th June 1944. They had been taken to Auschwitz - my mother, my father, my sister Bozsi, who had a little daughter, Julika, and Rozsi. Rozsi was married and her husband was in forced labor somewhere, and he also passed away. All the Jews in Eger were collected. The ghetto was simple. They said that it would be where the synagogue was, next to it there was a what-you-call-it, and they were collected there. I don't even know how it exactly happened in Eger. When Rozsi came back, we didn't question her because we felt sorry for her. Bozsi and her daughter were gassed immediately, just like my parents. Julika was six years old. She was a beautiful little girl, smart and intelligent, and she was to start school that year. They would have never thought in their worst dream to what place they were being taken. Who would have thought that such an evil thing could happen in civilized Europe.
It's pure luck that we have survived; because we had been taken to so many places. We lived in a rented apartment, then we moved to my sister because Jews had to move to yellow-star houses. My sister Piri lived in the 7th district and her building became a yellow-star house. And it was simpler to move in with my sister than with a complete stranger. There was another Jewish woman in the apartment who was sent to live there by the Jewish community or someone, I'm not quite sure. My sister worked; she delivered bread to stores. I did some sewing for people in the building. The Arrow Cross 9 men often came in the evening or in the morning and drove us out of the apartment. They told us that we had to go to the Turf. And then we sat there on the ground the whole day and ate. And then they changed their mind because there wasn't any place where we could sleep and it was already 11 at night or so and they told us to get the hell out of there and go home.
Piri knew a grocer called Szucs and we went there. He was a client of my brother-in-law, Gyula Krausz. The old Szucs was always coughing, spitting and sickly, but he was an incredibly decent man. There was a gallery above his store from where we could see who entered the shop but no one could see us. If Arrow Cross men came into the store to buy something, he started talking loudly so that we knew up on the gallery who came in. And he held them up. He also gave us food and tried to provide for us as best he could. He had a very large clientele with many Jewish clients. He hid a whole family in his home. His daughters were very nice and decent. He had a big family. His son was in his teens but he didn't grass on us either. I was hiding there with Piri for a while; then we separated. That's how the two of us survived in Pest. If Bozsi had remained in Pest, she would have survived, too, but she wanted to go back to my parents in Eger. And off they went to Auschwitz together.
. When we were in hiding in 1944, she had the prayer book on her. And she went out to get a Schutzpass 11 through a Catholic friend of hers. And she was halfway already when she remembered that she had a Jewish prayer book in her pocket. She ran back, lest someone would find it on her.
Then we went into the ghetto. I can't remember exactly when. We went when we had to go. We were obliged to go because he [Szucs] was risking his whole family. The ghetto was a calmer place for me. I'm not saying that it was a great place but we thought that it was safer to be inside. We couldn't take everything there, but I can't remember any more what exactly I took with me. There were many people in the apartment where we stayed but I can't remember exactly how many. It depended on which apartment one lived in. I can't tell you any more the address where we lived. It was all so chaotic, so messy. I don't even want to talk in detail about it. We lived in two or three places and then it was all over one day.
Liberation was most complicated because we were in constant fright about how they would execute us. We weren't sure if we would live to hear them say farewell to us. We heard the Russians and the Germans fire away at each other and we were having the jitters. We never knew who was shooting and from which direction. Let's not talk about it. I simply can't talk about it, don't even ask me please.
When the ghetto was liberated, everyone ran wherever they could.
When the ghetto was liberated, everyone ran wherever they could.
The lumber-yard was near the railway station and he had worked there, so he knew some people there, but they told him, 'How dare you come here?! Don't come here, they just executed someone yesterday'. So, he slid away. And he was hiding in Eger [until the liberation]. Then he came up to Pest and he started looking for his sisters, Dora and Mandi. He found them and they knew where I was because I had been in touch with them all the time - at the beginning, when I went into hiding, and also later on when I was in the ghetto. And they told him where I was and we were very happy to see each other again. My husband took me back to Eger.
Pista joined the Communist Party right after the liberation. Pista already had an apartment there [in Eger], which the Party gave him. And we had lunch at the canteen of the Party - we got bread there but they were quarrelling with me because I got an extra slice as I was pregnant with Karcsi. And they were quarrelling with me because of this; those were such bad times back then. Pista worked in the Party and I also worked there. He was the head of some department but I can't remember now what department it was. He went around the countryside on a motorbike. I was the leader of the MNDSZ in Eger. This stands for the Democratic Union of Hungarian Women. We organized many things. We went around the countryside on a dray or on any other kind of transportation that we could lay hands on. We did many things. We opened a nursery in the garden of the Archbishop of Eger for peasant women so that they could go and work in the fields in the summer. And there was a nursery for their children in the garden of the archbishop as well. All work was done by the same few people until all of them managed to find good positions later on.
Rozsi worked for the Joint 12 in Eger. The Joint set up offices in Eger, too, it had offices in many towns back then.
[After the liberation] Piri went home - she had an apartment and she went back there. She then saw that everything had been stolen. The apartment wasn't completely empty but all valuables had been stolen. And then people started to return from forced labor and it turned out that her husband didn't return.
My husband was departmental head [of the party membership department] in the Party Headquarters. He traveled around the country; he accompanied these big bosses. He was very much involved in all this. He never talked about his work. And I never asked. I saw it and I agreed with them completely and that was it.
This whole 1956 thing [the Revolution of 1956] 13 was very frightening. We thought that the country would have a quiet time and all of a sudden we had to be afraid once again; we only saw from it what made us frightened. We had done a lot of things out of [communist] convictions because we thought that we were right. We felt that we had done all we could, yet what came out of it wasn't what we had wanted. And we were very much surprised that it turned out the way it did. 1956 was a big disappointment for us.
It made me feel the way I felt during World War II because Pista didn't come home. I was coming home from work - at that time I worked at the Public Servants' Trade Union in Puskin Street, and I got home without any problems - and I was thinking as I was walking on the street, 'How funny, where are these people marching to?'. I didn't like the look of them, somehow. I had been through so many things and I felt that somehow all this wasn't quite square. I got home and Karcsi was already at home doing his homework. I said, 'Dad?' and he replied, 'He is not back yet'. Then I shitted my pants a little, so to speak. He finally came home [that night]. I tried to attenuate things as much as I could. I took Karcsi to my workplace every day. We walked from house to house, talked and got a little drunk - we took some alcohol with us. We walked a hell of a lot; I took him to my workplace, then home, then to my workplace, and home again.
Pista didn't come home for five days because he was departmental head in the Ministry for Food at that time and he organized the provisions for Budapest. It was a hot potato because he had a great responsibility. The ministry was located in the building where the Ministry of Agriculture is today, opposite the Parliament. [Editor's note: on 25th October there was a massacre in front of the Parliament when the armed forces opened fire on the mass of demonstrators. Almost 100 people were killed and 300 injured.]
He remained in his post after 1956, too; he was departmental head, just like before. He retired from there. He didn't talk much about his work.
It made me feel the way I felt during World War II because Pista didn't come home. I was coming home from work - at that time I worked at the Public Servants' Trade Union in Puskin Street, and I got home without any problems - and I was thinking as I was walking on the street, 'How funny, where are these people marching to?'. I didn't like the look of them, somehow. I had been through so many things and I felt that somehow all this wasn't quite square. I got home and Karcsi was already at home doing his homework. I said, 'Dad?' and he replied, 'He is not back yet'. Then I shitted my pants a little, so to speak. He finally came home [that night]. I tried to attenuate things as much as I could. I took Karcsi to my workplace every day. We walked from house to house, talked and got a little drunk - we took some alcohol with us. We walked a hell of a lot; I took him to my workplace, then home, then to my workplace, and home again.
Pista didn't come home for five days because he was departmental head in the Ministry for Food at that time and he organized the provisions for Budapest. It was a hot potato because he had a great responsibility. The ministry was located in the building where the Ministry of Agriculture is today, opposite the Parliament. [Editor's note: on 25th October there was a massacre in front of the Parliament when the armed forces opened fire on the mass of demonstrators. Almost 100 people were killed and 300 injured.]
He remained in his post after 1956, too; he was departmental head, just like before. He retired from there. He didn't talk much about his work.