This is a private person’s way of remembering

who perished in the Holocaust.

Our family was very lucky during the War. Most of us lived in Budapest and the Germans and their Hungarian cohorts were running out of time to kill us all. Thus thousands of Jews in Budapest survived. In some cases (like my parents and I were masquerading as non-Jews and we were lucky in not having been challenged) but some others of our relations were killed in Budapest after being found to have been using false papers. However, almost all our relations, who lived outside of Budapest and most of those who were taken to serve in Russia as members of the Hungarian Army forced labour battalions, did not return.

I am only showing those relations whom I knew personally and who were cousins of mine or those of my parents. I estimate that there are some 30 or more of our extended family that died during the Holocaust and whom I am not mentioning.

(Please note that I am using the Hungarian way of family name first and "Christian name" second. Thus Vadasz Eva would have become Eva Vadasz in USA or Australia.)

Vadasz Eva.

She was the only daughter of my mother’s sister. Her parents lived in a small village, where there was no opportunity for her to be educated and therefore she lived with us in Budapest, going home to her family during school holidays, when usually my brother and I also went. Thus she grew up almost as if she would have been our sister and my mother certainly regarded her as the daughter she never had. She stayed in Budapest with us even after she finished school and worked and studied dressmaking. She was just over 21 when regulations declared that she has to return to her home in April 1944, a month after the Germans occupied Hungary. Soon after she returned to the small village of Szollosgyorok, where there were just three Jewish families, namely the Weisz’ and Eibenschutz’, with a total Jewish population of 13 in that village. Of these only 1 man survived.

Around May, Hungarian gendarmes (the same bunch who in 1939 raped the then 15 years old Eibenschutz Zsuzsa, whose family was too petrified to report this to the authorities) arrested all the males, beat and tortured them until they gave up all their valuables and then took them all to a neighboring village where the Jews of the area were held in a Ghetto. From there they were taken to the military barracks of Kaposvar and then entrained and taken to Auschwitz. On the journey quite a few of them died, due to the fact that neither food nor water was given to them in the locked cattle trucks where 80 to 90 people were kept for up to seven days in an area where usually 8 heads of cattle was being transported. In Auschwitz they were classified as to their suitability for work and with the exception of Eva, her mother and the two Eibenschutz girls the rest were useless for work and gassed on arrival. Subsequently, the women who survived the first selection were all transported to the Stutthof (Gstadt) extermination camp, where eventually Eva’s Mother became sick and was gassed. Eva herself caught diphtheria, which she kept secret to avoid being gassed, but she died on 10th December 1944, just one day before her 22^nd birthday. Details of her death came to light in 1994 when inquiries were made through Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem.

They owned one of two shops in Szollosgyorok and had some little land they rented. More generous or hard working people one could not find. Uncle Bandi was always cheerful and loved children generally. There was always a sweet for any kid who came into the shop and there were always people there just to have a gossip and to see who was buying what. The shop and the house was in the same building and their living quarters consisted of one bedroom for them and one smaller one for their daughter and a "clean" room where there were some easy chairs, the telephone and the battery operated radio. Generally speaking the furnishings were minimal and the meals were taken outside the kitchen in an area which was really the central corridor of the house. There was no electricity in the village; because the squire, Count Jankovics believed that electric light will blind people. Water to the house was pumped from the well by the groom who looked after the two horses and helped in the shop and also picked up things from the flour mill or the railways some 6 miles away.

There was a large vegetable garden in the back of the house and also feeding stuff for the domestic animals was grown there. Usually a few pigs, lots of poultry and geese were fattened for slaughter. The family was well liked in the village especially as no one was ever refused credit, so necessary in an economy where most people used bartering and where money was only available after a good harvest. Most of the village inhabitants were peasants who either owned a small piece of land or rented it from the Count, or else worked for him and received their wages in the form of flour, milk, cheese, etc.

Soon after the German occupation in March 1944, the Hungarian Government regulations called for the closing of all Jewish shops and the Vadasz shop was taken away from them. Soon they were taken to the Ghetto at a nearby small township, but not before Mr Vadasz was tortured by the gendarmes to divulge his non-existent fortune. As it happened, my father buried some gold coins behind the house, and we were not surprised that Uncle Bandi gave this gold to the gendarmes. We know from the coachman who told us after the War, that he was seen blue and black from the beating he received at the hands of his torturers. No wonder when Dr Mendele in Auschwitz inspected him, he was selected to be gassed as being unable to work and thus contribute to the German war machine.

Aunt Margit was a quiet gentle lady, - my mother’s younger sister. While assisting in the shop, she was busying herself with sewing and she was known as someone who was always ready to look after the sick in the village. She had very few friends in the village, but everybody was friendly to her due to her kindly nature and charity. She never had a holiday and she visited us in Budapest for the sole purpose of choosing textiles and hardware supplies for the shop.

My mother’s half brother, who lived in Budapest with his wife and his daughter. His son was born after he was called up for forced labour and he died sometime after March 1945, probably in Austria or in the western parts of Hungary, without ever seeing his son. The last news from him came in a postcard from Koszeg. Zoltan was a highly intelligent and very quiet man, who became a friend of mine, in spite of the age difference of 18 years. A convinced socialist, he was often in trouble with the "law" of those days due to his contributions to various magazines with leftish leanings. His poor health enabled him to spend his time in prison hospitals, whenever he was sentenced to a term due to his writings.

About 70 years old when transported from the Nagyvarad (now once again Rumania and called Oradea Mare) ghetto to Auschwitz in 1944, where she would have been gassed within an hour or two, if she survived the cruel journey. She was my maternal grandfather’s sister and was widowed twice, first as a very young wife when her equally young husband was tragically killed and the second time around 1936 when her husband died of cancer.

My mother’s cousin who was deported to Auschwitz from Szekszard with her sister Klari, who survived and returned to us in Budapest in May 1945. (I did not recognize her until she told me who she was.) Blanka, who was about 45 years old at the time, was killed immediately after arriving to Auschwitz, while Klari was chosen to work for the Germans. Klari was my favourite "aunt" and she came to visit us often for supplies for their little haberdashery shop. Both of them were unmarried, although Klari married around 1948 a widower whose wife was killed during the Holocaust, but became a widow soon after.

Laci (Leslie) was my mother’s cousin, but being just 2 years older than I was and after his mother’s death from leukemia, he became a frequent guest in our house and became a very close friend of mine. In the summer of 1943 we spent an unforgettable holiday on Lake Balaton, the last of our summers before the occupation of Hungary by the Germans in March 1944. Soon after we were both called up into the Army, where we became members of the Labour camps. He finished up in the copper mines of Bor in Yugoslavia, where conditions were extremely severe. Many of the inhabitants died in the mines or due to hunger and the famed "fleck typhoid" which was decimating labour camp inhabitants. It is not known if Laci survived Bor or not, suffice to say that hundreds more died after being marched from Bor towards the Austrian horror camp of Mauthausen. He did not return and no one knows what happened to him.

Sign My Guestbook View My Guestbook