My father was actively involved with the Hungarian Zionist Organization and, unlike other Hungarian Jews, he did not lull himself into a false sense of security, trusting that the “civilized” Germans and Hungarians would never harm the Jews. He believed the unbelievable stories of persecution told by the refugees from Nazi-occupied countries; he believed even the inconceivable accounts of concentration camps that the few escaped inmates had brought with them. That spring my father had managed to procure false documents for me. Were those documents copied or forged? In any case, they were my entry into the Christian Hungarian community. With the help of Mária Babar, a devout Catholic who had previously worked for our family, it was arranged for me to hide with the Ursuline nuns.

My mother had made a courageous and painful decision by taking this walk with me under the festive wild chestnuts toward the convent of the Ursuline nuns on Stefánia Street near the Városliget, the city park where I had played with my nanny only a few months before. My mother rang the outer bell on the gate of the tall, black iron railing that surrounded the convent. Behind it was a garden, where I seem to remember yellow dandelions dotting the shaggy grass that looked as though it badly needed a trim. When I recently managed to contact the Hungarian Ursuline nuns, they sent me the photograph of the convent building as it was in Budapest in 1944. My memory of the iron grill railing was accurate.

On the day my mother and I arrived at the Ursuline Mother House a strange woman in a black floor-length gown opened the gate. Only a patch of her face was visible under the stiff white band across her forehead to which a starched white bib-like collar was attached. There was no glimpse of hair under the black silk veil flowing from the band to below her shoulders and secured by a pin at the top of her head. 10 tenuous threads

It was the first time I had ever seen a nun this close up. My stomach seemed to constrict around a pebble I hadn’t swallowed. This is a feeling I remember distinctly, a sensation that returns whenever I confront an unavoidable crisis. She must have smiled as her hands escaped from the full sleeves of her ample dress to reach for mine because when I followed her along the path toward the yellow stucco two-storey villa, that pebble in my middle began to dissolve.

Surely my mother waved as she turned from the gate that closed behind me. We would not see each other again for more than a year. How did she say goodbye? She may have said something that ended in pipikém (my little chicken), her favourite endearment for me in Hungarian. I only remember feeling strangely relieved as she released me to follow on my own behind my new companion. From this black-clad woman’s waist swung a string of large beads ending in a cross that bounced at every lively step. When she opened the front door she had addressed me for the first time by my new name, “Ilona,” or its diminutive, “Ili.” Nobody would call me “Judit” or “Jutka” or “Juditka” for almost a year. The game now began in earnest. I was to become Ilona Papp, a Catholic child temporarily separated from her parents in the Hungarian countryside.

For the next five months, we experienced some tranquility; we had more freedom and peace. Radom had a large Jewish population before the war and it had become larger due to the influx of Jews from surrounding areas. It was not paradise or like life before the war, but we managed to sustain some quality of family life.

My brother Ben befriended a younger man whose father was a watch repairman. Being so mechanically inclined, Ben was fascinated with the mechanism of watches and picked up the profession in no time. He also befriended a young lady, Etta, and soon insisted on marrying her.

Then, by April 1941, the ghetto in Radom was established. At first, it was easier to endure than the ghetto in Lodz or Warsaw, but with the influx of Jews from other communities, it soon also became crowded. With a shortage of apartments and work, the picture started to look like Warsaw again - people begging and sleeping in the streets, with some never waking up.

In the ghetto, the Nazis formed a Jewish police force. Ben was invited to join but declined. We were allowed to go out only if we had work outside the ghetto. We had to have official papers showing our place of work, were forced to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David and had a 7:00 p.m. curfew. After that time, we kids congregated on the stairway of our apartment building to entertain ourselves.

Through the Jewish Council, who were in charge of the ghetto’s administration (under Nazi orders), Ben got a job as a superintendent and handyman in the German Security Service, or “SD,” which occupied an entire six-storey building. The Germans took a liking to him; sometimes he came home with bread, salami or cheese. He also received a bicycle and special papers permitting him to leave the ghetto at any time. The bike had a plate on it saying: “This bicycle belongs to the Department of Special Forces,” and nobody could claim it. It was unusual for a Jew to possess a bicycle, but its purpose was to allow Ben to go to work on the spur of the moment.

Ben had a gift. People always took a liking to him. He was handy and inventive, and had built an AM and shortwave radio at age fourteen. He was a mechanical genius and could fix anything. He mastered watchmaking and photography, and he even fixed guns. I asked Ben if he could get me a job as his assistant. He asked his boss and sure enough, I became Ben’s helper. He showed me how to install electrical lines and outlets, make window blinds and fix small appliances. We worked together on many projects.

Working in a military building, we saw Poles who had been brought in from the underground organizations and from the Polish intelligentsia - leaders, lawyers, priests, doctors and teachers. They were interrogated and tortured; we saw them beaten beyond human imagination. Their screams still ring in my ears.

Sunday, March 14

I have opened my notebook again after a rather long break. And it is because today we are standing for the whole day in the stable to stretch ourselves out a little. And because it is very uncomfortable for me to write lying down, I brought the notebook upstairs. But the conditions are not favourable here either, because I am chilled to the bone even though it is mid-March and the weather is beautiful, the sun is shining brightly and the earth is fragrant. If only I could walk out of the stable door and sit on the threshold... It is so distant and simply unattainable, that, unfortunately, I should not even whet my appetite and dream about it. I already cannot imagine a life different from the one I am living. Shall it always be like this? Is the evil ever going to end?

Wednesday, April 7

The world is so large, so extremely enormous, that you cannot go around it fast or comprehend its vastness, not even with your mind. Almost the entire globe is inhabited by people. Apparently people live even on the other side of the moon and on Mars, too. There is a place on the surface of the earth for all living creatures. Sadly, there is no place on the surface of the earth only for two miserable, abandoned living creatures. So these two poor, miserable human beings are forced to live under the surface, squeezed in a small box, where you can merely lie down and still feel cramped. And you can only dream about sitting. And these creatures lie in this box for months on end and they emerge into the stable for only three hours a day. Confinement — dirt, bugs, darkness and stuffiness — as in a grave. But these creatures are so happy that it is as it is and not worse and they are thankful for this ‘grave’ in their daily prayers. And they say nothing, they do not even complain anymore because they know that there is no place for them on the surface of the earth. Are we destined to ever emerge onto the surface?

Before I went to bed, Mam and Pap told me that Ollie and I were to go away with someone named Pauw the next day. They wanted to wait until the morning to mention it to Ollie. I asked who Pauw was, as I hadn’t met him, but I didn’t question why we would be going away. I understood that Mam and Pap must have had a very good reason. I thought about what they had said to each other in the afternoon, even though I was not supposed to be listening.

Ever since the outbreak of the war, the Germans had installed rockets in the park next to our house. These rockets were fired from various locations in Europe and, in Holland, from Rotterdam. At night, when the rockets were sent, the noise was deafening. Lying in bed, I couldn’t help hearing that horrible screeching sound. I had been getting somewhat used to it, however, that particular night, they sounded louder than ever. I plugged my ears, but it didn’t help. Every time they flew over our house it was scary enough, but I was even more worried as to what I was going to face the next day. How was I going to tell Ollie that we had to leave Mam and Pap?

Every morning, Mam and Pap would wake us up at 7:00 a.m. On that particular morning in October, their greeting seemed different. They appeared nervous while we had our breakfast, and they were whispering to each other. When we finished eating, they asked us to listen very carefully. Then they told us that we, Ollie and me, were going away for a little while. Although it wasn’t a surprise to me, I was still afraid because I didn’t know where, and for how long, we would be gone.

My sister, being two years younger than me, thought that she was going on a holiday with Mam and Pap. She packed her little suitcase and was excited to go away. Ollie didn’t understand that our parents were sending the two of us away without them. I, however, understood very well that we were not going on a holiday.

Before we left, we were given strict instructions never to talk to strangers. We were to act as nieces of our new family and we would be brought up as Christians. We were to tell anyone who asked that Mam was in the hospital and that Pap was working in Germany. It was a very believable alibi, a fabrication we would be forced to tell in order to survive. No one was ever to know that we were Jewish.

A little later, a stranger whom we were told to call Oom Pauw came to pick us up. I still didn’t ask our parents why we had to go; I knew we had to. We both kissed Mam and Pap goodbye and went with Oom Pauw, the Resistance worker, to the train station in Rotterdam where we boarded a train. Our destination was Soestduinen, less than a hundred kilometres away but, to me, far away from Rotterdam, our home.

I can still remember how Oom Pauw lifted us up into the train because the step was much too high. I also recall that we had to transfer and I believe it was in Amersfoort where we waited inside the station for our connection. Meanwhile, Oom Pauw gave us something to eat. While we were eating our sandwiches, through the window we saw soldiers marching up and down the platform. Oom Pauw didn’t want to draw attention to us and he told us not to be afraid and not to look at anyone, just to pay attention to our food.

We didn’t know where exactly Oom Pauw was taking us but after an hour’s train ride we arrived at our new home in Soestduinen, “the sand dunes of Soest.” This little village on the coast of the North Sea was located near the queen’s summer palace in Soest. Her palace either stood empty or was occupied by the Nazis when our queen was forced to leave Holland in 1940 at the outbreak of the war. We were far away from Rotterdam, far away from Mam and Pap.

On July 21, a beautiful sunny day in 1944, I found myself sitting in the ruins of our house, crying bitterly. The little town of Kozowa, where I was born on December 9, 1920, had been destroyed. After I could cry no more, I just sat there thinking and dreaming, watching my life pass before me.

My hometown, Kozowa, was in Poland (now western Ukraine), the area known as Galicia. It was built among meadows and fields of corn and wheat that stretched for miles. In my mind it came to life in front of my eyes like an oasis in the middle of a desert. I could see the centre of town where there was a marketplace with a round building containing three stores and two groceries. Around the marketplace, streets branched out in all directions. I used to love to run down the hill from the marketplace to my home. At the top of the hill was the drugstore, and as I ran down I would pass a fence, then the pump where we got water, and then our neighbour’s house before getting to our home. After turning the corner and walking up a few steps, I would reach our big, brown front door.

I loved living in Kozowa. The summers were beautiful, not too hot or humid, and the air was always clean, making it a pleasure to take a deep breath. I used to go for long walks in the fields to pick wild flowers or just to get a little sun on my face. On a nice sunny afternoon in July or August, I would dress in a dirndl and sandals, put a ribbon in my hair and walk down to the train station with one of my girlfriends. It was a beautiful walk. We would take a short cut through the schoolyard and then through a garden that looked almost like a park. The garden was private property but had a path that led to the Koropiec River. The water was so shallow that we could even walk across it. The riverbed was uneven and the water ran swiftly downstream, like a miniature waterfall. Over that waterfall was a little bridge. Well, that’s what we called it, but actually it was just a board lying across our tiny river. We would take our shoes off and walk across the board in our bare feet.

On the other side of the river was another path between gardens – mostly vegetable gardens – where a herd of goats roamed. We often talked to the goats, and sometimes they even followed us. It took maybe an hour to reach the train station. We made sure to get there before three o’clock, when the train arrived. The station was a beautiful structure with an iron fence and a garden in back. We waved to the passengers in the windows of the train, and when the train left we walked home with the thought of coming back in a few days. Somehow I never got tired of that walk. I was always excited to go to the train station again.

When I didn’t have anyone to walk around with, I wouldn’t go very far by myself. I walked only to the river, where I’d sit down to read my book, talk to the goats or just listen to the birds. Sometimes peasant girls came to do their washing at the river. One might think this was hard work but it seemed to me, as I watched them, that they were having a lot of fun. They laughed, giggled and told jokes while beating the wash with a flat stick. I don’t think they would have enjoyed themselves more at a picnic or even in a theatre. The girls had long braids and wore tight vests and long, wide skirts, with one hem of the skirt tucked into the waistband. They were barefoot and carried the wash on their backs or in pails. Walking to the river, they made up part of the beautiful picture.

Despite these idyllic scenes, life in our town was not all that glamorous. Maybe we didn’t know better, or maybe we were just smart enough to make the best of it. For instance, we had no running water, so even taking a bath was quite an ordeal. If you were fortunate enough to have a tub in the house, you had to bring water from the pump, heat it in a big basin on the stove, and pour it into the tub.

When you were done, you had to pour the water out again. This is why many townsfolk went to the public bathhouse to take a bath or even a steam bath instead. I don’t know exactly how the steam was made – an old man, Ludz, attended to that. When the steam was ready, another old man, Mikola, went around the streets banging two scythes together to let people know it was time to go to the steam bath. This happened only once a week, on Fridays, when everybody had to get ready for the Sabbath. In the afternoon, all the men left their work or place of business to bathe. The women went later, when Sabbath preparations were done.

Every Friday morning my aunt, who lived around the corner from us, baked cheese buns. They were the best cheese buns in the whole world, and she baked enough for a whole week. My mother, Malka Esther’s, specialty was cinnamon buns. By noon on Friday, the buns were ready – first my mother gave me some cinnamon buns, then I went to Auntie for some cheese buns, and then I took them all to my grandmother’s house. And what a lady she was! My grandmother was very neat and always wore a long skirt, high-laced shoes and a vest.

She had vests in every colour, but especially loved to wear bright colours. Once, she bought a long sweater and, after trying it on, decided it was too dark for her, so she gave it to my auntie and bought a red one for herself. My grandmother’s head was always covered with a clean, starched kerchief. She used to say that she wished she lived in a town where there was no mud so that her shoes could always stay clean. In our town the roads and the side streets were not paved, so after it rained everything turned to mud. We had to wear galoshes or high boots.

[…]

There were so many types of people in Kozowa that I could write a whole book just trying to describe them. And nobody was called by his or her real name; everybody had a nickname. For instance, next door to us lived the shoychet, the ritual slaughterer. His name was Benzion, so his wife was called Benzinachy. What a character she was! She was a religious woman who covered her shaved head with a kerchief, as other religious women in the town did. Yet, somehow that poor woman always looked helpless. She was large, with an apron always tied around her waist, and her face was always dirty.

For as long as I’d known her she had only one front tooth, and she was constantly chewing because it took her such a long time to chew her food. Benzinachy was a good woman who wouldn’t hurt a soul. Many of her children had died young of various diseases, and she was left with only a boy and a girl. She and her husband also adopted a boy named Gedalieh. I remember once when I visited her, she sent Gedalieh down to the cellar to bring her potatoes and said to him,“Gedalieh, keep talking to me the whole time that you are in the cellar.”

When I asked her why he had to do that, she told me that she had preserves and jams in the cellar, and if he was talking she would know that he was not eating up the goodies!

[…]

All the people in town were like one big family. The ones that werea little better off gave meals and clothing to the less fortunate ones. Despite everything, we helped one another in times of need.

We sat in the field until dusk. Just before nightfall, large trucks arrived. We were told to climb on the trucks and were driven to a small town called Starokonstantinov. There, we were ordered to get off the trucks and again sit in a field because there was a large hole in the road, which had been recently bombed by the Soviets. Then I saw with my own eyes how the Germans took about one hundred Jews, beat them and forced them to dismantle their houses and use the bricks and rocks to fill in the hole. Only then did I understand that I must not say I was a Jew. I went over to the six Ukrainians and asked them not to tell anyone that I was Jewish. I had a silver wristwatch and I wanted to give it to one of the Ukrainians in exchange for the cross he was wearing, but he assured me that no one would reveal that I was Jewish. And, indeed, that is what happened. Before then, I would not have believed that six Ukrainians would protect me and not turn me in.

We were led away to a large building in some sort of an army camp. The Soviets had stored grain there but it was now completely empty. Approximately five thousand captured Soviets were packed into the building. There were also Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Poles and, of course, Jews. The Germans were especially interested in finding the Jews. At first, the Germans asked the prisoners of various nationalities whether any of them could speak or understand German to help them translate. Many of the prisoners called out that they either understood or spoke it.

We were locked up in the building, without food. After two days, people became like wild animals. We had to relieve ourselves where we were, one lying beside the other. It stank so much that I could not bear it any longer; I decided that I had to escape. I had noticed that each morning at 8:00 a.m. the Germans opened the door. They would only ask if there were any Jews and, without fail, the Poles and the Ukrainians would point a few out. The Jews were then beaten so badly that blood flowed.

One time, someone pointed out a Jew to the Germans, who then proceeded to severely beat this man. This time, however, there were non-Jews who were very annoyed about this. The next morning, when the Germans opened the gate and asked who was a Jew, these non-Jews pointed out the man who had given up the Jew the previous day. The Germans beat this non-Jew mercilessly. He shrieked, but they kept on beating him. They killed him like a pig. I will never forget this.

I worried about how I could avoid the same fate from such German bandits, especially when I was a Jew. I started to feel anxious about trusting my six Ukrainian companions. All I could think of was escaping. Still, they didn’t give me away. I do not know, to this day, why they did not hand me over to the Germans. For this reason, I have to believe that there is a God.

The Jews of Budapest, now concentrated in designated Jewish houses, were given new laws and regulations daily by a non-Jewish superintendent, whose job it was to carry out the prevailing anti-Jewish regulations. At the outset, the curfew was strict and only allowed us to move around the city for three hours, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The curfew regulations were posted inside Jewish houses and outside on bulletin boards. Slowly, the curfew relaxed and the time for free movement became longer — 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. But suddenly, on one Thursday in October, our movement from the Jewish houses was shut down — no in and out anymore. Previously, I would sneak out without the star to get supplies unavailable to us in our allotted hours.

Long before the occupation, many food items — such as sugar, flour, butter, jam and cold cuts — were rationed because of the war. Each person was given a certain number of coupons for an item. The allotments were very small and often the item was not available. But sometimes you could get things that normally were rationed. In the mornings, people lined up at bakeries to get fresh buns. I used to line up and, if I was lucky, I would get a bag full of kaiser rolls, which we all loved. My mom would fry onions with some red paprika; the fresh buns filled with these finely cut fried onions were a real delicacy.

But now we were locked in the Jewish house with no chance of escaping. The following week, that changed for me. One day before noon, our house superintendent came to our apartment with a man in civilian clothes in the style that Hungarian detectives wore. The superintendent, in a high-pitched voice, said that this guy had a document that ordered me to go with him to work with the International Red Cross. I have to point out that any Hungarian kid from the age of twelve had to belong to a paramilitary organization called the Levente. I had attended a number of this organization’s meetings. The meetings had two parts: disciplinary training and emergency work, for which we were taken to clean building sites that had been bombed. So when I saw this detective type, I connected him to my Levente activity. My mother got really scared, not knowing what this order meant. The man discreetly told my mother to give me a coat or sweater where the yellow Star of David was fastened with pins for easy removal. This gave my frightened mother a clue that he was friendly. So I said my goodbyes and went with him.

As soon as we left my house, his eyes searched the area to see if it was safe, and when he seemed satisfied, he told me to remove the yellow star. He told me he was a member of my Hanhac organization and that he was taking members of my kvutza from the locked Jewish houses to an office that was part of the Zionist underground. This was my first encounter with one of our group wearing a disguise. I learned later that wearing some sort of uniform as a disguise gave members freer movement on the streets of Budapest, especially during air raids.

He took me to an office building on Mérleg utca, a street in the prestigious business district close to the Danube. When we arrived, I met some of our leaders and also some members of my kvutza. It was both a happy and a sad reunion: happy because we were together again, sad because of the unknown future awaiting our loved ones.

I noticed that at regular intervals the German guards strolled over to the next post quite a distance away, stopping to chat for up to half an hour at a time. Everything seemed to be in my favour except for the fact that the sun would soon be setting and it would be much too difficult to make my escape in the dark. I didn’t look forward to the prospect of spending the night in an open field, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice. Fortified by the wonderful sandwiches my aunt had prepared for my journey, I settled down for what felt like the longest night I had ever experienced. As twilight gradually turned into pitch darkness and I could no longer see anything through my binoculars, I tried to use my backpack as a pillow and fall asleep. But try as I might, I couldn’t get comfortable and I spent a very cold and restless night. Daylight couldn’t come soon enough.

By the time dawn broke, all I wanted was a hot café au lait. My wristwatch told me that it was five o’clock, and it was becoming fairly light out. When I looked through my binoculars, however, I wondered if I was hallucinating. There were no Germans anywhere. By some strange miracle they had all vanished, leaving me free to safely make my escape across the river. I was so nervous that I kept checking to make sure that they weren’t just napping or hiding, ready to jump out and grab me. I gathered up my courage, picked up my backpack, slung it across my back and cautiously moved toward the German control post until I was near enough to see that, beyond a doubt, the German sentry was not at his post.

To say I was baffled would be an understatement, but without any further hesitation, I took advantage of the situation and went straight to the river and took off all my clothes except for the bathing suit I wore underneath. I then packed my clothes into the backpack and strapped it tightly across my shoulders. With one final look all around through the binoculars to satisfy myself that I was alone, I plunged into the frigid river. The sudden shock left me gasping for air and my cumbersome backpack made every stroke more laborious than the last.

I wasn’t a particularly strong swimmer and could only swim short distances before running out of breath. I also tended to panic unless I stayed close to the shore. Under the circumstances, I had to rely entirely on willpower to keep me going. The freezing water temperature was only a minor concern compared to the far more serious problem of remaining afloat. As my strength waned, my arms felt as heavy as lead, forcing me to stop and rest. I went into a real panic when several times I swallowed mouthfuls of water. When I checked my progress after these incidents, I saw to my dismay that I had only covered about a third of the distance. Using every ounce of energy to increase my pace, I forced myself to labour on mechanically, afraid that my strength would give out at any moment.

The realization that the Germans might spot me and shoot me gave me the impetus to keep going. By the time that I had covered two-thirds of the distance and was within reach of the free zone, however, my strength began to seriously fade and I was consumed with fear. I was so exhausted that I could only occasionally kick my legs. At the very moment when my strength gave out completely and I was no longer able to stay afloat, on the verge of going under, I found within myself a renewed energy that came from pure determination. I managed to fight off my fatigue and before long I found myself grasping the shores of the unoccupied zone of France and my entry into freedom.

I remember the cold, rainy autumn day in October 1941 when the youngster at City Hall announced that all Jews must be at the train station at 5:00 p.m. sharp. We were to pack food for three days and take only as much as we could carry. The youngster yelled out the order with a voice full of hatred, sneering at us with the authority of someone assigned full control over our destinies. Privately, to protect me from hearing, my father told my mother the final words of the ordinance. She repeated his words in shock: “Anybody found after the train has left will be shot.” Because we had been told to pack enough food for just three days, we naturally assumed, as any level-headed person might, that we would be returning home after three days. How could it possibly be otherwise? Such a thought was beyond our imagination. After packing, Mama started obsessively cleaning the house, demanding that I help her as she quickly moved from sofa to chair. I couldn’t understand why. The house was already so clean; hadn’t she cleaned it just the day before? I knew better than to question her – she was in such a terrible mood. We were ready to leave when Mama noticed that I had left my apron on the kitchen chair instead of hanging it up on the hook where it belonged. She screamed at me and I had to go and put it back in its place. That is how I remember the very last moment in our home.

My mother layered me in three pairs of long underwear, three sweaters and two coats, explaining as she was dressing me that it was very, very cold. It reminded me of my mother’s compulsion to fatten me up with “reserves,” always protecting me in case of an emergency. I was wearing my backpack when we left to walk to the train station. My parents carried the heavy bundles as well as pots full of food: schnitzels, which my mother had made that day from chicken breasts, and hearts of wheat as a side dish. We had just enough for three days for the three of us.

At the station, I stood with my parents, surrounded by our family: my aunt Mila and uncle Armin Treiser; my maternal grandmother, Rebecca Siegler; and my paternal grandparents, Beile and Elkhanan Steigman. A little farther away were more aunts, uncles and cousins. Most of the adults around us were silent, as if hypnotized; some were moaning and groaning. Kids were chattering and babies were crying. Now and then there was a burst of screaming when someone lost their child or their parents in the crowd. I asked myself, “How come everybody is travelling tonight, all at the same time, all to the same place, all with the same train?”

I saw that passenger trains were coming and leaving without stopping for us and knew instinctively that something was off. It was almost dark, getting colder, and we were still waiting in the rain. We began to get impatient. “In the train, it will be warm,” I reassured myself. I was leaning against my mama and closed my eyes. We stood there from about 5:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m., with passenger trains going back and forth, back and forth. To keep my mind busy, I was thinking about how cold it was in the forest and how the animals must be freezing. I felt bad for them.

Suddenly, a very long, brown train pulled in and stopped. It was a cattle train meant for beasts, not people. The doors, as big as walls, slid open with a thud. The soldiers were screaming at us, shouting, swearing, pushing, pulling, and barking orders for us to get in. Frantically, people began running, slipping in the mud, falling down and getting up. Everybody was moving and yelling. We were being herded with rifle butts into the cars. For a few minutes, I couldn’t see my parents. I panicked. Then, I fell in the mud and got a nosebleed. Somebody stepped on my hand. “Don’t step on me!” I yelled. I was pulled from the mud. I was afraid Mama would be angry because there was mud and blood all over my face, my mittens and my coat. The next thing I knew, I was picked up and thrown into the train.

After hours of waiting in the cold rain, we were stuffed, body touching body, into the train and the huge doors were slammed shut. The train stood in the station for at least two more hours before surging violently forward. We had no idea to where, for how long or why we were being taken away from our homes.

I was sent to a labour camp somewhere in greater Budapest. I believe it was in Kispest (“little Pest,” a southern suburb) or Újpest (“new Pest,” a more northerly suburb). I stayed in greater Budapest throughout my career as a forced labourer. At the main camp, the commander and the guards were indifferent, but not sadistic. The inmates were a cross-section of Hungarian Jewry. Among them were Orthodox Jews who worked wearing their skullcaps and who prayed wearing their prayer shawls every night, and assimilated Jewish inmates – those who were not Jewish in any religious sense, but who were Jewish by virtue of Hitler’s edict. The forced labourers represented all parts of the economic spectrum, all ages and all levels of education. I shovelled dirt with Dr. Schisha, a vascular surgeon (who had operated on my varicose veins when I was fourteen) and with a Justice of the Kúria, the highest court in the land. There were, of course, a lot of less accomplished fellows as well. The food was edible, lots of mutton that did not smell very good, but care packages from home improved the menu. We had occasional day passes to go home to be with family and friends, have a hot bath and savour mother’s cooking.

Such was life in the main camp. From the middle of July to the middle of September, I, along with a large group of young people from various camps in and around Budapest, was sent to Hárossziget (Haros Island), an island south of Csepel (an island south of Budapest), which was a very punishing experience. What made it worse was the sadistic camp commander and the nasty, mean-spirited guards who worked under his command. Rubble from the bombdamaged city was trucked to the island and piled up in pyramid-like heaps. Our job was to quickly level these pyramids. I remember when big chunks of the wire-mesh glass roof of our bombed-out railway stations arrived at the island. Without the benefit of work gloves, we had to break it up and handle the dirty jagged glass. Apparently, the purpose of the job was to fill up the marshy part of the island. But it was a make-work project, as they could have trucked the stuff directly to the marshes.

Around the middle of September, we were relieved by a new group, so we returned to the main camp. Occasional day passes were given and at times I would be home at the same time as my father and Jancsi. They were in separate camps in Budapest and coping quite well. Mother lived in our apartment at Hold Street No. 6 III. Her brother Feri, his wife, Blanka, and several friends had moved in with her. Each room housed a family, which lessened the chance that the authorities would put strangers into the apartment.

It was in this atmosphere, when we all happened to be at home on October 15, 1944, that Admiral Horthy spoke to the nation via radio during a midday broadcast. He conceded that Germany and Hungary had all but lost the war. He urged the population to avoid further bloodshed and to stop resisting the Soviet army, which stood about fifty kilometres east of Budapest. It was a happy moment. We all laughed and cried and hugged as we believed his speech signalled the end of the war and that we had all miraculously survived. We knew that most of the Jews in the countryside beyond the capital had been deported, and that most of them had been killed. But we believed that Horthy’s last minute change of heart, which was most likely motivated by his desire to alter his quisling-like image for post-war effect, gave us a reprieve. We believed that time had run out for the Nazis. The Soviets would soon be here and all would be well.

The euphoria lasted for almost an hour. Then we began hearing conflicting reports. Finally, news came that Horthy had been arrested by the Gestapo and that Ferenc Szálasi, the head of the extreme right Arrow Cross Party, had been appointed by the Germans to form a government. His reign of terror began that afternoon. That was the last time I saw my father. We had a long talk and agreed on two principles: 1) As long as our respective labour camps remained in Budapest, we would be safer in those camps than if we were to escape and start hiding prematurely; and 2) Before the camps were moved, we should make every effort to escape in order to avoid deportation.

I felt that my survival depended on how far away I could get from the ghetto.

I found out how to get to Dubeczno from the stationmaster in one of the villages I used to visit. A train to Chełm, in the Lublin area, passed by the station in that village and stopped there briefly every day. After getting the information, I quickly decided to put my plan into action. In April 1942, I said goodbye to my dear friends the Cytryns, who had treated me like their own. I knew so many ways of getting in and out of the ghetto that I wasn’t about to risk being captured by leaving Otwock from the railway station, or by bringing attention to myself when buying a ticket. Instead, I hiked out of town to the village station where I had gotten the information from the stationmaster, and I boarded the train there.

The journey to Dubeczno, including changing trains in Chełm and stops along the way, took twenty-four hours. The journey seemed endless and I worried because Jews were forbidden to use public transportation – I fully expected the German military police to stop the train and check the passengers’ identities. I didn’t sleep or, if I did, I could not distinguish my nightmares from my conscious fears. Luckily, no German military police checked the train. I arrived without any problems at the last station before Włodawa. Because the train had changed its schedule and wasn’t going any further, I had to continue to my destination on foot. I walked for some time with other passengers until we reached Włodawa. It was nearly evening, and through a heavy mist we could see the city as it slowly became more visible.

By the time I arrived it was dark and I was afraid to walk the streets of Włodawa looking for some of my other relatives, cousins on my mother’s side, who lived there. I decided to go directly to my uncle’s instead. I asked around for directions to the road leading to Dubeczno and finally a passerby pointed me in the right direction. Surrounded by darkness, in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of the city, I felt insecure and tired. I was aware of all the dangers that threatened a Jew at the end of April 1942. I knew that I was on the outskirts of Włodawa, but I wasn’t sure exactly where. I decided to look for a night’s lodging through the method I had used in my previous wanderings – by getting the assistance of the soltys. I must stress that whether the procedure had existed already before the war, or whether the Germans had ordered it, for me it was heaven-sent.

While searching for the soltys, I found myself on a road where there were only isolated farmhouses, each far away from one another. These houses were like shacks with thatched roofs. I entered one and bravely asked for directions to the house of the soltys, explaining that I needed a note for a night’s lodging. The occupants were friendly and seemed glad to have a guest. They laughed at the very official way I was going about trying to get lodging and said the soltys lived a long way off. It was already dark, so the farmer invited me to stay the night there. Of course, the family asked me a lot of questions over supper and, even in my exhaustion, I invented answers almost naturally. My reward for telling half-lies was a warm bed and a hot breakfast the next morning. Such hospitality and kindness from strangers! Would they have acted the same way had they known I was Jewish?

March 19, 1944, is a day that will live forever in my memory. This was the date that sealed our horrible future. On this day, the Germans invaded Budapest and took over the leadership in Hungary. There was a rumour that the Jews in the countryside would be safer than those in Budapest, but unfortunately this was not true, and most of the Jews who left Budapest, believing they would be safe, perished in Auschwitz. Our “dear” Hungarian-Christian friends left us to the mercy of the Germans. Those who were our friends became our enemies, and they turned away from us as if we had leprosy. More laws against the Jews were introduced. One of the new laws was that all the Jews had to wear a yellow star. I remember the day we were ordered to wear the star as if it happened yesterday, and ever since then I have hated the colour yellow. I didn’t go out of the house for days. I wasn’t ashamed of being Jewish, but I felt so violated. The more they hurt us, the more proud I was to be Jewish, but I still only went out on the street when I really had to. I was only eighteen years old then, but I didn’t want to see anybody. I was already fed up with everything. I didn’t know that I should have been happy because I was still together with my family – my parents, my sister, Klari, and my brother Tibi. I didn’t know that it would be only a few short weeks before things changed. How could anyone know that the devils from hell had been unleashed?

In early April 1944, during Passover, the Jewish population from the surrounding villages was taken to the ghetto in Kisvárda. They were allowed to take only a change of clothes and some food. At the end of April, we too had to leave our home and move into the ghetto, which was located in the most Jewish district of Kisvárda, by the synagogue and the surrounding area near Csillag and Petőfi Streets. All the Jewish people living within thirty to forty kilometres of Kisvárda were transported there and forced to live in the few streets of the ghetto.

Everybody knew which streets made up the ghetto. Hungarian gendarmes guarded the ghetto and the roadways were closed with barriers. Luckily, my family had some relatives who lived on a street that was part of the ghetto, so we stayed with them. We slept on the floor and had to share the room with strangers. Nobody had a separate room. I don’t remember how we managed to eat because we were not given any food. We didn’t have anything to do in the ghetto, so I helped mothers with their children and I also helped in the ghetto’s kitchen. Most of the men were not there, as they had been sent to forced labour camps. Day after day, we became more frightened, but we were still hopeful that the situation would get better.

In late May 1944, all of the Jews were deported from the ghetto. The first time I saw a German officer was a few days before the deportations. When the German officers came, we were forced to stand in lines for hours until they counted us. They made a list with the name of every person; I never understood why, because within a few days many had already died, nameless, and those who were still alive and able to work were like walking skeletons. We became numbers on the lists the murderers kept.

The people from the ghetto were divided into two transports. The first one left on Monday, May 29, and the second transport left on Wednesday, May 31, 1944. There were rumours that we were being sent to Germany and that the young people would be working while the elderly would be watching the children. We didn’t know anything about where we were going to be sent. We only knew who was going with the first transport and that our street was going to be sent on the second transport, so we were lucky that our family had two more days to be together. We cried as we said goodbye to our relatives and friends who were leaving on the first transport; although we didn’t know what to expect, somehow we felt we would never see them again.

When the second transport left two days later, it was our turn to stand in line with our few bags. We didn’t have anything else with us but I wished that the Germans had taken everything from us, even the clothes from our bodies, if only we had been allowed to stay together. I cannot express in words how terrible we felt. No one could imagine how horrific it was. To this day, when I think about the sickly elderly people who wanted only to die in peace where they had lived and the innocent babies who couldn’t hurt anyone but would die because their great crime was to be born Jewish, I cannot hold back my tears.

In April 1942, the population of our town fell by nearly a thousand. We had been notified that we were to appear with our luggage at a large warehouse near the railway station. The Jews of Budějovice were a civilized lot – we did not fuss much. We were used to doing what we were told, so we checked into the warehouse, presented our documents, were assigned numbers and prepared for the night. A few children whimpered and some of the older boys started to fool around.

The next day, we were told to board a passenger train that would take us to a gathering place. Our main worry was whether this new place would be in Czechoslovakia. Somehow there seemed less to worry about as long as we stayed in our own country. As the train began to move, we got our first glimpses of the cruel SS men (Schutzstaffel) – the Nazi elite troops who guarded the concentration camps. They were dressed in perfectly ironed uniforms and had animal-like expressions on their faces. One such beast – a high official with many stars on his uniform – inspected the train. Shouting orders in German, he kicked and slapped several people who got in his way.

The train sped north toward Prague, then west. At the end of the day we were unloaded at the gathering place, Terezín. Terezín was an old town that had many soldiers’ barracks, massive three-storey brick buildings and several large yards. The town had a moat all around it, making escape impossible.

That first night in Terezín we slept in a large warehouse, body to body, with just enough room to move around on our tiptoes. The next day, all the families were separated. Women were moved to one of the large barracks, and men to another. There was not much time to say goodbye as we had to line up quickly. Food was distributed from large barrels into small pots that were assigned to all the inmates in Terezín. Bread, potatoes and gravy comprised our main daily meal.

We stayed in Terezín from April 1942 until November 1943. The town grew more and more crowded from the incoming transports of Jews from other parts of Czechoslovakia. Old people and sick people started dying quickly. Every morning, bodies covered with white sheets were seen piled up in wagons, waiting to be moved to the crematorium.

At first, we all lived in the barracks, many to a room, sleeping on the floor. Somehow, amidst all this, children were allowed a little fun. We were permitted to play in the yard, to sing and play word games. One of my memories is of a teacher who would sing his and my favourite song, “Spring Will Come Again, May Is Not Far Away.”

Early one morning, Mama came into the room where I had stayed overnight with Dutch friends. Roused from my sleep, I was shocked to see her in tears as she ordered me to get up and dress quickly because the police were waiting for us in front of the hotel. She pleaded with me that I should cry, so that perhaps I might soften the heart of the policemen. But strangely enough, I, who had hitherto been something of a crybaby, could not bring myself to shed a tear. I looked at Mama with pleading, frightened eyes, yet felt too numb to cry. Once out on the street we were gathered into a large crowd of Jews who had been collected from our hotel and elsewhere in town. To my further dismay, I discovered that Papa was not with us. He had gone out before the police arrived, perhaps to buy a newspaper, or could it be that he pursued a lead to a possible hiding place for us? I shall never know.

Like a lugubrious procession we were marched along the street that led to the railway station. The police chief in charge was a burly brute with a moustache like Stalin’s; he swore at us, spouted antisemitic insults and shoved and bullied our pitiful flock all the way. What awaited us when we reached the square in front of the railway station was a veritable coup de théâtre, a sudden turn of events: by an unbelievable coincidence Aunt Fella had arrived on the night train from Limoges and happened to walk out of the station at the very moment when we were brought there! I still hear her cry of astonishment, “Mon Dieu, qu’est-ce qu’il se passe?” (Oh my God, what is happening?) Then, seeing that I happened to be at the end of the queue and that the police chief had momentarily turned away from it, she pulled me by the hand whispering, “Viens, sauve-toi avec moi!” (Come, run away with me.) But I was too dumbfounded to run. A moment later the police chief turned around; he saw my aunt pull me away and raced after us, slapped my tiny, frail aunt on both cheeks, and violently seized me by the hair and the seat of my trousers. Thus holding me kicking and screaming, that brute ran inside the station and toward the awaiting train on the first platform, past Mama, whom I saw being dragged over the station floor struggling and crying. The entire station was a scene of bedlam, with men, women and children being pulled, shoved and hurled into the train….

Just as the police chief was about to throw me into the train as well, two gendarmes in khaki uniforms appeared in the nick of time to stop him. Without a word he let go of me. One of the two officers took me aside and gently pressed my head to his chest, so that I would see no more of these horrendous scenes. After a moment he turned me around, saying, “Look, your mother is in that window over there waving goodbye to you.” The train then moved. That was the last time I saw my mama.

By the end of November, a ghetto was formed in the heart of the city. What happened from that point on is described in a letter I wrote on January 30, 1945, only two weeks after our liberation from the ghetto. The purpose of my letter was to write down what had happened to us, while it was fresh in my memory, and give it to Zolti, who I was sure would come out of that hell alive. I still have the original letter, written in pencil by the light of a single candle, the pages now yellowed with time and the words faded away.

Budapest, January 30, 1945

My dearest love!

Nine months ago, on May 9, 1944, when you kissed me goodbye, I told you my life would be worthless if you did not come back. “I will be back, sweetheart, because I love you and our little son. Don’t worry, my dear,” you replied to me. Now we are home and safe and so are your parents, and I feel that you will come home, too. I feel it very strongly. Our little son prays for you every night with his tiny hands clasped together.

Where should I begin to tell you of our sufferings? I want to tell you everything that has happened to us. Maybe I’ll go back to October 15, 1944. Our Regent, Horthy, spoke on the radio, and we were told that Hungary would no longer fight in the war, so nobody had to worry. We were tremendously glad to hear it. We had all crowded into the yard of our building to hear our Regent’s declaration from the janitor’s radio. We were jumping with joy and tearing off the yellow stars from our chests. We thought it was the end of our sufferings. We had had enough. The yellow stars were discriminatory – unlike other citizens, we were not allowed to go out of the house except between five and seven in the evening to buy groceries, and of course by that time there were not many groceries left. We were forbidden to go to any public places like cafeterias, soda shops, movies or playgrounds. On the streetcars or buses we could only sit at the back. In many of the stores you could read this: “Dogs and Jews forbidden to enter.” There were many other awful things but now we thought that an end had finally come to these orders. We were wrong. Even more bad things started. Our Regent had the best intentions, but he was weak, and on the same day, the fascist Arrow Cross Party, with its leader, Ferenc Szálasi, took over the presidency. Szálasi was bloodthirsty. He swore that he would help the Germans to annihilate the Jews.

The next morning I saw sixty or more people – men, women and children – marching with their hands raised above their heads. Fascists escorted them. Later on the same day, some police and fascists with swastikas on their arms came to our building. One of them roared, “Every Jew down to the yard or I shoot!” We were very scared. You know, dear, by then about three hundred people lived in the building, most of them Jews. We had no time to pack anything. I just grabbed the knapsack, little Andy’s winter coat and a blanket. Those things were all ready in case of an air raid. We had to raise our hands like criminals and form a double line in front of the house. When Andy heard those words “hands up” he took his hand out of mine and raised his, too.

First they took us to the nearest open ground and robbed us. We had to throw all money, wristwatches, rings and flashlights on a blanket. We had to put our hands up again so they could inspect if any rings were left. If they found something, they beat our hands with a whip. I put my wedding band in Andy’s coat pocket. I wanted to save it.

After we were robbed, we were ordered to form a double line once more and to march to an unknown place. While we were marching, still with raised hands, you couldn’t imagine what the crowd on the sidewalks did to us. They were enjoying watching our march. They hit us and spat on us. One man grabbed the blanket from my hand, so Andy had no cover for the night. Others took the coats off of people’s shoulders. One man beat your father and smashed his eyeglasses. At that point, Andy and I lost your parents in the crowd. On the route, I saw that we were being led to the Tattersall racetrack. There, we spent two horrible days and nights. It was like a nightmare. When we arrived, it was already dark. We had to sit down on the bare ground, which was covered with dung from the horses. There were a lot of people, collected from every part of the city. Many of them didn’t even have a place to sit, so they stood all night. The children fell asleep in their mother’s laps. Andy too fell asleep and I hugged him all night to keep him warm. We adults were awake the whole night waiting for the morning. What would happen to us? Finally, morning came. We were ordered once more to form a line of four and to walk around a platform where some Arrow Cross bandits were pointing machine guns at us. One of them roared, “You rotten Jews! All of you will die within a few hours.” But nothing had happened yet except that we had no food, water or roof above our heads.

During the day we walked all over the place looking for Mama and Papa. There were Arrow Cross women with whips, and they hit everybody around them. I tried to avoid those beasts. From time to time, Andy and I sat down on the ground and I fed him some crackers and apples from the knapsack. I couldn’t take a bite. After that, we again went to look for your parents. Finally in mid-afternoon, we found each other. We were crying and hugging to try to comfort each other. We all sat down on the ground again to try to keep Andy warm. Then came the second night. About 3 a.m. we suddenly saw a bright light and a man on a loudspeaker announced that we could all go home. The order came from the chief, Szálasi, who had become the head of the government. As soon as we got out, German soldiers shot among us at random. Many were wounded and killed, but somehow we got home. Little Andy’s first words were “Hello, my red tricycle. You say hello to me, too.” You know, dear, he had just received that red tricycle from Joe, our superintendent, before we were taken away.

...

I took my book, Gone with the Wind, which I had been reading for a while, with me to the bunker and I read it front to back many times. There must have been light in the bunker, as well as a trap door that could be opened so we could go out for some fresh air, but only at night, when the Nazis usually didn’t operate. Even so, we had to be careful when we went out because there were informers who would come at night, mix with people and beg them to be let into their bunkers. That’s how they found out where the bunkers were and the next day they would go and tell the Germans, who would come with flame throwers and artillery and announce that if the people didn’t come out in half an hour, they would burn the bunker down. Eventually, the Germans levelled the whole ghetto that way.

We were in the bunker for about three weeks, and for the last few days we stayed inside and didn’t venture out. People spoke only in hushed tones, which had a hint of hysteria in them. Then, the first week in May, the inevitable knock came on the trap door and we heard voices through the air vents. We had been found out. The voices — I can’t recall if in German or Polish — said that if we didn’t come out within half an hour, they were going to throw gas bombs into the bunker and we would all die. When we emerged, we saw Germans squatting with machine guns and they set the building on fire anyway.

One image has stayed clearly in my mind: As we left the bunker, we saw German paratroopers dressed all in black, like the devil himself, with black helmets and machine guns strapped across their chests. They kept shouting, “Hände hoch! Hände hoch! Nicht schiessen!” (Hands up! Hands up! Don’t shoot!) They thought that we had guns and they were afraid of us. I felt very proud.

We were all searched and then forced to lie down next to the building, where Ukrainians guarded us. Now the collaborators were either Ukrainians, Latvians or Lithuanians. We stayed that way for a long time while they gathered up a large column of people. By the time we started walking, it was dark and we were surrounded by burning buildings. People were trying to escape, running away from the column, and one man ran toward the flames of a burning building as one of the guards aimed his rifle and shot after him. The guard was laughing himself silly as he shot, not even seeming to care whether he hit the man or not since it really didn’t matter whether the man died of a bullet or in the flames.

That image became my first recurring nightmare; for years I would dream that I was being shot in the back and was dying as I ran into the flames.

All of a sudden, we arrived at a city. It was well-lit and we could see the streets from the station. My God, how this made me feel! Never before had I experienced such bitter heartache. Was it true that there were still people with a life? Elegantly dressed women, babies with smiling faces. We hadn’t seen children for five months. During those five months, our minds had dulled – perhaps we didn’t even have a soul anymore. All that interested us was not to starve and not to be so cold.

From the train, I could see through a window into a house. The gentle light of a lamp fell on a table covered with a white cloth, a family seated around it. A father, mother and four children were having dinner. No, this was impossible to bear, too much of an ordeal for us who had not sat on a chair for five months, who instead had to crouch, backs bent, to avoid hitting our heads on the bunk above. We thought of our old homes only as if they were part of a beautiful dream, from which we would awaken to the harsh reality. I sensed that we would never see our loved ones again; I didn’t know where to locate them in my thoughts. My weak, tall, lanky son, János, who lived only for his books. My dear husband, who shared my very thoughts. Where could they be living, if they were living at all?

The tears were streaking down my face as I closed the train curtains, and the optimism that had filled us at our departure evaporated as the train pulled away. We were like falling leaves in the current of the autumn wind…. A miserable night passed and toward dawn, while it was still dark, we arrived at our unknown destination in the pouring rain. As we got out of the carriages, I saw an undulating, menacing body of dark water in front of us. There was water wherever I looked and water streaming down our necks. At last we could decipher the name of the station: Schlesiersee. This was the name of the lake and also of the small town situated on its shore.

Rows of five and marching. The outlines of a pretty little town became visible in the grey, pre-dawn light. Mansions, each one more beautiful than the last, and tidy streets. Not a soul to be seen at this early hour, but behind a few windows a woman’s hand would pull aside a snow-white curtain, so suggestive of a peaceful home, and a pair of curious eyes peered out. I wonder what they felt, what they were thinking, as they caught sight of two thousand women marching in a downpour.

We marched for hours. We left the town behind us and all we saw around us were barren fields. Not a factory chimney in sight, even though it had been our hope to work in a factory. After all, it was almost the end of October – what could we possibly do in the fields? We saw all sorts of windmills, which, previously, I had only seen on Dutch postcards. My first time seeing a windmill, soon to become the thousand times cursed backdrop to the tragedy that played out on these fields, whose ill-fated protagonists we would become.

“ We talked about Auschwitz as we had before about our dear old bourgeois homes. ”

We passed through two villages. People who had just gotten up were shaking their heads, watching our sad, drenched company. The rain that had plagued us since the beginning of our exile was still cascading down on us incessantly, trickling down our skin. Our new attire, which we were so proud of, turned into wringing-wet, foul-smelling rags. My stockings, which I had stopped readjusting, slipped down, and I trampled on them; they were in tatters by the time we arrived in front of a small farm that stood all by its lonely self in the fields.

Fear pierced my heart. Could this be the place where we were going to live? In the autumn? In the winter? No! This was unbelievable, surpassing even our most pessimistic imaginings and yet, at the same time, nothing was impossible or unbelievable. We marched into the courtyard of the farm and were made to stand in a quadrangle- shaped formation. Never, not even on my arrival at Auschwitz, did I feel this level of hopelessness. The lack of civilized amenities had been my fear all along. In Auschwitz, I had been reassured by the presence of electricity and Waschraums. Now, even the gas chamber seemed better than perishing in this place. From the outset, I was convinced that we would never survive a winter here.

I worked with all my strength. I pictured our house, the synagogue and my street on the eve of Yom Kippur. Jews would be rushing to and from the bathhouse, wishing each other “a good year” and “may you have a good inscription in the Book of Life.” Some would hurry to synagogue early, bringing large wax candles. I pictured my mother standing in front of the candles, piously praying with tears in her eyes. Around her, we, her children, always stood crying, as was traditional for us on Yom Kippur eve. Looking at the position of the sun, I ascertained that it was probably time to light the candles. My poor mother was at this moment most certainly crying her eyes out for me, her only son, who was not with her. My mother’s suffering broke my heart. I put away my work and went over to a nearby tree. I rested my tired head there and my tears began to flow. I made every effort to stop my tears, to control my emotions, but my efforts were in vain. Leaning my head against the tree, I stood crying like a little boy. My tears fell on the dusty ground and on my dusty clothes. I felt strangely better. I felt lighter, revitalized. I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to be working and that all around me were Nazi murderers. I began to float in higher realms. My grandfather stood before me. I saw my grandfather in his kittel and his tallis, standing on the bimah and exhorting the congregation to repent from the bottom of their hearts.

Suddenly, from out of the blue, a hail of blows landed on my bent back. I lost my bearings, not so much from the beating but from the unexpectedness and suddenness with which the blows had so murderously and mercilessly targeted my back. Nevertheless, I collected myself immediately, realizing where I was in the world. It was not my grandfather but a Nazi overseer that stood before me. His eyes glowered with violent rage. He was ready to kill me. I went straight back to work.

The small acts of courage were what made it possible to survive. One evening, for example, we were made to stand for hours and hours in the Appellplatz for roll call. When we were finally released, some of the women who needed to go to the bathroom went straight to the barracks to relieve themselves in the latrines. When they got there, however, the doors were locked. A few of the poor women were truly in agony after holding it in for so long. Not being allowed to empty their bladders was torturous. This was the last straw for some of us, and we began to shout in resistance, “Let us pee!” over and over again. “Don’t let them suffer!” I called out. “Don’t torture people so much!” One of the female SS guards heard us yelling and came to the barracks.

The guard must have recognized my voice because she came directly over to me, as if I were to blame for the rebellion. The other women were sure that I would be killed. Then, something unexpected happened. A friend of mine from Mukačevo, a woman named Hilda, came to my aid. I had known her before the war, and she was normally very quiet and reserved. Yet, she rallied everyone together and encouraged them all to shout. All seven or eight hundred women in the area began shouting so loudly and with such intensity that the female SS guard grew afraid and left.

There was another way that we could resist – with hope. As we sat on the hard wooden bunks in our barracks, with only our thin, torn dresses to cover us, we still hoped that we would survive. Some of us even tried to learn new languages. By that time, I had already learned some English and spoke it quite well. I also still remembered Hebrew from high school and taught Hebrew words to my friends. It was a time of emptiness, pain and desperation, a time when it was impossible to imagine a way out. There was no way out. But I often thought about miracles.

An extremely important part of our resistance was singing. Although it seems paradoxical to talk about music and Birkenau in the same breath, singing was a key part of our existence. When our work was done and the guards weren’t present, we could find safe moments to sing Hebrew songs. We had to be careful never to sing in front of the SS because they would have beaten us to death. I couldn’t sing well, but it didn’t matter. None of us were really singers. I would teach my friends the words to songs I had learned in school and the women with good voices would figure out the tune. Together we combined words and voices, our voices hushed so that no one would hear us. It gave us encouragement and lifted our spirits; in those moments, we didn’t speak about death and killing.

These were not the only music events in the camp. There were also concerts organized by the SS – although these were hardly happy occasions for the Jewish prisoners. I recall one concert that was spontaneously arranged under orders from the camp administration. We were called out to the Appellplatz and commanded to sit on the ground. What we saw in front of us was a group of men in their filthy, striped prison uniforms, emaciated from hunger, each one holding a violin, a cello or a wind instrument. They were told to take their places on a platform and began to play – and, oh, how beautifully they played. Starving and ill, the musicians played waltzes by Johann Strauss II while the SS guards danced to the music.

I began to cry. I cried inconsolably because those musicians were playing music that had been created to make the world a more harmonious and beautiful place. Yet, these men, imprisoned and starving, were forced to play through suffering and humiliation. Strauss’s waltzes and operettas, which brought joy to listeners for a hundred years, had nothing in common with Hitler and his ideology.

During this first winter, as the walls grew wet and frozen, we had to move to Brzezinska Street, where we were warmer and away from the barbed wire fence and the German guard who occasionally fired his gun. I made friends in our new place. One of them was a composer a few years older than me. He had a girlfriend who was a musician as well. Even though we lived in the same building, we exchanged letters; we promised to be friends forever.

The small apartment where we lived was available for a short time only, and we were next sent to occupy a small room on Zgierska Street, near the bridge. The apartment consisted of a tiny entrance hall and kitchen combination, and another room that was already occupied by a family. This building was close to the barbed wire fence, behind which the tramways for the gentile population moved along freely. However, we were not directly exposed to the fence, as our room faced the courtyard. There was an outhouse in the yard, where people would empty their chamber pots. In the winter the opening to the outhouse would freeze over, and people would continue to empty their pots, creating a hill that grew and froze until spring came. There was no escaping the stench and it was hard to avoid stepping into it. While I dulled my senses to everything else, this sight and the smell repelled and revolted me. I washed every part of my body whenever I could.

Almost immediately upon our arrival to Zgierska Street, we were, to our horror, infested with lice, and there was no escaping the scourge. I succumbed to a feeling of self-loathing, and once, as my father and I stood by the window, I exhaled loudly and told him that I wished that someone would push me into a hole in the ground and bury me. Surprised at my own vehemence, I glimpsed my father’s profile and saw a look of sadness and despair.

During the first few months in the ghetto, we received mail from my brothers in Soviet-occupied Poland. They were preparing to come back and lead us to the Soviet Union along a certain route. My brothers specifically stressed that there would be schooling for me there, which was an ongoing family concern. But in the spring of 1940, the ghetto was hermetically closed and there was no longer any mail, news or communication whatsoever with the outside world. The penalty for listening to a radio was death.

[...]

In the fall, on Yom Kippur, we went to a prayer gathering; it was the first time I saw my father dissolve into tears. Whenever we thought things could not get worse, they did.We were hungrier than ever and we were getting weaker. My father was unable to carry on digging ditches for potato storage, the work to which he had been assigned. I started to work at a saddle factory, sewing leather and making harnesses, and the meagre pay was enough to receive our basic weekly food ration. It was up to us to consume the ration – bread and other staples – when we wished, and we rationed our food scrupulously, but it was a terrible temptation to dig into the weekly supply. The amount of the ration changed every week, depending on what the administration could get as payment for the production of goods for the Germans.

I felt mindless. Starvation was soon rampant, and mortality in the ghetto reached epidemic proportions. Death started with apathy, weakness and the swelling of ankles. The swelling would move upward, and ultimately the heart and lungs would shrink, resulting in a lingering death. On July 2, 1941, that is how my father died.

When my mother realized that my father’s situation was critical, she sent a neighbour to come and get me at work, and I came home. My father looked at me for a while, and then he closed his eyes for the last time. He was buried in the cemetery at the edge of the ghetto.

My mother and I were now alone.

People were dying like flies in the ghetto, not only in the daily Aktionen but also in mass executions at the Jewish cemetery, where the victims had to dig their own graves before being shot. Others were taken away in carts to trains bound for the death camp at Belzec. There were also those who died from disease, primarily typhus, due to the complete lack of sanitation. And then, of course, there was always starvation. Bodies in the streets became a regular fact of life, even though carts came around to remove them.

The liquidation of the ghetto was imminent. By the end of February, the Stanisławów ghetto was declared judenrein, cleansed of Jews.

Prior to that fateful time, however, my mother had sensed that she had to do something before it was too late. By December 1942, she had lost most of her family and her baby looked sadder and thinner every day. I was almost two and I couldn’t walk yet. I barely talked. One cold overcast morning, she wrapped a comforter tightly around the two of us and approached the main Schleuse, or gate to the ghetto, where she saw her cousin Jakob Mandel in charge. He was a tough, stocky man who had had business dealings with the Germans before the war. His position of authority was a reward for loyal service. Later he too was executed by the Nazis. On this particular occasion, there was a quick exchange as the eyes of the cousins met before he turned away, allowing my mother and her precious bundle to slip behind his broad back.

Once outside the ghetto walls, my mother ripped off her blue-and-white Star of David armband and ran down the cobblestone street, fully expecting a bullet in the back. By this time I was well trained to be quiet. Just being so close to my mother was enough to make me happy. We reached the safety of the apartment of a former neighbour, who pulled us in quickly, no doubt fearing for her life. That night I was nestled in between my mother and Pani (Mrs.) Poliszowa on her bed.

My happiness didn’t last long. The next day, my mother handed me over to Józia, who had been a maid in her brother’s house, to take me to her widowed sister in Pozniki, a neighbouring village. Marynia and her two young sons were my new family for the next eighteen months. With my blond hair, blue eyes and button nose, I fit in easily as the baby sister. Suffering from malnutrition and one childhood illness after another, it took a while for me to become a healthy normal toddler.

I will always remember my mother’s last words to me. “If, by miracle, you survive, you must bear witness and tell the free world what happened to us.” I am the only survivor of the Holocaust from my mother’s large family, which originally comprised more than 150 people. Among the few survivors on my father’s side were his younger brother, Shimon, the only survivor of seven brothers, and a few of his cousins. That was all that remained of our family. I often asked myself whether there could be a God who allowed the murder of my family and my people, young and old. When I was ten years old, I heard the last cries of Jews reciting the prayer Shema Yisrael on their way to mass graves in my hometown of Nieśwież. As a child, I was angry and disappointed that God had permitted this to happen, but to adopt a negative opinion of God would have meant giving up the struggle to survive and especially giving up on my mother’s last words to me. I came to the conclusion that there was a God and that He would give me the determination to live and be free again, and to avenge the Jewish people. I remembered what I had learned in Hebrew school about the two-thousand-year history of our people – how we had survived pogroms, slaughters and inquisitions.

When I was older, I always held on to my mother’s words and I promised myself that I would fulfill her wishes by telling Jewish and non-Jewish youth, as well as adults, about everything that our people had been forced to endure during the war, to implore them to pass on our history to future generations so that these events would never happen again.

Later, in 1941, we would be ordered to wear a yellow Star of David with the word “Jude,” which had to be sewn onto each piece of our outer clothing. Wearing the yellow star, my mother explained, was an ancient method used to keep the Jews separate from the Christians. We were not allowed to leave the house without the yellow patch on our outer clothing. This made it much harder to mix with the Polish population.

Selling anything on the street was considered “black marketeering” and prohibited by the Nazis. To make a point, the Nazis convicted six men caught doing business on the black market and sentenced them to death by hanging. The hanging was to be public to let us know what the consequences of black marketeering were. A huge stage with a scaffold was erected – built high so that everyone could see – in one of the city’s squares and everyone was compelled to attend. To me it appeared as though people wanted to attend this public display of barbarism. The square was ringed with four- or five-storey buildings, and all the windows were packed with onlookers. My family’s friends had an apartment overlooking the square and we were invited to see the spectacle from a good vantage point, right across from the gallows. From the window, we could see the entire square and as far as I could see, the square and streets were packed with people. The mood appeared high, anticipatory, if not festive. No one had ever seen a public execution.

Soldiers and police surrounded the square as the six men were lined up on the scaffold. The executioners put ropes on their necks. A Gestapo official read a short verdict and the trap was sprung. It felt like the crowd uttered a shudder as the men fell through the trap. Their knees jerked, then dropped, and their bodies swayed. They were left hanging for twenty-four hours. The crowd’s mood changed to sombre, and people left either crying or in silence. I heard that the families were allowed to retrieve the bodies for burial the next day. This exhibition understandably caused everyone to take notice, and my mother stopped me from going on the street to sell or trade.

The Nazis, supported by Ukrainian nationalists, launched a blitzkrieg and within days the train station in Rokitno was bombed. The Red Army retreated and in a flight of panic the Soviet officials in the town caught the last trains going east out of Rokitno. Many ordinary townspeople who could afford horses and carts packed up their belongings and headed out as well. Others fled east on foot. The trains were overcrowded with civilians, soldiers, animals and luggage. It was chaos.

Soon after the bombing began Natan came to our house with a horse cart loaded with bread and flour. He tried to convince my father that our whole family should follow him and many others eastward into the Soviet Union.

“The people who are coming want to kill you, Father,” he said with passion. “They will kill every Jewish man, woman and child!”

My father looked at my little brother, Moishe. “They won’t kill us.” he replied evenly. “They will only keep us in one place, away from the war.”

My brother couldn’t believe that my father was being so naïve. “Can’t you see that they are murderers?!”

“They will not kill us.” My father repeated, simply but steadfastly.

“You have heard the stories from the West? You have heard about the Nazis getting rid of the Jews?”

“I don’t believe the stories,” my father replied. “They are an exaggeration. I don’t believe that it would be better to flee. This is our home.”

Natan was resolute. “This is not home, Father. No one wants us here. Some of the people in the village are already talking about killing us, talking about hateful acts. Come, pack your things! Come with me to Russia before it’s too late.”

My father’s eyes turned very sad. “You go, Natan. You are young and you can do what you think is best. Your mother and I and the boys will stay here. It is safest for us here.”

Based on their experiences during World War I when German soldiers had treated Jews kindly, many older people like our father thought that the Germans wouldn’t hurt Jews now. In retrospect, such denial was completely misguided. We had heard eyewitness accounts from refugees who were fleeing not only Nazi atrocities but also acts of unspeakable cruelty committed by non-Jews from their own communities.

Natan decided without hesitation to head east with our cousins, despite our father’s disapproval and the constant air raids. It was the last time I saw Natan until many years after the war.

The rapid withdrawal of the Soviet troops created a legal and political void because German troops and authorities only arrived in Rokitno at the end of July. They were already stationed in nearby Sarny, however, and from there, they put a Ukrainian collaborator named Ratzlav temporarily in charge of a newly-formed band of Ukrainian police in Rokitno. Violence ensued as a wave of antisemitism now rose up in our “little paradise.” Polish and Ukrainian collaborators and thieves broke into Jewish homes and robbed them of everything of any value. The violence escalated and Jewish men organized a nightly self-defence patrol armed with axes, shovels and pitchforks. During the first patrol one of these men, Avraham Golod, was stoned to death.

When the Nazis entered the town in August 1941, the Poles and Ukrainians greeted them with ceremonial bread and salt. The Germans introduced their own laws and put Sokolovski, a half-Polish and half-German man from Silesia, in charge of the police force. Denes became commander of the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei, the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. The head of the town’s organized unit of Ukrainian collaborators was a man named Zagorovski.

Desperate and horrifying times started right away as one terrible order followed another. The Nazis established a Jewish ghetto on Stalin Street — my street — and Jews were not allowed to leave the ghetto without special permission. A Judenrat, or Jewish Council, was set up to be the spokesmen for the Jewish community and its members were forced to implement the Nazis’ vicious and binding orders. The ghetto wasn’t sealed with a fence as was the case in other towns, but the Germans and Ukrainians patrolled the perimeter, making it almost impossible to get out. Those who dared to ignore the prohibition, do business with non-Jews or buy or barter their belongings for food were sentenced to immediate execution by shooting.

In compliance with a new order that was issued soon after the ghetto was established, the Nazis, aided by the Ukrainische Hilsfpolizei and Judenrat officials, implemented a twice-daily head count to keep everyone in the ghetto under control and in constant fear. The head count occurred in the market square in the new part of town. The commandant did a roster call and then everyone headed back into the ghetto. Only very young children, the elderly and ill people were exempt from these daily head counts.

Every new order made things worse in the ghetto. Under the threat of death, Jews had to turn in all their gold, silver and furs, as well as their cows and other livestock. More than thirty kilograms of gold were handed over to the Germans as a result of this edict. At the same time, Jews had to report to the police station every day to be assigned to forced labour. Men worked repairing the railroad tracks and roads and in the woodcutting shop. Women worked in the fields. Children ages ten to fourteen were forced to work at the glass factory, and even though I was only nine, I worked there too. All of this was slave labour — we weren’t paid any wages. At best, we were given one hundred grams of bread per day.

In mid-September 1941, we were forced to make uniforms for the Ukrainian policemen. Their uniforms were made out of black gabardine and if there wasn’t enough material provided we had to cut up our own holiday clothing. That was the first time that I saw the Ukrainian trident, the symbol of Ukrainian nationalism, worn by Ukrainians who supported the Nazis because they thought the Nazis would help them gain national independence. There were also many Ukrainians who were committed supporters of Nazism, and not only to further their cause of independence. Ukrainian antisemitism has a more than three-hundred-year-long history that dates back to the seventeenth-century Chmielnicki massacres in which tens of thousands of Jews were murdered in Poland and Ukraine. The twentieth century offered them new opportunities for antisemitic persecution.

My brother Samuel worked for the German officers at the Organization Todt, the German civil and military labour organization. He had to shine the soldiers’ boots, split firewood, help their Polish chef cook and serve meals to the officers. Every now and then he’d sneak some food to eat himself and sometimes he was allowed to take home some food scraps and leftovers that had gone bad. Our mother made them into meals by adding oats and wild goosefoot. Samuel later recalled being beaten and humiliated by the Polish chef on a regular basis. One day, when Samuel was polishing the boots of a German officer named Lemel, the officer told him, “If we start killing the Jews, boy, come here and we won’t kill you.” Samuel realized what was in store for the Jewish community and reported the remark to the Judenrat, which ignored it.

A month later, in October, 1941, all Jews age ten and older were ordered to wear special patches on their clothing — two yellow circles, each one ten centimetres in diameter with a Star of David in the middle. One was to be worn on the chest, the other one on the back. Jews were not allowed to appear in public without these patches. There were still more prohibitions — for example, Jews were no longer allowed to walk on public sidewalks. In November, SS Captain Ditsch arrived with thirty SS men to take over command of Rokitno and assist in the collection of more “taxes” from the Jews.

Every day spent in the ghetto was filled with nightmares. Food was running out and it was getting harder and harder to get food from the non-Jewish people in the town. People began to die of malnutrition and sickness. We children sometimes managed to sneak out and exchange some clothes for a handful of flour or a piece of bread, but, as I’ve said, this was a very dangerous mission for all those involved. Risking my life, I managed to sneak out of the ghetto every now and then to trade some of our belongings for bread and eggs. This was dangerous not only for me, but also for the people I bartered with. We lived with constant fear and hunger and the anticipation of death.

These horrors came to a deadly resolution on August 26, 1942. On that day the whole Jewish population of Rokitno was ordered into the market square. No one was exempt now, including infants, the gravely ill and the elderly. Those who couldn’t walk were carried to the square on stretchers. Some people carried others on their backs. German soldiers and German and Ukrainian police surrounded the square. They began by separating children, women, men and the elderly. The situation developed into fear and disorder. Soon, deafening screams and moans filled the square. People panicked. Children were clinging to their mothers. Everyone was trying to defend the old and the sick.

All of a sudden, a sharp scream pierced the air: “Jews, they’re going to kill us all now.” It was Mindl Eisenberg, a big, tall, brave woman nicknamed “The Cossack” who saw the police squadron arrive from behind the train station and alerted the crowd. Anguished, people began to run for their lives. Men ran to find their wives and children. Everyone was trying to escape. Only bullets could stop them. The guards fired at the crowd and dozens of people were killed instantly, covering the square with blood. In this hell, my seventeen-year-old brother, Samuel, found me, grabbed me by the arm and we started running….

That was the last time we saw our mother, our father and our five-year-old brother, Moishe. We found out later that our father had been captured with other survivors of the shooting in the market square and taken to the Sarny area, approximately forty kilometres from Rokitno. Just outside of Sarny, in the ravines by the brick factory, he was shot along with some 18,000 other Jews who met horrifying deaths in that awful place. Witness accounts of the massacre say that the ground, covered with hundreds of bodies, was moving for days because people had been buried alive.

We never found out exactly what happened to our mother and our youngest brother.

My brother and I ran away from the market square to the house of the German officer who had promised to save Samuel. We broke into the house through the back window, but unhappily encountered the Polish chef. Without hesitation, my brother took my hand and we ran out the door into the backyard and then through the yard toward the woods. We crawled underneath the rail cars that had, I know now, been prepared for transporting Jews to the Sarny area and escaped into the forest. We ran as fast as we could and kept on running.

My father was beholden to his Gestapo friend for extending a helping hand to us on three occasions. The first was in 1933, the second was during the Polish deportation in October 1938, and the third was just before Kristallnacht. In the early afternoon of November 9, 1938, he telephoned my father to warn him of what would be happening that evening. He suggested again that we seek refuge in the Polish consulate because he was sure that they would arrest my father and send him off to a concentration camp. This time, however, not only were there not as many people in the consulate but we only had to spend one night there. This was even more fortunate because we no longer had the good services of Uncle Dadek – he had already fled to Brussels, Belgium. The persecutions continued with Jews being rounded up. The elderly were most affected – in Leipzig the SS dragged them to a rivulet near the zoological garden and made them jump from one side to the other while the officers whipped the old people ferociously.27 Many of them couldn’t make it across and fell into the icy-cold water. Onlookers, mainly youngsters, stood on the bridge off Humboldtstrasse laughing, encouraging the SS as if this were a display of trained animals. Witnessing this was one of the most sickening memories that is indelibly engraved in my mind. Even today, I can still see this picture as vividly as if it happened yesterday. It was probably the first real exposure I had to seeing man’s cruelty to man. As Boy Scouts we had had fist and kicking fights with the Hitler Youth and during the last years of my attendance at the public school, we had been singled out by teachers and ridiculed, but I had never seen this type of barbarism displayed by fellow human beings.

Walking through the city it was incredible to discover the burned synagogues and the Jewish-owned stores smashed and plundered. The Jewish district of Leipzig, in the vicinity of the Gustav-Adolf-Strasse, Humboldtstrasse and Gerberstrasse, suffered the worst fate. There was hardly a Jewish store owner or wholesaler who did not lose all his or her assets that night. The destruction was not only total but systematic – one could see the old German edict of thoroughness in its execution. It was hard for me – a twelve-year-old boy – to grasp the logic or reason behind such intentional and planned wanton behaviour.

Were these the very same people whose culture had produced Schiller, Haydn, Schumann, and Goethe, who Lord Byron said was the greatest genius his age had produced? Or was this a new breed producing Hitler, Streicher, Goebbels, Heydrich? Was Goethe prophetic when he said, “The Germans should be transplanted and scattered all over the world, like the Jews, in order to bring to full development the good qualities that lie in them, and for the health of all nations?” Kristallnacht was not only the burning of synagogues and the destruction of Jewish property but a test that demonstrated the effectiveness of many years of anti-Jewish propaganda used to brainwash the population. The general population showed no reluctance to participate in the destruction and the photographs of German people’s faces taken during this unpunishable “freedom to destroy”speak volumes. We are frequently told that not everyone engaged in the horrendous events of that night, but when one looks at the spectators, one realizes that their facial expressions aren’t very different from those of the perpetrators. Nor can one excuse the rest of the world for not taking measures to challenge the Germans and to express the total unacceptability of these acts. When could we expect decent human beings to take a stand on matters of wilful and planned destruction and death? Ninety-one Jews were killed that night and 25,000 carted off to concentration camps to a fate worse than death. In those days the concentration camps were still located within Germany – Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. But the world remained silent and the Germans realized that nobody from the outside world was concerned about the Jews.

As the war raged around us, we heard on the bbc that the Germans were losing ground and in retreat. We were overjoyed. One would have thought that the Germans would concentrate their efforts on ways to shore up their strength. Instead, they continued to obsess about annihilating Jews. They went door to door, searching houses for hidden Jews, Jews who had gotten away. They searched our apartment building and went as far as the third floor.

A widow whose late husband was Jewish lived on the third floor apartment, located directly below ours. She knew about our presence upstairs and was sympathetic to our situation. After the SS searched her home, she said casually, “Don’t bother going upstairs. There’s nobody there.” Fortunately, the SS listened to her and didn’t search any further. That was a narrow escape. The kind widow had risked her life and saved ours.

At the end of March 1945, the bloody conflict of war exploded in Slovakia as the Soviet Red Army pushed its way toward Vienna to attack German strongholds. Sirens blared in Nitra, warning the population to take shelter as a blitz of Soviet bombs fell all around. Airplanes carrying their deadly cargo shrieked above us, but we had nowhere to take cover. During the bombings we were afraid to flee; as Jews, we had to remain hidden. But at the same time, it was too dangerous to remain in the apartment. So we realized that the time had come to abandon our hiding place. We were terrified that we would be identified as Jews, but we had no choice. We dressed as unobtrusively as we could and left the apartment, never to return.

People streamed out of Nitra, carrying what they could, searching for shelter from the bombs that were mainly directed at urban areas. We were a mass of moving humanity. Jews and gentiles alike ran for their lives, travelling on foot in the direction of Mount Zobor.

My father was understandably nervous that we would be spotted and singled out as Jews. I remember that I wore a blue kerchief and he shouted at me, “Take that off! Don’t you know blue is a Jewish colour?” How paranoid one could become under stress.

We trudged all day, trying to escape the bombardments and devastation that had enveloped Nitra. Houses and buildings lay in ruins all around us. Explosions and the sounds of gunfire and sirens accompanied us. We three fugitive families stayed together on this long and painful trek that led us to the mountain. As night fell, we found a deserted cave. Damp and cold as it was, it had to do as our shelter. I slept on my mother’s lap all through that long night. Grateful for her love and protection, I still recall her selfless, tender loving care and self-sacrifice. I knew how uncomfortable she must have been and how little sleep she got in that God-forsaken place.

In the morning, we continued our long and difficult journey, although we didn’t know our destination. All we knew was that we were fugitives trying to stay alive, avoiding the bombs falling around us and hoping we wouldn’t be shot by the Germans. Suddenly, deep in the forest, we came upon a large, wooden building that we soon realized was a monastery. There, on the mountain, in the middle of the forest, we had come upon the Zobor monastery, a potential safe haven. We were bone-tired and in desperate need of shelter, food and respite. What kind of reception would we get?

We knocked on the large front door. A monk in a long, brown cassock appeared at the entrance. When he saw our dishevelled and exhausted appearance, he kindly let us in. He must have realized immediately that we were Jews on the run. He ushered us upstairs into a large, comfortable room with enough beds for all of us. He explained that because we were Jews, he would allow us the privacy of these quarters. Apparently, there were also many non-Jewish refugees from Nitra on the large ground floor of the monastery. We gratefully lay down to rest, relieved to have been given sanctuary.

It was night and the place was lit up with floodlights. I saw German SS troops with machine guns and dogs. We were ordered out of the boxcars without our luggage. It was a cold but clear night and the scene surrounding me was unbelievable. SS soldiers were running with German shepherd dogs, yelling and occasionally shooting at people. The night was filled with thousands of people in total panic. We were ordered to line up five abreast at the side of the boxcars. Some people in grey-and-blue striped clothing appeared. They looked like prisoners and began to remove the dead bodies and baggage from the boxcars. I stood in line by an open car door and one of these men asked me quietly if I spoke Yiddish. When I answered him, he whispered to that I should try to get out of here because our people were being killed. He said I should say I was eighteen years old. As the line moved forward, several people were shot because they stepped out of line or because they were trying to join the rest of their family, from whom they had been abruptly separated. The line slowly moved forward. I found myself in front of a table with two men behind it. One of them asked my name, my age and my occupation. I replied that I was eighteen years old and a farmer. He pointed to my right.

I looked around me and did not see a single person I knew. A panic took hold of me – here I was, alone, in a killing place, unable to do anything about it. I was crying to myself, Why was I here? What had I done to deserve this?

…a distant relative managed to get hold of some false papers for us from Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat. My mom, aunt and I had everything we owned in a wheelbarrow – from where we got it I haven’t the faintest idea – and we managed to get to a safe house. The safe house was close by, right outside of the ghetto on Akácfa utca 26.

By the time we ended up there it was a bitterly cold winter and I remember a lot of people being in the home. I also remember trying to get hold of some water, not so much to bathe – for which we used snow – but at least to drink, and the faucets were down in the courtyard; we had to stand in line with everybody else to get our water, which was barely dripping because it was frozen. I collected the water in a pot as it dripped down. I don’t know how we managed to get food in those days but we didn’t starve. My mother later told me that sometimes she soaked dry bread crusts in the snow.

When we moved down to a bomb shelter in the basement, my mother took turns with the other women going upstairs to cook food for the children and everybody downstairs. They used a Jewish man’s apartment because his kitchen still had a few supplies. Once, a bomb fell on our building while my mother was up there. She ran downstairs and when she saw that I was all right, she covered me with her body, just yelling and screaming. Her hair was white and I thought it had suddenly turned white but it was the dust from the building.

Many times, people ask me what we did, as little children, in a basement all day long. My mother made a doll for me from a sock, which she drew a little face on, and my friends and I played with it.

We were liberated by the Soviet army in January 1945. They were going from house to house looking for Nazis hiding in civilian clothes. When we saw men coming down the basement stairs with guns bigger than a soldier, pointing it ahead of them because they didn’t know what they were going to face, I didn’t know who they were or what was going on. They spoke a different language – I probably couldn’t distinguish between German and Russian. One young soldier came over to the corner where I was huddled together with other children; in one hand he had a huge rifle or gun and with the other he reached back into his knapsack and took out some dark brown bread and handed it to us. I will remember that dark bread as long as I live. It was something we hadn’t seen in a long time and the fact that it was coming from a person who was also holding a gun had an effect on me.

When we finally came out of the basement, I couldn’t see. My mother told me that for three or four days I simply could not see at all. My eyes weren’t accustomed to the light and she would tell me to keep my eyes closed and just open them for a few minutes each time, a little bit longer each day, until I got used to the daylight again.

When the basement was again used for storing coal and wood after liberation, I was always afraid to go back down there because I knew in what corner a neighbour had died or where somebody else had passed away from starvation. If I had to go down there, I went singing and whistling and my parents may have thought I was crazy for being afraid of the shadows from the memories.

At the end of the day, when we were marched from the ghetto to the railway station, I was unprepared for what I experienced out on the main street. It was lined with people, several dozen of whom were members of the Arrow Cross and were laughing and clapping loudly, showing their happiness that the Jews were being taken away and yelling insulting, derogatory remarks. Perhaps they were already thinking how wonderful it would be the next morning to loot our abandoned houses. Behind them, hundreds of people stood silently, which was painfully disturbing. Up until then, I had thought better of most people in my hometown.

In central Hungary, there was no uprising against the Nazis or their collaborators, not like there was in Slovakia or Poland. Since the beginning of the 1920s, Hungarian society had been homogeneous, a regulated police state, and people probably didn’t dare to risk the wrath of those loudmouth antisemites. Even with that in mind, this behaviour was still a blow to us; their silence was a shock that has stayed with me all my life.

The next morning, we arrived in Debrecen, where the gendarmes were concentrating the Jewish people from the smaller ghettos before deporting them somewhere else by train. These larger ghettos were brickyards or similar establishments on the edges of the city; we were put into a hide-processing plant, a tannery that was worse than a brickyard would have been. Because the hides were processed by soaking them in bins of water until the hair fell off, the place had only outer walls; it didn’t have a roof because rain or snow was a welcome addition to the processing operation. For the Germans and their Hungarian associates, it was a good enough place to keep us in.

I cannot recall how many roofless buildings there were, but between three and five thousand people had been amassed. The one we were forced to stay in was so crowded that the five of us were only able to put down our belongings. At night, my grandmother and my little brothers crouched down on them, trying to sleep. My mother and I had to stand, planting our feet among them, leaning against each other to try and sleep or nap, whatever we could manage. On top of this inhumane compression, it started to rain on the first night and continued to rain steadily for two days and nights. We stood in mud, soaked to the skin.

In the daytime, we were permitted to roam within the enclosed area. I saw terribly sadistic gendarmes, strangers who had been brought in from other parts of the country to eliminate the possibility of leniency toward people they might know. They beat people, punishing them for even the slightest infraction. On the first day I saw one of the oldest people from my town, Louis Angyal, who was very hard of hearing, feeble and near-blind, walking with a white cane in the middle of the yard where freight cars stood with open doors. While he shuffled around in the yard, a guard yelled at him to stop, but since he didn’t hear, he kept walking. After the third yell, they grabbed him, beat him and hung him up by his wrists from the corners of one of the freight car’s doors. He lost consciousness within minutes and they didn’t even take him down. They left him there to show others what would happen to those who didn’t obey orders. They did this only because we were Jews.

Around 9:00 p.m. on July 15, I was at home in Paris with Maman. My brother, Jojo, was in Champlost, helping Monsieur Basile with the harvest. Maman’s friend, a gentile lady named Madame Dumas, was visiting us. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. It was Maman’s sister-in-law, all out of breath. Being multilingual, she worked as a translator at German headquarters, which enabled her to know ahead of time of impending raids. Blond with blue eyes, she was able to hide her Jewishness. (Talk about chutzpah!)“You must leave immediately,” she told Maman, “because tomorrow the Germans are coming to take away all the Jewish women and children!” Many men had been taken away the year before. She then left in a hurry, to warn other people. Madame Dumas asked Maman what she planned to do. “What can I do?” she replied, “I have nowhere to go! Tomorrow when they come, I’ll take Muguette and go with them.” I started to cry. “I don’t want to go with you,” I told my startled mother. “I won’t go, I won’t!” Seeing that I was becoming hysterical, Madame Dumas told Maman to pack a few things and to come with her. She would take us to her house to spend the night and then they could decide what to do.

Madame Dumas and Maman each took a pair of scissors and removed the yellow stars that had been sewn onto our coats, and Madame Dumas (I’ll always remember this) put them into her brassiere. We left our apartment and took the metro to go to Madame Dumas’ home. The curfew for Parisians was 10:00 p.m. but for Jews it was 8:00 p.m. and we were only allowed to travel in the metro’s last wagon. Maman, Madame Dumas and I entered another wagon. There were many people in the metro, including German soldiers. Madame Dumas and Maman sat together in a seat. I sat by myself in a strapontin, a folding seat, flanking the doors. On the seat facing me sat an elderly gentleman. I noticed him staring at me. He kept staring at my face and at my coat. I was frightened and intrigued at the same time. He finally caught and held my eyes and then stared again at my coat. I looked down and saw, to my horror, on the left side of my beige coat, yellow threads remaining from the yellow star. I remember putting my right hand on my left shoulder and slowly beginning to pull out the threads. I saw the old gentleman smile; he got off at the next stop.

Madame Dumas took us to her apartment, where we spent the night. The next morning, July 16, 1942, at 7:00 o’clock, Maman left me with Madame Dumas, who, it had been decided, would take me by train to a hamlet called Le Bois Mouchet in Normandy. I had been there on vacation the year before. The streets of Paris were still under curfew, which wasn’t lifted until 8:00 a.m., but my mother started to make her way to her mother and sister’s place in order to warn them of the impending roundup, which came to be known as the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup.

The metro only started running after curfew was lifted, so she had to go on foot. She told me later that she crept from door to door, running when she could and hiding when she heard footsteps. It was a long way from Madame Dumas’ house to my grandmother’s but Maman made it in record time. Gromeh lived on the third floor and Maman ran up the stairs. When she came to the second floor and started her way up to the third, she saw her sister being escorted down by two French policemen. When she saw my mother, my aunt, who still couldn’t speak French, told her in Yiddish, “You see they are taking me away!” Maman pressed herself against the wall and didn’t dare answer because she knew that if she did, she would also be taken. She watched as her sister was led away, and that was the last time she saw her. Maman later learned that she was taken to Drancy, the transit camp near Paris, and then deported to Auschwitz. Maman was tormented and reproached herself for not having spoken out. “My sister went to her death thinking I was angry at her,” she often said.

In June 1943, around one hundred young men and women arrived at Werk C. They were first sent from the Warsaw ghetto to Majdanek near Lublin, but because of the shortage of workers in Skarżysko they were transported here to replace the hundreds who had perished. From them we learned how the Nazis destroyed the occupants of the Warsaw ghetto. Much later, we would hear about the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto, too, in the summer of 1944, when people were sent to Chełmno and Auschwitz.

Among the newcomers from Majdanek were a few doctors who were put to work in the sick house. There were also some singers and actors, as well as the writer Mordechai Strigler, thanks to whom the Sunday concerts became rich in content. We even sang concert songs while marching to or from work.

Today is not the time to laugh

So I’ve just been told;

But I do just the opposite.

I don’t give a damn;

I won’t transform the world

Because it’s not worthy.

A special hit was the song I created right after my arrival in Skarżysko, “In the Skarżysko Lager”:

In a quiet, thick forest

Stands the Lager wired round.

I tell you, people here are treated like garbage;

The Lager does not

Differentiate between rich and poor.

For many months I’ve been suffering here

But from the present noise one can become deaf.

The mass murders break one’s heart;

No words are adequate to express my pain.

How bitter it is in Skarżysko Lager.

This Skarżysko Lager, Good God,

The mere thought of it

Causes my hands and feet to tremble.

Would that I had never known this place.

Every evening the program ended with this song, sung by the whole crowd, like a hymn. Thanks to the artistic and literary people who came to us from Majdanek, we had a new program every week. Every evening after work I would sit down with my new friend Mordechai to write Yiddish or Polish poetry and sketches or satires about Lager life.

The concerts were a balm for the physically and spiritually broken prisoners. I recall one Sunday morning when Mordechai and I were finishing a new sketch for that evening and having trouble with a closing line. The barrack was empty, we thought, because the night shift workers had not yet returned from work. We suddenly heard a quiet voice from a corner. We turned to see a young man, around twenty years of age, who looked half-dead. He could barely raise his head as he looked at us through half-shut eyes. He called my name and gave me a closing line for the song. Then he asked if he would be able to attend the concert that evening. He died that day.

The death rate in Skarżysko was so high that if the war continued for much longer, the Nazis wouldn’t need to shoot anyone – we all would die of hunger anyhow. It was a miracle that some workers still managed to smuggle in food acquired through illegal trading with the gentile workers. They were both risking their lives because the Nazis would severely punish, or even put to death, anyone who attempted to improve our lot.

Summer was fast approaching, and along with it, the powerful Soviet army. Air raids were now a daily occurrence. The sirens began as soon as the German air defence detected planes over Warsaw, followed by the powerful German anti-aircraft searchlights crisscrossing the sky. Shortly after that we heard the roar of planes and saw the brightly coloured bullets of the anti-aircraft guns mingling with the beams of the searchlights; the scene was spectacular. We began a new game of gambling on the fate of each plane and on the number of hits the gunners would score, but the Soviet planes heading for Berlin flew too high.

After witnessing a few of these air raids, my excitement took the form of a constantly gurgling stomach. My emotional state was fed by rumours, predictions, speculations and some limited facts about what was going on around us. The wilder rumours included stories that the Americans were going to drop thousands of paratroopers into the middle of Warsaw; that the Soviet army was already on the other side of the Vistula River, preparing to coordinate their ground attack with the American paratrooper drop; and that the partisans were planning to come into Warsaw from the forests and seize the bridges to facilitate the Soviet troops’ entry into the city. This last piece of gossip turned out to be based on an actual agreement between the Polish underground and the Soviet army.

August 1, 1944 was filled with excitement and confusion. Father Stefanowski asked me to walk to a certain address to pick up hosts for communion, and I was thrilled to be able to see for myself what was going on in the streets. I saw groups of young men and women, as well as some older adults, standing near walls that had been recently plastered with posters of different sizes. After ensuring that there were no German soldiers or Gestapo agents around, I stopped to read one that called on the Polish people to rise up, to join one of the resistance groups fighting for the liberation of Warsaw and Poland. The poster proclaimed that the “holy war” was only a few hours away. Other posters stated that the Soviet army and Polish contingents would be crossing the Vistula to join the uprising.

Highly excited and fighting tears of joy, I saw numerous young men with guns hanging from their shoulders under open jackets. Many of them wore red and white armbands embossed with the initials of a political party. They didn’t have uniforms, but to me they looked like the best dressed and equipped soldiers I had ever seen. They looked at their watches every few minutes, which confirmed to me that the uprising would, as some of the posters had promised, start at 4:00 p.m. that day.

When I arrived at my destination, I checked the posters again to see how much time I had left, and I ran back through streets that were now empty of normal traffic. The usual German foot patrols were conspicuously absent. Open troop carriers raced through the streets, sirens screaming, filled with heavily armed German soldiers. Huge machine guns, with chains of bullets hanging from their load- ing sides, were mounted on the front and back of these trucks.

News of the uprising was already public knowledge at the institu- tion. We were told to get ready for 4:00 p.m., now only a few hours away. As one of the oldest boys I had few friends close to my age, but we all started talking about what to do. It quickly became obvious that we each had a different plan and in the end only one other boy and I wanted to join the army. I was thrilled at the prospect of fighting for liberation and revenge, but what I couldn’t discuss with anyone was that my first priority after the uprising — which I assumed would succeed — would be to find out what had happened to my family. For now, I couldn’t give up my false identity.

My would-be comrade-in-arms and I agreed that we would wait for the first signs of engaged battle before telling Pan Kapusta of our plans and asking for his permission to leave. The meeting with him in the courtyard went the way we had hoped — he congratulated us on our bravery in Poland’s hour of need. He suggested that we prepare everything that night and leave the following morning. For the moment, we joined the rest of the students and adult personnel outside on the street. Our ears were bombarded by the constant sound of small-arms and machine-gun fire. Some boys were sure that the small-arms fire came from underground fighters and that the heavier machine guns were still in German hands. As I scanned the street and the buildings, I was touched by the sight of many different sizes of Polish flags suspended from windows, balconies and gates, all fluttering in the breeze.

The most compelling sight on that unforgettable first day, however, was a platoon of resistance fighters coming toward us. The onlookers broke into jubilant cheers. To us, these heroes were angels come to deliver us from the depths of hell. They were without doubt a motley crew — at no time during the uprising did I see units of more than one political party marching together under one commander. The only thing they had in common was the look in their eyes, burning with the desire for revenge.

When I settled into the bunk, I thanked my new friend and we started talking. I asked him how long he had been there. He said six or eight weeks and then offered to give me a few tips. For instance, as we were talking I was rubbing my arm where they had tattooed the number. “Don’t rub it,” he warned me. “It might get infected.” When I asked him what Auschwitz was all about, Jakob was straightforward. “It’s a very terrible place,” he said. “Nobody gets out of here alive.” He took me outside the barracks, pointed to a chimney and said, “The only way we’re going to get out of this camp is through that chimney.”

I could see a huge red brick building but I didn’t understand what he meant. When we had arrived in Auschwitz we walked to Birkenau from the railway station and we could smell something burning. Of course, we didn’t know there were crematoria in Birkenau. How could any normal human think that in the middle of the twentieth century they were burning human bodies? Those things were too farfetched for us to even think about. But when we came into the quarantine camp, we started wondering what kind of place this was. The kapos would point to the chimney and say, “That’s your destination.” The ghetto, the labour camps in Poznań... these were all terrible places. Still, there we didn’t talk about chimneys, we didn’t talk about crematoria, we didn’t talk about gas chambers.

Jakob was quick to advise me that I had to be extremely careful in the quarantine camp. He told me that the Germans would try to work me to death there. If I survived, they would just take me to another camp. I told him that I had just come from a labour camp and that Auschwitz couldn’t be harder than that. “Oh, yeah?” he replied. Unfortunately, he was right.

Many of us were indeed worked to death in that quarantine camp, with hardly any food. The guards took us out early in the morning and we worked at making roads and digging ditches for the sewers. We were doing all of this because the camp was expanding. There were lots of prisoners, so we didn’t have to work fifteen hours a day, but we were doing very hard manual labour. It would have gone much faster if there had been wheelbarrows to take the rocks and move them to where they were supposed to go. But, no, we had to carry them in our hands. The whole thing was designed, I would say, as a test to see if we were able to do this type of work. If we survived three months of the harshness of quarantine, then we qualified to go to the D camp in Birkenau, which was the men’s labour camp.

The atrocities that happened in quarantine were horrible. Dr. Mengele was a frequent visitor, although in the beginning we didn’t know who he was. He and the officers went through each of the barracks to choose people for all kinds of experiments. We saw men taken away and they never came back. We heard screaming.

Then there was the selection. After I’d been working in the quarantine camp for about two weeks, a kapo came into the barracks and announced that there was going to be a selection, that no Jews would be going to work the next day. The other inmates left and the Jews stayed behind in the barracks. At first I was happy to have a day off work. I was so naive that I didn’t know what the selection was for. I thought that maybe the Germans were going to pick the ones who were healthy for special work. To me, we were having a holiday.

Jakob was wiser. He told me that he had heard that people had to be very careful during the selection, advising me to make sure that I knew where my clothes were when I was ordered to undress, to stand up straight, to not ask any questions.

An hour or so later, I saw Dr. Mengele. He came in with his entourage, about half a dozen SS men, and one man in civilian clothes who was taking notes. We had to strip naked. Dr. Mengele sat down and we walked in front of him. He indicated which person should go to the left or to the right. When a person went in one direction, the civilian wrote his number down.

When it was my turn, I saw that the man didn’t write down my number. I thought when he took down a number it meant they were going to take that person to another labour camp. Jakob had told me that sometimes, if a person was lucky, the Germans would need him for other work. I thought that I had missed an opportunity. So I went back and I tried to tell him that he had forgotten to write down my number. One of the guards pushed me away. I was almost crying. I was stubborn. I didn’t want to stay in Auschwitz. I didn’t want to go to the gas chambers. I didn’t want to be cremated. I didn’t want to die there and I kept pushing back. Finally the guard gave me a good pushand I fell over to the other side. I was with the men who didn’t have their numbers written down.

Papa has put his hat on askew and the collar of his over coat is turned under. Mama hands him his small suitcase. “Here are a few clothes,” she says, sounding distressed. They rush down the stairs. I watch them from the top of the stairs, stunned, and then I follow Mama to the kitchen window like a sleepwalker. Papa tries to go into the toilet in the courtyard, but they don’t let him. They grab him by the arm and drag him like a convict. The concierge finds it funny, watching from her window. She infuriates me! 

“See you soon,” calls Papa, looking back. My father knows what he’s talking about. She’ll see, he’ll come back! The officers and Papa are walking so fast that by the time we get to the window facing the street, they’re already far away. “He didn’t even shave and he had nothing to eat,” says Mama, upset. Seeing my sister and me, she changes her tone. “Get dressed, girls. We’ll go with him.”

I’ve never gotten dressed so fast in my life. Mama has made herself pretty. She’s holding a parcel in case Papa needs it. She goes out with Henriette without closing the door. Then she comes back and gets me. She walks very fast and Henriette follows us. When we get outside, they’re still there. Phew! We’re going to see Papa again! We’re still wearing our slippers. He’s talking with Dr. David, Dr. Weisman the dentist, Monsieur Salonès and some other people. 

“Moisheleh... Moisheleh!” Mama calls. He turns around. He’s seen us! I’m so excited! He takes a big step forward. “Stop! Don’t move!” says a nasty man. 

The three of us walk toward him. With one leap, my sister and I are in his arms. He holds me so tightly I can hardly breathe but I don’t get angry. I cling to his body and look hungrily at his face. I won’t let him go without me. I kiss him in spite of the bristles of his beard. He looks into my eyes. I’ll never let go of him. 

What’s this racket? A car has just pulled up and the policemen are pointing their guns. “My dear little girls, Henriette and Marguerite, we have to part now. But it won’t be for long. Be good with Mama, don’t give her any trouble. Promise?” We nod in agreement. 

Someone opens the beautiful gate to the courtyard and they start lining the men up. Papa bends down, releases us from his embrace and sets us both on the ground. I refuse to let go of him. “Come on, children, it’s Mama’s turn now.” I hold on even tighter to him. I’m the youngest, after all. “You have to let me go. I need to talk to her.” He gives me a gentle push. My mother is crying and he comforts her instead of me. In my distress, I’m jealous. He takes her tenderly in his arms. “Calm down, Rokheleh, calm down, please!” They whisper things into each other’s ears.

“We’ve got everybody. It’s time to go, ladies and gentlemen!” The officers call out the names, one by one, and roughly separate the women from the men. “David. Éliash. Solanès. Weisman.” The men are packed like sardines into the khaki Citroën. Papa leans out and shouts, “Courage, Rachel! Courage, children! I’ll see you soon!” I’m so miserable. Mama murmurs under her breath, “Courage, Moishinkeh, courage!” 

I have a stomachache. I have to go home. The cars pull quickly away. We wave to the one Papa is in as it disappears in the distance. The sun is rising and with it, my hatred. My heart is so heavy.

At dawn one morning in mid-September 1941, a neighbour raised the alarm, informing us that screams had been heard at the boundary streets of the Old Town. The Germans were seen going from door to door, taking Jews. We thought they were taking young men and women to work, as they had done the week before. My mother asked Nyusya to take me to her rooms and rushed to the garden with Grandfather and Adya, Aunt Sonya’s husband. Aunt Sonya stayed at home with her granddaughters because everybody thought that the Germans would not take old people and children for work. Nyusya put me in the same bed where her three children were sleeping. At that moment, the Germans came in, accompanied by a Ukrainian policeman. They asked Nyusya what nationality she was. Frightened to death, with her hands shaking, she showed them her Ukrainian passport. As the Germans pointed to the children Nyusya told them, “These are my children.” With that decisive statement, this brave woman saved my life. The Germans left, heading to the house extension where Aunt Sonya and her granddaughters were. In a few minutes, they were brought out. I could see through the window that they hadn’t been allowed to put on proper clothes. Sonya carried the younger girl, Vita, who was wearing only a short nightgown.

That day, Nyusya took her children and me and we all moved to her mother’s house. Knowing nothing about my mother’s fate, I stayed with Nyusya for two or three days more. Meanwhile, the news spread across Vinnitsa that the Germans had taken at least ten thousand Jews out of town to the nearest forest, where a huge trench was dug; all of them were executed there. There were many wounded, as well as children, who were thrown in the trench alive, buried together with the dead. People said that for several days it looked like the earth was moving.

My first encounter with Nazi cruelty came very soon. I was standing near the window of our apartment watching my father cross the street to get to a store to change some money. To my horror, I saw two German soldiers approach him, push him and order him to walk in front of them. I immediately ran out and begged the soldiers to let him go. I pleaded with them, telling them that he was my daddy and that they could not do this to him. They laughed, pushed me away, collected a few more Jewish men and marched them off toward the city centre. I marched beside them, together with my mother and some other Jewish women. The men were forced to dig trenches in the middle of the city until late that night. When my father was released, we ran home through the empty streets. My sister, Chava, was waiting for us with a hot meal. From that moment on, my father never left the apartment. We were constantly on the lookout and when we would see German soldiers rounding up Jewish men and dragging them from their homes, we would run home and lock my father in the apartment. They never took my father again.

On the ground floor of our house was a bakery owned by an elderly German couple. During the first days of the war, they would sell loaves of bread to their neighbours. They did it before opening the store, so that neighbours would not have to queue up a whole night in order to get bread. This helped us a lot. We would buy four loaves of bread and could exchange some for eggs and butter. Food was already scarce, and what was available was quite expensive. Even before the war began, people were discussing food shortages.

My father told us that he had taken our winter shoes to the shoemaker to make hiding places in the shoes’ heels for money and for my mother’s golden watch, her only valuable piece of jewellery. He wanted each of us to have some money in case we were separated. I do not know how much money we had, but I am sure it was not a lot. Nor did we know how long the war would last.

After a while our German neighbours stopped being generous to their Jewish neighbours and we had to line up like everyone else. The store opened in the morning, but people began to line up the evening before. One evening, we went down to join the line. My father stayed behind, locked in the apartment. I stood behind my mother, with my sister, Chava, behind me. Early the next morning, the doors opened and the line advanced in a slow but orderly fashion. I was not far from the door when suddenly a German soldier appeared with a little Polish boy not more than five or six years old. The little boy pointed at me, telling the soldier, “Jude! Jude!” (Jew! Jew!) The soldier kicked me out of the line. I ran home and said nothing to my father. I threw myself on the bed, tears streaming from my eyes. I could not stop crying. My world was collapsing and nothing was the same anymore. I was bewildered and could not understand what had just happened. I was humiliated and angry. I could not control my rage. My mother came up and tried to console me. “Don’t cry. You see, I have two loaves. I took one and hid it under my shawl and then went to the other salesman and got another one, for you. Don’t cry.” The finger of that little Polish boy pointing at me, telling the German soldier that I was a Jew, pierced my twelve-year-old heart. To this day, I still feel this hurt.

I was born as Rechnitzer András on July 16, 1942, in Budapest, Hungary. Although I was born during World War II, the horrors had not yet fully reached us. In accordance with Jewish tradition, I was also given a Hebrew name, Hillel ben Menashe, which means “Hillel, son of Menashe.” It is said that before naming a child after a specific person or relative, one has to be sure that that person lived a happy, fulfilling life. Hillel was a wise sage and teacher. I cannot comment on whether I am a wise man, but I have always felt comfortable teaching and sharing my knowledge with others.

The name Rechnitzer means “from the village of Rechnitz.” I hope to visit that village sometime. Although Rechnitz is located in Austria, it was once part of Hungary and was called Rohonc. When I was three years old, my surname was changed to Réti, Hungarian for “of the field.” I found out much later that many Hungarian Jews changed their names to sound more Hungarian, in order to assimilate and not be singled out as being Jewish.

When we came to Canada, András became Andrew, but I am known to all as Andy. András was the Hungarian version of Andreas, from Greek, meaning “manly.” I believe my mother simply liked the name...

I have always thought of myself as a fighter. As it turned out, I fought for many causes, and losing was never an option. I must emphasize, however, that I was never alone in any of my fights.

During my childhood, both of my grandparents had a great influence on me. I remember many of my grandmother’s folksy and wise sayings. One favourite was that she knew that a fight had started when I hit back. She was right. During my whole life, all my fights have started when I hit back. I was fortunate that I could always handle myself in a confrontation. Sometimes, I was too fearless. I am convinced that I was blessed with this ability for a reason. I was certainly not a street brawler or someone who walked around with a chip on his shoulder. I was involved in very few physical confrontations, but in many verbal and mental challenges, especially in my adult life. All of them started because I refused to back off whenever I was confronted with what I perceived to be an injustice. I hit back.

Although I can still hear my grandmother’s words, in reality it was my mother who inspired me to fight for justice all my life. I know that many times I scared her, but I always tried to fight for the common good, and not for selfish reasons.

I am a positive person. Because I survived a horrific period in history, my choice is always to look at the bright side of things. There had to be a reason my mother and I survived while others on either side of us were killed. I went through some difficult times before I could accept God, but I believe that God helped us through the horrors of the Holocaust. I think the words of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel sum up my feelings with great simplicity and eloquence: “The question is not, ‘Where was God?’ but ‘Where was Man?’”

I packed a knapsack, as I had on my journey out of Poland, but now I was on my way back. This time, though, my knapsack was larger and nicer. I also took a suitcase small enough to drag along with me since I had some nice clothes that were precious cargo. I was lucky to be travelling with Joseph – in times of hardship, it is nice to have a good companion and he was good to me.

By this time it was late March 1945 and spring was approaching. The trip wasn’t as bad as we had anticipated; maybe it was because I was getting used to all kinds of adventures. This time we at least had enough money to buy food, no matter how expensive it was. This hadn’t been the case when I was travelling south to Georgia from Arkhangelsk. Now, although we slept on railway station benches, we had some blankets with us to make them a little softer, and to our great surprise we were always able to find seats on the trains. We even managed to stop a few times in small towns and find a local public bathhouse to wash up. The only terrible encounters we had were with groups of men who had left labour camps and were also trying to get back to Poland. They were like walking ghosts, human skeletons. Big, staring eyes, tautly drawn skin, faces full of fear. We tried to talk to them and they barely answered; they only mumbled in Polish or Yiddish.

At first, I couldn’t understand why those people hadn’t been taken care of, as my group had been. We asked them where they had been and eventually pieced together the information that they had been sent to extremely hard labour camps, where very few had survived. I had been lucky to be in Arkhangelsk. We also saw some Soviet citizens who had survived labour camps, but we couldn’t understand them very well. They all seemed too dazed and bewildered to communicate; we couldn’t figure out why they had been freed or where they were going. The sight of them remained engraved in my memory for a long time.

After six weeks or so of travelling we reached the city of Lvov…

We came across some Jewish people and started hearing rumours about what had happened to the Jews during the war, but I wasn’t yet prepared to listen to what they were saying. I closed my mind. I tried to postpone the encounter as long as possible. For the rest of the trip, the few days it took to reach Lodz, the two of us were very quiet, each buried under the weight of our inner fears, almost embarrassed to face each other so as not to show the agony we felt. My thoughts were so mixed up, jumping from one member of my family to the next. The years I had spent away had been completely erased. All I could think was, what if? Suddenly, I didn’t want to go home. If only I could use some magic trick and disappear, or become somebody else. I was torturing myself to the point that Joseph later told me that he thought I had lost my mind.

When we finally arrived in Lodz, I was so mentally exhausted that I really was afraid that I was having a breakdown. “I can’t do it now, but I went through so much, how can I give in now? I must stop this; I must go on.” I kept talking to myself and poor Joseph didn’t know what to do with me. Somehow I got a hold of myself – after all, I was a survivor.

Lodz had been liberated some time ago – it had taken the Red Army a few months to march from there to Berlin – so we did encounter some Jewish survivors in the streets, a group of young people who looked so normal compared to those we had seen on the train. We couldn’t figure them out at all. We told them we had come back from the Soviet Union and asked if they would tell us where to go, what to do. They gave us all the necessary directions as to where to go first – to the Jewish Committee, where we could get assistance in various social services. We walked into a room in a building located on a main street of Lodz, which was buzzing with people and had lists posted on the walls. There was a whole army of people to help us, speaking almost every language, but I looked around and felt like a trapped animal. This was it. This was the end of the road. I understood that the fate of my family was posted on the long lists that covered all the walls. The Jewish Committee had made the task of searching easier by listing only the names of survivors.

At this point, we still didn’t know anything. I walked away from Joseph. I didn’t want him to be near me when I learned about my family. I needed to pull together all the inner strength I had and force myself to walk toward the lists, to look under the letter K. I was shaking. I didn’t see anybody around me. I was all alone, alone with my pain. My eyes moved down the list of Ks. I stopped at the end, closed my eyes for a minute and started all over again. Maybe I had missed our name…. The letters became very hazy. My head was spinning. Neither of my parents nor any of my brothers’ names were there – could it be that they didn’t have all the survivors’ names yet? It’s only the beginning, I told myself. They might still show up. Somebody had to have survived. My two parents. My four brothers. In my great shock, I forgot that my sister’s name wasn’t Kohn – her husband’s name was Laziczak. I quickly looked under L. There she was! She was alive! I was overjoyed to see that she had survived, but what about the rest? Was she the only survivor? I looked at Joseph, pale and shaken. He leaned against the wall and announced in a faint voice, “No one from my people is on the wall.”

That night we bedded down on whatever was available and, being ten years old and tired, I just stretched out on the ground next to the truck and slept. We didn’t have much to eat, only the remnants of what we had managed to gather over the previous two days. The next morning, my parents woke me up at sunrise and we were on the move again. The driver had somehow managed to get some gasoline and bread from either the farmer or the hamlet down the road. It seemed that even in that chaos, you could still find the essentials – for a price.

We wanted to cross the River Somme, thinking that we would be safer on the other side, but we never reached it. The German army had gotten there before us and had been only temporarily stopped by a blown bridge. They were turning back refugees, urging people to go home, telling them that the war was finished for them. This was all done in a very nice way by the smiling young German soldiers exulting in their success in battle. They offered us bread, canned foods and Leberwurst, the famous liver sausage. When they heard that we were short of oil and gasoline, they climbed down from their armoured car, crawled under it and drew some oil from their engine and handed it to us. This was a particular relief because the old truck was badly leaking oil. Still with big smiles, they also gave us gasoline, all the while repeating that the war was over for us and we should go home. Unable to do otherwise, we turned around and headed back north, to Belgium, Antwerp and home.

The Jewish World War I veteran who had joined our group in De Panne didn’t hide his dislike of the Germans and, despite warnings from all the adults, persisted in declaring his status as a Belgian veteran and Jew. When we stopped for gasoline in the town of Amiens, we pulled up in front of the Kommandantur – the German military headquarters – to find the tall, grey-haired commandant standing out in front. Somebody may have alerted him to the presence of the Jewish veteran or perhaps the old man did so himself with his insistence on so proudly declaring his identity and his opinion of the Germans. Whichever it was, the officer ordered the man off the truck, threatening that unless he did, he would not give us gasoline. “Jew,” he said. “You walk.”

We continued on our way with heavy hearts. On our journey back to Antwerp, we saw much evidence of the rout of the Allied troops and the overwhelming power of the German army. Tanks and more tanks – small, medium and large – thundered down the road, pushing the column of refugees to the side. Everywhere we looked in the meadows beside the road we saw German soldiers cleaning their weapons and machines. Above all of this, the sun shone brilliantly and incongruously from a clear blue sky.

Our stay with the Granlis came to an unexpected and abrupt end. In March 1942, the lensmann paid us a visit with some very disturbing news. A German raid of the villages in his district was imminent, and he urged us to leave for Buahaugen immediately. Travelling to Buahaugen at this time of year and with no advanced planning was a terrifying prospect. We did not know how we would manage all by ourselves or how we would get all the necessary provisions. Nils promised to look for someone to bring us what we needed at regular intervals, and we had no choice but to believe him. So on a bright, sunny day, we set out on skis with one of our neighbours, each of us carrying as many supplies as we could.

It took several hours of skiing through deep and heavy snow to reach the seter, but since there were four of us, we made deep tracks in the snow. We hardly recognized Buahaugen when we arrived — the landscape looked like it was frozen in time. Our neighbour helped us carry wood inside and start a fire in the fireplace and the stove to warm up the cottage. And then he left. We were all alone in the great expanse of snow and ice.

The brook was frozen, too, except for a small opening, where we were able to fetch drinking water — on skis, of course. When we needed water with which to wash ourselves and our clothes, we melted snow in a large pot. At night, the cottage got freezing cold, and it was usually my mother who got a fire going before my father and I arose in the morning. We could not go outside without putting our skis on. It was almost inconceivable that we could stay here all alone until the farmers came up for the summer. But that was what we did — at least that was what my parents did.

After a few days in the mountains, I did something that was probably the most selfish thing I have ever done in my whole life. My only excuse is that I was only thirteen years old. I told my parents that I wanted to go back to Rogne, to stay with Nils and Alma and to go to school. Their reaction was predictable. I was their only link to the village in the event that something happened to my father, and now I wanted to leave them completely on their own. In the end, they let me go, provided that I agree to return to the mountains every weekend with provisions.

So I set out on my skis, retracing the tracks we had made a few days earlier. I felt free as a bird — for a little while. Then I began to realize that I was now all alone in the great snowy expanse I had to cover. What would happen if I fell and could not get up?

It was at the end of March 1944, on a cool, bright and sunny day, the beginning of spring, the time of renewal of life, that the SS came to take the children. The survivors of the camp know it by its German name, Die Kinderaktion. It sounds so benevolent, like kindergarten or a children’s game, but on that sunny day they came to take the children to be killed. Why? Because they were of no use to the German war effort. The children had to be fed but produced nothing. There was little warning, but word spread like wildfire and mothers and fathers began searching for places to hide their children. Mother knew someone who had built a hiding place and so we ran there, but they had no place for us.

We could hear the commotion from downstairs – the Nazis were searching everywhere. What to do? Where to hide? We were standing in the corridor as people ran by us, with Mother holding Monik tightly in her arms, Miriam clinging to Fruma’s skirt. I told Mother and Fruma about the hiding place in the attic and we ran to the stairwell and up the stairs. There were people there, some rushing up, some down.

At the next landing was a little boy. I knew him. I don’t remember his name but he was about my age, but smaller. He was an artist. He made magic with a pencil and paper, producing amazing drawings of people, objects and landscapes. He mostly kept to himself, did not run with our gang and did not know about our hiding place. I asked him to come with us, but he just stood there in the corner of the landing, frozen. I had to keep moving. Once more I called to him from the top of the stairs, but he remained where he was, staring at me with his large, dark eyes.

Up in the attic some people with children were already hidden behind the beam. Mother, Miriam, Monik and I quickly crawled in and pushed the cut-out log back in place; Fruma remained outside to make sure it was even with the rest of the beam, then left. We crawled as far back as we could, all the way to where the slanting roof met the floor, and waited in silence. For a long time it was very quiet and then we heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, then the sound of someone in the attic, walking slowly, coming closer. Mother held my little brother tightly. No one moved. I held my breath. Would the soldier see the cut in the beam? He didn’t, and soon he was gone. For a long while we lay still and listened but no one else came to the attic. Slowly and quietly, we began moving from our cramped positions. I was able to look through the narrow space between the roof and the floor. I could see the gate and the area around it, a truck covered in dark green canvas inside the gate and a man in uniform standing at the back of the truck, facing a woman with a kerchief on her head who held a young child in her arms.

The soldier took hold of the child but the woman wouldn’t let go; she made as if to go in the truck with her child, but the man shoved her hard and wrenched the child from her and put the child in the back of the truck. That’s what I saw; that’s what I remember.

How many Jewish children did they take to be destroyed, their worth unknown? The boy on the landing might have been a great painter. But I never saw him again.

We were pulled down from the cattle cars and the selection began. On the platform, excellent music played by inmates in striped uniforms welcomed us. By the fence, Nazi soldiers were waiting for the sick and feeble, promising to take them to the hospital right away. Another lie. They were thrown into what looked like ambulances, and we found out later that they had been immediately taken to the gas chambers and gassed instantly. Next came the mothers with small children. The Jewish inmates warned the mothers with children to give their children to their elderly relatives to try to save themselves but hardly anyone listened and almost all of them were killed. A few minutes later, my father disappeared with my brother Shimon, and I never saw them again.

As I was standing huddled with my mother and little brother, along came a high-ranking SS officer, who we later found out was Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazis’ infamous Angel of Death, and he started the selection among the women. He sent all of the older women to one side, separating them from the young, healthy-looking younger women. All those in the latter category went to the other side where they lined up, five in a row.

Her maternal instinct must have inspired my mother to do what she did next. In front of us stood four tall, good-looking girls, whom we knew from the ghetto. They were holding hands with three children, their little nieces and nephew, whose parents were hiding in Budapest. My mother pulled the children to her side and pushed me to be the fifth in the row with the four girls. “I will take care of the children” she told them, “and you take care of Judith.”

I started to protest and turned around to go back to her, but within a minute my mother had disappeared with the three small children and my little brother. That was the last time I saw her.

Ellen:

One day I no longer had to go to school and I no longer had to be afraid of the neighbour lady. In June 1944, a law was passed that all people who were Jewish had to move into segregated apartment buildings that were only for Jews. My mother had already sewn a yellow star on my coat, and we walked to another building, where to my great delight I found my uncle Latzi’s wife, Serena, and my cousins Hedi, Imre and baby Gyurika. Hedi, like her two brothers, had blue eyes and blond hair. She and I had lots of fun playing together every day. Every so often my aunt Margaret came over with some food, and one day she even brought my sister, Kati, who was never as much fun to play with as Hedi and Imre. My mother looked so happy when she saw her, and I was happy too.

What more could anyone ask for? I had my best friends playing with me every day, I never had to go to school and my mother was always at my beck and call if I needed her, because living in this new place she never had to go out, so she never left me alone in the apartment. It was a dream come true.

Soon enough, the dream turned into a nightmare. All the grown-ups became very upset. They started to pack everything they had into one suitcase. My aunt Serena sent word to her husband that our building was to be evacuated and everyone who lived there was going to a new location. My mother, too, was troubled. She did not say anything, but I could tell. To my surprise, my uncle Latzi showed up, bringing my sister with him. He said that he would take us children with him and keep us safe. I was torn from my mother and we left, walking in the darkness to a place where children were supposed to be safe.

Uncle Latzi took us to a building that had a sign with a red cross. I knew about the Red Cross. They helped people. After my uncle left us there, our heads were shaved so we wouldn’t get lice, and we were shown where we could sleep on a mat in one of the large rooms, with lots of other children. We were also given something to eat, though I don’t recall what. All I remember is being hungry. But I wasn’t too scared, because my sister was with me, and I knew that she would make sure that I was safe. We must have been there for at least a few months. Hedi looked after her brothers, and I stayed by Kati’s side all the time. It was cold there, but not as cold as outside. When it was dark, and even in the daytime, we huddled next to each other on the mat to keep warm. I don’t recollect anyone playing or singing, but some of the children made scary sounds from their throats because they were deaf. I had warm enough clothes on, but my shoes had holes in them, which my mother had covered up on the inside with cardboard. This didn’t matter to me until we were made to walk outdoors when men with guns came to the building. They were angry looking and had sharp bayonets attached to these guns, so they could both shoot and stab with them. The sight was threatening and frightful.

We all lined up outside in the dark. A Red Cross nurse told Hedi that she could hide our baby cousin because he had blue eyes and blond roots, he wasn’t circumcised and he hadn’t yet learned to talk. Hedi trusted this lady, who seemed kind, although she was a stranger to us and we never even knew her name. The lady went away with Gyurika before the soldiers could see her. Then we were marched away from the building of safety, going where, we didn’t know. I held on to Kati because I had a hard time walking. The cardboard covering one of the holes in my shoes let in the slush, and when the snow stuck to it and froze, it made that shoe higher than the other. We could not stop to scrape off the ice. Hungry, scared and freezing, I marched alongside my sister, limping as if I had one leg longer than the other.

Kitty:

It seems that members of the Nazi-approved Arrow Cross Party had decided to march us children into an enclosed area called the ghetto. The Budapest ghetto was established on November 29, 1944, in the last months of the war, when Germany and Hungary were in a life-and-death struggle with the Allies. Nevertheless, even in those desperate times the Nazis were still determined to finish the job of killing all the Jews of Europe in a process called the “Final Solution.” To that end, they collected all the remaining Jews of Hungary, those not in hiding or protected by some neutral government like Sweden, and placed them in an area separated from the non-Jewish population. Guarding them with armed soldiers, enclosing them within stone walls and fences, the Nazis made sure that no food could go in and nobody could come out. By keeping the Jews completely cut off from the world, it was easy for the Nazis to continue moving large, defenceless groups of people from this holding tank of misery to slave labour camps, where the Jews were used, if capable, for providing much needed labour that would free up men in the general population to be soldiers.

The people remaining inside the ghetto received no humanitarian services. Surrounded by garbage and excrement, crowded together, the starved and weakened children and the elderly easily fell sick from typhoid and other diseases. Many died horribly. They were left out in the streets, or in areas not as plainly seen.

After Ilonka and I were shown to an apartment in a building, we stayed inside with one group of children, huddling because of the cold. Hedi and Imre were separated from us and put into another apartment, and I lost sight of them. Years later, I found out that my cousin Imre had decided to explore his unfamiliar surroundings. As he walked into a bombed, half-destroyed stairway, he stumbled and fell on top of a dead man. I don’t think he ever got over it.

I was aware of the scary situation we were in, but unlike Ilonka, I did not feel scared. In fact, I did not feel much of anything at all, except cold and hungry. As I lay beside Ilonka, I thought of all the food I had refused to eat when my sweet and caring mother had tried to get me well, but I did not think of my father or my mother or my aunt Margaret being marched away, possibly to their deaths. I just daydreamed about food and wished that it could be warmer in the apartment in the middle of a harsh December.

I hunted around the apartment and found a closet full of abandoned clothes. Since we had no blankets, I put on layers of them and went to sleep. In the middle of the night, I awoke with a terrible itch all over my body. When daylight came and I looked at the clothes I had found, I saw they were full of bugs and eggs. That is when my feelings broke through. On my own, without adults, degraded by the filth and by the bugs that attacked my body, I bowed my shaved head in despair and started to sob uncontrollably. Then I had to stop so as not to frighten my already terrified sister.

Before these tragic times, Jewish life in Humenné was vibrant and had three places of worship. The Orthodox synagogue where my father had worshipped was the most widely attended, with an impressive new building that had been constructed in the early 1930s. Long before the war, when the Jewish community was thriving, the synagogue had commemorated all of the Czechoslovak national holidays and invited local dignitaries, including the mayor and even the colonel of the local military squadron, on significant national occasions.

When Jozef advised me of what had happened, I dressed quickly, asked him to stay with my anxious mother and ran looking for the Jewish Council representatives, hoping for assistance. I located one man whom I knew fairly well, but he was very discouraging. He told me that a transport was due again and the police needed to fill a quota of one hundred people by that evening. He concluded that it was pointless to go after my father. I left for the police headquarters alone.

I arrived at the headquarters at seven a.m. The building was still, as if in a deep sleep. The main office would not be open for another hour. I searched through the few hallways and finally found the officer on call, a man who was not familiar to me. His face was expressionless and he appeared to be totally disinterested in me or my dilemma. I urged him to release my father so that he might go home to his sick wife. I could not have pleaded more passionately if I had been down on my knees. I heard myself claiming that he had been taken mistakenly, that he was a Christian and his presence at the synagogue was a mistake. I promised it would never happen again. The policeman looked closely at the clock hanging on the wall. By this time it was seven fifteen. Without saying a word he left the office and with his finger indicated that I should follow him. I waited outside the office on the stairs.

When I finally saw my father almost half an hour later, he looked shattered, still clutching his navy-blue velvet bag that held his prayer book, tallis – prayer shawl – and tefillin – phylacteries. In my father’s pocket was the certificate of conversion. The officer made no comment about the bag, or its contents, and paid no attention to my expressions of gratitude either. Maybe his thoughts were elsewhere, or maybe he was nervous. Lucky for us, he didn’t seem particularly dedicated to the requirements of his job. I only wish that more officials in his position had behaved similarly. Eventually, he said, “Go. And go fast!”

On the way home my father and I held hands tightly as we silently approached our apartment. We arrived to find Jozef still there, waiting, with my mother. They stared at us, unable to believe their eyes.

When I re-examine this event, and the many others associated with my eventual survival, I wonder what force pushed me. What prompted me to go to the police headquarters? Did I lack the instinct for self-preservation? Maybe I wasn’t smart enough to see the danger I was in. Maybe, like most young people, I overestimated my invincibility. I could barely endure the places in which I was forced to hide, yet when my father was taken, I threw myself into the lion’s den!

Above all, I remember feeling fearful. The police and gendarmes wore terrifying uniforms with rooster plumes in their hats. I would literally shiver when I saw them coming. We watched what we said and tried not to make our presence obvious. Still, how could we hide? The Hungarians, and later the Germans, did not need a reason to make trouble for Jews; our mere existence seemed to give them the justification to hurt and torture us.

We were humiliated and dehumanized each day. The Hungarian gendarmes followed Nazi orders, rampaging through our streets, picking up people and demanding our valuables. They built a torture chamber in what used to be a beer factory. They would grab Jewish men, take them to be tortured and force them to reveal where their possessions were hidden. One morning, they grabbed my father and tortured him.

The gendarmes came to our house and demanded our valuables. They pulled my mother’s wedding ring from her finger; she had been too proud to hide it. They also ruined a treasured gift that my sister and I had recently received. Our birthdays were in the same month, and in 1943 our parents had given us our first watches. When the guards banged on our door in the ghetto, we pulled off the lovely watches, smashed them hard and threw them into the fire. There was no way that I would give them up to the antisemites. After the war, my relatives gave me a photograph of us wearing the watches.

Our schooling had ended when the ghetto started. We were deprived of education, while our parents and all Jews were denied the right to run businesses and stores. I don’t know how we bought food – perhaps the grocery stores were able to sell whatever was left. My parents did not want to burden us with frightening details. My father was sensitive and cried all the time when he saw what was happening to us. He had no answer. Nobody did. It was a tragedy that we had not expected. But who could have known that despite our current conditions, worse things were still to come?

I was in a bad situation. I did not know where to go or whom to ask for advice about what to do. I thought, “What will be, will be.” I did not go in the direction of our town, but went through the fields that lay ahead of me. I did not take the roads, but walked through the fields and clearings. It became dark and I was still walking by myself. In one field there was a haystack. I was cold, freezing, so I crept into the haystack and fell asleep. I slept through the night. At dawn, I got up, stuffed myself with the bread I had and moved on.

I got to a small forest where I met a group of Jewish boys and girls from our town, Komarów. They, like me, had had to leave their farmers and were now walking around in the woods. I was somewhat relieved and in a better mood. I asked them about my mother and brother, but nobody knew anything. We told ourselves that cats and dogs had it better than we did: a cat has his oven, a dog his kennel, but we were being chased like rabbits from one place to another. For the time being, we stuck together. We were about eight or ten boys and two girls – all children. The oldest was perhaps seventeen years old, and the youngest, a girl, was maybe eight years old. We got along well with each other and shared our bread. Everyone was sad and we cried. I was worried because I did not know anything about my mother. I did not know if she had been caught or if she was in hiding. We slept on the leaves in the forest. I became friends with a boy, Yosel, whom I knew from the village. He had been herding cows not too far away from me. We stuck together, we slept and walked together.

One day we were sitting around a fire warming ourselves in the woods. We talked about the need to split into smaller groups because the [Polish] shepherd boys might notice us and give us away. We also decided that we should go ask for bread at the farmhouses. So we split up. I stayed together with Yosel. Yosel looked less Jewish than I did. We spoke Yiddish amongst ourselves because we did not know Polish well.

It was already quite cold, with strong winds. It was too cold to sleep in the forest, so we snuck into the village barns and hid in the straw, where nobody would see us. We stayed in those barns for many days. In the evening we went out begging, sometimes together, sometimes separately, to collect more food. At first we did not know where a good farmer lived or a bad one. The worst ones were the farmhouses where there were children. They called us names, yelling, “Get out, scabby Jews, we will soon go to the Germans.” They threw rocks at us and chased us. We did not go back to those farmhouses. We only tried the places where elderly people lived and where they would not chase us out. In some farmhouses, we were met with sympathy; they gave us dinner, hot soup, bread. They told us to eat fast and then get out. When people asked us where we were staying and sleeping, we always responded vaguely, “in the forest,” not giving away any details.

We lived this way for about a week. We knew more or less how we would be received in some of the farmhouses. One day, we went into a barn and apparently the mistress of the house saw us. We buried ourselves in the straw and stayed there. After a long while we heard steps and voices in the barn. We thought that the farmer might be looking for something. The steps came closer and only then did I notice the policemen. Someone’s feet stepped on me; they stopped, began shovelling away the hay and found us – Yosel and me. I came face to face with Polish policemen with rifles. The mistress of the house was standing in front of the door. The policemen yelled at us, “Get up and get out of here!” They chased us in front of them, hitting and hurrying us along. I began to cry and begged them to let us go, but they said they were taking us to the Komarów police station. They did not do anything to us, but they said, “This bullet,” they pointed at the rifle, “will kill you.” They pushed us with the rifle butts. We pleaded and begged them to let us go, but they joked and laughed at us. They were young policemen. We were already far away from the place where they had caught us. We continued crying and begged them to let us go, asking what they would gain by killing us. Yosel took out a purse in which he had some money (he had never told me about it or how much he had). He handed it over to one of the policemen. The policeman began counting the money and, before he had finished, told us to run away as fast as we could – like thunder! They stood watching us and we took off fast. As we ran away, we kept turning around to see whether they were following us. We saw that they had gone in a different direction. We made it to a small grove of alder trees where we rested for a while. We were relieved that the policemen had let us go because there were rumours that when they caught a Jew they didn’t just shoot him, they tortured and murdered him in a terrible way. I was afraid of such torture and I was glad that Yosel and I were saved.

We agreed that we would stick together, that God had saved us together. We got along even better than before, like true brothers. We were very afraid. When the wind stirred the leaves, we thought that someone was coming to get us. But it was cold and wet in the forest and soon we again began to go from house to house begging for food. We avoided the barn where we had been caught, however. We had to calculate our comings and goings so as not to be noticed by the same households. We were always looking for new places to sleep. We kept an eye on one particular barn that was open most of the time, so it was easy to get in and hide. Most nights, we stayed there.

We were in poor shape – always hungry, dirty and unwashed. I had one shirt and it was covered in lice. My woollen sweater was also covered in lice and I had to throw it away. My shoes were in an even worse condition – they were falling apart.

But a worse misfortune was in store for me…

On the morning we were forced to leave our home, our farm and our animals, we awoke to silence. We had locked the doors and windows securely the night before and Bobby, our dog, had been sleeping outside. But Bobby was not barking that morning – I never heard or saw him again. At the crack of dawn, the Germans had surrounded our house and were waiting for us to get up. When Bubbie Frida stepped outside, her greatest fear was realized. “Get out, you filthy Jews.”

German police stood in our yard, pointing guns at us and shouting in German. My bubbie, who knew a little German, asked if I could go up the mountain and say goodbye to my friend. Strangely, they agreed. My bubbie whispered to me, “Stay up there. Don’t come back.” So I ran up the mountain to say goodbye. When I was ready to leave Mecio, his mother told me she would come down with me and ask permission to keep me with her family. The answer she got from the Germans was short and to the point. “No. Get out of here.” Hurriedly, my bubbie put a few of her dresses into a small suitcase and we were chased out of our home, forced to leave everything else behind.

As they pushed us into the road, my zeyde, who had remembered to take his prayer book, realized he had forgotten his eyeglasses on the windowsill. He started back to the house to get them. One of the Germans kicked him and he fell to the ground. As he lay on the road, another German pulled as hard as he could at his beard. My zeyde, moaning in pain, began to lose consciousness. With what appeared to me to be enjoyment, the German police continued to pull at each strand of my zeyde’s beard. When they had pulled out almost all of his long beautiful beard, they cut with a knife what they could not pull out with their hands. I closed my eyes and hid myself between my mother and my bubbie.

Hungry, thirsty and stunned, we were ordered to walk in the direction of Kołomyja. As we stumbled toward the town, we were joined by other Jewish families. If anyone stepped out of line or tried to escape, they were immediately shot. My uncles took turns carrying me. At the time, it seemed a miracle that we all made it to Kołomyja alive. There, we were reunited with friends from the surrounding areas and with Aunt Mina and Luci. I was six years old.

The Kołomyja ghetto was located in the central part of the city, near the farmers’ market where peasants from the surrounding villages used to gather to sell their goods. This particular area and some of the nearby houses were ringed by a gate that separated it from the rest of the city. The non-Jewish families who lived there had been evacuated and given the vacated houses of Jews outside the ghetto walls. The Jewish families who lived inside the gated ghetto remained in their homes, but had to share them with Jews who were brought in from elsewhere.

Armed with rifles, the soldiers stood at the gateway, policing the Jews in the ghetto. We were forced to wear armbands with embroidered Stars of David on them. Our shoes were taken away and a strict curfew was imposed. Those who disobeyed were shot on the spot. For the first time in my life I knew what fear really was.

SS men shouted at us to line up, yelling, “Go! Go! Go!” to move us forward. There was a huge factory chimney releasing thick smoke into the air. Some of the female inmates told us that people were being gassed, sometimes just lightly, before being thrown into ovens. There were bodies burning day and night. A barbed wire fence charged with electricity surrounded the camp. Later, a few times, I saw women jumping to embrace the wires, wanting to end their misery. We were given summer clothing, each piece marked with a huge X on the back, socks and Dutch wooden shoes. It was October and the sky was grey, the wind strong; it was freezing cold. The inmates who were there already were unfriendly – I think they envied us arriving later than they had. The constant shouting of uniformed SS women accompanied by large dogs was terrifying. We knew we were facing a horrible fate. This was Birkenau, a death camp.

We were ordered to line up to be tattooed. On my inside left arm I was given the number A 27635. Less than a week later, we underwent one of the now well-known selections done by physicians like Dr. Mengele and Dr. König. I was very thin and undernourished and with one wave of the doctor’s hand, my mother and I were separated. I saw my mother’s desperate face trying to follow me, but she was pushed back. I was alone.

Like cattle we were pushed into trucks, hundreds of us heading to, I was sure, the gas chamber to end as dust in the chimney. They took us into a large room and told us to undress. It must have been late, as it was dark outside. Women started to scream hysterically that we were going to be gassed. We may have actually been in one of the delousing barracks, not the gas chambers at all, but I was in a daze and, as I remember it, I moved to a window. I looked around; no one was watching me. Everyone was in her own strange world of despair. I pushed my small head through an opening in the window, and then my shoulders and the rest of my body went through like butter. I didn’t hear or see any dogs. I jumped down and ran. I had nothing to lose. I knew I had to get into a barracks. I found one and tried to get onto a bunk but they were all filled. It was pitch dark. In the middle of the barracks was something like a huge steam boiler. I climbed up on it to sit down. It was quiet. Suddenly, I got a terrible toothache. Then something heavy and alive fell on me and jumped away – rats!

Life started at 5:00 a.m. in the camps and the next morning I heard shouts from the block elders, ordering us to get out and line up for the Appell, the head count. I had survived the night, but I knew I had to go out and line up. I remember standing in line, stiff, freezing, but don’t remember anything after that. I must have fainted.

I woke up on a top bunk in the hospital with another girl next to me. It was the least safe place to be because it was the first place they went to collect people to send to the gas chamber. But I was weak and couldn’t go anywhere. When my neighbour saw that I had opened my eyes, she said, “You have probably survived typhus.”

Some time near the end of May 1944, my father found a gentile man who was willing to sell us three documents – his son’s Christian birth certificate, school report card and Boy Scout membership card. The documents were appropriate for me because the boy was around my age. His name was József, or Józsi, a common name in Hungary, and his family name was Kovács, a typical Christian Hungarian name. So my new name was Józsi Kovács; I had to learn the name well and forget my real name. It took me days to learn my new name, where I was born and my new birthday. My father bought documents for my mother too, but she still didn’t want to escape without my sister.

Although my mother wouldn’t leave my sister, she was in favour of me escaping the ghetto. I think she could foresee the future and the danger of staying. I prepared a small suitcase of clothing and the next morning I said goodbye to my mother and kissed her. She was crying as I left the house to get the streetcar to Budapest. That was the last time I saw her.

That morning, my destination was not my school, as it had always been in the past, but an apartment in a small complex in Madách Square where Aunt Aranka, Uncle Frici and my cousins Vera and Tomàs were temporarily living with Frici’s brother. Their family had left Újpest right after the Germans arrived, which had been easier for my uncle because he was blond with blue eyes and didn’t look Jewish to the Germans. He could go outside without the yellow star and not worry too much about being caught.

I stayed with them for two or three weeks, talking about where to go and hide. By now, Polish Jews in Budapest who had escaped from other ghettos or camps were spreading the word of what was happening in the death camps in Poland and Austria. We all knew it was only a matter of time until the Nazis started to kill the Jews in Budapest, too. We discussed the possibility of escaping to the countryside to hide, but we knew that we could not all stay together. My aunt and uncle and Tomàs, who was only ten, had a place they could stay on a farm close to Budapest, but my cousin Vera, who was twelve, and I, now thirteen, had no place to go.

Shortly after the war began, the Soviet government opened its borders and many Jewish people tried to save themselves by crossing into the Soviet Union. But a lot of Jews didn’t go. Some disliked the Communist regime and others didn’t want to leave their homes and everything else behind. Older Jews, who remembered how well the German soldiers who occupied Poland in World War i had treated them, couldn’t imagine the German evil that would emerge in World War ii. And many Jews couldn’t go to the Soviet Union because they had large families with small children. In our family, my mother was ill with arthritis and there were seven children, the youngest only five years old. It was impossible for all of us to go to the Soviet Union. In early spring 1940, my good friends Leon Monderer and Jozef Szarp went to Lwów in Soviet-occupied Poland. They went through the open Soviet border and found freedom from Nazi oppression. After they had found jobs in Lwów, they got a chance to come back to Krakow for a few days to see their families and friends. Before they left Krakow to return to the Soviet-occupied area, Leon and Jozef came to my house and asked me to go with them. They told me that they had a good job for me and that I should seize this opportunity to save myself from the Nazis. I had an impossibly painful decision to make. Should I leave my dear family in such a terrible time? I couldn’t be of much help to them and I had the chance to be better off in Lwów with my friends. So I decided to be free and save myself. With pain in my heart, I decided to go.

My parents agreed with my decision; they wanted me to save myself from what was happening in Poland. My mother packed a suitcase for me with shirts, pants, socks and a jacket. I was ready to go. I said goodbye to my family and my parents pushed me to go with my friends, who were standing near the door. “I hope to see you soon,” I said to them, but then looked back and saw my whole family holding onto one another. My younger sisters were crying. It was such a distressing image that I couldn’t leave. I put down my suitcase and told my friends to go without me. “I hope someday we will see each other as free people,” I said, “but I will not leave my family.”

Leon and Jozef were sorry to hear my decision, but they understood my feelings. We all said goodbye and hoped to see one another after the war. It was difficult for me to say goodbye to my best friends because I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would never see them again. But if I had gone with my friends, I would never have forgiven myself. I was so glad that I decided to stay with my family. I knew then that I could never leave my family behind and that I didn’t care what happened as long as I was with my loved ones. It was the only way. I was only sorry that I couldn’t be more helpful to them.

I still think about that time when I could have gone to the Soviet Union to save my life and escape the Germans. In Krakow, we were hunted by the Nazis as animals are hunted in the jungle. We suffered from hunger, terror and humiliation. It was exhausting to get through each day and it was unbearable to watch my family suffering. Not being able to help them made me feel helpless, angry and miserable. If only my family could have gone to the Soviet Union.

…German troops marched into Lodz on Friday, September 8, 1939. It was a warm, sunny day and Iwalked toward Plac Wolności to watch the arrival of the occupiers. They came on foot and in trucks, looking immaculate in their uniforms, boots shining. Many of them carried flowers from the German population of the city. City Hall and other buildings were decked out with huge flags with swastikas. In other words, the city rolled out the red carpet to welcome the invaders, whom some regarded as liberators. The large German population of the city opened their arms for their brethren, even though the community had lived in Poland for generations. There weren’t many sad faces in the throngs, and there were fewer Jews.

Signs of things to come appeared almost immediately. I witnessed a soldier pulling an elderly Jewish man’s beard and kicking him to the ground because he wasn’t working fast enough to fill the trenches that had been dug only a few days before to stop the German tanks. I remember how enthusiastic and patriotic we had felt when we dug those trenches.

At the end of September,after weeks of siege and relentless bombing, Warsaw capitulated and the triumphant German army occupied the city on October 1, 1939. In the conquered capital city, burned out, demolished buildings bore witness to the results of modern warfare. A beautiful, cultural city was reduced to rubble. Most of Warsaw’s defenders were dead, and while the valiant survivors could resist no longer they were still full of spirit.

My sister’s store faced the Zielong Rynek, the Green Market. On one Sunday soon after the Germans arrived, the stalls in the market were closed and some boys were playing soccer there when a truckwith German soldiers went by. They stopped and joined the boys in the game, which frightened everybody. Another time, when I took my niece for a stroll in the park – this was before the harsh laws banning us from parks were passed – an older soldier next to me started playing with Miriam. With tears in his eyes, he told me that he had left a baby the same age back in Germany. I don’t remember any other demonstrations of kindness. Maybe the same soldier would think nothing of bashing a Jewish baby’s head against a wall to kill it. These examples are just too minor when you consider what was about to happen to us.

Before long, all kinds of decrees and restrictions started appearing, each one more dehumanizing than the last.There were so many of them that it’s hard to remember them all, although a few stand out in my memory. No Jews were allowed to attend school or institutes of higher learning, regardless of age, which brought my formal education to an end at fourteen. We were banned from using public transportation and from entering any park, theatre or cinema. A curfew was imposed from seven at night until seven in the morning. We had to get off the sidewalk when a German soldier approached. Most shameful of all, we had to wear an armband as a sign of our Jewish identity on our sleeves. Disobeying this rule was punishable by death.

Some Hungarian officers showed up at the power station, visiting different departments. They came into my office and we had a brief professional conversation. Before they left, they told me they knew I was a Jew, explaining that this made no difference to them but that they would soon be replaced by Germans, at which point I could expect extremely bad times. They suggested it would be safer for me to stop working and not come back to the office. I agreed.

The Hungarian army left Stanisławów in late July of 1941 and was replaced by small contingents of German special operations units. Among them was the Gestapo. They made their headquarters in the vacated Polish district courthouse building. Along with heavily armed German police in heavy jackboots and large helmets, they patrolled the streets and intimidated the entire population. The Jews felt like the breath of death was coming their way – a feeling confirmed within hours of the Germans entering the city. They rounded up former members of the city’s kahal (the local elected body authorized by the Polish government before the war to represent Jewish communities), which had been dissolved by the Soviets. The Germans began by beating up those gathered, breaking the arm of one man named Seibald. Then the Germans established a Judenrat (Jewish Council) and appointed a former banker named Lamm as its deputy chairman. To demonstrate their contempt, they called him “Lämmchen” (little lamb). The Judenrat served as the intermediary between the Gestapo and the Jewish people; in other words, it transmitted and executed Gestapo orders.

The first order that affected us directly came just two days later when all Jewish professionals and leaders of the community were ordered to assemble in the Gestapo headquarters building at specific hours, organized according to their professions. Failing to comply would be punished by death. My sister Nitka’s husband, Nusko Feld, a high-school teacher, and Charlotte’s sister Mañka, a pharmacist, both complied. Charlotte, being a pharmacist, wanted to join her sister. But I had been educated in German schools in Prague and didn’t trust the Germans, so I definitely refused to go and tried hard to persuade Charlotte not to go. Eventually I threatened her that if she left the baby, who was unwell at the time, I wouldn’t look after her. This worked and she didn’t go to the Gestapo headquarters. Only a few doctors were later released, including a dentist friend of ours who trusted us and told us what happened. The rest were detained without explanation and no communication with them was allowed nor was information released about why they had been detained.

We heard from our friend that the detainees were viciously beaten and psychologically abused by the Gestapo, who used sophisticated torture methods. Soon, rumours (most likely planted) were spreading that food parcels for the prisoners would be accepted. Family members delivered them in spite of the extreme difficulty in obtaining food and despite the absence of confirmation that their loved ones actually received them. A few months later we found out that not a single parcel had reached the prisoners, who had all been starved and tortured. Some were killed and some died; those who were still alive were transported in trucks to nearby woods, where they were executed.

In the middle of the summer of 1942, we were coming in from the fields one day when someone said that Leah wanted to see me. She was in the kitchen with another woman, chatting. Leah introduced her to me as Irena Adamowicz. Irena was a leader in the Polish scouting organization. Outraged by the injustice done to the Jews, she helped out however she could. Irena travelled across the country, making contact with chalutzim in the major ghettos and telling them about how the underground resistance operated. Although travel was dangerous for Jews, a few chalutzot, like Lonka who had come to the farm earlier, successfully fulfilled their mission as messengers too. The messengers were purchasing weapons, which then were smuggled into the ghettos through the sewers. Most people in the ghettos couldn’t communicate with others about what to do in case of a massacre but through Irena, they knew how the others were preparing for such a time.

Irena talked to me for a while. She told me that I was being sent to Krakow. She asked how I felt about resistance work and whether or not I knew Christian prayers. I told her I knew many of them by heart after so many years of hearing Catholic students saying the prayers every morning at school. She seemed satisfied with my answers. Irena gave me the address of a convent and told me to send a letter to the Mother Superior on the seventh day of every month as a sign that I was still alive. Whenever the underground needed me, they would let me know. She handed me a prayer book and said only, “Be careful and good luck.” That was the only advice I was to receive. The rest of my training would come from real-life situations. I would have to trust my intuition to keep me out of danger, just as animals do. They don’t think about it, they simply know when danger is near.

The next day, the resistance had organized for Hela and I to go to the village to have pictures taken for our identification documents. Dvora lent me a pretty blouse and combed my hair, so I would look my best. We walked through the village, afraid that someone would recognize us as Jews. The photographer took me by surprise when he asked me my surname. In shock, I didn’t think but just said the first name that came to my mind, a surname connected to the aristocracy. That name, Elżbieta Orlanska, was the one that was used in my forged documents. This was a stroke of luck because later it was useful in getting other documents required by the German authorities.

A few days later, with a forged document that stated that I was from Rzeszów and a letter from Leah for Laban, the leader of the resistance movement in the Krakow ghetto, I was sent to Krakow on the morning train. Hela was sent to another city in the afternoon.

After the war, I discovered that the rest of my group back on the farm in Czerniaków were sent to the Warsaw ghetto about four months after I left for Krakow. In April 1943, when an order came from the Nazis to concentrate all Jews in the ghetto for a massive deportation, some of the group, who were living at 18 Mila Street and belonged to the underground Jewish Fighting Organization, rebelled. Others simply dispersed. Most of them did not survive.

To my friends from Czerniaków who were killed while taking part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as to those on missions who were caught outside the ghetto, dragged to the Umschlagplatz – the assembly point inside the Warsaw ghetto – and killed indiscriminately, I offer my eternal homage.

October 26, 1944, was a cool, rainy day in Kľačany. I was playing with my skipping rope when all of a sudden I heard my stepmother screaming that we had to run. We could hear bombs exploding in the distance. I panicked; everybody around me, including villagers with their cattle, began running to the forest. Instead of going inside for my warm coat, I grabbed only Ivan’s hand. My stepmother and step­grandmother followed and we ran deep into the forest. We met Slovak partisans in the forest who told us that the vil­lagers could return home, but that the Jews should stay. The parti­sans forced open a cottage and told the women and children to go in. We were wet, tired, hungry and pressed together like sardines. I fell asleep and had a dream in which I saved our family. I dreamt about my little green room in Bardejov, where it was nice and warm. I wanted to go into my room through a cold corridor when somebody grabbed my shoulder. It was a woman dressed like a nun and she told me not to go into my warm room, but to stay in the cold corridor. I asked, “Who are you to tell me such nonsense?” She replied, “I am your mother and I am watching over you.” I opened my eyes and felt my stepmother’s hands shaking my shoulder. She was shouting at me, “Wake up! It’s already dark outside. Grandmother wants to go back into the village and we have to join the other people who are going back.” I told her about my dream. A lady by the name of Mrs. Erdelyi was listening and said, “Sarolta, it is an omen. Don’t go back. We are staying too — let’s all stay until the morning.” My stepgrandmother was furious, calling my dream ridiculous. “Instead of going to my bed,” she argued, “I have to stay in this horrible place?”

We later heard that some of the Jews who had returned to Kľačany had been shot by the German soldiers who were guarding the entry into the valley. If not for my dream, we would all have died. My step­mother was very grateful for my dream and told everybody after the war about this story.

For me, this incident confirmed for me what I had always known — that my darling mother was, is and always will be watching over me.

It turned out that my father had foreseen difficulties ahead. During one of his visits from Bardejov, he told me and Ivanko a huge secret. He had brought four brushes for clothes-cleaning with him, and embedded inside the brushes were plates of twenty-four-carat dental gold. Should it become necessary, we were to use the gold to save our lives. Fortunately, my stepmother had taken them with her when we escaped into the forest.

The morning after my dream, we were woken up by a very loud explosion. The partisans advised us to run even deeper into the forest because the German soldiers were getting closer. The villagers had already built several underground bunkers to sell to the Jewish refu­gees. My stepmother gave the first brush filled with gold as payment for our family to have accommodations in one of the bunkers.

Several other Jewish families — including four members of the Svarin family, the five Landesmanns, the five Lippas, the five Erdelyis, and some other families — shared our bunker.A total of twenty-nine people were crammed into a very small space. The bunker was camouflaged into the terrain so as not to be visible from the outside. It was approximately three metres by five metres. It had hardly any ventilation, just a small door that could be opened to get in and out. We slept on wooden bunk beds squeezed tightly together. We had no food supply. The first three days, when we had no food at all, Ivanko found a piece of bacon skin that had probably been thrown out by forest labourers. He and I chewed on it for two days. We melted snow for water, so at least we weren’t thirsty. After three days, we found horses frozen in the forest. The partisans had brought the horses with them from the uprising, but since they couldn’t feed them, they left them to freeze to death. Horsemeat was a huge luxury. Villagers often brought potatoes to the bunkers — which they sold to us at a very high price — and they also brought us a steel kettle so that we could cook inside the bunker on an open fire, which was also our only source of heat. Women cooked on the open fire once a day and everybody got a small portion of the food.

Not far from us was a larger bunker that was the headquarters of the partisan military unit. A doctor from the partisan headquarters warned us of the danger of a typhus outbreak and, therefore, to not use unclean melted snow for drinking water. We went out to look around and found several other bunkers containing Jews scattered around the forest within approximately fifteen minutes walking dis­tance from each other. After a few days of confusion, rules had to be established for the cohabitation of so many people, and a leader, Frankl from Prešov, was chosen to represent all the Jews. A number of rules were set, including one that three times a day we had to bring water for cooking and drinking from a creek fifteen minutes away.

Because we didn’t have our father with us, all this work was piled up on me. My stepmother, who was thirty-eight at the time, declared that she and her mother were too old to do such hard work. Ivanko was only ten, so it was left to me, at fourteen, to go with the rest of the men from the bunker to bring water and wood for cooking and heating.

We were still able to maintain contact with the villagers and they would let us know whenever the Germans pulled out of the village for a few days. This gave us an opportunity to bring some bread, potatoes and apples from the village. It was my responsibility to go with the men on this three-hour walk to the village. I continued to do this throughout the bitterly cold winter from October to March. I also had to carry the very heavy load of food to the bunker on my back. My stepmother never offered to go in my place.

When the people from the bunker said to her, “You should go instead of this child,” her excuse was that if the Germans caught her, her dark colouring made it more likely that they would suspect that she was Jewish.

During my first expedition, I went to our previous apartment to bring back a goose-feather duvet to help ease the frigid temperatures at night. My family was delighted that I had brought it back, but I never got to enjoy it. They covered themselves, not leaving enough of the duvet for me. I cried, asking my own mother to save me. The other people in our bunker were outraged at my stepmother’s behav­iour, and promised me that if we survived the war, they would tell my father what happened.

Every day we suffered from lice, hunger and cold. One day, as usual, I went with the men to get water. We would always see fresh footprints in the snow from the neighbouring bunker, but on this particular day, I saw only my friend Alice from one of the other bun­kers, and no other footprints. The adults I was walking with said, “Maybe they’re still sleeping.” At noon, when we went out for the second time, we noticed there were still no footprints, so we went to see what was going on. The sight that greeted us was the most hor­rific I’ve ever seen: the doors to the bunker were open, and approxi­mately ten feet from the bunker were the dead bodies of the families living there — sixteen children, parents and grandparents, who had probably been killed the evening before. All the bodies were already covered with snow.

In a panic, we ran from the bunker to the partisan headquarters. The partisans knew that the military gangs operating under the di­rection of former Red Army general Andrei Vlasov, who collabo­rated with the Germans, had committed many similar atrocities, and thought that this may have been some of his work. [Soviet General Andrei Vlasov began collaborating with German forces in 1942 while in captivity in Germany, where he founded the Russian Liberation Army, an anti-Communist, pro-German force, directing Soviet soldiers who had de­fected and organizing them to fight Red Army partisans.] Now we knew that we had additional enemies among us and relied on the partisans to protect us. Among them were a few Jewish partisans who didn’t disclose their origins because of the strong antisemitism among their Slovak group. These undercover Jewish partisans came to the bun­kers to help us. They wanted to supply us with handguns for protec­tion against Vlasov’s forces, but none of the seven adult men from our bunker knew how to handle a gun. Instead, two men stood on guard every night. If they suspected any danger, one of them would run to the headquarters. It was a harrowing time.

We made it to open space maybe an hour later. We weren’t even hungry due to the nervous pressure. We just kept on walking in the direction we had come from. I walked with Corporal Bystrický, also a Jewish soldier, who served at the outlook post like me. After an exhausting two-to-three-hour walk in the deep snow, our group arrived at Tři Vody, Three Waters. It is a confluence of three creeks, where three narrow roads also meet. There we found a sizable, slightly elevated wood stable; two or three steps led up to it. Since the door was unlocked, we walked in to sit down and rest.

The stable was already occupied by twenty-five to thirty partisan officers. We had been there with them, resting and talking, for maybe thirty minutes when, all of a sudden, we heard loud machine-gun shots very close to the cottage. At first we weren’t sure what was happening, but by looking through a small ventilation pipe we soon found out. We saw the Germans, who had followed our footsteps in the snow. A group of four or five of them were moving three machine guns on skis along the road, continuously firing parallel to the horse stable and the roads. There was no way out.

Some of the partisans in the stable jumped through the window and into the partly frozen creek. The Germans’ shots hit them all as they jumped out. We could see some of them fall through the ice. Some tried to run through another set of doors and into the dense forest that was only five metres away, across the narrow road. They were all hit, too, and died on the spot. Some twenty to twenty-five partisans and their officers were killed.

Corporal Bystrický and I both thought: why should we run into certain death? Let them come here and shoot us. One half of the door that faced the road was partly open, so we could see the dead bodies piled up near the doors and windows. Resistance seemed useless; death seemed inevitable. The shooting stopped, but we sat on the floor and waited. It was just the two of us, waiting inside the stable for the Germans to come and open fire. But they never came.

Miklós Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, made his declaration of intent to make peace with the Allied forces, including the Soviet Union. That same day, the fascist Arrow Cross Party, with the support of the Nazi relgime, seized power in a coup. Instead of returning to his unit, George went into hiding.

Everything was in chaos. Lieutenant Ujvary called me into his office and said, “My boy, I am sorry to say that you have to pack your repair shop into boxes – everything. The unit is going far away. If you have some plans in your head, talk to Private Jozsi Denes, a gypsy soldier, and have some money ready. I wish you good luck, and if we survive this unfortunate and terrible war, we will celebrate together. What I have told you is confidential.” I shook his hand and replied, “Thank you very much, and I wish you good luck as well. You have been a real gentleman. Take care, and God bless you.”

I understood what Ujvary meant. I told Tibor and eight other close friends that I was planning an escape because, in view of the takeover of the government, the unit would almost certainly soon be forced to go to Germany to work for the war effort, and I asked them to join me. I told them we would have to pay somebody a bribe to look the other way while we escaped. We managed to put together some money that our families had given us.

The next evening, I asked Jozsi, the guard, to come to the repair shop so I could adjust the heels on his boots. I revealed our plan to him and asked for his cooperation. I gave him the money we had collected, an amount he was content with. According to our plan, he would be on duty during the morning at the side entrance, a fence of wood planks. He said he would intentionally “look the other way” for ten minutes. This would be sufficient time for the ten of us to escape by moving away a loose plank.

Everything was set. I put my repair equipment into boxes and left all my clothes hanging from the nails. At 5:00 the next morning, we left the room quietly. Jozsi was there, as he had said he would be. I was the last one to go through the fence. One of my legs was outside the fence when a German army unit, made up of about fifty soldiers, passed by. I pretended I was repairing the broken fence. The soldiers glanced at me but did not stop. In the last seconds of the ten-minute reprieve, I made it outside. What a close call!

I removed the yellow band from my arm and bid farewell to my friends. With money in hand, I boarded the first streetcar that came by. Luckily, it was almost empty and the elderly conductor did not seem to care who I was.

When I came back to Budapest after the war, I was saddened to learn that none of the friends with whom I had escaped survived the war.

November 9, 1938, was the infamous night now known as Kristallnacht. This supposedly spontaneous demonstration against Jews in all the Nazi-occupied lands was, in reality, carefully planned. The world was shocked by the vicious display of hatred and violence, and there were protests from the free world. England subsequently offered a haven for Jewish children called the Kindertransport [German for Children’s Transport, it was a government-sanctioned but privately financed initiative to bring German Jewish children to Britain that rescued nearly 10,000 children under the age of seventeen between December 1938 and September 1939]. Our son Milan and his cousin Harry, both only four years old, were registered to go but we changed our minds about letting such small children go and took them off the list.

Many Germans were shocked by the destruction and brutality as well and the Nazis realized that such an event should not be repeated — at least not under public scrutiny. Some people didn’t approve when they saw a kindly neighbourhood merchant being beaten up, but there were others who felt that it should be done, but out of the public view. The latter was the official belief that the Nazis held until the end.

Not long after Arnold and I were married, he had opened a jewellery store in partnership with my brother Erna. Before Christmas 1938, my husband decided to close the jewellery business in Prague and sold it for next to nothing to the brother of his friend, Cenek Sykora. The transfer took effect on January 1, 1939. Arnold made this decision on the spur of the moment after an incident with a beggar. Arnold had regularly maintained the practice of distributing alms from the store on Fridays. On this particular occasion, the beggar insolently demanded more. In response, Arnold calmly and silently slid the money back into the drawer. The beggar went to the store entrance and screamed into the busy street that the Jew was beating him. A big crowd gathered, but fortunately, some police officers who knew my husband picked up the beggar and quickly ended the whole incident. But to Arnold, this was another clear sign that times were changing and that what was left of the republic would not last much longer…

At the end of February 1939, Arnold sent my brother Vilda, who was a lawyer and not married, to Switzerland to arrange some money matters for him — Arnold had sent money and jewellery out of the country through people who were paid twenty-five cents for every dollar they smuggled out. Vilda was to wait in Switzerland to receive that money from the couriers and then deposit it in a Swiss bank. When my brother called to say that he was coming home because everything had been accomplished, Arnold told him to stay a few more days. He was lucky — a few days later, on March 15, 1939, the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia. At least one of us was in the free world.

The day that the last remaining island of democracy in Central Europe disappeared was depressing and unforgettable. It confirmed that my husband had been right in his efforts to leave. “Go anywhere,” he would tell people, “go as far as possible.”

On that terrible Wednesday, March 15, 1939, Andulka woke me up at six in the morning and told me that Hitler’s troops were on their way to Prague. We got up and I asked her to pack a suitcase for my husband and me. The nanny was to pack a suitcase for the children. Without discussion, we decided to go to my parents.

We had left our home in such a hurry that we hadn’t even had a chance to tell my parents that we were coming.

It’s interesting to see how our family’s sense of togetherness immediately came into play. Our car was parked in front of my parents’ building and an hour later, my brother arrived with his wife, Hilda, and their baby, Eva. Erna and Hilda had gotten married on October 28, 1937, and their first daughter, Eva, was born a year later on October 29, 1938. We had all instinctively gathered there, without having called each other first. From that day on, we lived in my parents’ apartment on 18 Celetná Street, in the centre of Prague — it was upstairs from the jewellery store that Arnold had owned. As soon as we arrived, Arnold left the house to try to get exit visas for all of us. He came back that afternoon, discouraged because he had only managed to secure one exit visa — for himself…The exit visa was valid for ten days, but in the end he had to let it expire because he wouldn’t leave without the rest of the family.