THE ARMY AND I

The train journey north was remarkable only in being a mobile rumour factory. It seemed that every body knew somebody who has heard something which was told to him by somebody who knew somebody who has heard it .... etc, etc. We travelled all night and most of the day to arrive to the steel making town of Ozd. From there we walked to our destination at Felsöhangony, a small village which formerly marked the border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

On our way we passed the boarded up windows of the ghetto houses in Ozd. From inside the locked up Jews shouted words of encouragement to us and we gave them news from the City. When we returned the same way some ten days later, the houses were empty, - the inhabitants having been taken to Auschwitz and were by then processed in the gas chambers.

As we approached Felsöhangony, we were met by the local gendarme, who were jeering at us while being pleased to see so many potential victims to make miserable and to fleece. They were not to be disappointed. In spite of us being under Army rule, the brave gendarmes could get their daily fun, by simply walking into the Army compound and kidnapping a few Jews to beat up and torture, just for fun. Their greatest pleasure was when they caught some of the wives, who travelled secretly to meet their men. Their screams could be heard throughout the nights. Next morning, with their broken spirits and beaten bodies, they were sent back to Budapest without having seen their husbands.

A few days after we left the place, some partisans arrived from the forests of Slovakia, set fire to the gendarme barracks and shot some 20 gendarmes. Luckily for us we were not there for their revenge.

The Army in comparison was much better to us. By the time we were made to join, most of the army personnel were middle aged remnants of the Great War and while they may not have loved the Jews, had less energy and imagination to torture us in the same fashion as the members of the Jewish labour battalions were tortured and destroyed in Russia in previous years.

In fact, the hardest time we had, whilst being trained in army drill, originated from fellow labour camp inmates, who have served 2, 3 or even 4 years in that capacity and who were charged to make "soldiers" out of us city slickers. One of them, the young Jewish Österreicher was particularly hard on us. He made us sit on our heels until we fell over, made us run on the spot holding our rucksacks over our heads until our legs and arms were numb, shouted and swore at us and punished us heartlessly.

When in the cow sheds, where we slept, he became human, he told us that the only way we will survive if we become as strong and fit as he was. I believe that after the war, he became a General at the age of 25 and at 28 he was hanged during the show trials of 1949.

Our days consisted of being assembled, counted and drilled. Every now and then we marched about and often we were collectively punished, by having to jump around until fatigued or kneel in the middle of roads. It was quite an acceptable way to spend a day and we were not complaining. The food was quite acceptable, even if we had to wait in queues, but that was where we exchanged with our comrades our daily quota of war news and rumours. When evening came we bedded down in the various sheds, where straw was made available for us to lie on and we all in turn did our guard duty and we made sure to be awake when our superiors arrived to check on the guards. One could hear the shout of the sentry challenging and than his report to those who went around to check on us. It could have been fun if it would have been on a boy scout jamboree, but we suspected that there might be a serious side to it all.

There was very little we contributed to the war effort, but it was early days yet. Soon whole companies were sent to help on farms to dig potatoes or cut timber. Having been instructed by my Father never to volunteer, I did not, when volunteers who could drive were asked for. A relation's future husband (Imre Nagy) put his hand up and was transferred to Budapest, where he spent the rest of the war, sleeping in his own bed every night.

My company was sent to a mine nearby and we replaced some of the miners, who were serving in the army and probably helping out on farms. The farmers were also in the army, but they were sent to act as guards to Jews, who were sent into the mines, etc. etc. No doubt similar inefficiencies were characterising other armies elsewhere, but the Hungarian Army could always be relied upon to be mind boggling.

We spent only a few days in the coal mines and were moved before we could be useful. We were not upset at being moved, although the German saying: "selten kommt was besseres nach" (seldom does something better follow) could not have been truer.

We were sent to the steel mills of Ozd. We marched through the streets and arrived to a school which was to be our home. We were looking forward to collapse on to our beds, which on this occasion, as was usual was to be the bare floor of the class rooms. However, we noticed that some dozens of gendarmes surrounded us and before we knew what is happening, all our possessions were checked. What they were looking for we did not know. They went through everything. The lining of some clothing was torn apart to check better. Cans of food had to be opened and checked. Pockets had to be emptied and the little money we had all disappeared. The belongings of 250 people were mixed up hopelessly by these laughing thugs, who after finding nothing in a shirt or pair of pants threw it on to a huge heap of other clothing, to be sorted out later.

This was the occasion when I "accidentally" showed my photographs of Admiral Horthy. The gendarme asked for an explanation, called in his superior, more arrived to see the photos and I was wondering if I will score my first beating of my Army career. Not at all, on the contrary, one of the Gendarmes started to pack my rucksack, while the other packed my hand luggage, my photos were handed back and a Gendarme helped my rucksack onto my back. Which just shows the mentality of these people and how easy it would have been for somebody in high places to control them instead of allowing them to terrorise us and the population at large.

We dropped on to our floor boards and soon found the least painful position to take up for a reasonable night's rest. It is not easy to sleep comfortably on bare boards, but we soon learned and surprisingly it was quite acceptable.

Next day we were off to become steel workers. Our job was to break up the steel that was poured into channels where it solidified. That steel was still extremely hot and to break it we had to use sledge hammers. To walk on the hot steel we wore wooden clogs covered by steel, but the wood used to catch fire. When that happened, we just had to hobble back to the sides of the area and douse the fire on our feet by whatever water there was.

We wore leather aprons and on our hands pieces of leather, so that we may carry the heavy, hot steel to the outside, where it had to be flung as far as will enable the steel to clear the platform we were standing on and fall into railway trucks below.

There was a way to do the job and the steel workers could have shown it to us. They preferred to have their amusement and taught us nothing. We were burned, dehydrated and endangered our lives. They worked two hour shifts, which was quite inhuman, we kids were given 8 hour straight shifts. They were each supplied 3 bottles of sweetened soda water per shift, we were allowed to drink as much as we liked out of the rubber hoses used to cool the steel. The fact that the water in these hoses was almost as hot as the steel, made our lives just that much more difficult.

It was obvious to every one, even the greatest of jew-baiters that we could not give our best under these conditions, yet we were accused to sabotage our war and threatened with all types of dire consequences.

Luckily the place where the molten steel was cooling was of limited size and 250 of us could not work there all at the same time. This way, it was not difficult to be excused for health reasons and in any case, after a while, there was a roster in operation, which enabled us to go in on shorter shifts and even have days off. Just the same, injuries and burns were common place.

After about three weeks of this, one early morning we were marched down to the station and after we loaded up the horses, cooking utensils and a whole wagon load of black army bread, we also entrained into cattle trucks. The horses travelled 8 to the truck, 40 of us was to take up similar amount of space. It was July 8th.[1] Our train contained my company and some other companies from our battalion. It was soon after we started to travel that we heard the news that there was an attempt at blowing up Hitler. It took two days for the news to get to us and even then some of us did not believe that it happened, some of us did not believe that he survived. Quite a number of us thought that if he dies things will deteriorate further. Many of us thought that Hitler is a calming influence on the "others" such as the SS, Gestapo, the Nazis.

I travelled in my truck in a sort of a haze. On my neck I had a number of carbuncles, some of which needed cutting open. The medical services in our company were provided by two medical students, who between the pair of them had almost 3 years of study, - some years ago. They took a knife, sterilised it by moving it over a flame and started to cut me open. I used a handkerchief for bandage and lay down on the floor of the cattle truck hoping to die or feel better, which ever comes first.

From the direction we were travelling it was obvious that we were going towards Russia. We were interested but fatalistically couldn't care less. What's the use, there was nothing we could do about it.

Back in Budapest some of the parents thought otherwise. They organised themselves into a quasi-committee and made enquiries any which way they could as to their sons whereabouts. Father was still friendly with General Gerloczy and it was he who finally located Company 711/101 on a train travelling towards Russia.

Father started to pull strings, while the locomotive pulling our train got us into Poland. It was definitely Poland as we fell asleep in our train, yet when we wakened we were in Hungary again. Interesting, where are we going from here? Our train next turned towards Romania, surely not that way? Next the train started to wander towards Budapest, then to the East again, then South. After 5 days the train turned North again and on the evening of our fifth day we stopped at the station of Kecskemét, some 150 kilometres south of Budapest. We arrived.

What we did not realise is that all the resources of the Hungarian Army and the Railways were used to trace the train containing Mr Kálmán's son and to turn it round away from the areas which did not show promise as places where the war can be weathered. The long trip was partly due to un-availability of locomotives, coal etc, but also because a place had to be found where a battalion of forced labourers can justifiably be employed. Once this was found the train was instructed to drop us there.

In Hungary it was still an advantage to know the right people at the right places at the right time.

HOLIDAY CAMP

 

Indeed, Kecskemét was very much better than Russia. In fact, it was a holiday camp and not only in comparison. We were unbelievably lucky to have arrived there and just as unbelievably lucky to have been able to leave the place in October without a single casualty throughout our stay.

After our arrival we marched to a school in the middle of the country town. There we played soldiers for a day or two and then walked the 8 km to the military airport where our new barracks were being built by a labour company of ex-convicts. They were good enough to work but not good enough to die for their country, so were under the same conditions as we were: i.e. no uniforms, no arms, no pay and always to be accompanied by a guard.

The convict company and ours lived side by side on the outskirts of the airfield and we never once had any trouble or problems with them. In fact they always helped us, shared their sources of food and their art of building latrines with us and on one occasion invited us to their circus performance, during which one of the convicts was buried alive in a coffin six feet underground. When the grave was opened 24 hours later, the buried fellow may have been alive, but certainly he was not present. He must have unburied himself during the night and disappeared, - for ever as far a the Hungarian Army was concerned.

Soon after we arrived to Kecskemét I was called to go to the Company office. Obviously I was in some sort of trouble, or so I thought. However: there was my Father. The surprise of seeing him there could not have been greater. At that time all the Jews from country areas were already "re-settled" (deported to Auschwitz) and even in Budapest no Jew was allowed to be on the streets after curfew. Jews had no right or opportunity to be away from Budapest, which was not only against the law, but would have been dangerous.

Unbeknown to us in Kecskemét, Horthy realised what is happening and decided to do something for the Jews. Whether he was being a humanitarian or wanted to collect bonus points for after the war is of academic interest only. He sent his confidantes around to find out what he should and could do and it was his ADC General Gerloczy who contacted Father, sent a Royal Car with a Crown for a number plate to the Jewish House from where Father was brought to the Royal Palace. There he and the General had some discussions and during the talks, Father was to suggest how the Regent, Admiral Horthy could possibly help.

The scheme discussed was for Horthy to exempt certain Jews and their families from the regulations and make them "Honorary Aryans". Gerloczy listened to this and some other suggestions, excused himself and went to the next room where Horthy was, returned some minutes later, asked a few questions on behalf of Horthy, returned with a message, etc. This is how it went on for quite a while, Horthy was interrogating Father but was so ineffectual and frightened in the country he was almighty in, that he was afraid to see him in person, just in case he is reported to have been meeting and talking with a Jew.

Some days later a courier from the Palace arrived with an envelope in which there were two typed letters exempting Father and Mother from all the regulations restricting the Jews. Father's certificate bore the serial number of 3 and was signed on behalf of Admiral Nicholas von Horthy, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Within days, Father got on the train and decided to visit his son in Kecskemét. His visit was a great surprise to me, but did cause no great ripples by my comrades in shovels, because my Company was one of non-israelite Jews, i.e. racially Jewish, but not of the Jewish religion. As such we wore a white armband with our soldier cap instead of the yellow armband, a great distinction, but no great advantage. We had plenty of people in our company, whose father or mother was 100% non-Jewish, in fact we had a guy with us whose father used to be Secretary of State until he was found out to have been sleeping with his half-Jewish wife. My best mate's father was actually a professional non-commissioned officer and came to visit his son every week.

Father and I sat and gossiped outside the office when the young officer in charge of my company came bye. I jumped up to salute him, my Father greeted him with a loud: "Good Afternoon, Lieutenant, Sir!" to which he replied: "What on earth are you doing here, Uncle Kálmán?"

Lieutenant Bocsor was the son of a flour mill owner, who was a customer of Father's and who often visited Father in Budapest with his son. After their chat I realised that things might be looking up for me. Although I did not know what the Lieutenant could do for me, I knew that I have a friend. Luckily for us Bocsor was a friend to us all, even though sometimes he was frightened to show it or wise enough not to.

Bocsor invited Father to be the guest of the Company for meals and he did so, meeting all the important people like Kövári and Kelemen. His fame preceded him because most of these people knew of Father's role in the efforts of ensuring that our train goes to Kecskemét and not to some outrageous place in Russia or Poland.

After a while our wooden barrack sheds, pre-cut in Germany and designed in the same fashion as the concentration camp huts, were erected and we could move out of the school and onto the airfield. There were six side entrances into six rooms of the long building. Each room had a long table and benches in the middle and on both sides shelves, three high. Those shelves were our beds and living areas. Our heads pointed towards the middle so that we could at least breathe. The shelves were about 1 meter high, so that once we were in our "living areas" we could only crawl or sit. Not surprisingly we spent minimal time inside.

In spite of fatigue, sleep did not come easy as the place was really hot and airless, so some of us moved out and slept in the fresh air. However, we awoke with swollen eyes, full of mosquito bites and the dew settled on us. We decided to sleep under the wings of the enormous Gigant planes, that were strategically set up around the airfield. One night while we were asleep one of these planes was towed away and we just missed out on being crushed by it.

Our job was to build a second runway at the airfield while it was being used by both the Hungarian and German Air Force. We had a few Stukas (dive bombers), Messerschmidt ME 110's (fighters) and Focke Wulfs (light bombers) and finally the 6 engined Gigant transport planes. These had noses that could open and the body of the plane could take a tank or 200 people standing up. It was then the largest plane flying and interestingly it was really a glider plane, which used 6 French made engines and a number of small rockets to become airborne. Many were the occasions when we were involved at one end of the runway in building it and had to run for our lives because a Gigant was lumbering down the runway and we felt that it will never take off. Mostly they did.

The road making machinery being used for laying the runway was made by the same German company, who manufactured Father's Medicago hammer mill in Budapest, Prague and Berlin. They were also well known as manufacturers of narrow gauge rail equipment and these were also to be seen around the airfield. Soon it became known in the building contractor's office that one of the chaps in one of the labour companies can be approached for advice as to the best way to order spare parts for an Ohrenstein & Koppel machine.

We had no trouble with the Germans or the Hungarians on the airfield. Especially the German Luftwaffe personnel was polite and absolutely correct in their behaviour towards us. Even the gendarmes left us alone, but then we lived on the airfield and made sure that we had the correct authority when we went into Town to paint it red. We actually enjoyed visiting Kecskemét and on one memorable occasion the staff of the local house of ill repute took a day off, purchased food and wine, engaged horse-drawn carriages and came out to the airfield for a picnic. They were amateurs for the day. In the evening they returned to work.

Our life was almost enjoyable, but it was not all skittles. The food was not too bad, but of course most of it was "ersatz" - substitute. Coffee was made from chicory, bread was black and hard and weeks old, meat was available seldom and obviously we were restricted in our movements. Even if we had permission to leave the airfield we had to be escorted by a soldier, who in turn had to be bribed to do the escorting. Health was also at a premium, because in spite of the best intentions, the living conditions, the close proximity in which we were with our comrades, caused a lot of diarrhoea, infections and both flea and lice infestations. The worst was the prevalence of a form of typhoid, which caused the patient to almost waste away in a few days.

I escaped almost all illnesses, except skin problems, and I claim that this was due to the fact that I never went near the official latrines. If I had to go, I picked up a shovel and wandered off to the fields and dug my own, never-to-be-used again hole. While I had lots of diarrhoea attacks I never contracted the dreaded spotted typhoid and in fact I doubt if I had a single day's ailment during all the months I spent in the army, with the exception of my constant dermatitis and some problems with my teeth.

One day I was called to the office and was told by Lieutenant Bocsor that I am to travel to Budapest and bring back some nails which were used to hold the railway lines to the sleepers. It appears that Father was asked to find these nails, which were required to build the narrow gauge rail line on the airfield and of course he had some in stock and Agocs released it to him. He agreed to supply but for every 10 kg nail bartered a day's furlough for his son. I was to be accompanied by a soldier who was to guard me and also to help me carry the nails. We could only carry 40 kg, so that gave me 4 days with my parents in Budapest.

The interesting thing was, that by that time Father, with his Regent's Exemption, and Mother with hers decided that it would be safer to live in a Hotel than in the Jewish House. However, I could not go there as I was not exempted. Thus they lived in the Hotel Császár and I lived in their room at home.

The flat was chock a block with people. Being locked up almost all day, not being allowed either newspapers or radio, they were starved of news of the outside world and I brought to them some hope by coming back home, being sunburned and in fine shape. I could not tell them any horror stories and I was not even giving them the impression that I am returning to my company with reluctance.

There were literarily thousands of people in the 20 flats of the building. One of our new neighbours was a young lady, who like all young people of those days was in a hurry to live her life, in case tomorrow is cancelled. She fell in love with me instantly and never left my side until I left her and Budapest. I was not complaining.

The next time I saw her, less than 12 months later, it was at some sort of celebration or party. By then she was the wife of a Turkish diplomat and to-day I could not even remember her name. I believe that at the same function was the wife of another Turkish official. I believe her name to have been  Zsazsa Gábor.

Becoming an "important" supplier to the war effort had certain other advantages. Lieutenant Bocsor appointed me to be the custodian of the nails and also I became the storeman in charge of the shovels and other hand tools. My warehouse was at the other side of the airfield amongst all the army and air force officers, both Hungarian and German, and to get there I was provided with transport. Not quite a chauffeur driven car, but a bicycle, a luxury which was very much appreciated as it gave me freedom of movement I enjoyed greatly.

I felt rather bored and lonely on my own so far from everybody, that I considered going back to work to build the runways, but instead I appointed my friend George Kennedy as my assistant. Now there were two of us doing no work. This was noticed by the civilian building supervisor, who insisted on calling himself major and requisitioned for me to become his assistant in addition to my usual job in the warehouse. He spent all of his days sitting at his desk, whittling away at a piece of wood making cigarette holders in the shape of male sex organs. These were all exhibited in his office and had to be dusted every day. This was my job. I also had to make a fire, using the chips of wood from under his desk.

To relieve the boredom I used his telephone. There were not many people I could ring, but I managed to ring my parents in their hotel a few times. The way to do this was to shout at the operator sitting at the airport switch and get her to connect me into the switchboard at Kecskemét. From there I had to be put through to some other Town's switchboard and knowing the code word which gave me a priority I got into the Budapest switchboard, from where all I had to do was to ask for the hotel number. All went well until one day my Father would not recognise my voice on the phone and insisted in telling me that he has no son. I realised that I should cease ringing them and I did. Later I heard from my parents that after one of my phone calls military intelligence rung them to enquire who it was who rung them and why.

We were almost completely isolated from the war. We knew that the Russians were progressing well and were pushing the Germans back, that Tito and his partisans were causing a lot of problems to the Germans and of course we knew that the Allies in France must be winning, because the news services were constantly explaining away the loss of ground in the West as well as in the East.

However, there was very little that suggested to us in our idyllic surroundings that we are in the middle of a vicious war. We sometimes saw in the evening sky the bombing of Budapest, we saw the flashes as the bombs exploded some 150 kilometres away. The bombers that attacked Budapest were Russian and they always came at night. However, every day a huge armada of American planes arrived above Kecskemét on the way back from Germany.

We were not at war with the USA and it seemed that we had an arrangement with them. They did not bomb Budapest and the Hungarian air force kept away from New York. Sometimes they dropped their bombs they could not get rid of earlier over Germany, but our American friends made absolutely sure that they did not drop it on any target larger than wild pigs. The Hungarians protested about the daily overflights, but this was the extent of the quarrel.

Thus it was no surprise to us that the air raid alarm went off every morning at about 11 without fail and on hearing the siren we all, soldiers, airmen and slave labourers were wandering to the centre of the airfield where there was a large reservoir of water. Being mid-summer we were usually frolicking, some in our trunks, some without.

On one memorable occasion we were swimming in the water, when we saw some Messerschmidts coming in to land. This was at the time when the Rumanians, after being allied to the Germans, with no prior warning signed an armistice with the Russians and declared war on the Germans. The Germans began evacuating their troops from Romania by sending almost all their Gigants to airlift arms and troops and being close to Romania and having a long runway, our airport became the home port for the Gigants, which continued to fly out the Germans as long as it was possible.

We believed the Messerschmidts to be German and we were hardly interested. We saw their wheels come down and expected them to land as so many of them did every day. We became interested only when they started to blaze away with their machine guns and cannons at the parked planes.

Although it should have been obvious that they were not after the 40 or so young men frolicking in a muddy water hole, it seemed to us that every shot was directed at us. The whole lot of us ran as fast as we could out of the water and tried to burrow ourselves into a nearby mound of clay. Never could one describe the sight of so many nude bottoms pointing to the sky and seeing no heads attached to them.

The attack was carried out by Romanian planes. It was repeated next day, when the destruction of every plane on the airfield was completed. It was difficult to hide one's glee at having seen some 50 German planes destroyed.

By early October it became obvious that war is approaching Kecskemét. The Russians were coming and we were discussing if we should hide and get liberated when the Russians occupy the area, or if we should retreat with the Germans.

Some decided to stay, they were the unlucky ones. When the Russians came, they did not get a great reception from them and were not allowed to follow them back to their lines when they withdrew. Staying in no men's land they were betrayed by the Hungarian population and many were summarily shot by the SS.

Most of us, however, decided to retreat as soon as possible and we were watching what the German and Hungarian air force people were doing. In this respect I became a very important link in our intelligence service. I worked in the middle of the air force offices and actually sat in an office where there were both Germans and Hungarians. I could overhear their telephone conversations, hear them discussing the situation and generally I could gauge what the situation was.

By that time Lieutenant Bocsor was almost completely dedicating himself to ensuring the safety of his 250 slave labourers. He was a great little bloke and the fact that he might have been promised financial rewards if and when it will all be over, does not take anything from the fact that he was a gentleman[2].

My friend Kennedy was very sick with an infection on his thigh and he left employment as my assistant warehouse man. Instead I got a middle aged fellow to help me do nothing, who was cheeky with the Hungarian soldiers and constantly baited the civilian workers of the Army and Air force installations, who came to us for their hand tools. He told them what he will do to them when the Russians come and made himself a very unpopular man to both his labour comrades and to his enemies.

The closer the Russians came, the more nervous these people became, realising that on our testimony will depend what will be done to them after the Russians arrive. They were particularly disturbed by my idiotic abrasive assistant and 4 or 5 of them decided to do him in. They beat him until he was half dead, then they knifed him and left him for dead. I watched horrified from a distance, could do nothing except to run for one of the officers, who knew him and suggested that he deserves the beating.

He did not die, but I actually had to push his eye back into its socket before I put him on a horse drawn cart and dispatched him into the hospital. He stayed there through the first three day occupation of Kecskemét by the Russians, survived the return of the Germans and I met him after the war, aggressive as ever.

Bocsor relied more and more on two comrades of ours, who were both ex-officers, and who could be said were almost in charge of our company. Kövári and Kelemen, both called George, were as different as chalk and cheese, but single minded about surviving and ensuring that they knew about anything that happened around us. With foresight, they were buying food from the peasants and stockpiling it, while ensuring that the food given to us was nourishing and that we were fit and healthy. They even bought medicine on the black market and were most concerned for us all. There were others high in the pecking order. Another George, Schusztek, (who later married Rózsi Bársony, the Marilyn Monroe of Hungary) and even the Barons Tornyai and Dirsztay, together with Goldpierre, a well known poet and playwright, are members of the top echelon as Bocsor consults them also. I also become important, but only as a listening post. Furthermore I had a bicycle and thus became the most mobile of our company and its official courier.

On the 4th October I reported to Kövári and Kelemen that the German Air force is issuing rifles to the aircrew, whose planes were destroyed. On the 5th I see some German Waffen SS troops digging in just outside the airfield. Next day I tell Bocsor that the German and Hungarian airforce people are burning their files and packing up.

 

BACK TO BUDAPEST

 

Bocsor, Kövári and Kelemen went into a meeting to which I was also invited. They decided that we should start our retreat towards Budapest and they instructed me to get our company together. They were working all over the place, some as far as 6 kilometres away. I got on my bike and went to collect them. The job was not without its problems.

In one case 30 fellows were working for the Germans unloading a railway truck full of paint. The German sergeant was completely unmovable about my wishing to take his helpers, he was only interested in unloading his paint. I argued with him and suggested that he talks to his own superiors who are supposed to know all about our orders and who will know that our company must leave Kecskemét whether or not his paint is unloaded. He left to contact his Airport commander and by the time he returns, we were gone.

Finally we were all together outside the barracks. It is late afternoon when Bocsor and Kövári address us. They give us a few pointers as to what we are to say if we are stopped by either the Germans or the Hungarian military police, but their main advice and instruction is that we should try and stay together on our way to Budapest, but if we cannot, we are to meet in the courtyard of a certain building and re-form the company.

Bocsor and a couple of others got into the best carriage and drawn by two of the best horses set out on our unauthorised retreat. Kövári, Kelemen and Schusztek, together with a sergeant sit up on the horse drawn peasant cart. Kennedy, still sick and I start off, pushing my bike, which has our luggage tied on it. The others, except some who stay behind and go into hiding, also start walking and a very bedraggled lot starts out for Budapest.

Some of us have compasses and thus even in darkness we know which direction to go. To ensure that we go by the most direct route and so as to avoid the Germans and gendarmes, we walk through fields, hoping to reach the main road soon.

Instead of the main road we met about 30 SS men. They stop us and instruct us to return to Kecskemét and dig some anti tank ditches. Kövári, who is with us, explains to the SS that we had orders to immediately return to Budapest, where we have very important war duties to carry out. The leader of the SS group listened politely and they moved back a little to have a conference. Finally, they wave to us and leave.

Next night SS men, the same or other than those we met, approach a similar group of retreating labour campers some 50 km away from Kecskemét, ask them to return and when they do not, shoot all 220 people, with only a few getting away to tell the tale.

The later it gets, the more tired we become and the more difficult our march gets. Soon we stopped and started emptying our rucksacks and suitcases. I sat down with Kennedy in the middle of a field and we inspected our luggage with a view to lighten it. After a while I suggested that we are crazy:

"You know damned well, that we are going to lighten our luggage every few kilometres, why the hell don't we just throw the whole lot away now?"

George agrees and we simply get up and carry on with our retreat, carrying nothing. He leans on the bike and I push it. His huge open wound on his thigh hurts him so much that he cries and I have to be very firm to make sure he carries on. Finally we reached the road that leads from the South to Budapest.

We were surprised to note that we are not the only people taking part in this retreat. There are thousands of civilians and we count 4 different armies, Hungarian, German, Croatian and Russian, yes, Russians who joined the Germans and who have now a lot to fear from the Red Army. They retreat in cars, carriages, horsebacks, bicycles, pushing prams, pulling handcarts or just walking.

Once we get to the road, we should ride the bike, not just push it. Kennedy is almost incapable of walking so I make him mount the bike and he pedals or I just push him for a some time. After a while, we stop and have a little rest and fall asleep in a roadside ditch.

He felt better when we wakened and so I suggest that he takes the bike and tries to get ahead. He does so and I soon loose him. I carry on walking for a while, until I discover Kövári and Kelemen at the road side, giving their horses a rest. They invite me to join them and I do so with great pleasure. Having a horse cart full of food, makes them very desirable people to know.

So we carry on, with horses so tired that none of us sits on the cart, but actually help pushing it. At about 2 a.m. it seems that if we want the horses to get us to Budapest, we better stop. Kövári walks to a peasant house to find that the owner is a "Schwab" or a Hungarian born German.

They were not very sympathetic with Hungarians and positively anti-Jewish. They were less than enthusiastic about letting us in and allowing our horses to stand and spend the rest of the night in their sheds. Kövári takes his highly illegal pistol out of his pocket and does as if he would be wondering whether to shoot them first or burn the house down. At that we are invited in, but the atmosphere is less than cordial. We and the peasant family all sleep in the same room and are up and ready to go two hours later.

Kövári offers to buy some eggs and chickens, but they will not sell. So Kelemen just takes the food from them and we eat their food while getting ready to go. There is another offer to buy some chucks, but they simply don't want to know us. So Kövári takes out his pistol again and starts shooting the chucks. We take at least 8 dead chicken, leaving no cash for the farmer.

We ommit to farewell our reluctant host and join the long line of refugee transport. The traffic is one way only, so much so that both sides of the narrow road are taken up by refugees and retreating soldiers. We are still walking beside and behind the horse drawn cart, our horses were in a worse shape than we are.

Every now and then there are military police stationed to interrogate and instruct the retreating members of the Army. We get our instructions from the MP's and promise to report to HQ as soon as we get there. Of course we have no intention of doing so. We are sure that the war for us will be finished as soon as we get to Budapest. We cannot believe that after such a disorganised retreat the German and Hungarian armies can ever stop running.

Finally we got to the outskirts of Budapest after our little walk of just over two days. We covered some 150 kilometres, which was not too bad, after all we had to help the horses up hill. We say good bye to the horses and to each other and take the tram for the next stage of our retreat. I take a soldier escort with me to ensure that I don't finish up in the cooler.

Of course my parents were in the hotel and not at home. Not that there is a shortage of people in the flat, which is still occupied by a multitude of people, all hungry for news about the Russian advance and when it might be all over. I am too tired to gossip and I go to sleep with my escort in my parents twin beds and feel really happy to take my boots off for the first time after quite a few days.

In the morning my parents came back from the hotel and were happy to see me in their bed. Jews not being allowed to have telephones Father has to go searching for one to cancel the Royal car, which was arranged to take him for another day of search for his son. What happened was that Father through the Army Command found out that my 701/101 Company disappeared from Kecskemét. He assumed that we are on our way to Budapest, so he wangled a Horch[3] from Horthy's fleet and came to pick me up and give me a lift.

He was probably trying to make up for all the times when he did not allow me to be driven to school. Father and the chauffeur of the Regent's car spent the whole day trying to drive towards the front from where the thousands of refugees, myself and the retreating armies were coming, with limited success. The crowds trying to avoid the Russians would not allow even the Regent's car to pass. We probably missed each other when I boarded the tram. It was a great pity because I would have cherished the memory of having finished my retreat from the War in the luxury of the Regent's car.

Instead, my escort and I went to the meeting place agreed, but only a small fraction of our Company turned up. Those who did not, must have been convinced that the war was over and they had no further use for our Army unit. After making arrangements for our next meeting we returned home.

Next Sunday I went visiting relations. It was a lovely autumn morning and I felt real swell in my brand new leather jacket. I wore my army cap and the white armband and I was pleased because I looked clean and elegant and also because it was the first day of new regulations, allowing us to out on the streets without an escort.

My cousin Bözsi greeted me with the news that an armistice was arranged between the Hungarians and the Russians. She just heard it on her gentile neighbour's radio. I went looking for a radio and heard it myself: Horthy made an announcement and declared that the Germans broke their word, they attacked Hungarian citizens (oblique reference to the Jews, who were delivered by his Government, his railway, etc. to the German extermination camps), they have acted against the best interest of Hungary, they wasted the lives of Hungarian soldiers and what's more they arrested his own son. Consequently he decided to arrange an immediate armistice with the Russians and per medium of this broadcast asked the Russian Army not to fire on Hungarian troops pending the signing of the armistice agreement.

The background to all this was that Horthy's elder son, Stephen, 4 years earlier became the Deputy Regent, or in other words became his father's heir in an obvious effort to establish a dynasty. In 1941, less than a year after becoming the Deputy, 35 year old Stephen Horthy joined the Hungarian Air Force in Russia, where he is carefully kept away from being shot at. One day as he takes off in his German maintained and serviced plane, his Messerschmidt looses part of a wing and crashes above the runway.

The investigation is conducted by the Germans and Hungarians who agree that there are no suspicious circumstances. However nobody doubts that the Germans are responsible. [4]

Horthy has another son, Nicholas, who is completely disinterested in politics, armies or air forces. However on the death of his brother he is forced to take an interest in the affairs of his family, which automatically means that he becomes involved in Hungarian power politics. When an approach is made to the British, it is Nicholas Junior who acts as courier, and when the Yugoslav Partisans of Tito wish to talk with Horthy, he sends his son along to meet them.

These partisan emissaries turned out to be SS officers led by the same Skorzeny who sprung the captive Mussolini from the mountain top where was guarded and who becomes the specialist in dirty tricks. Later in the war it is Skorzeny who leads the Germans who pose as Americans in the Ardennes offensive.

It is on Sunday 15th October 1944 that Skorzeny meets Horthy junior, shoots him in the stomach, rolls him up in a persian carpet and having carried him into a truck, kidnaps him. On hearing this Horthy senior gets really angry and decides, without having made any preparations, to send a recording to be broadcast to the studios of Radio Budapest, denouncing the Germans. Nothing shows the naivety of the rulers of Hungary more, but the fact that no body guards the radio station which is simply occupied by the Germans within the hour of the broadcast, nor is any force required by the Germans to occupy the Government offices or the Royal palace, where the Government and Horthy are patiently waiting for the Germans to arrest them, which they do, without a single shot being fired.

By 11 a.m. the Germans are frantic only because they cannot find the head of the Hungarian Nazis, Ferenc Szálasi who up to that day was being ignored by the Germans. They need Szálasi, because they want him to form a new Government. They find him at 1 p.m. and Hungary has no Government, no Regent, but a new Fuhrer.

 

ARROW CROSS RULE

 

Soon the radio blared out invitation for members of the Arrow Cross Party to collect their arms from the Army. The Army was instructed to either lay down their arms or join the Germans or the Arrow Cross. By 3 p.m. it is all over, bar the shooting.

Indeed, the only shooting that occurs is in the Ghetto area. It is there that the newly armed boys of the Arrow Cross movement decide to have a go at some Jews, who must have had some arms hidden, for they shoot back and defend themselves capably. From then on the Arrow Cross murderers will concentrate on unarmed Jews whenever possible.

On hearing about Horthy's radio announcement I immediately made my way home. My parents were there and my uncle Imre arrived by lunch time. He told us, that members of the Arrow Cross were checking people's papers on the streets and arresting some. He himself was stopped, but got away, because he had some false identity papers, which was accepted by them.

Imre was my Mother's younger brother. He was not the brain of our family and when I asked him what papers he carries with him, he showed me that he was very well equipped, because in addition to his false identity papers, he also had every one of his own papers neatly in one of his pockets, while other sets of false identity papers were being kept in other areas of his jacket.

I insisted, that before he leaves our flat he empties all his pockets, which after a lot of reluctance he did. I then checked everything he had and allowed him only one set of his papers, which happened to suggest that he is an Aryan and allowed him a fairly good cover-story, which I rehearsed with him until he knew it. He was very upset with me to have taken his real documents, including his birth certificate and did not realise until later that day, that his was the first life I ever saved.

Uncle Imre left us that afternoon and was stopped by a band of Arrow Crossites within a few minutes. His papers were regarded as suspicious and he was taken to a school which was used as their HQ. There were hundreds of people captive there, being interrogated, tortured, beaten and every now and then groups of people removed from there and taken away to be shot. Imre was not interrogated that day and stayed overnight in one of the class rooms.

Next morning he recognised another captive, a girl called Susan Kádár,[5] who was a niece of my Father. She was cleaning the floors of the school corridor and recognised, but did not greet Imre, realising that if she speaks to him, his life will be jeopardised. Susan was not quite 15 at the time. Click here for Susan's story. She was kept alive by the Arrow Cross people as their whore and murdered when she became pregnant.

After a night of frenzied blood letting, Imre was released next day unharmed, travelled to re-join his wife in the country, where they hid and survived.

While we had no radio to receive news of what is happening, we realised from little bits of news that there are very great dangers in living in the houses where the Jews were concentrated. The reason why they were concentrated was of course arranged with a view of facilitating the easy collection of all Jews for the purpose of trucking them to Auschwitz or other death camps.

Not that we knew what was in store for the many thousands of Jews from the country who were first put into a concentrated ghetto area and then put into cattle trucks, crammed 80 to 120 to a truck, designed to transport 8 horses and sent to their final solution. Those that survived the 5 to 8 day trip without food or water were then either sent to the gas chambers or selected as being suitable for labouring on a temporary basis before conversion into ashes.

As we heard from a survivor of the camps after the war, Eva and her mother survived the selection, while Uncle Bandi, Eva's father was gassed within hours of arriving to Auschwitz. Margit, Eva's Mother, became sick later and was sent to the gas chamber. When after a while Eva contracted diphtheria, she kept it secret as she knew that when found to be sick she will also be gassed. This way she was sick for a while and finally died in her hut, with diphtheria and because there was no medical attention available, - another innocent victim. Her wasted 21 years old body must have been put in front of the hut and collected by other starving, shuffling inmates, commonly known as "Musulmans". [6]

Even 'though we did not know all the details of what is happening in Auschwitz, hearing the guns outside our houses, seeing Arrow Cross gangsters strutting in their caps and armbands with the arrow cross instead of the swastika, with their rifles harassing Jews, we started to remember all the rumours we used to disbelieve. However even we could not imagine the extremes of horror, that we found true afterwards.

All the hate these semi-literate blood-thirsty people could muster was pent up and ready to burst. These people were hoping that the German occupation of their country will deliver the Jews and their imagined riches into their grasp, yet after seven months of German occupation they could still not have what they thought was rightfully theirs. Instead, the jewels of the Jews was taken by Eichman's organisation to Germany and with bombing and the Germans removing food from Hungary their own circumstances were getting worse. What's more, the lot of the Jews started to improve, there were no deportations, Jews were left to live in their Ghettos and Jewish houses, they were not pestered by the authorities, especially in Budapest.

Now that the Arrow Cross party and Szálasi were in power, the time was ripe for the members of the party to harvest their rewards and reap the benefits of their patience in awaiting the day when the German authorities will give full power to their chief and to the other co-operators.

It was obvious that some action will occur. It was time to get out of the house. Father and Mother were resigned to stay in their flat, - it would have been impossible to go to their hotel or to stay there. I stayed with them temporarily, but was waiting to get back into my old Army unit.

I was not the only one who was yearning for the security of Kecskemét and my Army Company. My 701/101 Company's second "reunion" was a greater success than the reunion a week or so ago. Now everybody wanted to get back into a peaceful labour camp. Unfortunately, we had nowhere to go, no one wanted us. Lieutenant Bocsor did his best, trying to interest the Army in giving us something to do, to make us eligible to get food in exchange of our work, but the Army was much too busy in surviving themselves amidst the new order being established by the Arrow Cross Party, who were now the de facto Government of Hungary and thus the Army was not being very worried about a Company of non-Jewish Jews.

There was nothing to do but to go home again and arranging to meet at the court yard of a building in two days time on the 20th October.

It was at 6 a.m. on that day that we were wakened by the knock on the front door of the flat. Police and Arrow Cross were collecting all men between the ages of 16 and 50. I could prove that I belong to an Army Labour Company and was excused, but Father and hundreds of others were taken from the house. They were taken onto the street and marched off. From other houses too hundreds of people were collected and all over Budapest thousands of Jews were marching towards their next meeting with fate.

That afternoon I rejoined my Company again. We finally had official status and we marched off to the railway station to travel by slow train to an area where the defences of Budapest will be strengthened by digging some ditches, to stop the Russian tanks. It was said that our ditches will stop their tanks for 8 hours and one minute. It will cause them to stop and laugh for 8 hours and the one minute is what is required to cross the ditches.

We were billeted on a farm at Veresegyháza and we moved into the cow shed where we bedded down on the straw now unoccupied by the cows, due their having been requisitioned and eaten by the German Army. The farm was owned by the Palotás family. One of their brothers-in-law was one of our comrades, the Baron Dirsztay and it must have been interesting for him to be the "guest" of the Hungarian Army on the farm where he used to be the honoured guest of his relations in happier times.

I cannot be sure, but I venture to guess that the Baron managed to find a more comfortable bed than the straw in the cow sheds and probably also had his meals with his landowner relations.

A lot of our comrades were missing. On the morning when the Arrow Cross collected all men from Budapest many of those who belonged to our Company were picked up and they could not join us. Most of them were herded to the brickworks at Obuda, from where they were marched either towards Germany or sent towards the front lines, which were than some 50 kilometres towards the east of Budapest.

Father and his comrades from our house were taken to a sports stadium on the outskirts of Budapest and then next day marched some 25 miles to a place called Valkó, where they were put to work to dig anti-tank ditches. They lived in farm buildings or on the fields of these farms. Very little food was provided and they were guarded by the Arrow Cross, who constantly abused them verbally and in some cases physically. They were also relieved of every penny they had and in another camp two Jews were executed because they had a few coppers left on them by accident after they were ordered to hand in all their money.[7]

Of course none of us knew where the others of our family were. Mother was back in Budapest, attempting to find out where Father or I was and at the same time she was trying to get hold of a "passport" for both of us. At this time it was realised by some of the neutral countries that unless some effort is made to save the Jews of Hungary, soon there will be none left to save and thus Switzerland, the Vatican and especially Sweden gave all who could get close enough to their Legations a piece of paper, declaring that the person named is under the guardianship of the country concerned and all authorities are charged to respect the rights of the country and the person.

All this was started by the Swedish Legation, whose Raoul Wallenberg has personally been responsible to save thousands of Jews. This young Swede has taken it onto himself to rush around Budapest and outside of it, fight and argue with the Germans, who were hell bent to move the Jews into the gas chambers before the ring closes and they might be unable to feed the death factories. He was just as fearless in arguing with the Arrow Cross threatening them with all sorts of consequences if they do not carry out the non-existing international agreements he was telling them about.

Wallenberg was a remarkable man, who within a few days after liberation by the Russians, was invited by them to their HQ, where he was captured and sent to Russia, never to be seen again. Or more accurately, he was seen by various people, although the Russians never admitted to have captured him.

My unit was sent into the fields to dig our quota of ditches. Some Army experts marked out where we should do so and we worked on a beautiful hillside overlooking green fields and pastures. It was hard to believe that there was a war and we were scarring the country side with a view of hindering the Russian Army. Our work done we returned to the farm where, after a nourishing meal of goulash and a hefty piece of black bread with "szalonna", we lay down to sleep in the cow shed.

At the time I developed all sorts of skin problems and managed to have everything infected. Thus while my comrades were busy digging trenches to hold back the Russian hordes, I was flat on my back fighting for my life due to a blood poisoning on my wrist. Our sick bay consisted of that part of the cow shed where usually cows gave birth to their calves and it was there that the officers' cook visited me and asked what I would like to eat. Being delirious I asked for a particular type of carp that had no bones and Tommy Lorand, the chef, delivered it to me within a few hours. It was not the real "mirror-carp" but Tommy removed every bone from the ordinary fish he obtained heaven knows where and I enjoyed that fish more than any other before or since. Tommy continued to look after my diet for the next few days.

I improved sufficiently to work around the farm yards and realised that our horses were dying of starvation. I suggested to Lieutenant Bocsor that may be I could assist and get some hay for the horses. With a soldier as guard and with one of my comrades I set off on a peasant cart towards the Royal Farm, where the manager of the farm was one of the people who attended the chopper demonstration in the presence of Horthy.

I arrived to the office of the Royal Farm at Gödöllö with some trepidation. How is the manager going to take to my approaching him? With the horses, cart and corporal and my comrade left outside I ventured into the office. There were at least 10 people waiting to see the great man. A soldier, his batman, asked me what I wanted and jumping to attention I reported to him, that "I, Kálmán István, member of Company 701/101 would like to see Mr. Vilmos Thiringer."[8]

"Colonel Thiringer, you mean," said the batman, "and what the hell would you want from Colonel Thiringer?" he bellowed.

"A cartful of hay, Sir" said I manfully and watched the soldier laughing at the audacity of this kid of 18.

Nevertheless he reported the matter to Colonel Thiringer, who on hearing my name rushed out of his office, embraced me in front of all the people, kissed me and took me into his office. I was absolutely overcome, - I have seen this man from a distance and in Admiral Horthy's company some 15 months ago, have never spoken to him. All he knew about me was that I was my Father's son, I was persecuted and I required his help and hay.  

He gave me all the hay I wanted, offered me money and suggested that I contact him again, although he felt that the Russian advance is progressing at such pace that he will probably need to retreat with his staff. He arranged for us to have as much hay as our vehicle could carry and also arranged for us to be given grain for the horses and meat for us.

Kövári and Kelemen were still running the affairs of the Company and they were concerned with the many who used to belong to our Company, but were taken by the Arrow Cross during the round up on the 20th October. A list was made out of those 20 or 30 that were missing and Lieutenant Bocsor asked me if he should include Father in that list. I asked him what he proposes to do with the list and it turned out that the idea was to distribute it to the various camps run by the Arrow Cross and ask them to return the members of our Company who were inadvertently in those camps.

I am not sure whose idea it was, but instead of distributing the list, it was decided to have a list taken round and to "order" the Arrow Cross Camp Commanders to deliver the Jews who were needed by the Army to the bearer of that list. One of the non-commissioned officers volunteered that he will accompany the mission provided he is paid 100 Pengö, an amount then equivalent to $22.

I volunteered to go and with the non commissioned officer, Steven Petö (now manufacturer in England) and George Lászlo (he became a gynaecologist) the four of us set off to find and bring back members of our Company and some relations who were taken in the Arrow Cross "razzia" of 20th October.

About forty of us will return four days later.

We had no idea which way to go and where our comrades might be. We started towards Budapest and while walking or accepting lifts on retreating Army trucks we were making enquiries. Whenever we heard of camps run by the Arrow Cross and containing middle aged Jews, we went to the camps and presented our list. By the evening of our first day we collected 2 comrades and they were released by the Arrow Cross without any problems. In fact, it was so easy that in the second camp we visited I met a good school friend of mine, Peter Arányi and invited him to join us. He refused, saying that his father was taken to Germany some time ago and he wants to find him, so he is looking forward to getting to Germany. He did not return.

We travelled right through the night. At one stage we got a lift sitting on the top of a German Tiger tank, being driven by a German soldier peeking through the small window of the tank while we were holding onto guns and cannons outside. We could not resist making some remarks about the retreat of the bloody Germans and we were stumped at hearing the German driver of the tank warning us that he understands Hungarian. From then on our conversation was rather more careful and distinctly un-political.

Sitting on our Tiger tank we were suddenly in the middle of a column of Jews marching towards Budapest. We got off the tank to make our enquiries in case there were some of our people amongst them. They were led by Arrow Cross guards and we found no one we knew amongst them. The Jews were dead tired and could hardly walk. They begged the guards to slow down or to allow them to rest. The young guards, - they were between 15 and 18 years old, encouraged the older men to sit down and have a rest, while the rest of the column marched on.

After a while the guards returned and shot the stragglers. They put the rifle against their heads and pulled the trigger. I know, I saw it. Some 15 people were killed and left lying on the roadside.

Next day we visited some more camps and found Steven Petö's father, uncle and some of our comrades. George Lászlo found his brother and he was sprung also. At this point our corporal suggested that he should be paid not 100 Pengö for the trip but 100 per person. We agreed. By the time we finished he earned it all.

With our band grown to a largish group of some 20 or 25 people, it became unwieldy to travel with a group that large and it was decided that while the group stays hidden in a disused shed on the outskirts of Gödöllö, the corporal and myself will go to another camp we heard about and where there might be some more of our people and maybe Father.

We got a lift on a horse cart out of Gödöllö and on the way met the people from the Valkó camp digging their quota of ditches in a forest. There were 11 of our comrades in that camp and my Father also. He was back at the camp excused of work on that day. The corporal and I left, promising my comrades that I will wait for their return from work and take them with me.

The camp of course was not a camp along the lines of Dachau or Auschwitz or Bergen Belsen. It was a series of farm buildings and in some of these the families of farm labourers still lived. The Jews were accommodated in sheds and hay lofts, while the farm carried on its business as best as it could.

When we arrived, we found 3 of the Arrow Cross guards in one of the one room flatlets previously occupied by a peasant farm labourer and his family. With them was a woman in bed and the guards were in a state of undress suggesting that they joined the peasant woman for some entertainment from time to time. This was actually confirmed later by another peasant woman, living in a flatlet next door, who told us that she was constantly used by the guards.

The guards agreed that we can have and take with us any of the Jews who are on our list and I went outside to change the list once again to include all our people and to await the arrival of the working detail. While waiting I found the sick bay and there was our neighbour, Dr. Földes,[9] who told me that Father is well, although he was excused from work that day for a minor ailment. He was not on the main farm but on another one some 5-600 meters away up a steep hill.

While talking to Dr. Földes one of the guards arrived and told the doctor to get all the sick to dress and get all their belongings together because they are going home. He passed on the message and soon the 5 sick came and stood awaiting instructions. After a while the 3 guards came out, lined themselves up opposite the Jews, one of them started to shout at them and said that they are malingerers and not worth feeding and the three of them started to shoot the sick Jews.

I stood next to them and it took me some time to realise what is going on. By that time the corporal got hold of me and pushed me away from there, to stand in line with the executioners and so I could see some of the people being shot at begging for their lives. To no avail, after at least 20 ill aimed shots, there was quietness. The guards invited my corporal to go and use his pistol to finish off some of them who were still moving, but he refused and the three guards returned into their room for some more ammunition.

When they disappeared, Dr. Földes, who stood on the landing of a loft watching it all from above, shouted at one of the dead: "Now, go now" and one of them, unharmed, jumped up and started to run. He got away before the Armed Cross guards returned to put a few more bullets into the dead, after which they made their way up the hill to take care of the sick Jews in that part of the camp. I rushed to my corporal and implored him to go and save my Father who was one of the sick in that camp. He went, but either did not do anything or couldn't because I heard the shots, some 6 or 7 of them, followed by some more.

The corporal returned first and we went into a room used by the cooks. This is where we were, when the guards sent every one out, except me, to bury the dead. When we realised that the guards went back to have some more drinks, I gave the corporal a photograph of my Father and asked him to go up the hill and identify him. He went and came back to say that the man is lying on his face, but he has very little gray hair. There was no doubt about it, they murdered my Father.

There was very little I could do but to wait for my comrades whom I promised to take back to the Company. I could have left after what has happened, but I never considered it. While waiting, one of the cooks returned from burying the dead and knelt down in front of me and begged me to take him with me. He was the brother of an Olympic gold medallist, and himself a gymnast until he fell and broke his hand, which was now withered and useless. He was petrified that if the guards realise that he is crippled, they will kill him. He offered everything he ever owned, money, gold, everything as long as I will spring him from the camp. I promised to take him and explained to him that he need not pay me, except that eventually he should re-pay the 100 Pengö which I will advance on his behalf to the Corporal.

It needs to be told at this point that some 5 or 6 months after the end of the war I met a young fellow on the street, who was very familiar to me. When he told me what his name was and I saw his withered hand, I knew where I met him, but he could not place me. I helped him, by telling him that we met at Valkó.

He looked enlightened: "Sure, I remember now. We got out of that place just in the nick of time." I agreed with him.

"I wonder what happened to the young fellow who got us out of there," he said, "he wanted me to pay him 100 pengös, but I had more sense than to pay. Did you ever pay him, or didn't you ?"

I had to tell him who he is talking to and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction to see him stuttering and wishing that he could disappear. I had to enlighten him, that it was I who paid the 100 Pengö for every one of the people I saved and it was worth every penny.

Another one of the people present in the camp wanted to come also and I told him to call himself József Kálmán instead of Father, whose name was already on the list, but not needed any longer, since I believed my father to be dead at this stage. I asked Dr. Földes if he wanted to come with me, but he was too frightened and he stayed.

The corporal was getting nervous. It was becoming dark and the workers were still not back from their trench digging. We wondered if they weren't in some trouble, being shot or whatever. It was almost 9 at night when they returned and all 11 came to the room. What with no decent lights other than candles, the steam of a watery meal being cooked, the cooks and all the people who were assembling to be taken out of the camp, it was a scene reminiscent of Dante's Inferno and it was not surprising that I did not notice an extra man until he squeezed my hand and asked me if I have heard of Mother lately. It was my Father, very much alive, emotionally drained from waiting all afternoon beside the shot man until he died and then burying him.

Within a short time we formed ourselves into two rows and walked away from the camp. After about an hours walk we met a peasant on a cart and Father and I and the Corporal got on to the cart. Father had to hold both of us in case we fall off the bouncing unsprung cart. I was becoming delirious and running a high temperature once again. I remember dreaming about becoming a Swiss citizen and returning to Champery.

On our way to Gödöllö we met two young Gendarmes who had the man, who escaped his execution that afternoon in chains, taking him back to the camp. The gendarmes did not believe his story of killings and decided to take him back to the camp from where he must have escaped. We explained to them that it is all true. Even they were shocked, took the chains off the man and literally gave him to us. He came with us eventually to Budapest, and after being "executed" once again and his body pushed into the partly iced over Danube, he was finally killed when a Russian truck run over him!

We got to the place where we left Petö, Lászlo and the others from the camps and found no trace of them. It was obvious that they were caught. We wasted no time to get away ourselves and we marched towards where our Company was.

We stopped about halfway in a village and went to the courtyard of a pub in the hope that they will be able to feed us. While we were there a member of our own Company arrived with his escort. He was in Budapest and while there he collected some mail for his comrades in 701/101. There was a letter for me from Mother telling me that she heard that Father might be at a place called Valkó and that she got for all of us Swiss consular protection papers, a certified copy of which she enclosed.

I must confess that both Father and I cried. Not only did we find out that Mother was alright, but it was a tremendous feeling for us to know that somebody was still thinking of us and cares. It might sound stupid, but this is how we felt then.

We continued on and the news of our approaching the farm where the Company was billeted preceded us. There were comrades coming down the hill to meet us and help us back to where we started from three days ago. Not having slept more than two or three hours during the three nights we were away, made us almost incapable and while the corporal and I were most concerned about the loss of Petö and Lászlo and their group, we could not properly describe what the situation was. Stephen Petö's young brother, who was in our Company was silently crying, knowing that he lost his father and brother at the same time.

My Father was alert enough to go into conference with Bocsor, Kövári, Kelemen and some of the others and they came to the conclusion that we should move back to Budapest as soon as possible. The Company started to pack up and when I awoke from my stupor that afternoon I was told that we are going to Budapest.

Just as we were called to assembly our friends including Petö and Lászlo turned up. They were indeed caught, but talked themselves out of trouble, were released and they returned to the shed to await the Corporal and me, not knowing that we were there already and left without them. They assumed that we had some sort of calamity and having waited for us for an extra day, gave us up for lost and made their own way back to the Company.

Once again we travelled overnight, my fourth night on the hoof in a row, and arrived back to Budapest and our home on 5th November 1944. It was my parents' 26th wedding anniversary and never has my Mother received a greater surprise present than the one I brought her on that morning. Here were two of her family returning from their separate places of captivity and returning together. Another one of those miracles, that kept on happening daily and hourly those days.

In spite of our Swiss Protected status, Father and I could not feel safe in the flat. We knew that in spite of that piece of paper, we are not only at the mercy of the Arrow Cross thugs, but also that being men we had to serve or appear to serve somewhere.

The 701/101 Company, on arrival to Budapest, dispersed for the individual members to go home to find or not to find their families. Once again it was arranged that we should meet and some of us made it at the appointed time and place. Some were missing, having been picked up. Those of us who made it to the meeting place were all keen to get back into service once again, finding it safer to "belong". It was not easy. Once again no one wanted us.

Lieutenant Bocsor and Father had some discussions and I was called in to see if I wanted to join Bocsor who was living with Baron Tornyai whose full name was Tornyai-Schwartzenberger. He was a fat bloke, well known throughout the bohemian coffee society of Budapest and he was married to an actress, whose father was the most Hungarian of Hungarian actors: Mr Kálmán Rózsavölgyi, who was married to a Jewish lady, and whose half-Jewish daughter was the Baroness.

The Baron invited Bocsor to stay with them and thus he had a permanent Army officer escort. In any case he lived in the safest flat in the whole of Budapest, because no Arrow Cross member could conceive that the famous Rózsavölgyi was even remotely connected to anything not 101 % Aryan.

Bocsor in turn invited Kövári, Kelemen and after some prompting by Father, me to stay with them in the Baron's flat. We accepted and I left our flat to move in with the Baron and all the other multitude. Father left about the same time, being picked up by one of his old customers, vitéz Baskay Gyula, who was a largish land owner and a Member of the Upper House, a very exalted position.

Baskay was a gentleman of the old school. I did not know him well, because he was regarded as a very important person and as such I was never in a position to talk to him if I saw him in Father's office. When the problems became really bad after the German occupation in March, he contacted Father and offered his help. When he heard of Father having been arrested he came and offered his help to Mother and me.

This was quite surprising, because Baskay was not regarded by Father as anything but a customer, a member of the gentry and just one of the many land owners who were civil to a lowly supplier of agricultural and hardware requisites to the farms owned by the Church and the landed gentry. If Father would have been asked to list his 10 customers who could be termed as friends Baskay would not have been included. Father never entered Baskay's home, he was never taken to Baskay's club and Father would not have dared to invite Baskay either to our house or to his club.

Encouraged by Baskay's oft repeated offer to assist, after our return from Valkó, Father rang him and he immediately offered to hide Father in the house he rented in Budapest, after his own home in the country was occupied by the advancing Russians and he became a refugee himself. It was to a house full of his own family and a number of orphaned children, who were cared for in that house, that Baskay now took Father.

One has to realise the risks involved to appreciate what it meant for people like Baskay to act in this manner and what it would have meant for him and his family if his humanitarian action would have been discovered. The risks we took to survive were natural and had nothing to do with either bravery or decency, we had nothing to loose only to gain our life. Those people who took Jews in were interfering in a private matter between God, the Nazis and the Jews, a matter that did not concern them and could get them only trouble and suffering and almost certainly death. Many a times since, I wondered how I would have reacted to being given the choice of minding my own business or acting to be the saviour of some down-trodden person, against whom all the facilities of the State were mobilised. Would I have risked my life and that of my family for a Gipsy or a Kampuchean or a Jew?

As it is, I did risk my life. I lived with the Baron and Co for less than 2 days when I realised that the Baron was less than pleased that I moved in with them. Bocsor asked me if I would go and there was nothing for it but to get out. But where? Kövári thought that he will be able to get me some false identity papers and indeed he equipped me to become "Kálmán István" but this time a member of the regular Army and a Christian one at that. Bocsor went and bought me a soldier's uniform jacket and I exchanged my mountaineering boots for black riding boots. Kelemen had a black pair of officers' riding pants with red stripes from the days when he was an officer in the Reserve, and thus I got together my Army uniform. The fact that it was early winter and I needed an overcoat as well did not worry me, my leather jacket was not only warm, but very army officer like and very swish.

Seeing that I had all my papers and my uniform to match, Kövári and Kelemen asked me to go for another trip and save some other people from camps similar to the ones I visited in search of Father some ten days ago. Being 18 and not having had anywhere else to go, I agreed. I was given to understand that by the time I return with the chaps from the camp, they will have found a safe place for me to go to.

From where, I do not know, but an Opel Blitz army truck was obtained and together with another soldier, who was the driver, we were off towards the West to find some camps and bring back to Budapest some people, whose name I had on the various lists forged by Bocsor and Kövári.

We found the camps and we found the people, which required a lot of luck as the camps were then already on the move towards Austria and Germany. We got some 20 odd people out of two "camps" the localities of which were a field where the people on the march were resting and a school yard respectively. Soon we had them packed in the back of the lorry. We had no difficulty and it was all much too easy to be true. In fact on the afternoon of our second day out we were ready to return to Budapest with our charges, when we were stopped by a few soldiers or Arrow Cross in the semi darkness of the late afternoon.

One of those who stopped us asked for our papers and our driver showed the list to the guards, who ordered him to get out from the driving seat and show the Jews he is transporting. He obeyed and got into the rear of the truck. At the same time, I moved across from the passenger seat into the driver's seat so that I could rev the engine, which was giving us a lot of trouble by not idling properly, probably due to the poor quality fuel.

At this time out of nowhere two officers, with Arrow Cross armbands, brandishing revolvers turned up about 10 meters in front of the truck. In spite of the fact that I could hardly drive and certainly did not know how to drive a lorry, I panicked, selected a gear and took off. One of the officers jumped and escaped, the other one was knocked down by the truck and I felt the bumps as the wheels went over him.

I could not hear the shots which were directed towards us as we went along, but my driver and some of the people who were in the rear have watched as the guards opened fire on us. They did not hit us, either because they were bad shots or because not being able to drive properly the truck was lurching at top speed from side to side.

I drove madly for at least 5 kilometres, before I managed to land the truck in a ditch. It was only then that I took stock and found that my driver was, luckily for him, on the truck and that none of the shots hurt anybody. They also confirmed seeing the body of the officer, who was probably killed by me, but we had no sympathy for him.

The truck was pushed and driven out of the ditch in a matter of minutes and we were on our way to Budapest, this time with the driver at the wheel. As we approached the City, some of us thought it to be good sense to abandon the truck, just in case they were looking for us. The suggestion was not supported by the driver who was hoping to make more trips in the future, but finally we got onto a tram, where the driver and I guarded our charges and escorted them to the courtyard of what we hoped will be a safe house. By that time I was well aware of the fact that the soldier was not very friendly with me for being instrumental in his loosing his beloved truck and I left him and the others as soon as possible.

I went off to the flat of the Baron and his crowd, to find that Kövári and Kelemen were also told to go during my absence. Bocsor was still there and it was him who told me the Váci ut address of a timber yard not too far from there, where Kövári, Kelemen and some dozens of others moved to live. It was getting late, but almost as if I wanted to test my new found identity and to show off my uniform, I decided to join them, so I took off.

Sure enough, on the way I was stopped by an Army patrol, who accepted my papers, wished me good night and I completed my trip to the timber yard, where I was to spend the next week or two.

 

 

SLEEPING AROUND

The Timber Yard

 

At the timber yard Kövári and Kelemen greeted me in Army uniforms. It seemed that during my short trip they established a brand new army unit, which was a figment of their imagination. They assumed ranks of Lieutenants. It was a great arrangement because in a day or two we were brave and cheeky enough to re-claim our horses and cart from wherever they were being looked after and drive to an Army HQ and ask food for a Company of 250 soldiers.

There was nothing we could do in the timber yard except to await liberation by the Russians. We had a cobbler living there also and we all gave him a hand in exchange for lessons in making slippers. Other than that we were completely bored.

After a while some of us decided to strike a blow for liberty and petrol bombs were made for the purpose of flinging them into German trucks. I am afraid I did no bomb throwing and thus I cannot claim to have been the cause of the defeat of the German Army.

It must be realised that acting to be a Hungarian soldier made it almost impossible for me to get close to houses which were designated to be Jewish and therefore it was not easy for me to visit either Mother or my other relations. The risk was much too great for no practical purpose.

Just the same, we all went out of the timber yard and in to the City to check on our families. I used to go to visit Mother until we decided that she is to move into a house designated to be a "Swiss House" i.e. one in which people who were supposed to have been protected by the Swiss were concentrated. She found a bed in one of these houses and I promised to help her move in.

When I went to collect her to take her she was already on the street, in the company of all the people who remained in the house. There were hundreds of old, women and children lined up in columns of 6, holding their few belongings in briefcases and bundles, guarded by armed and jackbooted Arrow Cross youth. There was nothing I could do but walk past her hoping that she will ignore me. She did, and I followed them from a distance to see where they are being taken.

It turned out that they were not going far, the Arrow Cross having established their second Ghetto not far from the house we used to live in. The streets were boarded up and small gates were available for people to move in and out, provided they have the correct papers. It was impossible to get through any other way. Within this area, referred to as the Protected or International Ghetto, there were houses set aside for the Swiss protected, the Swede protected, those protected by the Vatican, etc. There were even some neutral South American banana republics whose honorary consuls issued "passports".

It all started with Raoul Wallenberg, a Councellor at the Svedish Consulate, who came to Budapest for the express purpose of saving as many persecuted Jews as he could. His idea was then copied by others. In some cases the governments of the countries issuing the protection papers did not even know that their consuls have done so. In fact some "consuls" set themselves up as consuls and had no real connection with the country they were representing. Not surprisingly the value of being "protected" was diminishing in direct proportion to the proliferation of the various papers. The only really worth while protection was afforded by Raoul Wallenberg personally, who rushed to the rescue of his Swedish protected "citizens" and who has daily saved the lives of those whom he provided with papers.

He risked his own life arguing and fighting the German SS and especially the Arrow Cross gangs, the latter being especially trigger happy and completely irresponsible. It must be added that Wallenberg would issue passports to all and sundry, in the embassy or on the run to anyone who required protection. He was a real hero, - he fought without weapons, without even a belief in God or religion, simply because he was human. He paid for it all, loosing his freedom and his life. He must never be forgotten.

         

Father was quite far away from the City on the Buda side of Budapest. In the house where he lived, Baskay found a small space under a staircase, without window or a door and it was there that Father lived for some weeks. Baskay looked after him totally, even emptying the chamber pot for him and helping him out for his nightly walk in the garden.

The public telephones in the City still worked and I used to ring Baskay enquiring about Father and sending him messages about Mother and myself until one day when speaking to him, Baskay told me that I must come and collect Uncle Joseph soon, because he has to leave now that some German officers were billeted in the same house.

I had to move Mother from her Swiss House also. There were rumours that the Germans will not respect the protection arrangement and we heard that the Arrow Cross have constantly taken people from protected houses to the banks of the Danube and shot them into the river. If they did not die by having been shot they froze to death in the river which was full of ice floes, soon to freeze over completely.

My biggest problem was therefore to find safe places for both Mother and Father and quick. In my search I went to visit some acquaintances or relations of my Mother's stepbrother's wife's mother and sister, who have taken half a flat under a false identity and lived as if they were Aryans. However, just when I was visiting them two policemen arrived and wanted to take the women, saying that they were denounced as being Jews. I started arguing and after a while they believed me when I explained to them that if they would be Jewish they certainly would not have me visiting them. That I could convince these policemen demonstrates the intelligence of these servants of the State.

The two ladies were frightened out of their wits and they begged me not to leave and thus I stayed overnight. Their fright was twofold, first they got a shock when I arrived, due to my attire, which by then consisted not only of the riding boots, black trousers with red stripe, army jacket and leather coat, but also a special army cap showing that I was a member of the field gendarmes, with a metal head and cross bone insignia as worn by the SS. I also became a corporal, since my latest false papers were better suited to a corporal than to a private. On my belt I wore an automatic pistol, which I purchased on the black market from a soldier.

I left them in the morning and went back to the timber yard. The cobbler was the only one left, all the others were gone. In the middle of the night the timber yard was surrounded and everybody was arrested, or so I was told. In actual fact, Kövári and Kelemen got away with two or three of the others, who were sleeping in the office of the timber yard and not in the shed. They jumped out through a side window and ran.

I felt rather lonely. My parents required my help I could not give them and I had nowhere to go, nobody to turn to. I dropped my bundle, - I was convinced that for us it was the end of the road.

 

SLEEPING AROUND

Going to Bed.

 

I decided to go to a cinema and afterwards, to boost my moral I had my boots cleaned by an old man outside the National Theatre. For want of something to talk about I asked him where he lived and he told me that he lives not far from there and is a "bed-goer". The only way to describe what a "bed-goer" is to say, that those people who were quite low down the scale and could not afford to rent a room or even share one, rented just a bed and thus were termed "bed-goers" i.e. they went to the place only to go to bed. There were bed-goers renting the bed during the night, while others rented the same bed during the day.

I asked the shoe cleaner if there were any vacancies where he rented a bed and he told me that he doubts it, but I should enquire. He asked me why I would want to bed-go, and I explained to him that my army pass only gives me a few days and of course I cannot afford anything better.

Off I went to the address he gave me and having told Mrs Szabó that I was on furlough from the front, the little fat old lady accepted me as suitable for one of her ten beds which were let by both day and night. Indeed, while we were talking in the kitchen I could see the room where the beds were and some of them were occupied. In total there were 12 beds, because both her and her son slept with the paying guests.

I paid her a deposit for my next nights' lodgings and went back to the timber yard to collect my belongings, then to another cinema, after which it was reasonable for me to arrive back at Mrs Szabó's place and bed down. I met some of my bed mates, the butcher from Transylvania being the most remarkable amongst them. There was also a young refugee couple, who paid for two beds but used one only and constantly. The street cleaner of shoes greeted me as a long lost friend, which gave me a status amongst these people. I can also remember a young apprentice who has lived with Mrs. Szabó for 4 years.

Another interesting person was one of those who rented a bed for day time sleeping and who told us one morning that she is a prostitute during the nights and therefore has to sleep during the day. The butcher was quite interested in a professional liaison with the young lady, and made an offer which was refused, with the excuse that if her pimp hears about her taking on clients during the day, she will be in trouble. The butcher thereupon offered her meat instead of money, but surprisingly this was also refused. I recognised the woman for what she really was: a Jewess whose cover story was the bit about being a pro. Heaven knows what her cover story was in another place where she must have spent her nights sleeping.

This was a period when everybody legitimate was prepared to tell their history, their adventures, their background and the butcher was no exception. So I heard where he came from originally, how he and his wife escaped from their Town in Transylvania, how they travelled until they got separated and how he got into Budapest. He told me how he went to the Refugee Registration Centre and how they sent him to the police station to register first and how he then had to return to the theatre where the Refugee Registration Office was set up.

I asked him all the questions I could, so that I became familiar with the sort of questions I may be asked and next morning I set out to get a set of absolutely genuine original false papers for my Mother.

My very first step was visiting a men's wear shop to purchase a walking stick, because for that day onwards I was to be a wounded soldier during the day, but unwounded when arriving as a bed-goer at Mrs. Szabó's place. In the course of the next 10 days or so, I had to hide my walking stick or throw it away and thus had to purchase several sets, always from the same shop. The shop assistant couldn't understand why I am buying all the walking sticks and finally asked me. In reply I told him that I work in a field hospital and I am buying this for my comrades.

My first trip with my stick was to a police station where I registered my Mother, as a refugee from the only Transylvanian town she ever visited, Nagyvárad. On my way to the station, I picked a house, memorised the number and street and this was to be where my Mother was supposed to live. I was more embarrassed than surprised when the policeman noticed the address and asked me whether my Mother rents a room from Mrs X or Mrs Y and of course I did not know if it is a trick question or what.

          "Has she blond hair or black?" asked the man.

          "I think it is blond," said I.

          "Well, it is Mrs. Y than and you better tell your Mother to lock everything away, because she pinches everything that is not nailed down."

I got Mother's police registration and got the hell out of that police station as fast as I could.

Next stop was the Liszt Concert Theatre where long queues of refugees were waiting to be registered as refugees. Unless you had a full set of regular papers, without obtaining refugee status one could get no ration cards and what was more important, if you were registered as a refugee you could claim that you lost your documents and thus the need to have identity papers and papers to prove one's racial purity was alleviated. In fact there could have been no more complete documentation available to any Jew who went underground than a set of Refugee Identification papers.

To jump the queue I became the "Wounded Soldier" and due to my acting ability I was ushered past the crowds up the steps. My Mother's assumed name, Ilona Kálmán was showing little imagination on my part and it is typical that almost everybody who took false papers used his or her own name. There must be a psychological explanation for this.

The clerks interviewing the refugees were sitting at their trestle tables arranged according to the alphabet and thus I was interviewed by the man looking after names commencing with the letter "K". He soon gave me the almost priceless piece of paper proving that Mrs Kálmán is a refugee from Transylvania and my next aim was to hobble down the many steps of the Theatre and get past the real refugees, who were spending their days in badly organised queues for papers, rations, financial help, clothing and accommodation and therefore less than kind to people who jumped queues.

After the nervous strain of getting past the police, the refugee authorities and the refugees, getting the ration cards from the Food Office was easy. My next problem was where Mother could stay with her newly won refugee status and how to get her out and away from the Swiss House.

I cannot now remember, how it came about that I met Zsuzska Reszeli. She must have been somebody's maid or cleaning woman, and somebody must have suggested to me that I speak to her. I remember sitting with Mrs Reszeli and her daughter Csöpi and discussing my Mother who was a refugee from Transylvania. I knew that this was not true and so did they, we were going through an elaborate ritual of trying not to endanger their life.

Csöpi was 18 and she was a "little person". Her height was that of a 3 year old, her head may have been large for her body, she was not a true "Lilliputian" whose every feature was a scaled down version. Thus Csöpi was not very attractive to look at, but as soon as she opened her mouth and started to talk her gentle nature, her uneducated intelligence and her interest in everything around her, gave her an aura which made everybody to like her on sight. (Photo shows Csöpi with a fox in 1946.)

They did not ask too many questions and there was no interest in discussing money matters. It was obvious that my Mother will pay for her keep and it was clear that if my Mother needed a home they will gladly provide it in their two roomed flat in the centre of Budapest.

I could not send any messages to Mother and had to get in the "International" Ghetto compound to bring her out. I went to reconnoitre and found guards at every entrance. I was devoid of ideas on how to get in there and even less ideas on how I could get out should I succeed in getting in. I left without attempting anything stupid.

Late afternoon and in the semi-darkness of late autumn I got back to see if I could get into the Ghetto. The situation was not different and there were guards to be seen at every street corner, where obstructions were acting as gates. I noticed one area where a "gate" was not manned. I was through that gate like a shot and once inside the Ghetto I started to run. I heard shouting but I was not likely to stop and argue with an armed Nazi guard.

I did not know which house Mother was in and had to take pot luck of running into the house most likely to be the correct one. The gate of the multi story building was open and beyond it a milling crowd who were surprised and terrified to see a soldier rushing in and running up the steps. I enquired what number that house was and found that I was in the right house. I rang the bell at the door of a flat and it was opened by one of Hungary's best known comedians, Dénes Oszkár, then married to George Schusztek's future wife, Bársony Rózsi, who was even more famous than her husband. He did not know Mother, but was not going to give me more information than was absolutely necessary, after all he also must have thought that I am a Nazi myself. He certainly looked scarred stiff. In the background I had a glimpse of the actress hiding around the corner of the entrance hall.

I continued my search and finally found Mother in an overcrowded flat on one of the upper floors. I undressed in a hurry and got myself into a bed on the floor, hiding my clothing under the mattress. It was from there that I watched the Arrow Cross guards who came in soon after, looking for the soldier who was observed to run into the house.

The guards left and Mother and I were without many ideas of what to do next. Finally, I realised that in spite of the terror of being frightened into total inactivity something has to be done whatever risks, so I dressed, got Mother to put her bundle on her shoulder and quite openly and with considerable noise I escorted her out of the house and towards a gate different from the one I sneaked through.

I was asked where I was going and I said that I am taking the old bitch to headquarters for interrogation. Mother sniffled as if she would be petrified, which of course she was. We were allowed to go and we went our way. After a walk of 15 - 20 minutes we arrived at the house where on the third floor the Reszeli's lived. It was very late at night, but they let us in and made us welcome.

I stayed with Mother overnight and it was on this occasion that I almost kicked her out of the window. My riding boots were quite tight for me and it was almost impossible for me take them off on my own. There is an old established way of pulling off boots and part of the exercise is for the person pulling the boot to hold the boot between the knees while being pushed away with the other foot. Mother's hands slipped as I was pushing her behind and she went flying with her head towards the low window. I dived after her and we collapsed in a heap, laughing until our laugh turned into crying.

In the mean time I was searching for a place for Father who had to move from the Baskay's place. Once again I cannot remember who suggested it, but I was given the name and address of a Jewish lady, who has taken refuge with one of her girl friends. I went to see them, but they already had someone else, a Jewess who spent years in prison as an active Communist, to come and live with them. However, the Gentile lady suggested that she might make some enquiries from her next door neighbour who ran an unregistered brothel in the flat next door. After a few minutes she came back and I was introduced to Frau Eidam, an Austrian lady of about 62 years, tall, well dressed and speaking atrocious Hungarian. In a few minutes she accepted my Father as a lodger and showed me the empty maid's room where Father was to live.

The next problem was Father's cover story. I decided that the refugee lurk might be the easiest to arrange. So I went through the performance again, first a visit to the police, then back to the Refugee Registration, where I faced the problem of being recognised of having been there earlier. I was lucky, I had no problems, in spite of the fact that for Father's papers I had to go to the same desk as before. Nevertheless, when obtaining his Food Ration Cards I visited a different Food Office to the one which issued Mother's coupons.

I contacted Baskay and we arranged to meet near the Royal Palace. Father and Baskay were already there when I arrived and were quite nervous. The area was full of German soldiers, SS and Army officers with Arrow Cross armbands. I was nervous also, but cheeky enough to greet every German with a very correct Heil Hitler. Baskay was impressed, but Father was not and the German soldiers probably thought that I am a bloody Nazi, but returned my greetings with a simple salute.

 

SLEEPING AROUND

The Brothel

 

I took Father to the brothel and introduced him to Frau Eidam, who probably knew exactly why somebody like him wishes to take up residence in the maid's room off the kitchen in a brothel. However, she displayed the same professional discretion as would be expected if he would have visited the brothel instead of taking up residence there and she never asked any questions then or any other time. I left them and went back to see how Mother is going and then back to my bed-going bed at Mrs Szabó.

The Transylvanian butcher was still going out into the country by tram in the morning, buying a pig, butchering it and bringing it back in a huge bag and selling it off the kitchen table of Mrs. Szabó. I usually bought some meat for my "comrades on the front" but delivered them to either Mother or Father. The butcher and I were good friends, so much so that he invited me to become his partner and travel with him to buy and butcher pigs. I declined.

My official cover was that I was serving in a Company in the front line just east of Budapest and I was supposed to be always on my way either to the front or as a courier back to my officers at an Army headquarters near to Mrs Szabó's place.

However sometimes my story was that I was injured and while I could show my blood poison scar on my wrist, which was well healed in spite of my trying to keep it as a wound by frequent scratching, my limp was more demonstratable as an injury, but would have carried no weight if subjected to medical scrutiny.

It would not have been healthy to be detained and investigated, especially not if the Arrow Cross or the Army was to have caught you. The penalty for desertion was immediate hanging and many were the soldiers whose body could be seen, hanging from lamp posts in the City, sporting blackboards or pieces of paper declaring "I was a deserter" or "This is what deserters deserve". Of course this did not make you less of a deserter but it made you more desperate and more careful.

Nevertheless it was impossible to move on the street and not be stopped by some organisation, who wanted to know your right of being on the street. I was stopped almost daily and it was a nerve racking experience to be checked for your papers.

On one occasion it was obvious to me that those who looked at my papers had their suspicion, because they made me stand in an area guarded by one of them and they kept my papers. Understandably I was anxious and after a while decided that I cannot loose by becoming aggressive. I had my stick on me and started to shout at the men, punctuating my remarks by waving and knocking my stick against the ground:

"It is ridiculous to get one miserable day's leave and wasting it here, waiting for an officer!"

"Is that the treatment we wounded soldiers deserve?"

I made so much noise that they had another look at my papers, handed them over to me and let me go.

It is interesting to recall that a new relationship developed between me and my parents and especially Father. Whereas he used to be completely in charge, he now allowed all decisions to be made by me and although he had an opinion on what he or I should do, he never forced his opinion, in case it turns out to be the wrong one and he needs to blame himself for a tragedy. Generally, he agreed with all what was done and decided by me, who did not possess the wisdom or caution of trying to stay responsible. Indeed, if I would have acted with less bravado and more sense, if decisions would have been taken by me with more caution and without what in retrospect seem enormous risks, I would have had to be completely inactive. Undoubtedly, my parents' chances of survival would have been worse.

Now that I had my parents settled it was time for me to have a few of my own problems. Mrs Szabó warned me one night that two gendarmes who were refugees themselves and were living next flat made enquiries about me while I was out. I did not sleep very well that night and in the morning nice and early I dressed and quietly left the flat.

The building was a typical European housing settlement type, built around 1900. There were 4 floors and they were built around a courtyard. Each of the small flats had their entrance from the landings which were, as if they would have been balconies, arranged around the courtyard. If all the people living in the flats would have stood in front of their doors on the landings, any person in the courtyard could have addressed all the inhabitants.

This time I was hoping to leave quietly through the staircase which was also open to anybody to see from almost any part of the landing. As I got down to the first floor level I heard shouting and saw a gendarme in uniform standing on top ordering me to stop. I doubted the wisdom of running across the courtyard, because they had rifles and I had no ways of taking cover. However, my choices were limited.

I run out on to the road, where the tramlines were in the centre and saw a tram approaching from the right. As it got close I jumped up the moving tram's foot plate. The driver shouted at me to get off and when I did not, brought the tram to a stop. I finally jumped off. Just then another tram was approaching from the opposite direction. This time I jumped on to it from the centre and in the rear so that the driver shouldn't see me. Hanging on to the hand rail this tram bore me towards the house from where I just rushed and as we travelled past it I could see the two gendarmes just stopping a car and going off in hot pursuit of the tram from which I was expelled. Had I not been told to get off the first tram they would have caught up with me.

I went to Mother and told her that I need to find somewhere else to live. She suggested that perhaps I could stay a night with her and I agreed. Next day, I was approached by Csöpi, who quietly told me that they overheard me telling my Mother about my problems and if I want to stay there, I should feel free to do so.

One has to realise that neither Csöpi nor her mother had any sort of inkling that we might reward them after the war, it was just never discussed. They accepted that we had more than they had and that we contributed to our upkeep by buying food and sharing it with them or giving them money so that they may buy something, if available, which they would share with us. Neither were they religious nor did they have any political affiliations or feelings towards communists or Nazis. They were just human beings, uneducated but bright, poor but happy, who realised that we were in need of their help and found it absolutely natural for them to give that help in the purest fashion.

After being there for a day or so it became obvious to Zanyu, as Mrs. Reszeli was called, that I left behind all my belongings at Mrs. Szabó and she volunteered to go and get it. I had misgivings about this because amongst my few items of clothing there were false papers which were awaiting to be filled in with names, etc. I imagined that if the gendarmes found those papers they will await me when I pick it up or else they will follow the person who picks up my luggage for me. I warned her of the danger she risks.

Zanyu did not listen to me, she said that I have nothing to fear and went off to collect my bundle. Causing us to worry for her safety, she did not come back for many hours, but when she did, she told us that the delay was due to her spending a lot of time travelling from one place to another and making sure that nobody is following her.

She also brought Mrs. Szabó's regards to me and her warning to me that I should not return. The gendarmes called on her again and told her to let them know if I should come back. She promised to do so.

Every now and then I visited Father, who has now arranged with Frau Eidam the payment of 1 gold coin per day, always provided she does not allow any of her girls to work there. I never found out if Father did not want the temptation of the girls, or if he was disturbed by the visitors who rang the door bell at all hours of the day and night. Frau Eidam kept her word only during the night, but she could not refuse to admit any girls visiting her, and if someone called while a girl was there, well she couldn't really refuse the extra money. It would not have been fair to either the girl or the men.

I must say that I never saw any, except one of Frau Eidam's girls until after the Russians came, although we heard them visiting Frau Eidam, bringing her food, or just coming for a gossip. She always shared with us whatever they brought. There was another tenant, the Romanian, who was also sharing the food with us and we could have been one happy family, but we were not. It was not their fault.

Frau Eidam was a non-stop teller of her past experiences. When she was a young prostitute in Vienna she was obviously a multi faceted specialist because her exploits were certainly out of the ordinary. She was telling her stories to us proudly, making sure that we realised that she excelled in her profession.

Her auto-biography would make better reading than my story.

One day while going to Mother, I accidentally met Kövári. He was in uniform and lived in a similar fashion to me. Kelemen was in the Ghetto, together with Kövári's girlfriend and her Mother. When he heard that I got refugee papers for my parents he asked me to get some for him, his girlfriend and Kelemen also. I promised to do so and after we parted, remembered that both their names started with "K".

By the time I realised this, I was sorry that I promised to have a go at getting the papers as I was becoming nervous about returning there again and especially to the same desk. Still, I promised and in any case, Kövári got me my papers and I have to try for the sake of reciprocating.

In spite of my forebodings I got the papers without any problems. The official in charge of refugees whose name starts with a "K" was not the same I met on the previous two occasions. I made Kövári into my cousin and a married man, his girl friend became his wife. Kelemen was another cousin and when the fellow behind the desk asked why they have different names I tell him that they and I are all of German origin, but we changed our names to sound Hungarian. No trouble at the police stations either, I went to two of them, nowhere near to each other. There were so many refugees by now that getting the papers was surprisingly easy.

Next day I met Kövári, who was delighted to get the papers. It was the last time I ever saw him. Somehow he managed to get Kelemen out of the Ghetto, but has difficulty in arranging his fiancee's escape. Finally, he and Kelemen decided to go into the Ghetto and bring her out. On the way in they are stopped and taken to an Arrow Cross House where they were tortured until they admitted that they were Jews and that their papers were obtained illegally. They are taken down the street and in front of the Hotel Royal both of them get a bullet in the back of their neck, in full view of passers bye in one of the main boulevards of Budapest.

Kövári died instantly, but Kelemen was picked up by strangers and was still alive. The bullet entered the back of his neck, through his mouth, shattered his teeth, damaged his throat and chin, but he was still alive. He was taken to a hospital, where he stayed until liberated. I met him after the war, when he was happy but still a mess. He warned me that Kövári's fiancee blames me for his death. Neither Kelemen nor I could understand why. Next time I met him, after a number of operations he was almost perfectly well.

Another sad case is that of a school mate of mine. I met him one day on my way to Mother and I told him what my cover story is. I also told him that I am running out of my supply of false papers and he suggests that I meet him later that evening in a coffeehouse situated at "Freedom Square". For some reason I cannot make it, but pass through Freedom Square next morning. As I approach the large square, I realise that something is going on and when I see soldiers with Arrow Cross armbands directing people from all approaches to the square towards the centre I realise that there are people hanging from trees.

One of them was my school friend, the others were the boys I was supposed to meet. After the war I meet his mother, who tells me that she hasn't heard from him for months, but that she has heard from others that he is in Germany. Of course I was too much of a coward to tell her that I saw her dead son months ago.

I also had more pleasant meetings with people I knew. One day I was on a crowded tram when two armed Arrow Cross men and a girl in Arrow Cross uniform (green shirt, everything else black) boarded the tram. I recognised the girl and she smiled at me, but said nothing. Buci Kovarcz was the daughter of one of the most infamous Nazis, who became a Minister and eventually was tried and executed for the murder of thousands of Jews.

I knew her from my holiday at Lake Balaton, when she and I were going out a few times. After a while I broke off the relationship as it was against the law for a Jew to have sexual relations with a Gentile woman, and even 'though there was no question of anything but a few kisses and a bit of groping around, I did not even wish to be subjected to the suspicion of it.

After the war I read in a newspaper that she was in prison awaiting trial. I am afraid I did not try and help her. Happily for my conscience I read soon afterwards that both her and her mother were released and her trial was abandoned.

The other person I met was a guy who went to the same class as I did. He was a junior officer in the army but wore an Arrow Cross armband. He stopped me on the street and interrogated me on why I am wearing army uniform when I am a Jew, etc. I asked him if he is going to report me or cause my arrest. He was quite hurt: how could he betray a friend of his? I must say that I never regarded him as a friend but on that day under the circumstances I was very happy to be a friend of his.

When later he was attacked in school, where we returned after it was all over, I spoke up for him and he came to no harm. Similarly I spoke up for one of our teachers, who I knew helped a class mate of mine, who disappeared later and could not speak for him.

I did not speak up for another teacher of mine, who used to come to our home to teach me and who arrived the day after the house where we lived was evacuated. He took over our flat and when the house was almost destroyed, removed everything of value, including even my father's dinner suit, he could find. To his bad luck we survived and Father and I were tactless enough to ask that our belongings should be returned.

I had to move around a lot. I lived with Father in the brothel for 3 or 4 days and then moved to Mother for a similar period of time. They were living about 6 kilometres apart, Father on the outskirts and Mother in the centre of Budapest. To go from one to the other I would have had to go through one of the two Ghettos, and since that was neither possible nor desirable the distance I had to walk from one to the other became considerably more than 6 kilometres.

The war was going on every where but in Hungary, or so it seemed. In October the Russians were 80 kilometres from Budapest, in November and December there was no change, they were just as far as ever. How long are we likely to last without any action around us? The Germans took all the Jews from the country, then the Arrow Cross took all the men from Budapest and the old men and the women and children are now being starved to death in the Ghettos. If that is not enough they are going into the houses and dragging out people for torture and to shoot them into the Danube. There is no food to be bought any more, not even for the Gentiles, even they live on the food they stockpiled, - how long can the Jews last without anything?

Even if Wallenberg could get all the food he needs to distribute it is impossible for him to do so. There were some 100,000 Jews to feed, an impossible task. Thus it is natural for the dead to be placed in front of the houses to be collected and buried in the parks outside the Ghetto. There is nothing green in Ghettos.

For us it is not that bad, as yet. Mrs. Eidam still finds the odd thing and shares it with us. Csöpi and Zanyu also get a few things and while we cannot say that we eat enough, we are surviving and will cope with it all until after liberation.

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

Frau Eidam had another lodger, who claimed to be a Romanian. He spoke perfect Hungarian, which was not suspicious as a lot of Hungarians lived under Romanian rule. However it was interesting to us that a member of the Romanian Legation should live in a brothel. That was surprising even at that time at that place. If that was not enough for us to have our suspicions, he was said to be engaged to a member of the Hungarian Gentry, a young lady who lodged in the Hotel Bristol, one of the best hotels in Budapest, yet he accepted with gusto the invitation Frau Eidam gave him and us to attend dinner on Christmas Eve. Not that we discussed our suspicions with anybody.

Father and I certainly did not have any other engagements for Holy Night and we sat down in Frau Eidam's bedroom for dinner. No sooner did we start when the fireworks started also. It appeared as if suddenly hundreds of guns commenced the bombardment of Budapest, which was an understatement. There were over 1000 cannons and Stalin Organs lined up and additionally over 5000 mortars to pound Budapest into submission.

We did not know what a Stalin Organ was, but got to know and respect them: they were a series of truck mounted rockets, each truck letting off 16 of these rockets in a matter of 16 seconds, after which they were re-loaded and fired again. When hundreds of these rockets were flying above us and landing, you had no doubt that the Russians meant business.

Father and I hardly dared to look at each other in case we burst out laughing or otherwise showing our pleasure in hearing that the fight for Budapest finally commenced. There was never any doubt as to its outcome and we never allowed ourselves the luxury of having any doubt as to whether we shall be around to see victory. In spite of seeing the starving, the murdered, the executed, - all that was happening to people who had bad luck, not us. We were feeling absolutely invincible and I can say that I never had any doubts that I will not perish. However, I was always hopeful that if I do have to go I will have a chance to take one or more of our enemies along with me.

Thus the tremendous amount of cannon, rocket and mortar fire which was to be heard was going to hurt only the Germans and the Arrow Cross, never Father, Mother or me. It made us not frightened, but happy to hear it and to know that deliverance cannot be far away.

Halfway through dinner we had a visitor. It was one of Frau Eidam's girls. Around 18 years old, she was about my age and she brought a couple of bottles of wine for Mrs. Eidam and sat with us while we finished dinner. Afterwards the Romanian and us decided to take down one set of the double glazed windows, so that if a bomb hits us, only one set of the glass should be broken. When we tried to put on the light again, we realised that the electricity supply failed.

We sat there in romantic candle light and with every sip of my wine, I was getting more and more convinced that Father's frequent advice that I should have nothing to do with prostitutes was all wrong. When our visitor decided to go home again she said good bye and asked me to step out into the corridor with her. I wondered and maybe even hoped, that she will now solicit her services. She did nothing of the sort, just said:

"If anything happens and you need a safe place, you and your father can come to me" and gave me her address on a piece of paper. She left before I could even deny that we needed a safe place. I wish I could say that I met her after the war, but I didn't.

We went to our beds or in my case: mattress, quite happy, knowing that it cannot last long now. In actual fact it lasted another 3 weeks, not a long time as such, but an eternity, when you are being shot at and hunted from every direction.

It has taken a few days before we realised, that on Christmas Eve, the Russians completely encircled Budapest and having done so, bypassed it and mounted an offensive towards Vienna. Within Budapest there were still strong German troops, who in accordance with the stupid no-retreat order of Hitler, were left behind and who had no hope other than to become POW's if not killed in the siege. Later there was an attempt by the Germans to break out, but it was repulsed by the Russians and the Germans lost tens of thousands of soldiers for no result.

I stayed with Father for a few days after Christmas and it was extremely cold. There was nothing to heat with and I used to go down to the street to scavenge some timber to burn in our tiny stove in the maid's room. Whenever we lit the fire, Frau Eidam came in to amuse us with her stories of the dirty old men of Vienna and her magnificence in giving them what they paid her for.

Frau Eidam did not know that I used to pinch the insides of her German penny dreadfuls, of which she had hundreds in various book cases and burn them, leaving the covers of the books propped up with matchsticks. It was a nasty trick, but it kept us all, including her, much warmer than anything else I could lay my hands on.

Our Romanian friend stayed in his room some nights, but was visiting his fiancee in the Hotel Bristol some other nights. Luckily for us, he was at home when we had some visitors, a day or two before New Year's Eve.

We were already in bed when the door bell went. It was late night and there was a lull in the cannon fire. We were anxiously listening who the visitor might be. We soon heard the voices of the three Arrow Cross troopers as they announced in the entrance hall of the flat that they came to check the inhabitants of the house. One of them said:

"We are searching for Jews and deserters. Give them up or you'll be shot too."

Our Romanian friend came out of his room and we heard them interrogating him, but he satisfied them. They came in to the kitchen. We heard the clutter of their machine pistols knocking against the kitchen furniture. If they turn left they are in the bathroom, if they turn right, they come into the room where Father is in bed and I occupy a mattress on the floor.

By that time I was on my feet, grabbed my trousers and put them on. Within seconds even my tight boots slide on without any effort. I was in bed wearing my shirt and pullover, so all I need is my pistol. I take it out of its holster, check the safety lever, cock it and stand behind the door, firm in my resolve to let them have it as soon as the door opens.

Father is much too shocked to be able to get out of bed. He whispers that I should jump out through the window, then he suggests that we should give ourselves up. I try to shut him up and I succeed temporarily.

I hear the Arrow Cross men talking just outside the door, there is only a thin veneer between them and me. The Romanian is telling them jokes and they laugh, he invites them to have a drink in his room and they accept. There is quietness again, except Father starts to ask me and himself what will happen to Mother, using the exact same words he will use 36 years later on his deathbed. I open the window lock in case we really have to jump for it and put on my jacket and leather coat. I cannot get Father to move, he is lying in bed, stroking his head, probably praying, paralysed from fear.

Suddenly we hear rifle fire outside on the street. The Arrow Cross trio in the Romanian's room hears it too and they rush out. We hear them on the street, where they find that the shooting was in connection with some Jews who were trying to escape. The Jews were shot at and surrendered. Next day we hear that they were marched down to the Danube and shot into the water.

Here but for an unnamed Romanian[10] and an Austrian brothel keeper would have gone I.

As things quieten down, Frau Eidam comes in to tell us that the Arrow Cross left. We cannot let on that they saved our lives, after all we Kálmáns are perfectly legitimate. But I think that they knew. What they did not know was, that they have done anything extraordinary. I believe that they thought it just as natural for them not to bring the Arrow Cross into our room as it was natural for us that the Arrow Cross wanted to find us so that they can kill us. It appears to me that you can get used to everything, even to being killed.

On the morning of the 31st December 1944 I leave Father to go to Mother for a few days. On my way I sneak into the International Ghetto and the house where my Grandmother is, with her daughter, Irma, son-in-law Paul who is Father's erstwhile partner, grand-daughter Bözsi and great-granddaughter Zsuzsi. I bear gifts: a quarter bottle of brandy, some biscuits and half a loaf of bread and more importantly the news that we are still around and that it cannot last too much longer. I wish them a happy New Year for 1945. I had little risk - it could hardly be an unhappier year than 1944 was.

I will see my relations again in 16 days time.

The Russians were pulverising Budapest. The cannons go non stop all day, except they stop at exactly 11 a.m. and at 3 p.m. the times when their planes take over and instead of being shot at we are bombed. Mother, together with the rest of the legitimate population of Budapest lives in the air raid shelter. Father goes to the shelter once only for a few minutes, but decides to join me and never goes to the cellar ever again. I never once go into an air raid shelter throughout the siege of Budapest or before or after, except once to let Mother know I am going somewhere.

Having seen how the other half lives, I don't have a yearning to sit in the cellar and although one feels rather exposed on the third or even on the first floor of a building when the bombs and rockets start flying, I realise that there is very little difference in being hit in a cellar or on the roof. Consequently I never feel unsafe even when I believe that I am the sole target of all those tonnes of bombs that are being thrown at us.

I arrive to the Reszeli flat and Mother is very happy to hear of Father and the László family. She wants me to come down to the cellar, as also does Csöpi and her Mother. I will not go and I move in to their third floor flat. To quieten their fears I make my bed under their heavy kitchen table which I move under an archway between kitchen and hall.

In the late afternoon of New Year's Eve the aerial bombing stops and we are in for possibly the most concentrated bombardment of WWII. One corner of the flat gets a direct hit and the wisdom of my sleeping under the table is shown, when another direct hit causes the kitchen cupboard to tipple over and onto the area where I would have had the bed.

After the first direct hit on the flat, Csöpi arrives to inspect the damage and insists on staying. She gets the cards out and we play pontoon until midnight, when our mothers arrive from the cellar and we celebrate the arrival of a new and hopefully, happier year, after which I get them to take Csöpi back to the shelter and I finally get into bed. It is then that the flat is hit again, but once again I am completely uninjured, although slightly deaf for a while.

Next morning German troops arrive and set up camp in the court yard of the house. They have a field kitchen there and from then onwards, Csöpi either gets or steals food from the Germans. They are friendly, frightened and far from home. One cannot but feel sorry for them. Not much, just a little bit, - after all we regard every German soldier, rightly or wrongly, as a supporter of Hitler, a gangster and an enemy.

Csöpi spends a lot of time with me. We compose poems, write a diary and make up New Year's cards to give Father, Mother, her Mother etc. There is a man in her Mother's life, but it isn't Csöpi's father, she happens to be illegitimate, as if being a midget wouldn't be enough of a handicap.

There is no doubt that Csöpi has a crush on me. It is not surprising. I would have been the first boy of her age, who bothered to talk with her, I would have been the only one she could steal for, cook for and help. Is it any wonder that she regards me as a friend and probably imagines that I would be more than that if she would not be size of a three year old child.

After spending a few dangerous days with Mother, or more accurately, near Mother I return to Father and Frau Eidam. Nothing changed there either. From now on, I spend 3 or 4 days at one place and a similar period at the other place.

Father always wanted me to become a "Weltreisender" i.e. somebody who travels around the World, - now at least I travel from one safe house to another in a Budapest which is falling apart.

 

 

 

THE SIEGE

         

The siege and bombardment of Budapest was at last something which we all shared in. The Jews were not singled out for special treatment, although we certainly had the handicap of being eligible to die by both Nazi and communist bullets. The search of the Arrow Cross thugs for Jews to plunder, torture and kill, was going on unabated even when the Russians were within hours of entering the City.

The Arrow Cross Party was so extreme that it has been kept underground by Horthy and was ignored by the German Nazis also, until Horthy asked for an armistice. The Germans then called in Szálasi and his madmen and they were armed for the express purpose of arranging the final solution of those Jews who could not be transported to Auschwitz and the other death factories.

There was a "legitimate" Arrow Cross Government with Szálasi, a cashiered major, the new Fuehrer of Hungary.

His Government consisted of all types of psychopaths who personally tortured and killed people, beat children for no reason other than that they were Jews and who spent their days in Government in ensuring that they can get hold of as much material goods as could be stolen from Jews, who were tortured in Party Houses to disclose where their fortunes are hidden.

The Minister of Interior was Kovarcz, the father of the girl I courted at Lake Balaton and he gave official consent and encouragement to murder. The Foreign Minister was 23 year old Baron Kemény, whose first action was to declare war on the USA, thereby prolonging the war by at least one hour, while the Americans found out where the hell Hungary was.

The Arrow Cross Houses were buildings occupied by the Party within a day of their take over and they were used to house Party members and their families. The cellars were used to hold Jews until they could be beaten to confess and give up their hidden belongings and then taken to be killed. Each of the Arrow Cross Houses had favourite places for the extermination of Jews. The location was dependent on where the killings could be carried out with the least inconvenience.

The Arrow Cross House closest to the brothel used the banks of the Danube to shoot the Jews. If properly positioned, the Jew would fall into the river and the body float away, together with the ice floes that were gathering. Eventually the Danube froze over completely and when spring weather caused the river it gave up hundreds of bodies. The amazing thing was that there were a number of people who, having been shot into the frozen river, swam away, climbed out and survived. The man, who was executed at Valkó in November, was shot again in January, swam downstream and even survived the freezing weather. There were many more, including women and children, who injured and half frozen, survived. There were others, who having survived, were seen alive in the water by their murderers and were given no chance the second time.

It might be difficult, but one ought to be able to understand that people can be anti-semitic. Not everybody is perfect and while it is undemocratic, there can be people who do not like the Chinese or prefer their daughter not to marry a Negro. One should be able to understand prejudices in respect of colour, race or religion and while such prejudices cannot be excused they are an accepted part of life and cannot be abolished. But how does one rationalise the anti-semite who wishes to kill a human being just because he is Jewish? Even the Ku-Klux-Klan used alleged crimes by a Negro as an excuse for lynching that particular one.

Behaviour like that of the Germans, who were systematically and with factory like efficiency slaughtered the Jews in exterminations camps, had their origins in anti semitism, but the organisers of the gas chambers, the doctors who conducted the experiments and made the selections must have been maddened by the brain washing they received or were devoid of any humanity. One cannot say that they were "animals" because no animal kills its own species unless for food. 

We were discriminated against and we were looking forward to meeting the "Russki". We were not communists, but that did not enter into our thinking at all. Even if we would have had a feeling about the politics of the Russians or if we would have known about Stalin's concentration camps, we would have still regarded the Russians as our saviours. There is nothing we would not have done to put our arms around our friends and liberators, knowing that they bring us life and liberation from being subjugated and treated worse than any other nation or race ever was.

At the same time, we had to be liberated soon, we could not last much longer. There was no food, and we were wondering if paper will give any nourishment. In a few days time, we shall be reduced to cooking paper, or shoe leather or socks. It is surprising that when you are hungry, there is no other thought than food and your hunger is just a large piece of pain in a body that consists of a large empty stomach.

It was on a food scrounging expedition that Father went towards the eastern areas of Budapest on the 14th January and returned with some little food he was able to find. However, he also told me about seeing some people from a distance with strange fur caps. They were obviously Russians, but neither he, nor I recognised them as such. We probably just ignored it, because subconsciously it was too good to be true.

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