Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, Daniela Bajar, and Severo Reynoso, from the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, travelled to Cambridge, MA, to record Dr. Janos Beér’s testimony. Dr. Beér was part of the Schützling Protokoll, a department created by Raoul Wallenberg within the Swedish Legation with the objective of rescuing Schutzpass holders and accompanying them into safe houses. The role of the Schützling Protokoll was instrumental to the success of Raoul Wallenberg’s rescue operation in Budapest, 1944-45.

I was born on February 27, 1923, in Budapest as the only child to my parents Sándor and Gizella Beér. I was born Jewish. My father owned a workshop of business machines. I married my wife Marta Csato on October 27, 1944.The anti-Semitic laws of the prewar period did not particularly affect me. After matriculation, I entered the University of Technical and Economic Sciences in Budapest. In April 1944, I was conscripted into the army’s labor battalion. In August, the battalion was brought to Budapest and was prepared to be sent to Germany. I deserted from the battalion and joined a university squadron which had the secret objective of getting the country out of the war. When the Arrow Cross came to power in October 1944, they disbanded the squadron. Shortly afterwards, in the street, I ran into Tom Veres, a friend whom I knew from our common service in the labor battalion. He told me that he was working at the Swedish Legation as Raul Wallenberg’s photographer. He offered to introduce me to Wallenberg if I were interested in his work of rescuing Swedish protected Jews from the SS and the Arrow Cross. I agreed.

Wallenberg came to Budapest in July 1944 and has issued Swedish Protective Passports (Schutzpass) to Jews who had Swedish connections. The Schutzpass entailed the promise that the holder will be taken to Sweden as soon as the war activities would permit. In the meantime, Schutzpass holders may reside in special safe houses under the protection of the Swedish Legation in Budapest. This has worked until the Arrow Cross came to power in October 1944 and disregarded the agreement with the previous government. Many Schutzpass holders were taken prisoners in Arrow Cross party houses and were killed or prepared for deportation. Raul Wallenberg created a department within the Legation called Schützling Protokoll with the objective of rescuing Schutzpass holders and accompanying them into the safe houses. I was introduced to Wallenberg who accepted me in the Schützling Protokoll.

My first mission, on November 29, was to assist Wallenberg at the Józsefváros Freight Railway Station where men from Jewish labor battalions were put in cattle wagons to be deported. Many of them were known to the Schützling Protokoll to hold Schutzpasses. Wallenberg had permission from the German Embassy to take the holders of Swedish Schutzpasses out of the wagons. Tom Veres and I traveled with Wallenberg in his car to the Railway station. A small group from the legation was already there when we arrived. They had books with the detailed data of Schutzpass holders and a line was formed in front of a desk by people who either had their Schutzpasses with them or have claimed that it was taken from them. Their personal data had to be compared with the Legation’s record before they could be released into the custody of Wallenberg.

Tom Veres had taken photographs from the car with his disguised camera and my duty was to go to the wagons and talk to the people to make sure that everyone who had Swedish protection left the wagons and presented themselves to the examiners who also included Hungarian authorities. By the late afternoon more than one hundred men whose credentials were accepted were selected. Wallenberg arranged for them to be escorted by police to one of the safe Swedish protected houses.

When we got back into his car it occurred to him that the people he rescued have not eaten all day and, instead of calling it a day and going back to the Legation, he asked his driver to head for the safe house to make sure that the group of men will be met by food, a warm soup when they arrive. I should mention that Wallenberg had not eaten either all day; we brought sandwiches but Tom Veres inadvertently sat on Walleberg’s sandwich in the car, but Wallenberg could only be concerned about the people he just rescued. A small event that, for me however, underlined this great man’s humanity.

The next day, we returned to the train station, but this time we were not successful. The SS man in charge accused Wallenberg of having gotten the men under false pretences the previous day and threatened to shoot us if we did not leave immediately. Wallenberg signaled to us and the driver to leave.

In the Schützling Protokoll my colleague was András Szentgyörgyi, a young journalist imaginative and brave, much inspired by Wallenberg. One day, we went to a party house of the Arrow Cross and said we wanted to speak to the man in charge. The headman there asked us why Sweden was so much interested in Jews and not, for example, helping the Veteran’s Hospital in Budapest. He hinted that he wanted some donation to the Hospital for releasing the three Jews on our list. We promised to report this request to the Legation and the persons were freed; we then took them directly to the International Ghetto. I reported this to Wallenberg. He told us that the next time we should give the Arrow Cross a check already signed by him, and fill in the amount needed. I think it was either 500 or 1,000 pengös. There, indeed, was a next time. The Arrow Cross people contacted us that they had people with Swedish papers, and to come and get them, and not to forget to bring along the check for the Veteran’s Hospital.

I was very much impressed by Wallenberg. Tom Veres called him Pimpernel, like the Scarlet Pimpernel in the movie. In fact, he looked similar to the British actor Leslie Howard, who played the Pimpernel role in a pre-war film. Wallenberg was very brave, but not reckless. He knew and appreciated the dangers. There was much solidarity in our group, and we knew we could rely on Wallenberg in case of trouble.

Wallenberg got me a certificate from the Commissioner of the Jewish Ghetto to permit entering and leaving the ghetto within certain hours of the day, as a liaison of the Swedish Legation. During December, I made about five forays in the ghetto to take about 70 people who showed evidence to the authorities of being Schutzpass holders, from the Jewish ghetto to Swedish protected houses. The distance they had to walk from the ghetto was about a couple of miles and they were accompanied by police men for their protection. The Swedish contingent in the International Ghetto numbered approximately 7-10,000 people.

I slept in the Legation building. My wife stayed with friends elsewhere until the end of the year and then moved also to the Legation. As for my parents, they were staying with friends on the outskirts of the city. I continued working with the Schutzling-Protokoll until the arrival of the Russians. On one occasion, when the Russian front moved into the city, a Wehrmacht unit came into the Legation building with machine guns to take up a position. They left after being told that this was diplomatic territory.

In November 1956, my wife and I fled Hungary after Russian tanks crushed the 1956 Hungarian revolution, and eventually settled in the United States. I am a Professor Emeritus of Chemical and Fuel Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On the recommendation of the late Tom Lantos, member of the U.S. Congress, my wife and I have left our documents relating to our connection with Wallenberg, including the mentioned certificate issued by the Commissioner of the Ghetto, to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

Credits:

Recorded by Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, Daniela Bajar and Severo Reynoso & slightly revised per Prof. Beér’s annotations
January 31, 2010

It’s so important that people know about Wallenberg’s courage because persecution does not just happen to Jews. This is happening to other nations now too like in Darfur, Sudan, so we must continue the story of Wallenberg to spread the inspiration and courage to do something about it.

Q: What is your name?
A: My name is Ester Mejer.

Q: What city and country were you born in?
A: Budapest, Hungary.

Q: And who did you live with while growing up? Your parents, siblings…?
A: I lived with my family; my siblings, parents and grandparents lived together.

Q: How many siblings?
A: 11 siblings.

Q: Did you grow up in a Jewish community?
A: Yes.

Q: Did you go to a Jewish school?
A: Yes.

Q: What activities were you involved with before the war?
A: I was a child in school when the Germans came; I was a child survivor.

Q: What were the first signs of anti-Semitism that you noticed?
A: We had a villa near Budapest and the Otto-German people lived [in this village]. They were from Germany, and … they swore at us all the time and called us names. That was when I first started noticing anti-Semitism.

Q: And how did that affect you? What did you feel?
A: I felt very, very bad. I didn’t understand why they were doing this and I did not know the implications of what they were doing, but I could never have.

Q: Were there changes in your family’s religious practices?
A: They were very, very religious. Not Hasidic, because in Budapest we had no Hasidic individuals. My family were called Iber-landish.

Q: Can you tell us what happened to your family during the war? Were you separated from your family?
A: Yes, I was separated from my family. My family went to the safe house and I saved myself. I was living with Jewish people, but they did not know I was Jewish, and then I ended up in a convent.

Q: How were you separated from your family? Why did they go to the safe house and you to a convent?
A: Since I did not look Jewish and I did not even act it, and I was very blonde, with blue eyes, my father told me, ”We’re going to a safe house, but we don’t know how safe it is.” Nobody could know. ”So save yourself. You don’t look Jewish, and you are a very young girl. Try to save yourself. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us.”

Q: So they went to the safe house?
A: They went to the safe house.

Q: How did they learn about the safe house?
A: They learned about the Sweitzer Loots, the safe house. They were there first. Then Wallenberg came. Wallenberg came to our house because he collected everybody who was working to save people and my father was on the list. He came to us because he wanted to know what to start and how to start it. He and my father were very closely involved in it. After that, he started to somehow organize everything – he didn’t know where to start, so he made a meeting with all the people he had on the list and they suggested maybe we have houses that we designate, like ”Swedish diplomat houses.” What is the name?

Q: Like a consulate? Embassy?
A: As a consulate, yes. He realized the idea very good and he started to buy houses in the section where most of the Germans lived. That was the purpose.

Q: And do you know how Wallenberg composed that list of people? Where those names came from?
A: Yes, yes. When they elected Wallenberg, he was supposed to come to Hungary. He came here to America first and there were a lot of people who knew those on the list because they were in contact with them. So my father was in prior contact with these people. Before that, they established a hautssoload, which means ”to save people.”

Q: What was your father doing in Hungary to catch the attention of the Americans? What were the activities?
A: He was always involved. He was a big businessman, but he was an only child and he wanted to do something. His parents taught him if you are working only for yourself, (he was an only child) then you are not doing anything; so from a very early age, his life was meant to do something. He began by doing anything, starting out when he saw there were a lot of people who did not have enough food. These were very, very impoverished people. Then he went on and on, and did more and more. In’41, the deportations began to Poland. The people wanted to escape the deportation. A lot of people came to Budapest and my father got to them and they wanted him. They wanted him because nobody wanted to do anything – even the Jewish people – since the Germans hung big, big signs, ”Whoever have hidden the Polish will share the same thing with them.” That means the people who tried to save anyone, will also be deported – not just those who are hiding..

Q: Did you personally meet Raoul Wallenberg?
A: I personally met Wallenberg. He came to our house, and I opened the door and my father was there and invited him in; that is how I got to know Mr. Wallenberg.

Q: How did Wallenberg look?
A: He was a very tall man… Right away you could sense that he was something important – a diplomat or something. But he made a very, very good impression.

Q: A diplomatic type of personality?
A: Personality, yes. He projected a diplomatic personality.

Q: Did you have a Schutzpass? Or your family had a family Schutzpass?
A: My whole family had a Schutzpass. Wallenberg worked the date around when my father moved into the safe house, because our apartment was in the ghetto. So then they moved in. They were afraid to stay in the ghetto because they heard in the ghetto they were starting the deportation. So they moved into the safe house – what Wallenberg established. From that point on, my father worked with Wallenberg and he also had copies of all the Schutzpasses and wrote all the names because he knew the people in Budapest.

Q: Can you describe how a Schultzpass looks?
A: I wish I would have brought my book. I did not know about the interviews until I met my friend who was here before – Dreckas – in the city. I said, ”Where are you going?” She replied, ”You don’t know? You don’t know? We’re going to the Wallenberg testimonials.” I said, ”Well, what do you mean?” ”They’re making a memorial about Wallenberg,” she responded. I said, ”Okay, if it is about Wallenberg, I will go because I know the story. I know the whole story of Wallenberg, so I will go.”

Q: Can you describe the book for me? How did the Schutzpass look?
A: Okay, one second. Okay, I have a passport here, right? The Schutzpass was about the same size. And, naturally, it was not a passport. No, it was not a passport, but it was about this color. It also had the gold lettering. And it was Swedish – this is the Americana. Okay, and on the inside, instead of visas, it says ”Schutz-pass” in the Deutsch-German. That’s Deisheudenrequeni. It was in the Deutsch-German language – not Swedish; that way the Germans would understand what was going on. Instead of visas, they were Schutzpasses.

Q: Did you reunite with your family during the war, when you were in the convent, or did you have to wait until after the war?
A: Before the ghetto, my father told me, ”You don’t look Jewish. You are a young girl. Please save yourself.” He thought maybe the safe house would not be so very safe because every day the Germans would find more Jewish people living there. So I went out in the street. First, someone who knew me and was also pretending not to be Jewish said, ”Follow me. Follow me.” I followed him and we went into a dark area down in the basement and he told me he was working for the partisan side. He said if I wanted to, I could become a part of it, ”because you don’t look Jewish and you have a lot of guts, and you are a child and they wouldn’t even suspect you.” I thought about it a little and realized I have no other choice because I was on the street and I did not know where to go. I agreed to the idea and they sent me all over Budapest where they knew people were working and hiding. They gave me the address but I had to memorize it because they did not want to give me anything written. So that is what I did for a few weeks and then, October when the Gulash came, they were even more extreme than the Germans were. I got a little afraid so I started thinking about what to do. Then I found a ”Convent.” I went to the convent and they sent me to a place outside Budapest. They did not know I was Jewish; I did not tell them I was Jewish. The place they sent me,– called CuBano – was very, very far from Budapest, and they told me I should involve myself with the children. I found out, out of the 25 children, one of them was Jewish. They left every morning at 6 o’clock before they opened, and they always found a new bundle. Inside of the bundle was a child. I loved them and was very much involved with the children.

Q: How did you reunite with your family?
A: We were saved, I would say, about 15 months before Budapest. We were freed earlier; Russia came earlier. We were freed exactly between December 25 and January the first. We were freed, but I knew that Budapest was not free at this time. It took them three weeks. After that I prayed every day that I would find my family. And I made myself promise that I should do this and that until I found my family. When it was over, when we were freed, I knew, because of the reports in the papers, about Budapest. At this point, I did not want to stay anymore. I told them, ”I am Jewish,” and they were very, very shocked. They told me I did not act like a Jewish person, or what they thought of as Jewish, but they understood. I told them I wanted to be with my family now, and they told me they understood and, so they let me out. The first thing I did was go to the apartment where we lived and my family were already there. This was a week – exactly a week – after Budapest was freed, since before, nobody could have gone out. There was fighting – street fighting. House to house – not street – house to house fighting. The Jewish captain etc – all of that was going on. There was chaos, and tons of fighting in Budapest, so it took me one week before I got back to my house.

Q: What was that like? Going back to your house and seeing your family there?
A: It was very, very, very emotional. My grandmother called me over. She was extremely weak. She did not want to eat. No food was available. No food at all, and she did not want to eat. She thought the family’s needs should come before hers because we were younger than her.

At this time, and before the war, they did not have finished clothing. Our family always had someone who came to our house or we went to their shop to get clothing made because all of the Jewish people had a separate kind of clothing for work. My grandmother called me over and she told me I should go and get the woman who makes the clothing. I went to find the woman, but I could not find her. Naturally, I went upside-down to get people to help me find her, but they had moved to other places, so I could not find her. When I came back, I told my grandmother that I was sorry, I could not find her, but I would look for her tomorrow. She answered, ”There is no tomorrow for me.” And that night, my grandmother died.

Q: So when you met your parents and your siblings again, did they tell you anything about life in the safe house?
A: No. Nothing. Nothing. They could not. Everybody was so overwhelmed. They could not talk. And, everybody was very weak. No food. No food. Not at all. Not at all. We got bread, you know? Everybody got a thin, thin, thin slice; that was the ration for the whole day. One piece. Sometimes, a potato. One potato. That is all. That is all we ate for a whole 24 hours.

Q: In the safe house?
A: It was very, very, very, very bad for everybody. Everybody became very weak. No one could truly think [puts hand to forehead]. And everybody was busy thinking, ”Oh, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow,” and so on. Nobody could talk. Nothing. Nobody was interested, and nobody could talk. Everything was very, very…low, low, low, low, low, very low.

Q: When did your father learn that Wallenberg disappeared? They were close during the war, so when Wallenberg disappeared, did he know?
A: No. But he was in contact with him until the last day because they wanted to work to get the people some food. At this point, the war was over, so he did not need to save people from deportations. He wanted to save the people now, so that they would not die of hunger. So my father and Wallenberg were in contact. And he sent people out and he tried to get food from outside of Budapest since they had more food and outside they could bring in food from farms etc. So, a little food came in, but the prices were so unreal that nobody could buy them. So unreal nobody could buy them.

My father knew of Wallenberg’s disappearance when he did not show up as he usually would, in the place they usually met. They would meet in different places, and when he did not show, then my father thought that something happened. And he tried to find out, but there was no way to find out. No way.

Q: Do you know if all the people Raoul Wallenberg saved were Jewish, or were there others among them? Gypsies or resisters or…?
A: No, most of them were Jewish. That is why he came – only to save the Jews, only to save the Jews. That was all he wanted to do – to save the Jews. There are a lot of pictures showing that he went to the train stations where he gave out the Schutzpasses. He really went very far outside of Budapest. He had his car, a diplomatic car, so nobody would threaten him.

Q: What would you say to Wallenberg if he were sitting with us today?
A: What I would say? Naturally, I would say that what he did is unbelievable, what he did saved so many people. We Jewish people believe even if you save one person, it is the same as saving the whole world. Right? So, how many worlds you saved, and look here in America what is happening to all those people who you saved. How many people survived? The whole nation survived. That is what I would say.

Q: And what do you think he would say to you?
A: He was a very, very modest person. My father told me also that he was extremely modest. He never wanted to talk about himself or what he was doing. He tried to get people to join him, but that was very hard. So I would think he would say that what he did, he did because he felt the necessity, and he was really, really sorry for the people. He would say, ”I saw the whole situation. I saw that I was very much needed.” I do not think he would have blown it out of proportion or would have especially talked about himself. I do not think so because he was very modest.

Q: Do you think it is important to keep Wallenberg’s legacy alive?
A: Yes, yes. 100 percent. People should know. This was not the first time it happened to the Jewish people or any other nation. It is no different, and it is still going on in the world. It’s so important that people know about Wallenberg’s courage because persecution does not just happen to Jews. This is happening to other nations now too like in Darfur, Sudan, so we must continue the story of Wallenberg to spread the inspiration and courage to do something about it.

Q: Have you ever spoken to anyone else specifically about Wallenberg?
A: Not really because, after the war, the number one thought was, ”We are hungry; we should have something to eat.” Nobody was thinking for longer than just that moment. We thought, ”We have to survive. If we don’t have anything to eat, then we won’t survive.” After a few months, they started to bring in food from outside. It started to get a little better – not too much but a little better. Then, people started thinking, ”I don’t want to stay here. What will I do here?” So, we wanted to leave. We wanted to get away from the area. If we stayed there, we would always think about the past, because we went through so much.

Everybody wanted to get away, but my father, because he was involved so very much – he was the president of the synagogue, he was president of the community – he did not want to leave all that behind. He did not want to leave the people behind. He wanted to settle, but he was arrested. He was arrested by the Germans and he was arrested by the Russians, also. He was arrested because he had people who were very angry with Israel. These people thought, ”This Israel, they take things away from us, they rob the land too much….” My father did not do anything illegal; there was only a the rumor that he did something. People started this rumor.

The young people, naturally, wanted to get away. They did not want to stay there. But my father opened a business. He had a business before, so he opened his business and, after two years, they arrested him and took away the business, like they took away everybody’s businesses… This time, my father was arrested. He was there a few months until he got out, and this was a great, big miracle that he got out because usually this was a very, very big thing and the only way to get out was to escape. My father’s release happened during the day, in a normal fashion. My father was on the blacklist and he could have easily, easily ended up in Siberia like so many did. His friends ended up in Siberia. He could have ended up there but, fortunately…he was freed. It was very, very interesting. It was a big miracle.

After his release, we wanted to get away. There was no question because they could have done the same thing later, also. So we wanted to get away and we got a passport and we got away in the end of ‘49. At this time, we went to Vienna. … From Vienna, I first went to Switzerland because I had a brother there and he arranged for me to come in. After that, the whole family came in from Vienna. It was not the whole family because when the young people started to go out, and escape, my older brothers escaped. Only my younger brothers were there with me.

Q: And you stayed there in Vienna until when?
A: Until we got to Switzerland. In Switzerland it was much easier to get to America because the quota in Switzerland was very easy. So we got in, in two years. But I married there, and I stayed there; I stayed behind in Switzerland.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
A: I hope for Shalom in Israel and for the children of Israel to be in Israel. Everybody. I could go to Israel if I wanted. I could go to Israel, but I could not afford Israel. Now I am retired. I am not working and I don’t think in Israel I would be able to work, and I cannot afford that myself. I cannot afford that. I tried. And, fortunately, my family is here, and that is the most important for everybody – the family.

Credits:

• Interview conducted and filmed by Daniela Bajar, Adam Esrig and Aliza Klapholz
• Transcription by Katie Kellerman. Additional editing by Rebecca Zlouf and Adam Esrig

Interview filmed August 29, 2007, Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York

More Info:

• Testimonies of Survival Documented in Borough Park, Brooklyn
• More Testimonies

Q: First of all, thank you very much and the first question is: what is your birth name?
A: My birth name was, in English you would say, Judith Maria Garai. G – A – R – A – I. In Hungarian you say the last name first. So my name was Garai Judith Maria.

Q: And what is your married name?
A: My… I was married twice. And this story that I’m going to talk about concerns very much my first husband. His name was John Kudar. K – U – D – A – R. My second husband was John Saly. In Hungarian: Sh-aly. S – A – L – Y. So my name today is Judith Saly.

Q: And what city and country were you born in?
A: I was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1921.

Q: And the month and the day?
A: August 21.

Q: Where did you grow up?
A: I grew up in Budapest. The summers we spent somewhere in the country, on the lake, on the Danube, but I grew up in Budapest.

Q: And whom did you live with? Parents, siblings, extended family?
A: Sure, my father was a dentist. Very well appreciated and loved. And he and my mother and my younger sister, we lived together, and we had family nearby. We lived near the Margarit Bridge across the Danube that divides Buda and Pest. We lived in Pest.

Q: And did you grow up in a Jewish Community?
A: Not really. I grew up very much in a simulated Jewish community. Most people and my friends were born Jewish and did not convert. But there was very little of the Jewish tradition kept. I am sorry now that we didn’t have more connection to the Jewish heritage because maybe it would have been easier to deal with everything that came. But in school we went to the Jewish religious instruction class. And we, however, we had a Christmas tree because my family, especially my mother’s family, was very much intermarried with Catholics. I had great-uncles who married Catholic women and uncles who married Catholic women. And one of my great-aunts sent us a Christmas tree, and every year with decorations and it was part of my growing up that we always had Christmas.

Q: What kind of schools did you attend?
A: At that time, elementary school was four years and high school was twelve years. And I went to a private school for both elementary and high school. And the high school was for girls only but the elementary school was co-ed. I loved to go to school. (Laughs) Most people don’t like schools, but I loved it.

[I love schools.
Yeah? And I had lots of friends. ]

Q: And how did you learn your Jewish customs and Jewish religion?
A: As I say, very little. My family did celebrate Yom Kippur and, you know, New Year, Jewish New Year. But that was just once a year. And we did not even celebrate Passover. Except once I was at that time at my relative’s, my father’s brother in the country, and there was a Passover. My uncle was impatient and he wanted matzo ball soup (Laughs) faster than the ritual would allow. But what was interesting was when the Germans occupied Hungary in, on March 19th 1944, of course, already before that we knew that there was big trouble. So actually it was after the Anschluss that we felt that we have to come closer to our Jewish heritage. So my parents, with an uncle and aunt who had two sons, and we were two girls, we were very close and we decided we would have a Passover Seder, which we did. And I still remember, which today still stirs me most, when one says, ”Today in captivity the tessiriture was on.” And as you see I’m still teary about this because the longing of the Jewish people, of the Jewish past, is so much in this. I just read a very interesting book about Jewish history. How the Jews would constantly undergo, how the Jews were always expelled from one country to the other and then they think, ”Now, here we can make it.” And before you know it there is another anti-Semitic wave and it’s again another country and again hiding or trying to make it melt into the population. Or, on the contrary, keep your heritage and, you know, it’s our history. That’s why I also think that the existence of Israel is the most important thing. As long as there is Israel there cannot be another Holocaust. That’s what I think.

Q: What activities were you involved with before the war?
A: Well, I wanted to be a doctor. But I was not admitted to the university because I was Jewish, and a Jewish girl. You see there was a rule that allowed Jews, Jewish students, only to be enrolled in the number, in the proportion that the establishment was in proportion of Jews in Hungary, which was six percent. So you can imagine, I was an A student but, and I applied to seven universities in the country, and I was not admitted into any of them. So, I enrolled in a training course for surgical nurses, what you call here a scrub nurse at the clinic of the University of Budapest. And I did that and I thought I should be at least in that kind of profession. Close to being a doctor so I did that. And I also did other things. I went to University as a, what do you call it, not registered, but could attend classes, in art history and philosophy. I did stuff like that.

[You're very well rounded.
Well, I was hoping that I would survive and then things would change.]

Q: When did you notice signs of anti-Semitism?
A: It was in the air. In Hungary, at that time what happened was that after, before the First World War there was an era of liberalism, and Jews were allowed to do whatever they wanted. And it was very much encouraged for Jews to change their names, to mergerize their names. So for instance, my father’s name was Goldstein, and then he, before the First World War as a young doctor, he changed it to Garai. And there were lots of people who did the same thing. But there was anti-Semitism after the First World War; for a brief time there was a communist regime, which was rather brutal and many of the leaders were Jews, and therefore, when Admiral Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, came to liberate Hungary from that regime, I mean, it’s more complicated than this, then a right wing wind took over. Then that’s when there were all these decrees against Jews. You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that. But it was still… one could still have a normal life. And I personally never encountered anti-Semitism. So, nobody said to me, ”You dirty Jew.” But it happened, for instance, my favorite cousin who ended up in Brazil, he even, when he was in elementary school, one day another kid hit him and said, you know, ”You dirty Jew.” And, but as I say, it was in the air. One was very careful. One should not become too conspicuous. One should behave well and should know one’s place.

Q: How did you first hear about what was happening to the Jewish people?
A: What, you mean, in the parted grounds, in the gas chambers? I don’t know exactly when it was but obviously before the Germans invaded Hungary. Well before that. Also, there were a number of Polish non-Jewish refugees in Hungary. And from them we also heard all kinds of stories, and we knew. We knew about gas chambers, so one could not imagine what that was like. But we knew about it.

Q: What were your thoughts, feelings, or reactions, when you first heard of all of this?
A: Well, in credulity, one can’t really believe that this is happening and that nothing is done against it. Now, I, to this day, I feel that the Pope was really a miss. He did not do what he should have done, Pope Pius XII. He should have stood up against this atrocity and he should have at least thought that would have been enough but at least he should have said that those Catholics who are by Hitler, by his laws considered Jewish, the Catholic church does not consider them Jewish once they are baptized, and they should be, have said that that would not be enough. Because that would not have been the right moral and spiritual attitude, but even that he did not do. And we were expecting that. We were waiting for a paper, a cyclical, or a letter or some kind of a proclamation. Nothing happened.

Q: When did you first hear of Raoul Wallenberg?
A: Well, I heard about Wallenberg as soon as it was known that he was coming. Now, a little of my personal story here, that when the Germans came into Hungary, and that was on March 19th 1944, I think that was a Saturday. On Sunday I went over to my very good friend’s who lived in the very next building. And she was a concert pianist and the husband was a physicist. And there I met my future husband who came there, who was not Jewish at all, all his ancestors were okay. He went there to ask, ”What could I do, how could I help?” And that’s where we met. And the next day he came over to our house and there was such an instant connection that the minute we were alone he asked me if I would marry him. And then he could save me. He was going to go to Sweden. He had been in Sweden before. He spoke Swedish. He worked on some of his patterns in optics with a Swedish, at a Swedish company, factory, whatever. But he couldn’t get there because there was war, so you could not ever know flights, or any way to get from Hungary to Sweden. But he said, ”Well we could get married and we would find some way.” Of course, we could not get married because there was a law against Jews and non-Jews getting married. Then, well, a friend of mine appeared and said, ”Would you like a set of papers, because there is somebody who has two sets of papers?” And she bought the set of papers and my parents bought this other set of papers for me. So I had another name and there was a wonderful Frenchman, an artist, it was with whom I studied a bit of textiles and designing. And he forged documents. So he forged a document that showed that Yanjey Kudar and, my name was, Erjay Behtmuschani, were married. So this was – I dropped the, It’s okay – So I had all these papers. And then, as soon as, I already referred to him as Yanjey, which is John, you know, my first husband. As soon as he heard about the marriage, he immediately went and offered his services. So then from right at the beginning he went there and meanwhile I went into a very strange kind of hiding with him. He had a very close friend who was the director of the observatory on the highest mountain. You know, Budapest is surrounded by high hills, not very high mountains, but it’s mountainous and very lovely. And on top of one of them was, and sure there still is, the observatory, which was part of the University of Budapest. And the director, who was a friend of his, had said to him many times, ”Come and teach here a bit. We have students.” Because Yanjey was a mathematician and an astronomer, originally. Then he got more interested in optics. So he said, ”I’ll come one day.” And then he said, ”I’m ready to come. But I just got married and I’m bringing my wife.” Okay very nice. But of course nobody knew that I was Jewish. So we were there but he was very careful, he never, he really didn’t like to leave me alone anywhere. And so I went with him to this villa, which was further down the same, close to that mountain but you know, further down, where he established his office. And so I was sitting there not doing much, observing the scene. So that’s when I met Wallenberg. Well you know what he looked like. He was a very modest kind of person. He came in, he said Hello, and he was immediately going to work. I mean he wasn’t just hanging around, hanging out. And the funny thing was that sometimes people thought that Yanjey was Wallenberg because he was tall and blonde and Wallenberg was not that tall and had dark hair. And once I went with at least, this is what I remember very well, you must have heard how the Jews in Hungary had been deported earlier and there was not much anyone could do there. But with Wallenberg’s help, the Jews in Budapest were trying to withstand this. But still a lot of them were herded on foot towards the Austrian frontier and it was November and it was raining and I was in the car with Wallenberg. His driver – What was his name? Juantos. No. It was something else. I can’t remember – They were in front and I was with my husband, Yanjey, in the back. And we saw these columns of beheaded people in that rain, that was like, red, and mud, and they were just herded and they were wounded, and actually, Yanjey saw a friend of the family, a woman, there but didn’t tell me because he knew he couldn’t do anything at that moment. But what they did was that they got out and the two had a Swedish connection and tried to pull out anybody that they could. I don’t remember what happened to those people. How they came back, whether they still had to walk… It was horrible. And so I had a little contact with Wallenberg. You know, just a few words. Never a conversation. But also, I was very respectful. And somebody else whom I saw being interviewed in one of these events when I went said exactly what I felt. That, and I also want to say something else here before I go to that, I once saw an interview with Archbishop Tutu on television, and he was asked, what was the worst… So he was asked what was the worst: imprisonment, or torture or whatever that the African people in South Africa endured. And he said, ”No, the worst thing was that if you hear often enough that you are inferior, you will believe it.” And this was, I think, was the Jews’ also. That you hear all the while growing up that there is something wrong with being Jewish. And no matter what you know you are in some ways stained and inferior. And then you believe this. So here comes this Swedish gentleman from a distinguished family and is willing to risk, we do know that he was risking his life, but he was risking a lot by taking on this task. And that gives one back some of this feeling that maybe we are worth saving. Maybe we are not the scum of the earth. So that was a very important message that his mere presence gave us. So I had so much respect for him. I wouldn’t even try to talk to him. There wasn’t anything to talk about really because he was so focused on his task.

Q: Do you remember how old you were when you met Wallenberg?
A: Yeah, yeah, I must have been twenty-three.

Q: Do you have an idea how old he was at the time?
A: I… How old was he? I don’t know.

[He was thirty…
In his thirties
Thirty-three.
In his thirties. Yeah.]

Q: Just general questions about him like: what was he like? Was he serious? Did he have a sense of humor? You said he was focused?
A: Yes, yes. This is what I can most remember. That he was very focused and very devoted to his task. He really meant it. I don’t know how this happened to him. That this mantle descended on him and that he rose to this occasion. But then there was, which is still today a bit embarrassing for me to tell, but what happened was that one day when we went back to the observatory, the director said he has to talk to Yanjey, John. And he said to him there were two men here looking for him. They looked like detectives. One was tall and the other one was short. And then so Yanjey said, ”I can’t imagine why anybody would look for me,” and went back to our room. And immediately we packed our things in the small suitcase and split. We didn’t even dare to take that, what do you call, those cars that go up and down the mountain. You know that, it’s like a streetcar but it’s a cable car. And we just went down on foot through the fields because we didn’t know. Was this true? Did this man figure out there was something? We were really careful. We never said anything when they talked about the miracle weapons that the Germans have and are going to deploy very soon. We were very careful. But we, to this day, I don’t know. Were these two people there? Or did he invent it? So very quickly we go back to this house where Wallenberg’s office was because we didn’t know where to go. My parents and sister, they were by that time in one of the Swedish houses, where those people had passes to the house. So they said, ”Can we stay here for the night?” And Star said, No, we couldn’t. It’s not allowed. And we had no idea what to do. And then one of them took pity on us and said, ”Look, hide somewhere on the top floor. I am supposed to walk through the building and see that everybody has left at night before we close, but keep very quiet and stay for the night. But be very careful. Don’t flush the toilet and don’t turn on the light.” Well, they discovered us the next morning because I did flush the toilet before there were enough people there. And we had to, and Wallenberg wanted to see us. And everybody was around there, and he said we jeopardized his whole mission. Because he has an agreement with the Hungarian government that this is an extraterritorial space and we are not going to hide anybody there. Nobody can sleep. And we did that, and we have to go. We have to leave. So it’s very embarrassing. I still somehow see this whole scene. You know, like, we were standing there and trying to be as small as we could. And we left. And of course other things happened with us, which were miraculously helpful and I survived the whole thing. But this was my closest contact with Wallenberg.

Q: Do you remember, or have any experience, serving anyone he was close to?
A: Not really. No. But I saw that musical, which I loved. It was very nice. It was performed last, was it last year or two years ago?

[Yeah, it was two years ago.
I learned more from that than I knew from experience.]

Q: And can you tell us what Schutz-pass is?
A: Yes. This is a photocopy of my sister’s Schutz-pass. This was an ingenious invention that Wallenberg and his friends concocted. This was a provisional passport, which said that the person whose photograph is in this place and who owns it is protected by the Swedish crown. So miraculously, this worked most of the time. Not always because these, these hooligans, the Arrowcrosses which, that was their name, because their emblem was a cross that had on. Every end an arrow. Not like the swastika but similar. Some of them did not respect this but others did. And then the Swiss embassy and the Portuguese got the idea and they also issues Schutz-passports in smaller numbers. But after we left, anonymously, Wallenberg, Yanjey still wanted to continue saving Jews so we went over to the Portuguese embassy and offered his services there. And that’s when we got a Portuguese Shutz-pass. We, he, my husband, he was very smart and let’s have one together. Because then I am with him. So this is that. And very miraculously when we left Hungary, this was all traveling people and we went to Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and Greece and England with this. And also, maybe even the people issued some papers. He was a lovely man. Round face, rosy cheeks… His name was Angelo Rota. And, I don’t know why, but with the mother of a friend of mine who was a devout Catholic and had some connections, I once went to see him. I don’t know what we were asking him. And he did his best. And he had, there was Anonsino Verrolino who was also on his staff, and these two people were wonderful; In spite of, I’m sure, being encouraged by the Vatican.

Q: You mentioned that your sister and parents lived in a special house. Was that the safe house?
A: Well, you can call it a safe house. It wasn’t that safe. But what happened was that when the Germans came and everything was taken over by those laws, Jews were forced to move from certain buildings that were considered non-Jewish dwellings, and had to move to other houses that were designated as Jewish houses. Now, my parents’ house, which I had left, was designated as a non-Jewish house. My aunt, who was also a dentist, lived very close by. Her house was designated as a Jewish house, so my parents went there first as my aunt was deported and died in Auschwitz. That’s another story. But then when certain houses needed and were designated as being protected by the Swedish crown, then everybody who had the Swedish Schutz-pass moved there. So my parents, my grandmother, and my sister moved there.

Q: How long did they live there? How long were they able to stay?
A: Well, I don’t… I can’t tell you exactly, because, I don’t exactly… When they moved there it must have been in late spring, early summer. And they lived there until the Russian troops liberated Hungary, which was in, probably in January in ‘45, where they were because every part was liberated at different times.

Q: Would you know, for example, how were the mechanisms of how the safehouses were organized and maintained?
A: Well everywhere there was a kind of a person who was in charge. But families had one room. And sometimes somebody, a friend or a relative, would arrive and they would make room for us. It was very crowded and they did their best of what one can do in such circumstances.

Q: There was mention that Wallenberg had opened an orphanage in the area of approximately 78 children in the orphanage. Do you know anything about that?
A: Yes, I know a little bit about it. I’m not sure, but it’s possible that my sister was there for a while because there was a time when we thought that my sister would be safer not being with the parents. And she was in some kind of a children’s home, although she was not a child. But I don’t remember much about it.

Q: And there were also descriptions of Raoul Wallenberg attaining trucks and drivers that he used to rescue people?
A: Oh yes, well that’s how it was. Yes.

Q: Do you know how he did that?
A: No.

Q: How did you get from Hungary to Yugoslavia?
A: Yanjey, who was a genius, anyways, he said, after the Russians liberated us, in quotes, he said, ”Let’s get out of here,” because he was much older than me, actually. He was nineteen years older. So he had seen more. He said that that at first when he was a young man, he was sympathizing with communism and all these idea. But then in the 1930s there were these mock trials in Russia, in the Soviet Union, where so many people were condemned, made to confess crimes against Stalin. And were executed and there was a dictatorship. And he said, ”Everything that’s now there is going to happen here. One will need not only a passport, but an exit visa, which one won’t get. And then if it’s a visa, it will be very difficult to get out of here. Let’s go now. Let’s try to make our way to Sweden.” Because he had a contract with the Swedish company called ”Nifer”, but how? So he said, ”The only way to get there is to get to somewhere by the sea.” How can we get to the sea? Going south to Yugoslavia. There will be, somewhere, a boat, and we can make our way by sea to Sweden. Of course it was absurd because the war was still going on. But there was no other way. Obviously we could not have gone through Germany. So, I said, ”Sure, whatever.” I trusted him so much. And how can we get to Yugoslavia? There were no trains, no nothing. But somehow we managed to get on a cattle car. There were no animals there but people. And so that was the first attempt. And then we got into another car, another train that had a little more shelter, and there were Russian soldiers but they didn’t care because there was, at the end of it there was a little space, and we were standing there, I don’t know, for twenty-four hours, I don’t even remember anymore. Until we got to Yugoslavia. And there we were questioned by the partisans. The partisans were in charge there. And, eventually they let us go and we thought then that we should go to Turkey. And for that one would have had to go to Bulgaria and for that one would have had to go… And these partisans in command, they said, ”Okay, we are not going to arrest you. But you have to get out of the country.” And how do we get out of the country? The Bulgarians, they didn’t give us the visa. We got on the train anyways; we made our way into Bulgaria. But it’s a long and interesting story, but from there, with the help of the British, we got to Greece. And from there to England.

Q: How long did you remain in England?
A: Five years, actually. Not that long after we settled in London where I had relatives, Yanjey thought, maybe we should go to America because meanwhile the Swedish company decided they don’t want to develop this invention that he had. This patent. That we should go to America because his patents had to do with high-speed cameras and film projectors and such. So we went to the American consult, and a very nice American young man said, ”Don’t apply for a visitor’s visa because you will only get into trouble. You will not want to leave, but you will have to leave, then you will have to enter again. Apply for an immigration visa.” And we said, ”That will take very long.” ”Oh, that won’t take that long.” It took five years. We were just about ready to apply for British citizenship when we got this letter that our turn has come. So we came here. That was in December 1950.

Q: If Raoul Wallenberg were with us here today, what would you say to him?
A: Don’t even ask. In a sentimental moment where I just said… No.

[Okay. We'll take a little break.
Yeah. Maybe that's enough. Don't you think so?

This I told them, said if they want to take just one more thing, is that, not only that how one person can make a difference, because he started this, then the Portuguese and the others did that, but that there were some very good people. For instance, a friend of mine who was a young teacher and also a pianist, a teacher of philosophy in high school where I went, he lived with his mother and his sister. They took in, I think seven, or, a number of Jews. And hid them and fed them in their apartment and that was, you had to be very careful because you were not even supposed to, even to allow people to notice that there was more food going in there and there is more activity. And not only that they saved them, and fed them, and housed them, but they didn't let them do anything. They treated them as honored guests. You know? Now this is something really very special. There are people like this. And of course, Yanjey Kudar, I think somewhere he should really be remembered. And others who I have known who have hidden Jews and risked their lives. But it is easy to forget that and it's easy to remember all the people who were cruel and put Jews in cattle cars and shipped them out of the country. So I didn't want to go back for a long time, but then I did go back and I realized that there are good people everywhere.

[It helps you reconcile with the entire thing.
And the other sad thing is that I am convinced that this can happen anywhere. I thought that this could not happen in America, but I don't think that anymore. But if it's not Jews, then of course, Indians, Negroes, et cetera. You know what's going on now.]

Q: Do you know, or do you remember, what were your husband’s tasks when he was helping Wallenberg?
A: Well, to go and talk to people and see who has a connection and put a list together and bring them out. Also, at one time, he went to a brick factory, for some reason, brick factories were used as places where they put the Jews ready to be deported. And in one of these places, he found my best friend and her mother and father and little brother, and he got them out.

[That's great.
Yeah.]

Q: The writing said you wrote. What happened to the story?
A: I wrote up this whole thing with many more details. Not that I could give all the details about Wallenberg because I’ve been trying to say anything I can remember. But my personal story… before, after…

Q: Is it published?
A: No.

Q: Would you ever think of getting it published?
A: Well, I’ve been thinking of it.

[It would be quite a gift.
And I wrote another something that the people want me to publish, which is recipes that are from, that came from my mother's recipe book where she started to put recipes when she was just married and later on. And most of them say who gave it to her, and then the stories of those people. I intermingle that with the recipes because some of them ended up in Auschwitz or similar places, which didn't survive.

That would be beautiful.
And there are photographs. My son put that together.

That's such a good idea because it makes two different things come together.
Yeah, yeah.

Food and family put together.
Yeah, yeah, so, we are thinking about it.

Let us know!
Okay, of course! If it happens… Thank you very much.]

Thank you.

Credits:

Interview: Mari Rodriguez
Camera: Michael Ragsdale
Transcript: Yale Kim
Editing: Adriana Lee

Q: What is your birth name?
A: Leifer. It is my father’s name. I was born in the Ukraine, on July 12, 1935, which makes me 71 years old. It is Kayla Kaufman now.

Q: What is your married name?
A: My first married name was Grosz, the second was Kaufman, the third was Etzyon. But I stayed with Kaufman because my publishers feel that Kay Kaufman, the name under which write, is a better byline. But Kayla is my name from the Hebrew Chayala.

Q: What city were you born in?
A: I was born in a little town called Chust. This is in the Ukraine.

Q: Where did you grow up?
A: I basically grew up in Budapest. I came to Budapest in 1940, and we were there until the end, until 1945.

Q: Whom did you live with? Parents or siblings, etc.?
A: I lived with my mom and dad. My father was a Rabbi in Budapest. I was the oldest child of four. I was nine in 1944. My sister was six, my other sister was two and a half, and my baby brother was two months old.

Q: Did you grow up in a Jewish community?
A: Yes, Budapest was the Jewishest community. We were Chasidic Jews. My mother wore a wig, my father wore a beard and a shtramel. They were very Chasidic.

Q: What kind of school did you attend?
A: Interestingly enough, I attended a Hebrew school that was Reform. The reason was that my mother was very modern. She was a Viennese woman and when we went to investigate the Jewish Orthodox school, she didn’t like the behavior of the kids there. They were too boisterous. She said, ”I am not sending my daughter there.” So I went to a Reform Hebrew school.

Q: How did you learn your Jewish customs and Jewish religion?
A: In the home. I learned everything that I have in the home, my mom and dad.

Q: Was your family religious before the war?
A: Yes, my family was very religious before the war. During the war and after the war, as we all are today.

Q: What activities were you involved with before the war?
A: Ate a lot of candy, went to school, played the piano, dancing lessons, stuff like that.

Q: When did you first notice signs of anti-Semitism?
A: You hear little things. The first time I noticed it was from almost nothing to a bomb in 1942 when we went to visit my father’s mother in Chust and the evacuation began. The night before my grandmother was taken we heard screaming from neighbors who were being evacuated. I remember my grandmother sitting up in her bed and crying to my father, ”Moishele,” she begged, ”What should I do?” He could do nothing. It was over for her and her family. The next morning they came. She could not hide because they knew exactly who and how many were living in each house. Also, she was a Polish citizen and they were taken first. My father, mother and us kids hid in the attic even though we had papers as Hungarian citizens. But that could become void at any moment and we did not know if in 1942 it was still valid. Later that morning we heard my grandmother screaming, begging the Nazis not to kill her children, a 14-year-old son and a nine year old daughter. Then they were gone. We don’t even know where they were buried. My father would have been very happy to know where there was a grave. Imagine, being happy with a grave. There is no grave. We don’t know when they were killed. That was the beginning of my knowledge of the Holocaust. Then you put it away, because you need to go on to the next day. I figured, we are going to go home. Things will be okay at home. Which, of course it was not. That was the beginning, 1942, I was not quite seven at the time.

Q: How did you first hear about what was happening to the Jewish people?
A: I personally did not. I began hearing about it after we were liberated by the Russians and we came to the American sector in Austria. I am sure my father knew more but he certainly didn’t tell us. When you are that young and someone says ”Six Million”, what does that mean? It doesn’t mean anything. I knew my grandmother was gone. I had no idea what six million is. I don’t think I even totally comprehend it today.

Q: What were your thoughts, feelings and reactions?
A: It was a combination of things. For a little kid, this is 1945, and I was almost 10. Here I was now in the American sector of Austria. I spoke German. There were new people I had to get to know. There were old people I had to get to re-know. The war was over. I had to forget about the hunger, the horrific fear. Then I had to get up in the morning and learn not to be frightened because during the Holocaust, in Budapest, when the bombs came, we never took off our clothes. We slept in pajamas. We had to relearn to put on PJ’s. To brush our teeth. You had so much to learn, you really couldn’t process it all. It took years and years for me to process it. And as we speak, have I really processed it? G-d only knows.

Q: What other changes did you experience?
A: I went from a serene childhood to this frightened little girl. Every morning I would get up with this pit in my stomach. And when you’re a kid, you can’t explain it. When you are a grownup, you still can’t explain it. It really never goes away. It just doesn’t go away. Until today. Not every morning. But until today, it will be there because you almost feel at home with that pit in your stomach. That is what you know, you don’t know anything else. Of course, again, until today, I will not go out without some food in my bag for fear of starvation. I cannot pass a policeman on the street without saying to myself, I have done nothing wrong, I have nothing to be afraid of. That started way back then. Until today. Good legacy. Hitler.

Q: How did the war affect your family’s religious and cultural traditions?
A: We were and are a very closely connected, strong family. It’s probably one of the reasons we survived. We were one of the few families whose immediate family came out whole. We kept the religion as if it were an oxygen source. As if it were a shelter, just to keep us going to the next day. My father never, ever blamed G-d. He taught us that it wasn’t G-d who brought us this cataclysm, humanity allowed this to happen. Today they allow Darfur, then they allowed the Holocaust. Today, even though you see the horrors on TV every morning and every night in full color, how many are doing anything? We eat our burgers, go to movies, buy cars, boats and houses. We are busy. Too busy to notice. We must never ever blamed G-d. People allow bad things to happen.

Q: How did you and your family manage to keep and continue to practice your religious traditions during the war?
A: There is a law in the Jewish religion that says the preservation of life is the only thing that matters when in danger. You can eat on Yom Kippur, you can travel on Shabbat, if your life is at stake. There were many times, when we found food and it was not kosher, but we ate it to save our lives. Many times we could not even observe the lighting of the Shabbat candles because there were no candles to be found. But we carried the religion in our hearts. We felt two things: either we will survive and continue the religion, or we won’t survive, and G-d will know that we carried the religion in our hearts. So one way or another, it was inside us. That was the strongest source that kept us going, our faith, our belief in G-d.

Q: How was your family separated?
A: Other than my father who was taken to labor camp in 1944, thank G-d, we were never separated. The Germans came into Budapest in 1944 and he was taken soon after, I believe in March or April. We five stayed together. My mother found a place in the Red Cross which was safe for the Jews for about two and a half minutes. When my father was taken, it became terribly difficult for us, as we felt we lost our protector, our father. He was the anchor of our lives. Strong, determined, tall and very handsome. It was very, very difficult.

Q: Where was your father taken to specifically?
A: I don’t know. Most Holocaust survivors, as my father, did not talk about their experiences. It was just too much to remember, to deal with. I started to talk about it because I will soon be gone and then who will tell my story? My father never told us the name of the labor camp, which was really a concentration camp because they worked you to death and when you were over, the next batch of Jews came in. Very easy. Enough Jews left. What is the big deal?

Q: Can you tell me the role the Red Cross played in helping you, your mother, and your siblings?
A: We were supposed to go to the Ghetto in Budapest. The Germans were very clever, they said ”We’ll take you to a place where all Jews will be together. It’s going to be real cool. You will all be in one place. You will not experience any anti-Semitism.” So a lot of people went. But my mother had this sixth sense, it just did not seem right to her. Even then she didn’t like the word ghetto. She started looking for someplace to go. To hide. And she found the Red Cross that was run by a friend of ours from better days. For the moment, this was a safe place. But by the time we asked for admission, it was already overcrowded. My mother offered to wash floors to get in. This from a woman who never picked up a broom. But with our friends persuasion, they took us in and that saved us from the ghetto which we later learned the death march to Auschwitz began.

Q: When did you first hear about Raoul Wallenberg?
A: You are in a hospital and you are very sick and someone injects you with something. You wake up and feel fine. Then, maybe six, seven years later you realize what saved you was penicillin. Raoul Wallenberg was our Penicillin. My dad was in labor camp. He was very sick with kidney failure and was on the way to be annihilated. He was a rabbi and most of the people in the camp knew him. Raoul Wallenberg came into the camp, my father later told me, he was very tall and very good looking and had this magic, this charisma about him.. He came in with his entourage. He came to the side with the healthier men giving them Schutzpasses, which was the ticket to life for the moment. Everything in those days was for the moment. My father was on the other side, the sick men’s side. Raoul was about to leave when some men pointed to my father and told Raoul’s interpreters to take ”…that man. He is a rabbi.” For some reason, my dad told me later, the Germans allowed Raoul to do as he pleased. Perhaps due to diplomatic immunity. So Raoul gave my father papers as well. My dad told the interpreter that he has a wife and four kids someplace in Budapest but the last time he tried to contact them they were no longer living in the old address. He did not know that we had moved to the Red Cross.

Through some wonderfully braves Jews who had infiltrated the Nazi regime, they miraculously found us after several weeks of searching. One Friday morning, they came to the Red Cross, Nazi uniforms and all, knocked at the gate, which horrified us, but we had to let them in. They then explained that they were Jews who had come to take the Leifer family to a Swiss safehouse. My mother was summoned. She was told that our father was safe and that we had to be taken in shifts to him so as not to cause attention. That at five thirty they would come to take her, my six year old sister and two month old brother. And at 7:30, they would come to get me and my two year old sister. My mother protested, wanting to be taken last. But they insisted that she come first because should something happen, my father was too sick to care for anyone. At five thirty, as planned, they came and took my mother, sister and brother. They told us to be ready at seven thirty when they would return for us. Seven thirty came. No Nazis. The clock kept ticking, eight, eight thirty, nine. Still no Nazis. I think it was at that point in my life that the permanent stamp of fear became a part of me. I just lost my mother, had no father, and here I was, with a two year old for whom I was totally responsible. What if something happened to me? But I saw that my sister was becoming frightened so I had to push down the fear and put on that calm, everything will be okay, smile. That was also when I learned how to suppress fear. It was now nine thirty. Was it over for the two of us? At ten thirty, they did come.

It seems they ran into some trouble on the way over and were held up. My mom and dad did not know what had happened, why we were so late and figured the worst. It’s interesting, I talk about keeping the faith. Remember, it was Friday night and my father knew he had to make kiddush, the Shabbat prayer over wine. My mother later told me that he stood for a very long time, waiting, praying for our safe arrival. After eleven, he was about to begin the kiddush when in we walked. When he saw us, and I have said this a million times, I have seen hundreds of movies, TV shows and such and never, ever in my life, have I seen such a torrential down pour of tears on a human being’s face. He managed to finish the kiddush, took a sip of wine, then stretched out his hands to embrace us. We ran to him and my mother, baby brother and sister, who till then seemed paralyzed, and joined in the family group hug. And we sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. This was a Raoul Wallenberg miracle.

Those 6 people he saved are now, Baruch Hashem, 159 souls. What I have been trying to find out for many years now, how many are alive today because of Raoul’s one hundred thousand souls he saved? How many? A million? Two million? Who can design an algorithm to answer that question? This man, who was not Jewish, risked his own life so that he could save Jews. Because of that, and who knows of some other reasons, he disappeared.

I was sixteen or 15, we were settled in the United States, we were living in Cleveland Ohio, my father was the Rabbi there and stories about Raoul began to surface. People now felt a bit more safe or less afraid to talk about ”those days.” At any rate, the stories started to come out about Raoul Wallenberg. Stories of a hero who courageously just walked about, at every risk to his own life, and plucked victims from the furnace. The survivors would sit in our kitchen and recall stories of how they were saved.

There are some people who walk the earth that you know are there for more than just walking the earth. They are there to do something, to be something, to discover something. In Jewish folklore, it’s supposed that there are thirty six righteous people who keep the world going. Each time one dies, one is born. There are always 36, which is twice eighteen. Eighteen stands for life by Jewish people. My father always maintained that Raoul Wallenberg was one of the 36. After having saved him, my father never saw Raoul again. I never saw him at all. Most of the young kids did not. Through the years we learned about it in school. I went to yeshiva and you learn about it there, but I put it away. I could not deal with it yet. I had to learn English, make new friends, get married, have kids of my own, the kids had to go to school, I had to get a job. There was just so much. Too much. I was running on such a speeding treadmill up the hill that there was just no time to look back. I knew that if I did look back, I would stumble and have a fall from which I could never recover.

It is time. Now I could do it. Now I have to do it. I must do it. I must talk about Raoul Wallenberg and his messianic work. The human being is the most phenomenal being. He can walk on the moon. He also does the most horrific things, like slicing off people’s heads. So you got the two extremes. So now I had to talk about the tragedy and the triumph. Hopefully I can help. I don’t now.

Q: When did you first meet Raoul Wallenberg?
A: As I said, I never met Raoul Wallenberg. I only saw his picture. As a result, I see him in my heart all the time and through the stories of my father and from stories of other survivors who still speak about him in the same way as my father had: Angelic. Hero. Courageous. The man was not Jewish and yet he saved one hundred thousand Jews. He was one of the few who mattered. I so regret never having met this unbelievable human being.

Q: How old were you when you and your family were saved by Raoul Wallenberg?
A: I was not quite nine years old because we were saved in June 1944 and I would turn nine that July.

Q: Do you know how old Raoul Wallenberg was at the time?
A: He was 33 years old. A very young man to have done all that. A man from an extremely comfortable home that went out on such a limb to do this until his unfortunate demise.

Q: Do you know what he looks like, or what people told you he looks like?
A: From the pictures I see, he is an extraordinarily handsome man, tall with very deep, wise eyes. My father described him that way as well. He had this vision. As if he knew what he had to do. And did it! At any cost. In this case, his life. Raoul was an unbelievable man. There was just nobody like him then or ever since. So the looks matched the deeds of this man.

Q: Do you know if he had a sense of humor or have you heard stories about his sense of humor?
A: I don’t know about that. But I am assuming that a man who had gone through so much had to be able to laugh about it all once in a while or he would have lost it. I can recall my own father, during the worst of times he would find things to laugh about. I think that when thing really became unbearable we often laugh the most just to be able to move on.

Q: Can you tell me what the schutzpasses were?
A: These were papers. A schutzpass is an actual passport or a piece of paper that says you are a citizen of that country. I have never seen them. I know it was a the most important document those Jewish people owned. Even today’s survivors feel that our papers are our tickets to life. I know that when the time nears that my passport is about to expire, oh my G-d, talk about a pit in my stomach. How would I travel? How would I run to safety? All survivors guard their papers with their lives. Nothing else matters. I am sure that my father had kept those Schutzpasses someplace. But I never saw them.

Q: Do you know how they were created, designed, manufactured or distributed?
A: I read that it was Raoul Wallenberg who created these documents that looked very official. Almost domineering. I believe the emblem was printed in blue ink. I can’t recall reading about the other colors. I don’t know how or where it was produced. He might have had it printed in some underground place. It did make an impression because it fortunately fooled the Nazis.

Q: Do you know if the process changed with time, did they catch on to it?
A: Apparently the Nazis did not catch on because he was able to save so many victims before they were to be deported. I assume he had to work very quickly. He must have known that time was running out because on the other end, Eichmann was trying to murder as many Jews as he could before the war was over. So here we had two people. Two extremes. Eichmann the killer, Raoul the savor. Never let it be said that the world is not balanced. We can choose which side of the scale we want to be on. Hopefully, most of us will choose to be on the side of life.

Q: What were the safehouses?
A: The safehouses I believe were like Swiss property where the people possessing proper paper were safe. They were a row of tall apartment houses in a rather nice neighborhood of Budapest. Interestingly enough, my best friend, Tamar Gil-Ad, who lives in Jerusalem, was in one of these houses. We never knew of each other till we met in Israel.

At first we were able to live in the apartments but when the bombing became too intense, we ended up in the basement shelters where there were no bathrooms and we had to go upstairs to use the facilities. As the war intensified, the food and water we did have became more scarce.

As the Nazis shipped more and more rations to the front, starvation became rampant and people began dying. Every morning we woke up and more bodies had to be dealt with. I was 9 years old. I was one of the strong ones, so I was on body duty, helping to drag the dead upstairs to the courtyard and pile them up like logs of wood. When I went to the bathroom, I would see those bodies and would have to say to myself, ”No, no, no, don’t let that get into your head now. You have to go to the bathroom and then go downstairs again where you will be safe.” Today, if I see a dead mouse, I totally freak. The mind has this way of learning how not to deal with things it cannot handle at the moment. It’s our instinctual way to survive. Later on, I did have to deal with it. With the dead, the sick, the terror, the bombs. It often is in my head, till this very moment, unfortunately.

Q: Can you describe what day to day life was like at the safehouse?
A: As I said, eventually we stayed in the basement permanently. Everybody was given a corner. We slept on blankets on the floor. All day, there was nothing to do. There were only emergency lights so reading was difficult, if not impossible. Because there were so many people the space was tight. Many people were crying, some from hunger, some from fear. The babies didn’t cry anymore. Some people, due to the overcrowding, did not get along, while others truly went out of their way to help each other. Many, not only the religious ones, kept praying for the Mashiach. I remember going upstairs to the bathroom one day and sort of peeked around the corner, sure that I would see the Mashiach. Of course he never came. Instead, six million of his souls perished. And he still did not come.

Q: How did Raoul Wallenberg obtain the food, clothing, and other necessities for those he helped?
A: I am sure he did the best he could as the food was being taken to the front. At times we had someone come in with some soup and old bread, but this was not often. That was why the starvation. And there was also sickness. Once in a while we would get a treat of good bread and some fruit. But it was so very, very seldom. We all knew that Raoul did the best he could. As for clothing most of us had brought a change of clothes with us which we washed whenever possible due to the bombing and the shortage of water.

Q: Do you recall or did you learn how Raoul Wallenberg was able to open run a hospital at the time.
A: I cannot. But I have a feeling that Raoul Wallenberg had a sense of how to do things right. How to knock on the right doors, for the right request, at the right time. To do what he did, he had to be a very talented person in many areas. He had to have that instinct to know how to deal with people and get the best from them.

Q: He also opened and maintained an orphanage. Do you know how he managed to create it and what happened to the children there?
A: Actually this is the first time I hear of this. But from what I heard and later read about him, Raoul Wallenberg was a multi talented, determined, strong individual. In that vain, I am sure he saved many orphans who would have perished otherwise.

Q: Do you know how he obtained trucks and drivers to rescue the people?
A: Again, as these rescues were taking place, none of us knew about anything. Later, reading about it, mostly in the States, we knew. But I don’t know, or remember reading about how he did these things. We only know the results that his power to influence, his charisma, his magic saved one hundred thousands Jews.

Q: Can you tell us anything you remember about the documents: the insurance policies and drivers licenses that Raoul Wallenberg gave to the people he rescued? For example, did these documents actually have people’s real names on them or were they just blank?
A: That is a very interesting question because until today I don’t know if my father and family were rescued under our name or some other. Again, I am so terribly sorry that I never pressed my dad to tell me more about his experiences, especially with Raoul Wallenberg. There was just so much going on in my life. New things to learn. Old things to forget. I guess most of us kids who survived were terrified to ask. We were afraid. Would we find a box full of treasures or skeletons? Today we know better. No matter what, you should always seek the truth.

Q: Do you know how the Jewish people were able to use these documents once the Jewish people were rescued from the cattle cars and taken back to Budapest?
A: The fact that the documents were good enough to release some Jews from the cattle cars is all that I know. All those rescued ended up in the safehouses and waited for the war to be over. As you know, Budapest was liberated by the Russians who also took the food that was still left to the front for their soldiers. So the starvation continued. Also, the Russians were a wild bunch. They would forever be drinking and shooting their guns all over the place. They also took a lot of the people to clean up the rubble. People who could not even stand up from hunger. So the dying continued.

One day, one of those bullets found its way to a neighbor. The bullet passed the mother, over the heads of the kids and miraculously did not hit anyone. After that my dad said, ”We are out of here! The Russians are the Red Nazis.” From there we went to a small village in Hungry where the Russians had not yet taken the food. So for a moment we were safe. At this point though, I had stopped walking from weakness and just laid on a cot and slept. My mom kept pushing bread and honey into me, with some milk. Until this day, I hate honey.

From the village we went to the Russian side of Austria. The borders were not that controlled yet.

From the Russian side my father knew he would have to go to the American sector in order to be able to get to America. Getting from the Russian sector to the American sector was a bit tricky. There was this no man’s strip in between Russian and the American sectors divided down the middle. We started walking toward the American sector. We knew that by and large the Russians would not stop us, but there were those flying bullets that could start at any time. My father kept cautioning us not to look back. Already conditioned to terror, we kept walking, walking, walking. We could hear screaming, singing, yelling from the Russian side, with fear our constant partner. The moment we reached the American half of the strip, a jeep sped toward us, picked us up and threw us into the car. A few moments later we were on the American side. For the first time in a very long time, I suddenly felt truly free.

A few weeks later, we went to Germany because that was where the DP Camps were. We ended up in Heidenhein. 7 months later we would leave for the US from Bremerhaven. While in German, my father and I visited many DP Camp to try and find family, friends or anyone we knew who had survived. We found a few. Far too few. We arrived in America on April 1, 1947. My life, at long last was about to begin. This, I knew, was due to one man and one man only: Raoul Wallenberg.

Q: On the outskirts of Budapest there was a death camp, it was located in a mason factory where thousands of people were cramped in there. Do you know how Raoul Wallenberg heard about it and was able to help the people there?
A: Unfortunately I heard nothing about that death camp. But again, if anyone could know about these places and try to save souls, Raoul Wallenberg could.

Q: Do you recall any stories about how Wallenberg obtained the assistance of nurses and doctors who helped out?
A: Probably the same way as he did everything to continue his mission, his calling. My father told me later that when people heard that Raoul Wallenberg was in a building or a particular place, those who could, and felt safe, would come running just to catch a glimpse of him. As if he had a message, ”I care and I want you to care as well.” I know that this man was chosen by G-d. He was G-d’s messenger. I believe this very strongly.

Q: Do you know how he was able to learn of the cattle-cars that were filled with Jewish people?
A: I don’t know personally. But I surmise that since he knew people in very high placed, this information came to him from various sources, especially toward the end when Eichmann sped up his extermination process to murder as many Jews as he could in the time left before the war would end. There were not enough cattle cars, or tracks to carry them because of the constant bombing, so he started the death marches. Later, when Eichmann was tried in Israel, it is said that he did not care what happens to him only that he was instrumental in killing six million Jews. That was more then enough for him. And nothing they could do to him could reverse that act. Six million. How many Jews would that be today? On the other hand, how many Jews are today from Raoul Wallenberg’s one hundred thousand?

Q: Do you recall any stories about what happened at the Danube River?
A: That was spoken about almost immediately after liberation. Again, the Germans wanted to get rid of as many Jews as possible. They would line up Jews several rows deep and take long, heavy logs with Germans holding each end of a log and they would press the log against the backs of the Jews standing and just push them into the Danube. The method proved speedy and went on till liberation. I don’t know how many were murdered in that manner. Many, I am sure.

Q: Were all of the people rescued by Raoul Wallenberg, and those who worked with Raoul, Jewish or were there others among them?
A: From what I understand most were not Jewish. Even in disguise, Jews could not move about town easily. Raoul knew a lot of people both in the diplomatic corps. as well as out. He had a lot of volunteers from many sources and I would think countries. Those who saved me and my family happened to be Jews. But I am not sure how many were successful in infiltrating the Nazis that way. I am sure he had many people who, what we call today, were righteous gentiles.

Q: If Raoul Wallenberg were sitting among us today, what would you say to him?
A: What do you say to someone who gave you back you life? There are no words. No music. No prayers or poems that one can recite for such a person. Still, I would say, thank you Raoul for my parents, my siblings, for my two daughters, my seven grandchildren, one a doctor, an other a designer, a business man, a future lawyer, a rabbinical student and two young ones with unlimited opportunities because of you. I am also blessed with a great grandson and another on the way. I would say thank you for my sibling’s kids, grandkids, great grandkids and for all the future souls that will come into this world because of you. On the other hand, I cannot begin to thank you, I will leave that to G-d.

Q: What do you think he would say to the world today?
A: The world is hemorrhaging. Do something! This cannot continue. Everyone’s blood is on everyone’s hands. And he, himself, would be putting his life on the line all the way, just as he had done before. This is what he knows. To matter. To stir. To save.

Q: After the war what happened to you?
A: As I said, we were liberated by the Russians. It was a door to door fight between the Russians and Germans. One day I went up to the bathroom and I saw a Russian soldiers and a Germans soldiers coming at each other from opposite directions. Instinctively I ducked. The German was killed. The Russian came over to calm me. Some were very nice, at least he was not drunk as I don’t think they were while they were still fighting. At first we felt great. After all, we were liberated. We were free. We could look at the sun and breathe free, fresh air. But as it turned out, after they were victorious, they started their drinking and we began out odyssey to leave Europe for America.

Q: Your parents and family, after the war, where did they go, what did they do?
A: As I said, we left Budapest for the farm, then to Austria. My father tried to find his brothers and sister and their children. The entire family, other then one sister perished. Four brothers and three sisters, and countless nieces and nephews were exterminated. They lived all over Europe. All gone. They did not have a Raoul Wallenberg.

My mother’s family, four sisters and three brothers survived because Hitler threw them out of Vienna when he annexed Austria to Germany. So they went to England and the US. When we arrived in the US, they took us in, still in shock that we had survived. We stayed with them for a few weeks then found our own apartment in Williamsburg. I started school, a yeshiva, learned English very quickly. I am good at languages. I made new friends. I only wanted to make American friends. I wanted to become Americanized as soon as possible. I still could not get over the fact that I could go to the store without fear. Talk to people without fear. Walk the streets without fear. Say my Hebrew name without fear. Well, almost without fear. As I said, some of the fear will remain forever. I am never quite sure what I am afraid of. That pit. But I was free.

Q: How did the war, and what happened to you and your family, affect your relationship with religion after the war?
A: It didn’t. I stayed the same affiliated religious person. I completely believe in G-d. I keep the holidays, pray, eat kosher, though I am a vegetarian. If anything, because G-d sent us Raoul Wallenberg, to save us, is a positive answer that there is a G-d. I am grateful to both G-d and Raoul for keeping me and my family on this earth.

Q: Do you have any photos or documents that you would like to include in this footage today?
A: Sadly, I do not. Unfortunately, most of the pictures were left behind when we ran for our lives. My mother took some family photos that would be irrelevant to this interview. We did recover some jewelry when we went back to our apartment after the war. Jewelry my father had hidden in the attic before we left. But all of that was traded in for food. Like a gold bracelet was exchanged for a loaf of bread. Yes, that was how scarce food was. And life certainly meant more that gold. The pictures were destroyed when the Nazis ransacked our apartment looking for valuable.

Q: After the war, what happened to Raoul Wallenberg?
A: If anyone has that answer I wish they would share it with the world. It’s almost like one of those fantasy movies. A man comes to earth to accomplish something. After he has done his job, you see him walking away, turning back once or twice, then waves Shalom and disappears in the fog. I know, the Russians took him. I know that some people claim to have seen him in prisons in the Gulag. I don’t want to see that image of him It is not fair. Of course the word fair is only in the dictionary. I prefer to see him in that mist, with a smile on his safe, satisfied that he had done what he was sent here to do, then moved on.

Q: Why is it important to keep Raoul Wallenberg’s legacy and story alive today?
A: Are you kidding me!? There are certain people’s memory who must be kept alive because of what they did and to show others how to get it right. This man save 100,000 Jews. Maybe more. Definitely not less. We keep our heroes alive because the world needs heroes. We need to reward them. And keep them in our memory, talking about them, writing about them, making films, TV shows and plays about them. That is a must.

The Talmud says that when you save one life it is as if you saved an entire world. Well, Raoul Wallenberg saved one hundred thousand lives. One hundred thousand worlds. If that is not a good enough reason to keep his memory alive then what is?

Q: I’ve learned that you have shared your story at schools etc., why do you do that?
A: For Seventy one years I kept quite. I was afraid to go down that road. What if I go there and crack and can’t come back? But suddenly, Holocaust deniers are cropping up like poison mushrooms in dark cellars. Then I knew I had to begin to tell my story. There are so few left who can confront these evil deniers and say, it is true. I was there. I suffered. I saw death. I saw the immeasurable hate. I felt the fear, the hunger, the panic. My kids will only be able to say ”My mother was there. She told us so.” How many would believe that? And who would tell them about Raoul Wallenberg? Who? It is my job now. And the job of those who are still left to bare witness before our voices are silenced forever.

Q: Is there anything else that you would like to share with us today?
A: I hope that we can come to a point in this world where we hold life dear. Every single life. We don’t have to love each other. No one can love everyone. But to hold life dear. And to remember men like Raoul Wallenberg who held life dear, even at the risk and eventual loss of his own life, then we will become a world of people worthy of life. We must say, enough! Enough!

Again, I want to thank Raoul Wallenberg for saving me and my family and thank him in the name of the 100,000 whom he saved. I also want to thank the Raoul Wallenberg foundation for honoring me and letting me tell my story.

Credits

Interview: Mari Rodriguez
Camera: Michael Ragsdale
Transcript: Evan Rosenbaum
Editing: Adriana Lee

Q: What was your maiden name?
A: Shulamit.

Q: Where were you born?
A: Hacnas Latina. Do you want me to write it, ’cause it’s hard to spell?

Q: Where was this?
A: Czechoslovakia

Q: Did you grow up there?
A: No.

Q: Where did you grow up?
A: We were taken to see my mother and were spread out because we didn’t know where we were going to be. I grew up everywhere! All over the world. But from there I came to Budapest. To Hungary. And that’s where we were with Wallenberg.

Q: Whom did you live with? Parents, siblings?
A: Sister. One sister left. And I lived with her, the rest were taken to Auschwitz, and some didn’t come back. One brother…

Q: Whom did you live with before the war started?
A: Before the war started I lived with my… we were five children and my mother. My father died.

Q: How old were you when your father died?
A: I was eight. Just from pictures I remember him.

Q: Did you grow up in a Jewish community?
A: Yes, it was a Jewish community.

Q: Was it orthodox?
A: Yes, definitely.

Q: What kind of school did you attend?
A: I attended a first a small school, in town, and it was like a public school, but we had Jewish studies, I don’t remember how many times a week. I was there until third grade. And then, we, my family was a very large family, aunts, but we were five children, and they said we’d be safer in Budapest, Hungary. So we lived there, and I was left with two sisters. And the, my mother came also, and she said, ”You don’t go back to Czechoslovakia. You celebrate Pesach…” This was 1943. She said, ”You should come when you have your Pesach vacation, then we should come.” And then, by the railroad we went to the train, and a man, I don’t know, he said we were crazy. He said to go home, that we shouldn’t go to a place where we will never come back. It was left two of us. My sister was in Israel, and he told us to just go back! Don’t turn around, don’t go to the train ’cause you will never see light again. So we went back, and we stayed in our apartment, until they started to take the Jews in Budapest. It was ‘44 I think…

Q: How old were you when you left Czechoslovakia to come to Budapest?
A: I was about ten years old.

Q: And how old was your sister?
A: My sister was… she’s six years older than me, so she could be seventeen, eighteen?

Q: Can you describe the school that you went to?
A: In Budapest- at first, at the beginning of the year, only a Catholic school would accept me. And then they stared all that brain [washing], and doing things. So I said to my sister, ”I’m not going back there.” So we found a Jewish school where I went, and until the war broke out and they took over. The Nazis, the Russians… they took over the school. So we were taken first to the ghetto, then to the apartment. And then they picked up my sister. You know this Pinchas Rosenbaum has this magazine, writes for something in New York, very famous person. He was married to Swiss person, England maybe, head-Rabbi’s daughter. He married. After the war. But he died.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your school in Czechoslovakia?
A: In Czechoslovakia, it started the anti-Semitism. They didn’t let us study Jewish studies, nothing. My brothers used to go to Cheder, but now they couldn’t go. That’s when my family decided to go to Budapest to keep eyes on us, and to live there until my mother decided for us to go back. But the schools were bad.

Q: Do you remember any specific occurrences?
A: I remember one thing: I was in third grade and the teacher wasn’t Jewish, we didn’t have any more Jewish teachers, and she turned to the board, writing. And I was copying like all the other children and for no reason she came over to me and hit me with her ruler. You couldn’t say anything, like why do you do this? Why? I couldn’t say anything. Just somebody talked… they were very strict. So I said to my mother, ”I’m not going back to school.” She said that maybe I did something she didn’t like. I said, ”She didn’t even see me!” She was with her back to me and I was always very quiet. But she [my mother] said I must go back to school. Until we went to Budapest. And there, finally we found a Jewish school. A very famous school, it was a seminary for ‘chazanim’. You know what a ‘chazan’ is?

Q: So would you say it was a Yeshiva?
A: It was then, I don’t remember what it was called, but very, you know, and special school and there I didn’t have to repeat classes or anything. Right away I got into the right class and I was very happy there. One thing, we weren’t allowed any more in Czechoslovakia to study Hebrew, and I couldn’t read. Before we went back to Budapest, I had a twin brother who went to Auschwitz. He… I’m sorry… teach me at the cemetery to read from the stones. He teach me the letters. And I got scared, I heard someone crying, I was little, maybe six, and I said I didn’t want to go there, not there, not the school not anything. Just stay. And the… my mother decided that we go to Budapest. I remember in ‘43 when she decided we should go for Pesach. ‘43, in March. I remember everything, that day… we should stay there until and see if she goes back to Czechoslavakia.

Q: Was your family religious before the war?
A: Yes.

Q: What activities were you involved in before the war? Things you did for fun, with your family or friends?
A: We were children, we were playing, we were skiing. We lived between the hills, and we skied. We played like children. We didn’t have toys like you have today. But we had things.

Q: When did you first notice signs of anti-Semitism?
A: The first time we saw airplanes coming in, bombing. When was it, ‘39, ‘40? That’s when the war started. So that’s when… after that we left for Budapest.

Q: What kind of actions were being done against Jews? Did you see anything?
A: All of my uncles all had beards and peyis, and they would come and cut off one side of it. They were cut, with the skin also. It was awful, we were not used to this. If my mother stepped inside a store they came, not the Czech, the Czech were very nice to us. They told us to travel further, that for the Jews bad things were coming. Told us to go back where we came from. We were afraid, they used to come to the houses, they would break the windows, throw stones. When we went to school they would hit us. We thought these goyim were friends. We were afraid, so we saw a lot of that.

Q: Were you aware of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in the camps at that time?
A: They took Jews in Czechoslovakia just when the chair left town. In Budapest they took Jews and threw them in the Danube, and threw them and said, ”If you won’t go, we won’t take you.” You know, Budapest is divided. They said they would take us into the ghettos, and they took a lot of people and they killed them. We saw many on the streets of Budapest. I didn’t know who it is… I had an older brother, he was sixteen years old, and he was taken to a labor/working camp, and he asked for you know, socks, to send food… I was still with my sister. I went out. We weren’t allowed out, the Jews were not allowed to go out. We had stars on, and I removed the star, and my sister said, ”No one will know you, you go shop and we’ll send him a package.” Unfortunately children did recognize me, and they screamed, ”Where is your star?” They ran after me, but I was a very good runner, they didn’t catch me. But there was no more Jewish star, and they wouldn’t give me anything, I couldn’t get anything for my brother. We couldn’t send the package. Then they took the Jews out of the houses, wherever they lived, and they passed my own house and the custodian wasn’t Jewish. He hated us. And he said, ”You see? You see?” We were in a very big apartment-house. ”I didn’t give your names or anything. They didn’t collect from me, the people. For this you must pay me.” I don’t remember what my sister gave him, but she said, ”I’ll see to it what we have…” and they did not take her out like they took the others. They shot a lot from the houses. Many were taken to the ghettos, and that’s when Pinchas Rosenbaum came with two other people – two other men – and they took us out. They didn’t take me because my sister wouldn’t let me go. And they brought the Wallenberg papers to go save other people. My sister and her group were caught by the S.S.- the Nazis. And right away they had to throw away the papers, the Christian papers so they shouldn’t see. And right away they knew what to look for. So they went however they could, through the toilet, through the windows, and they, she came for me. She took me to the place, the same place where Mr. Wallenberg was, you know, the Swedish Consul. That was in a factory, a glass factory. I remember exactly how it was, room… glass… very big room where people slept on the tables, on the floors, and I didn’t want to. We were brought up very religious. Men and ladies in the same place and I kept on searching, going around. I thought there were still places in the rooms. I was anxious to see what’s going on. And finally I found a hiding there, but when they said when they found me there they needed it for an office, and they took me and the other kids and they took us… My sister, she didn’t know where I was taken. When they told her, she begged them to leave me, it was just the two of us, but they said I was too young. They would send people to Switzerland, to Sweden, but they couldn’t send me anywhere because I was too young, and they were afraid that we would be caught. My sister stayed there til the end with Wallenberg. She said she saw him, but she didn’t know which one, there were so many people.

Q: Let’s backtrack a little bit. Before you met Wallenberg, how did the war affect your family’s cultures, your traditions?
A: See we were left just the two of us, my sister and I, my mother didn’t come back from Auschwitz, my older sister didn’t come back from Auschwitz, and my brother didn’t come back from Auschwitz. My twin came back and he was going for Bar-Mitzvah studies. He didn’t have one, he couldn’t. My mother took him also back to Czechoslovakia, she said they would have the Bar-Mitzvah, there was not that many people, they were in a ghetto in Czechoslovakia. He did not have a Bar-Mitzvah. And after the war I didn’t know who exist, who lived, and I was going all over to look for family… and I saw in the places where they brought back the people, and this one woman, I wasn’t sure if she was my mother. I followed her around and she yelled at me, ”What do you want?” And I heard her voice… it was not my mother. Then we went all over Jewish organizations. I was thirteen, and I… until I found a list of my brother, thank G-d he made it back. He told me the stories of what he went through, and he said that he’s not going to be religious. He said what he saw, and how they threw children and families into trucks to burn them in gas chambers. He said there is no G-d if He could sit there quietly and let this happen. I was hurt, because when I was in the convent I didn’t eat, I was very watchful not to eat any food or anything, and they allowed me to bring in snow to melt and eat it. Until I became very sick one week and they took me in a hall to die. Here was one girl, we didn’t talk if we were Jewish or not, but she said you eat what they give you to survive, and when your parents or someone will come for you you’ll still be alive.

Q: So you didn’t eat because the food was not kosher?
A: It was not kosher. And I was sick from the smells from when they served food. And one time we made up songs and we made up a song about the principal who wasn’t Jewish I guess, and they lined us all on the knees to stand for hours as punishment because we made up this song. One song against… but the nuns were so nice, I wish I could remember one name for any of them, the Sisters. When the S.S. came and asked for the Jewish children to stand out and they will take us to ghetto – this was when Budapest was divided- like here you have New Jersey. They said they will take us to the ghetto in Budapest. But all the bridges were already… they didn’t exist. So I looked back to see if there were children who stepped out of line with their hands on their heads and the nuns said, ”We don’t know what you want. These are all Sisters and Brothers here.” All the same. And they pushed me back so I wouldn’t move that I would be all alone to be taken.

Q: Do you remember when the Nazis invaded Hungary?
A: I don’t exactly remember the date.

Q: Do you remember seeing it occur?
A: Sure. That’s when we had to start wearing the star. And I always took off the star. I thought I would aggravate them. They took over the Jewish schools, and I was a kid, and I went by and before I went by the building, I took off the star and I passed. The Jews were not allowed to go on the sidewalk. And when I passed it I put back the star and turned to them and they wanted to hit me but I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore because I said what they did to my family, I have nobody anymore. I don’t care what happens to me. Many things like that happened. I saw them hitting people in the street. All over. But I always removed the star. Around my neighborhood kids recognized me, and they called me, ”Dirty Jew”. [I said] ”But you are the same as me! If I’m dirty then you are dirty!” I didn’t care what happened to me because I felt there is no one to go to, to complain.

Q: What was the ”Arrowcross” and how was it organized? The Hungarian Police…
A: They participated, they always ran together with the S.S.

Q: Do you remember anything that they did? Did you meet with them ever? Did you have any encounters with them?
A: When I went around the street they were in front of the school building. The Hungarian… I forget the name, but the Hungarians, also German S.S. were with them because the Germans didn’t speak Hungarian.

Q: When did you first hear of Raoul Wallenberg?
A: When we were taken to the building and my sister went and asked them to let me in…

Q: Which building was this?
A: It was the glass building. Then name of the street was Vodasutzer. That’s what it was called. Across the building was a market. They had Jewish people standing in front of the market, but they wouldn’t let me in if they didn’t know who I am, and my sister begged them, ”The Nazis, the S.S. will come from across the street and get me!” So finally somebody came and told her to hide, here was a window to the downstairs. They told me to crawl in there and I was hiding until they told me to come out. So that’s when I knew about Wallenberg.

Q: Did you ever meet him?
A: I saw… I spoke to my sister and I asked questions, did he look like this, a tall person, and she said yes, he was a tall blond man. He was there when I came to the door, but I didn’t know then his name was Wallenberg.

Q: Do you know how old Raoul Wallenberg was at the time?
A: He could be a young person, not an old person. I didn’t know exactly. My sister though, she remembers everything.

Q: Can you describe him, what he looked like? What people told you he looked like?
A: He was tall, blond. The age I couldn’t begin to tell you. For me he was an older man, but my sister said he wasn’t. She said he was a younger person.

Q: How did he save you and your family, your sister?
A: He didn’t let the S.S. come on the roof. They jumped over, they came and right away he told men that this was a special house and they have no right to come there. They were shooting there, I remember once the shooting and I was afraid. That’s when I was really afraid and heard, ”They’re coming, they’re coming.” I didn’t know who ‘they’ meant, but then they said that the S.S. are coming, the Nazis. But you know, he was a big consul, and he didn’t allow them. Some Jews got guns…I’m not sure – I think Wallenberg killed also…

Q: In the consul?
A: Yes, the consul, the glass building.

Q: Did you hear any stories about Wallenberg? Did you talk about him, you and your friends? Or your sister?
A: My sister always talks about him, because she remembers him very well. You know that he was taken by the Russians, nobody know what happened with him. He was taken… he was killed…

Q: But at the time of the war, during 1944, did you hear any stories about him?
A: No. Maybe my sister did. She was there til the end. And she says she spoke to him. I said, ”What language did you speak to him in?” German… she didn’t know Swedish. But Hungarian…but I didn’t know exactly who he was, I had seen him, like other people, but I didn’t know.

Q: Did he give you Schutzpass? Do you know what Schutzpass is?
A: Yeah, my sister had it. I had it when they let me into the building. My sister was holding it for me, and when they took me out I don’t remember what happened to it…

Q: Can you tell me what it looked like? And what it was exactly?
A: No.

Q: Do you know if your sister still has the Schutzpass?
A: I never asked her what she did because I was always in hiding until we got to Israel. You know they took us to Cypress. And we lost everything. I wrote many times to Czechoslovakia if we could please get the birth certificate, but they wouldn’t. We didn’t get anything.

Q: What were the safehouses? You were staying in one – what were these houses?
A: They took regular houses, schools. Some were houses that people donated, Jews, that’s where people were kept, in the houses.

Q: Who was in charge in the houses?
A: Jewish people. Some were not so nice. I always tried to get out, but they said, ”We are not responsible for you.” You had good ones and you had not such good ones. But they had to do their job I guess.

Q: Do you remember if the house had a Swedish flag, or a red cross on it?
A: Red cross. Not all, only the houses that Wallenberg took. In the house where I was in, the glass one, there were about 800-1000 people. And you had to stand in line, there weren’t so many utilities, to go to the bathroom, to go to wash, you had to stand in line for hours.

Q: Who gave you food and clothing and other necessities?
A: Clothing we didn’t get. We had what we had. And I don’t know where the food came from, but there was some food. We were hungry, we didn’t always have breakfast and lunch, and we stood in line for that too, the food. Who gave it I don’t know, must be rich Jewish people that donated, like the factory. I think it was donated. And I guess it came also with what Wallenberg collected.

Q: So you think Wallenberg might have been involved?
A: Yes, 100% how.

Q: But you’re not sure how?
A: I don’t know how. No. I would have to ask my sister. She knows everything because she was older and she was there until the end.

Q: So Raoul Wallenberg helped set up hospitals and orphanages? You said you stayed at an orphanage?
A: In a convent. He made the arrangements. Otherwise they wouldn’t accept me there. I went with a few kids, and the boys ran away when the S.S. came so they wouldn’t take them away to the ghettos. I couldn’t believe that they would take us to the ghetto because there were no bridges. So I don’t really know…

Q: How long were you in the orphanage for?
A: I was there until the end of ‘44… a year I was there. And then they came for me – the organizations to collect children. The war wasn’t even over. One part was Germans, and the other side Russians and they were fighting still. And the bombs flew. There was a big huge shell – an empty bomb. I was with children, we were going to ask for food from the Russians, and we were hiding when the bombs came until we didn’t hear any more shooting.

Q: How were you reunited with your sister?
A: How we were reunited… I was in a D.P. camp and she was in a D.P. camp, and how exactly we heard of each other I don’t remember. But somehow my brother came – he was with my sister. She found him and he came for me. We traveled the whole night. Her camp was in Bomba. Mine was Leipheim. Leipheim was a children’s camp – all Jewish young people. And one day my brother came and he took me to my sister to her camp. Just to visit, I couldn’t stay there. And I came back, and then we met in Israel. She sent me a telegram saying that she’s in Israel. I came before her. She got married in the D.P. camp. So I came to visit her and her husband was the president of their camp. In Bomba. They closed up the camp and didn’t let people in. When I came they wouldn’t let me in until someone, I don’t remember who came, but my brother saw me and he went to tell my sister that I am standing there trying to get in. They didn’t let anyone in or out until they moved the whole camp to the city of Bomba. I don’t know if it was Austria… I don’t remember exactly. Then I met her in Israel.

Q: Do you remember any stories about what happened at the Danube River?
A: I remember that you see people were coming to find Jewish children. And they came to the place where I was and asked how I’m related to them. I said I never saw them. They said I’m their ’sister’. And they said my parents will come and be responsible for what happens. And I ran away. I had a few minutes with them, from the organization, and they told me where to meet. Night fell. I jumped from a window, and ran away. We went to the Danube. We walked a lot til we got to the Danube. There was a whole row of dead soldiers there and people were taking their clothes, they just didn’t care. We found a small boat there and one of the men fixed the boat so we could go to the Budapest mountains. The Russians stood on the mountains and were shooting at the boat. We said, ”What happens, happens.” They made bridges of dead soldiers to go into this boat. I was so afraid. I said I’m not going to step on anyone to go into the boat. So they brought some wooden pieces. They broke, I fell in, but the boat, little fishing boats, water came in, we all had to remove the shoes to get out the water so we wouldn’t drown.

Q: Did you hear any stories about the Jews being lined up next to the river?
A: Yes, from the ghetto they took them out and lined them up, by the Danube and just shot at them.

Q: You saw that?
A: No, I didn’t see that.

Q: Did you hear about Raoul Wallenberg saving any of them? Any of the Jews from the river?
A: No. My sister also had some of the papers to go save other people. They were caught. My sister jumped from a window when they were caught. She said she threw away the papers, then jumped, I don’t know from what floor. They ran away, and walked a lot until they got back to Wallenberg.

Q: Were all the people rescued by Raoul Wallenberg Jewish? Or were there also non-Jews among you?
A: I know about Jews. I know all the Jews had papers, false papers that they had to give to save other people.

Q: Do you remember any non-Jews at the house you stayed at?
A: No.

Q: If Raoul Wallenberg were standing here today, what would you say to him?
A: I would… really thank him for all what he did, for all the people, all of us, even us kids who were sent out and he saved. He saved so many people. I think we would do something special to celebrate with him.

Q: What do you think he would say to the world today?
A: He would tell them why it had to be the Jews. We are just like any other people, and we didn’t deserve that. You know one night I opened the TV to watch news and they showed all that. They showed people who were saved. But they didn’t show Wallenberg. I didn’t see from the beginning. They were talking about it, how this happened and why they have to do that, between people that knew more than I knew.

Q: After the war what happened to you?
A: I was saved by these people and they made a new home for children like me. They started a home, we stayed there. There wasn’t much food. They took us to the country

Q: Who were these people?
A: Jewish organization- I don’t know if you know it: Bnei Akiva.

Q: Of course! Were they from Israel?
A: No, maybe there were Israeli among them, but I remember they were from Hungary or Czechoslovakian.

Q: Where was the house that they set up?
A: It was a Jewish school where they got a building. In Budapest, but not for long. Then they took us to the countryside. In Hungary. It was a big beautiful place for sick children… what was it called? I don’t remember… it wasn’t a Jewish place. There was a swimming pool and also a lake. There were some boats also. We stayed there until they took us to Germany.

Q: Where did they take you to in Germany?
A: In Germany… from I guess it was in Leipheim, Munich you heard of, I don’t know how far… a D.P. camp. In this one it was mostly young teenagers, kids. The grownups just who ran the groups. I was always in a religious… and I was you know they gave us… what do you call it? Papers that we could use to go to the canteen to buy stuff. And the Germans brought us stuff, and I was working there as a secretary. I was in shock when a German woman comes with bones, human bones. And I asked, ”Where do you get the bones?” It was Jewish bones. She wanted food for the bones. I gave her food and we buried the bones. I wish I would have remembered exactly where so we could have sent for them to bury them in Israel. I didn’t…the woman always brought us stuff, but the bones, they were different. And they took us to the movies. They gave three minutes for the… And we were wondering – all the Germans left, all the goyim left and it was just us, the kids, many groups organized in Jewish organizations. And for the first time I saw what happened. I saw what happened in Auschwitz, and what happened to the Jews there. I saw the places, how they burned the Jews and where they put them. It was awful. I just looked and thought this could be my mother, this could be my sister…I ran out. I saw a German. I decked him. I could have killed him. He ran after me and stopped me from doing it. And I said, ”Why could they do it to our parents? To our families?” I was really shocked when I saw this because I didn’t know exactly what happened in Germany. My brother never wanted to talk about it. And then I didn’t want to go anymore to a movie or anything, because we didn’t have T.V. or anything to see this, to see what had happened. And they wouldn’t take us anymore because it was a shock for all of us. Because most of us were in the work camps and we wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t been in those camps. Then we were there until the end of ‘45, ‘46. ‘46 I think. They said we got certificates to go to Israel. And we were very happy and we made packages that should go and they came and told us, ”No”. They told us we couldn’t go because the Polish children had suffered more than us. And they have to let them go for. That’s what they said. So illegally they took us to France. We were there maybe 6-7 months. That’s when it happened with that Nazi that they called me in to speak to him what happened to him. And illegally they took us to Israel. And we were discovered by the British close to Tel Aviv. They came and were fighting with us. They threw tear bombs. It tore out our eyes. It was awful, but they did it. You know, we were in a little boat. And they were afraid even to come on our boat. So they fought with us just to make us to go to their big boats. They were like animals, the British. I couldn’t believe it, how they could be such animals, how they behaved. We were young kids, and the food they gave us we threw it at them. It was unbelievable what they did to us. They took us to Cypress. And at Cypress they took everything away from us. When we went off the boat they told us in France to make small packages, not only papers to take with us. We had a small bag and this is all we can take with us and they took that in Cypress. They lined everything up in the street and you could go for days looking but you couldn’t find everything. No water, no showers, it was just awful in Cypress. I think it was even worse than being in the camp. But I remember the British were not nice, very rough. All soldiers, they were supposed to take care of you, but… the food wasn’t like… they told us we were supposed to have normal food, but… until they took us to Israel it was a very bad situation. We couldn’t believe it. They built from, what was it called? They make the… I don’t know, the shower places that many people could take a shower, but the water was like, what is it called, that you burn in lamps?

Q: Kerosene?
A: Yes, kerosene. The water was like kerosene. No soaps, no nothing. And if you dropped your clothes it was red soil, you could never wash it out. It was just terrible, terrible situation. The way the British were…

Q: Once you arrived in Israel…
A: They put us in places for young people to study. I was 15, 16 years old. So they put us where we learned to read, and they taught us secretly how to handle guns. And they said that these bullets were dead bullets. And we tried to use these bullets up to the ceiling and some of these bullets were live! Some of the bullets were live… and in the night they trained us how to, you know how to fight in case we have to fight the British or the Arabs. You know, we was fighting the British.

Q: What happened to your parents and your siblings after the war? Where did they go and what happened to them?
A: My sister was taken away… they took them to Romania where they had… first she was with Wallenberg but then they took them, and they had them in groups, and they took them from there to Romania ’cause there they didn’t suffer like in Budapest. Some of them were sick, like my sister, and they stayed there until they were brought to Germany. And from there they came, my sister, a little bit to Israel. My brother also came, he made it through Auschwitz and all of that, he was also still a teenager, and they took them to Israel. He lied about his age and he went to the army, you know when they announced the Jewish state, so he wanted to… he was in a kibbutz. And you know, many of them were killed, especially the men. He made it to the army, he lied about his age. And I had a terrible dream that I saw my brother came and he was injured. And then he really came and I asked him, ”Did this really happen to you?” And he said, ”How did you know?” I said I have a dream, I couldn’t believe how I saw everything happened to him. And he stayed in the army until you know, you could make arrangements to have a place for yourself. He got married very young. Nineteen. We didn’t want, my sister was there and he said, ”I need a home. I want to build a home.” And that was it. My sister was married also, she married a German, and I went to a kibbutz. And that’s when the war was over. I mean just started, ‘48, the war just started. And they… I was on Kibbutz Yavneh – you heard of Kibbutz Yavneh? They took all the men … then we had to work, just teenagers. They took us away from studies and taught us how to shoot. They gave us battle rifles and we had to work with the rifles in the fields. Until it was over they send us and said we’re free to go. So someone arranged for me to go back to school, you know to study.

Q: How did you come to the U.S.?
A: The U.S…. my, I didn’t really want, I swore that even on a little boat, they made it like chicken coops, and there were three people in that coop, and if someone wants to get out all of us had to get out. And you couldn’t get out just one person. Before the British discovered us. In the middle of the ocean the boat broke down and we stayed there. We were happy ’cause at least we all rested. We were sick from the boat. This way we had four days we stayed on the ocean. Until from Italy, somehow we had shlichim from Israel. And they called to Italy for people to come to repair the boat. What did you ask, I’m sorry?

Q: Your in-laws said you should come to the U.S.?
A: My in-laws, they had relatives. And they said… my husband was fighting also in Israel and I was also… I said I don’t want to go to the army or anything but we got married and they said we should come but I didn’t want. And I swore on the boat I would never leave Israel. I had to go through, you know, what do you call that? Change… I swore that…

Q: Hatarat Nedarim? (Rescinding one’s promises)
A: That’s right I had to do that because…

Q: So how did the war, and what happened to you and your family affect your relationship with religion after the war?
A: I was in religious home and institutes that were always religious, and I had no problem with it and so was my sister. But my brother would never, he didn’t want to. He said he didn’t want to believe in G-d.

Q: So you continued practicing the chagim (holidays) and everything?
A: Everything, yes. I practiced everything. And we have five children. And one got married. All of them are married in Israel and one came here. And she got married with a young man and he said he wants to become religious. She had no idea what that is, what religion is, but her husband said this is how he wants to live, religious, and if she doesn’t want then they will have to separate. So she became religious, and she is the only one in her family. My brother was sorry that, he you know, he’s sick now, you know he’s diabetic also, like me, and many other problems, heart problems, and it’s no wonder from the camps what happened. So he’s sorry now that he didn’t become religious.

Q: After the war, what happened to Raoul Wallenberg?
A: I heard that he was taken by the Russians. They didn’t know what he is, and he was taken to Siberia. And he was kept like other people. I had cousins there too and my cousins managed to get away, but he didn’t get away. And I heard that they killed him.

Q: Looking back today on Wallenberg’s heroic actions, how much did you know at the time?
A: After the war I right away wanted to know what happened to him. And I asked. My sister was for more in Israel when I moved in. and one day I used to connect magazines. And in one of the magazines I saw Pinchas Rosenbaum, who saved us, took us to… and he wrote a story about Wallenberg. I have somewhere the magazine. I have to look for it if you’re interested. It’s not much, very little, but… My sister has books, she has many books that in Israel they printed many things and she says they call in the books, they call the house that we were the ”Glass House”. I don’t know if you heard of… yeah?

Q: You mentioned Pinchas Rosenbaum. Was he from an organization? If so, which one?
A: A religious group.

Q: From the Underground?
A: Yes. You know my sister, after we were united, I was left alone and he and a few more people came to save my people from the houses showed-she couldn’t believe who he is. He showed that he was wearing the tzitzit. He said if he will come into the building he is finished, they will know who he is.

Q: Where did he take you from, and where did he take you?
A: My sister ran away to Getmen after she was caught. I told her that the Nazis caught her and the papers she destroyed when she came to get me, because then I was alone in the apartment. I was going out to look for relatives. I had relatives in Budapest and I couldn’t find anyone. Finally she came and too me there to the building of Wallenberg. And I was there for a short time. I don’t know how long I was there.

Q: Pinchas Rosenbaum took you from there? From the safehouse?
A: To the safehouse. He worked to save people.

Q: He worked with Wallenberg?
A: Yes, he worked with Wallenberg. They had a group of young people who worked with Wallenberg and they made the false papers to go and they send many people to Switzerland and to Sweden. I had a cousin also who was in Sweden through Wallenberg.

Q: Why is it important to keep Wallenberg’s story and legacy alive today?
A: Because this is important in our history, Jewish history. He saved the Jews. What he was, we have to remember him always. What he did… there were many goyim, non-Jews, that saved Jews, but they didn’t do what Wallenberg did, to help so much. He was in danger too. My sister said when I was there that they went on the roof and were shooting, they came all the time to kill the people from that house. You know, the factory. But he fought, whatever he had, so that they shouldn’t come. And he saved all the people. Who would be left? I wouldn’t have even my sister. And now she’s very sick in Israel, that I just heard this week the news, but she will go til the end of the world to get all the information she can, his books and all about him. Everybody who was saved by Wallenberg, and not just who were saved, Yad Vashem is doing something on him, so people should remember him. Everybody feels terrible what happened to him. To destroy just like that such an important person.

Q: Is there anything else you want to add?
A: I don’t know, I have to talk to my sister whatever I remember. You want if I get some information from my sister? Maybe she can send you something.

Q: Do you have any pictures or documents you’d like to include in this footage today?
A: I have a piece of paper that we got in Cyprus, but I don’t know where. That’s what happened when we were there in the camps. And one photo from Germany I remember to be… to get it, some of the people.

Credits

Interview: Evan Rosenbaum
Transcript: Dana Adler
Editing: Adriana Lee

Q: What city and country was she born in?
A: She was born in Hungary. And then she married, she moved with her husband to Prague, Czechoslovakia. And that’s where my mother was born and also her younger sister.

My mother got married when she was quite young and didn’t get along with her husband… so when I was two years old she divorced him and she moved to Vienna to be with the man she wanted to be… Mr. Landsberger. And naturally she took me along, and I grew up in Vienna.

My grandfather, Hugo Hoffman, died when I was five years old. We went back to Prague, not by plane obviously, and I was at the funeral and since she [my grandmother] really couldn’t take care of herself financially she also moved to Vienna. For a while she had a beauty parlor in Vienna, which did not do very well, and my stepfather moved up in the world and we moved to a better district and we rented a room near us so that when we wanted to be alone, when he wanted to be with his family, she was in her room but she came for some of the meals.

In Europe at that time the main meal was around lunchtime and since I came home after school, which was after lunchtime, she [my grandmother] and I usually ate together while my father went back to work and my mother went to beauty parlor or library or whatever.

And then Hitler came. As a matter of fact the army of Hitler marched under our window. We had, they call them French windows I believe, it wasn’t a balcony, but it opened up like a fence that you could stand there. Our dog, who had to go urgently, we wouldn’t take him on the street, peed on the German army but they didn’t notice it. Luckily for us.

My biological father called and said, ”Look send him to me,” but my mother and he didn’t get along, and she said ”No,” but one day I got a letter from the police saying since I am still a Czech citizen, I was never adopted, I had to leave the country within 4 weeks. So my mother did call my father and I met him for the first time in 16 years… 15 years.

He had promised to send me as quickly as possible to England or someplace else. He was the sole representative of Parker Pen. And he sent me to, it was delayed because at that time there was a Munich crisis and then Chamberlain came back with this paper and saying there’ll be peace don’t worry about it and everybody believed him and right after that I traveled through Germany to Prague, I traveled through Germany on November 7 and November 9 was kristal night so I just got out in time. And I lived in England together with the export manager of Parker Pen.

At that time it was permitted to get affidavits from total strangers, and my father and my mother bought an affidavit from a lady who lived at the Dakota House building on 72nd Street [in New York], she was a very wealthy woman, and that way we could come to America.

And as I minor, I was not yet 18, I was living in England. Didn’t do very well, didn’t have any money, lived in a room without lights, had a cup of tea for breakfast and that’s it and I visited girlfriends to eat. And suddenly I got a visa to come to America.

Meanwhile my grandmother had come to Budapest where she had a cousin and some friends. And we knew she got the schutz-pass from Wallenberg, and we assumed that would be wonderful and we got news from relatives that she died in her sleep. Which I consider she was very lucky because who knows what would have happened to her and they sent me the schutz-pass. That was while Hungary was still involved in the war and everything. And that’s how I have it. And that’s why I think highly of Wallenberg… And that’s my story.

Q: What is your grandmother’s birthday?
A: I would have to look it up… She was born in January 9 1879 in Budapest. And the length of her body was 162 centimetres and gray hair… well she wasn’t a youngster, and blue eyes. And she was born Berta Eisler. And the only few relatives I had here on her side were all Eislers. And two of the Eislers went by the name of Eys. And they were very famous writers for the German movie Aufer (?). And they came to America and one of them I met, and he worked for MGM. As a matter of fact I was in the army there and before they sent me overseas my wife and I had a long hitchhike to Los Angeles and during the war MGM didn’t let any tourists there, but because of him we were able to walk around MGM and even we were bit players, so we never saw us in some of the movies.

Q: Do you know what kind of community your grandmother grew up in? Was it a Jewish community?
A: Uh, I would not say that we were exactly a very religious family. But yes, we were all Jewish and they were married… I may even have some of her old documents someplace. Because I got these too.

Q: Was your family religious before the war?
A: No.

Q: Did the war affect their religion at all?
A: I don’t know. I know very little about her.

Q: Do you know when your grandmother first heard of Wallenberg?
A: No.

Q: Was she in hiding?
A: At that time, most of the Jewish people lived in certain buildings that were assigned to them. And that’s where she lived. And that’s, from what I understand, [where] the messengers for Wallenberg came and looked for them. And whether she ever met him in person I have no idea.

Q: When did you first hear about Wallenberg?
A: Uh, after the war.

Q: Because of your grandmother’s story?
A: Yes, but there were also stories. Did you ever hear of the newspaper Aufbau? Well the Aufbau had many stories about Wallenberg and we subscribed to the paper…

Q: So it was not until after the war that you heard of the schutz-pass?
A: No. As a matter of fact, I don’t know I got it… much after the war.

Q: Who told you about the schutz-pass and your grandmother’s story?
A: As I said, it was a relative who survived. And she… she asked me whether I wanted it and I said yes, naturally, and she also told me she [my grandmother] died a natural death before most people were sent away to a camp.

Q: Do you know the date of her death?
A: No.

Q: What were the stories about Wallenberg at the time?
A: I know very little about what people say. Everybody seems to know his name. As you have seen in the park. And they built a memorial in Parsippany, New Jersey. I was contacted by Etlinger, and we sent money for a stone but I was never able to find my stone there and I was there when they had the dedication. And obviously we feel very grateful [to Wallenberg]… there were not too many like him. So now we learn more of Righteous Gentiles who saved people.

Q: Why do you think it’s important to keep a story like Wallenberg’s alive today?
A: Well I wish we would have a Wallenberg in Darfur or some other places. Unfortunately we don’t. He’s one of the few people who actually did something, most people talk, he actually acted. And that’s not happening too often, even today. Whether it’s Kosovo or Darfur or wherever.

Q: How do you feel about Wallenberg?
A: How do I feel? I’m grateful that he tried to help my grandmother. I am sorry about what happened to him. And I do believe in the years to come Wallenberg will always be famous.

Q: What do you think he would say if he were sitting here today?
A: What’s for lunch? Haha. No, I don’t know. He would probably have an office in the UN. And participate.

Q: Do you think he’d have any advice?
A: Advice is very easy to give; the problem is very few people listen. That will happen to you when you grow up and get married and have children. You give them advice.

Q: Would you want to say anything to him, if you could?
A: To Wallenberg? Thank you. That’s about all I can say. Thank you, not only for my grandmother, but for what he has done. Because, there are really very few names that are famous… the diary of Anne Frank, and Wallenberg… and who else?

Q: Why did you donate money to the library?
A: My wife and I are paying for an ongoing collection at two public libraries. Most of the good collections of, in the Holocaust, are in universities or specialty places like Leo Beck or others and the average public library may have a few books but really nothing to speak of. So my wife and I are funding it both in New Jersey, near our corporate office, where very few Jewish people live, and also here in Verona.

And over the years, the collection grew, we have the pictures, and now because of the Internet and because of interlibrary… I understand that the books go out continuously because it’s rare that a library has so many books about the Holocaust… The libraries are in constant demand for books. So it’s come in very handy because of this, and I’m very happy we’re doing it. We do not decide what books to buy, that we don’t. It’s up to the librarian and they have done a wonderful job. In other words, if each library has all the money they wanted, I bet you we’d have lots of books we don’t have now, not just about the Holocaust.

Q: Do you feel it’s important to teach children about the Holocaust?
A: Absolutely. Not only about the Holocaust. But about any area of the world where they’re trying to kill people because of their race, color, creed. And after the war we said it would never happen again and it keeps happening all the time. I guess it will continue as long as this world lives. Unless one day, global warming, this world won’t exist anymore.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
A: No, I’m happy you came. I’m happy you gave so much time.

CREDIT
Interview and Transcript: Adriana Lee

Q: What city and country were they born in?
A: They were both born in Hungary. My father was born in a city called Vác, V-A-C. And my mother was born in which today is a part of Slovakia, a border area, which on many occasions belonged to Hungary or Czechoslovakia.

Q: What are your mother’s and father’s birth dates?
A: My father was born on October 16 or 17, 1907. And my mother was born on December 22, 1910.

Q: Where were they raised?
A: In Hungary. My father lived in that town until he got married, the town that he was born in, and my mother became an orphan at the age of 3. Her father was killed as a soldier in WWI, and her mother died a few months after that. I’m sorry… I think her mother died in childbirth. My mother ended up living with her grandparents. In the beginning they lived in a smaller village, but I think in the 1920s they moved to Miskolc, which is a major city in Hungary.

Q: Where they raised in Jewish communities?
A: Yes, they were. They were all observant, what we call today Orthodox.

Q: What kind of schools did they attend?
A: To the best of my knowledge, my father’s secular education was until maybe 6th grade, and his religious education was until the age of 19, elementary, secondary and advanced yeshiva education. My mother, probably something like that of my father. She must have done about 8 grades. That’s about my recollection.

Q: How did your parents learn their Jewish customs and religion?
A: Their parents were all observant Jews… it was a major factor in their lives. My grandfather died before I was born, but was a very strict religious person who raised his children to follow in his footsteps. And the same for my mother’s grandparents, they were very religious people… the minute observances of religion, they would observe.

Q: What kinds of activities were your parents involved in before the war?
A: My parents got married in 1937; they lived in Budapest after that. For a short time they lived in Miskolc for a couple of months maybe. And then they went to live in Budapest. My father was a traveling salesman; originally he was a salesman for Swvig, which is a major alcoholic drink manufacturer. After that, he worked in a family business of shirts and uniforms.

Q: Do you know when they first noticed signs of anti-Semitism?
A: As Jews they probably had anti-Semitism all their lives. The organization of anti-Semitism started the rise of Nazism, which in turn came into Hungary shortly after that. I don’t know if you’re aware, but there are numerous clauses where the Jews were restricted from certain professions because -according to the demographics- they had too many Jews in that profession… so, there was always unofficial anti-Semitism in Hungary, there always was.

Q: What were your parents’ thoughts, feelings, and reactions regarding these changes?
A: Well, as these things came about, the restrictions became worse. My father’s two brothers were taken into forced labor, in all practical purposes as slave laborers to the Hungarian Army. And he lost two of his brothers who were in Ukraine with the Hungarian Army doing very menial work, often very dangerous work. I don’t know exactly what they were doing, but many times these people were sent out to the front to be human shields, human people to activate mines if the opposing army mined their fields. These people were sent out and they were the human sacrifices.

One of my father’s brothers, we don’t know what happened exactly but another one that was used as a human sacrifice, his family still got a notice from the Hungarian Red Cross stating that he fell in the war. Sarcastically the letter said, ”In the defense of the Motherland”, which wasn’t a fact. My father observed whatever was the date of his demise, and the other one we don’t have any definitive… obviously he succumbed to something.

This was in 1941 when they were taken away. In general terms, to the best of my knowledge, many restrictive professions came about against the Jews, at certain times. A Jew could not employ a Gentile; a Jew could not have certain business, limited businesses, and eventually no businesses. By 1941, there were very restricted anti-Jewish laws which were enforced and which were in the books. It was really enforced and really done. And as I said, two of his [my father's] brothers were taken and they perished.

Q: How did the war affect your family’s cultural and religious traditions?
A: My parents kept to their religion very strongly even in the worst of times. They tried to avoid, even in the Swedish Protectorate House. They did not eat anything that was definitively non-kosher. Obviously, they could not observe certain strict interpretation of kosher laws but as far as not eating pork… they did refrain from that, in the worst of times. They weren’t in the condition of starvation, but they were hungry.

Q: How did your family manage to keep and continue their Religion during the war?
A: As I’m saying, in their particular circumstance in Budapest, the situation as far as I know, was restrictive of Jews but they were able to [keep their religion]. They abolished ritual slaughtering in 1940, I believe… so there was no ritual slaughtering. Which did not allow people to eat meat. If there was any clandestine slaughtering of small birds… it’s possible, but I’m not aware of that. So this is something I cannot answer you definitively. On the other hand, they refrained from eating anything that was specifically non-kosher. They went hungry; there was a great deal of food lacking. They survived on whatever there was…

There was, as far as I know, forced labor even in the Jewish community. But I don’t know… My father was working in Budapest in the Forced Jewish Labor Brigade at the Budapest Airport, which is called Ferihegy, the name of the major airport. He was working there, but he was able to come home on very frequent occasions. I never heard from him that as a policy he violated the Sabbath, even though according to Jewish law you are allowed to violate the Sabbath for the preservation of life.

Q: What happened to your parents during the war?
A: My father was first… I’m vague on that… but for some time my father was taken away. It must have been in the early 1940s. I believe it was to Yugoslavia, Serbia. He was there for… not a very extended amount of time, but some time. And then he was back in Budapest, and as I just mentioned before, at one time he was forced to work at the airport, where he was able to have a communication with his wife and he came home very frequently. That was until the occupation of Germany… Germany occupied Hungary, I believe in March 21st or 22nd of 1944.

Q: And what happened to your mother and siblings during this time?
A: They stayed in their apartment. Which turned out to be the ghetto, when the ghetto came into effect. When the Hungarians and Germans sent Jews into ghettos… our apartment was in that area.

Q: When did your parents first hear of Raoul Wallenberg?
A: I can’t answer that exactly. But, it was something… his legend was known. And my brother was born on October 16 of 1944, which was the date that [Miklós] Horthy was ousted by the Germans and the Nazi Nyilaskereszt [Arrow Cross] collaborators in Hungary. My father, who went to get my mother, but by that time she had already given birth on the street, while trying to get into a hospital or a medical center, not quite sure which one. After she gave birth on the street, they were able to get into an infirmary, or a hospital, whatever. They were there approximately 10 days or 2 weeks, and during those days the new regime in Hungary picked up most of the Jewish men and horded them… killed them. My father was not in that house, because he was with my mother in that so-called hospital. And, in a way, that was a survival for him. They came back, again my dates might not be perfect, but some time around the 30th they came back to their house… to their apartment. My sisters, who were 6 and 4 at the time, were being taken care of by neighbors. And the Gentile superintendent squealed to the Hungarian collaborators that there is still a Jewish man in the house. So they came to pick up my father. They came – one officer and two younger soldiers, and picked up my father and while they picked my father up they also found another Jewish person in that house. They took them to the SS Headquarters in Budapest. I think it was number 60. It was the Headquarters of the SS management in Budapest at the time. That was a place where a Jew was entered… it was almost unheard that he should walk out of there alive.

It seems that my father had some righteous instinct, God helped him, and as soon as they got there, there was an air raid. All the Germans and Hungarians ran to the shelter. And my father and this other person walked out. They took a broom, or a shovel, and made believe they were shoveling the snow, and they walked out and returned home. This was on a Friday night – Saturday during the day, the officer came back. He told the superintendent, ”I forgot my white gloves, and I’m coming to pick them up.” My mother saw, and obviously got scared. I forgot to mention that all the way from our apartment, I would say, it was a good mile. Anyway, the two enlisted Hungarians were beating my father with sticks non-stop, and my father came home that night. My mother saw that he was blown up; and that his head was unimaginably altered… so this officer comes in and my mother got scared so he tells my mother, ”Don’t be afraid. In civilian life I am a doctor. I came here to see what’s happened to your husband. I’m not here in any official capacity to harm him, I’m here to heal him.” He looked at my father’s wounds, and then my mother asked, ”Tell me, who are you?” and he says, ”Don’t ask.” And he disappeared. He could have been Jewish, German, or a Good Samaritan. This must have been early November of 1944. They received a schutz-pass, which was the Swedish protectorate paper, and soon after that and in mid-November is the time when they entered the Swedish protectorate house.

Q: Did your parents meet Raoul Wallenberg?
A: My father said that he saw him once, I think. Once he came to this protectorate house, but one-on-one I don’t think my father ever… no.

Q: Did your father describe Raoul Wallenberg to you?
A: Physically? No. He said he once met him, but…his physical appearance… no. There was something I discussed with my older sisters, as they were going from the apartment that we lived in, which was in the seventh circuit of Budapest. They went to the Swedish protectorate, this was, by that time a Jewish area, it wasn’t yet considered ghetto, but it was an area were Jews were allowed to live. They went out to a non-Jewish area, which became the Swedish protectorate house. This was quite a long walk from where they lived. A Jew at that time was not allowed to be on the street, not to be outside of the area, and my sisters were young kids, as I said before – 6 and 4. And they were hanging on to the carriage that my mother was pushing with the one month old. They were trying to go to different places, but they were told, ”you can’t go here, you can’t go there”.

My father knew Budapest like the palm of his hands, but there was no way of going. It’s not a question of he didn’t know where he was going. He knew the direction, except there wasn’t any permission and they stopped him. My sister told me, they stopped them in one place, and there was somebody who said, ”I will take care of them,” and he marched them. And eventually they got to this protectorate house. Once they arrived there, again I don’t have the exact date, but it was by mid-November to late-November of 1944. They went along with my older siblings, two sisters and one brother, two of my father’s brothers, a neighbor family from across the hall, and two young girls who were cousins of my father. This was the small group that got there.

The building itself, where they went, once upon a time, before the war, must have been a luxurious apartment building for that time. But it was bombed… there were no windows, and some of the walls were left. It was cold and there wasn’t much warmth. They were in there for… 24 hours a day in whatever clothing they were able to have. They stayed there until a little after the liberation.

Q: How did your parents obtain food and clothing while at the safe house?
A: I would assume that clothing was only what they had from before, whatever they took with themselves. I have not heard anything about clothing, and food is something, which I inquired, my memory and the memory of my siblings that I talk to now, after, food… they don’t have a clear recollection that the Swedish Embassy brought in any food. I had some recollection my father saying that sometimes somebody from the Embassy brought in something.

There were two things… as I mentioned before, I had two girl cousins that were there. One was a 12 or 13 years old girl who was able to pass as an Aryan and occasionally went out without the yellow star, and was able to secure something. And an original neighbor from our building, whom after the war I knew, his name was Schneider, and they also were able to [find food] and they risked their lives by going out. They were able to secure something. An interesting thing that happened, somewhere along the line they were able to secure beans. My mother cooked it or baked it, or whatever. There was no fire, what they did was, the broken pieces of the building that were the wooden beams, they made a fire. There was no gas. My mother ate those, and she was able to nurse my brother. He survived, and so that was the food… A major staple of food was that: beans. I don’t really know where they got it exactly, but somehow they got it and it was probably a major factor in their survival, as far as food is concerned. Clothing… as I said, I do not have any recollection of them talking about any new clothing… or, not new as ”new”, but newly acquired.

Q: Did Raoul Wallenberg ever visit the safe house?
A: Once my father saw him. But he saw other diplomats that came.

Q: Do you know anything about the design and manufacture of the schutz-passes?
A: My father had a friend, who is not with us anymore, Mr. Benedict. He was a year or two younger than my father, from the same hometown as him, and I met him here, my father was friendly with him. I was traveling once on a bus with him, and we were talking, so he tells me an interesting story. He says that he also had a schutz-pass, a Swedish schutz-pass, which at that time, they were very difficult to see.

Thousands of people besieged the Swedish Embassy to get this thing. He came up with an idea, which is… flabbergasted me when he said it. He went up to the library, or the post office, he went up there and he saw the Swedish telephone book. He looked up somebody with the name ‘Benedict’. He found someone. He sent a telegram to that address, stating, ”I am Alfred,” I think that was his name…”I am the son of this-and-this Benedict, who is a brother of a cousin of your father.” And, ”I am stuck here in Hungary, and there is such a thing as a Swedish schutz-pass. Can you secure that for me and for my family?” He went up a few days later to the Swedish Embassy, where people were trying to get this schutz-pass, which was very limited. And so he goes up, and identifies himself as ‘Benedict’, and there is a schutz-pass written up for him, with instruction from this Mr. Benedict in Stockholm. And he got it without any fighting, without any standing in line.

As far as I understand, people were standing day in and day out trying to get this. He got this, and this person survived. It was a couple with two daughters. The daughters were, to the best of my knowledge, at that time probably 4 or 5 years old. And he tells me, after the war, he sent a letter to this address, this Mr. Benedict, thanking him for what he did. And saying, in reality, ”This is what I did. And I appreciate what you did, and I thank you.” He gets back a letter, and says, ”I knew that you were not related to us. We are not Jewish, we are Gentile. We have no relatives in Hungary, no connection whatsoever. But I did that for you and your family.”

So, if you’re talking about Wallenberg as humanitarian, there were other Swedish people who did the same thing. I mean, this person did not risk his life, but he went out of his way to save a fellow man. And he said he knew it all along, and he did it as a humanitarian. Which, I don’t know if any similar stories are in your records or not, but it’s something which I tell many people. It should never come to it that people should need these types of different ideas, but it’s a tremendous idea.

My parents went back [to the apartment], after the liberation, which was naturally ransacked. Not necessarily ransacked, but it was a small apartment, and it became the ghetto, and there must have been a hundred people living in those small apartments. And what they did… they needed heat; they took the furniture and burned the wood. So, a lot of things were missing. And they picked up their life after that. They survived.

There was no food after the war either, and my father…there was a Swiss chocolate factory, and somehow they got hit, and they were able to remove blocks of chocolate and that became my father’s way of bartering for everything. With a piece of chocolate he was able to secure some flour, some wood. My father and his brothers were able to put their hands on something and that became their bartering tool. For food, for whatever they needed, for the early period after the war.

It was something miraculous that my brother survived. He was a preemie, and there was no food, as I said before my mother was able to nurse… The family was together practically…well, other family members were killed, but the immediate family was together. They survived, and they built up a new life after the war. We stayed… I was born in 1946, and we stayed there till late 1956 when Hungary became a Communist country, that way we were unable to leave the country, and 1956 when the revolution against the Russians took place there was a possibility of leaving illegally, and that’s what we did. Crossed the border illegally, and we came to Austria and from there eventually we came to the United States.

Q: On the outskirts of Budapest, there was a death camp in a mason factory. Do you know anything about this?
A: Yes, there was. Going back a little bit, in the Swedish protectorate house, where my family was there, by my calculation roughly two months, from late November to late January… when Pest was liberated. You understand, Budapest is a city made up of Buda and Pest. Pest is the eastern part, and Buda is the western part, separated by the Danube River. And the Russians liberated Pest, but they had a tough time crossing the river, because the Germans, the retreating Germans bombed all the bridges. So in order to cross the Danube, they had to put up bridges, and it took them about a month before they were able to cross. So this was in Budapest… in Pest… and they were liberated in January. Buda was only liberated in February.

During those two months, as I mentioned before, these protectorate houses, and these protectorate certificates, were just as good as the Hungarian-German officials accepted. I know of at least once, but I think twice, that the Hungarian Arrow Cross, which is the Hungarian SS, came into the protectorate house. They ordered all the occupants to line up, and they were taking them to the Danube to be shot. This was a time when deportation was impossible for them, because the railroad to the death camps was broken, so what they did, the Hungarians, was that they took Jews… marched them to the Danube, lined them up, and shot them. The same thing was at least once, but I think twice to my family. My father said somebody from the Swedish Embassy came and arranged to pull them off, and they were not taken to the Danube. There were others who were taken, even from the protectorate house. The Hungarian SS came in and did take them out and kill them. So it was a protection, but not a full protection. So this was what transpired there and this is how they survived.

Q: Were those rescued by, or who worked with, Raoul Wallenberg all Jewish?
A: If he had any Hungarian Gentiles…To the best of my knowledge I don’t know… it was all Jewish people.

Q: Do you know what happened to Raoul Wallenberg after the war?
A: That is a major question. I know as much as what’s written. But as far as I know, he went to meet the Russian Commandant and that was the last time he was heard of. There are all kinds of rumors, and I know as much as anybody who wants to read or study. I have an interesting theory on that. I don’t know if you’re familiar, in Slovakia there was a major worker for the Jewish cause, a Rabbi Weitzman. He was legendary, what he did… he was a Jew; he had held meetings with the highest officials of the SS. He wrote books after the war, and he was a tremendous head… genius. In everything else, not just… and he improvised. He kept, and he was able to, if you’re familiar with that, in Slovakia there were two deportations. One in 1941 and one in 1945. No, 1944, I’m sorry. Late 1944. But there was no deportation between 1941 to 1944. A major component of that was this Rabbi Weitzman. He worked ceaselessly, unbelievably, for saving the Jews. He came up with ideas, which is all documented, it’s all written about on how to save, and how to delay, and who to talk to, and how to talk to. It was interesting; he jumped off the wagon taking him to Auschwitz and made his way back to Bratislava…it’s the capital of Slovakia today and he made his way back there and hid in a bunker. The Russians were right there, to liberate Bratislava. This man, with a small group of people from that bunker, made a deal with a German officer. He was taken by German officers to Switzerland, the distance from Bratislava to Switzerland is huge, I can’t tell you the mileage, but… they had to go through part of Austria, the whole width of Germany, in order to reach Switzerland. My guess would be definitely 300 to 500 miles. Here is a man who knew that the Russians are here, he is in a bunker, and the chances are that he can survive until the Russians come, he lets himself… okay, there was bribery, there was trickery, everything for these German officers to save him. But it’s still German officers, who pledged their lives. He allowed himself to be there, instead of waiting days, maybe less than days, to be saved by the Russians. He didn’t trust them. And I think that, obviously, he made the right move. They survived and he made it to Switzerland.

Raoul Wallenberg was an honest man who believed that the Russians are liberating the Jews. He did not have the same fear of the Russians as this Rabbi Weitzman and he trusted them, and we see what probably transpired. But this is something which is, as I said before, I dabble in amateur history of this era. I talk to people; I love to talk to people. I read books, but every book, even if I know the author of the book…it’s still a book that was written down for mass distribution in an appeal to sell that book. I like to speak to people that were there, one on one, I can ask a question, I can have a communication… And I did, in many cases, had conversations with… as I said before, with this Mr. Benedict, and I don’t know whoever he told, if it got into any public forum or not, I don’t know. I have other stories, not necessarily related to Wallenberg, which are probably very rare or not written about.

Q: What happened to your family after the war?
A: My parents went back to their own apartment. And they were able to somehow secure food. My father was dealing with some Russian officers. The Russians, as I said, they were barbarians. The average Russian soldier at that time was a barbarian. Many of them were illiterate, starved and hungry, in war for 4 or 5 years. They were… it’s an old fact…but they attacked women. They did not care. The officers, obviously, were of a better breed. Some of them were… they had some Jewish officers too, who spoke Yiddish, were able to communicate with the Jewish population. My father had some dealing with a Jewish officer, who was dealing with him, as I said, in bartering food, and the Russians… this is an old story, they were crazy about watches. They had no watch. Russia at that time was way behind, to the best of my knowledge. They were crazy about watches, and they were trading with everybody, they saw someone with a watch they grabbed it and they took it and the ones who were decent they gave you something for it. And they were so foolish, when they had this big alarm clock, this is big watch, they say, ”Give me 10 small ones!”.

So that was at the beginning, there was no industry at the time yet, so they lived on that. My father also was able to find some things, which he had. As I was saying, he was involved in shirts and uniforms, so he had some raw material, which was also in demand because there was no clothing. So he was able to barter for that also. Eventually life became somewhat standardized, and I can’t tell you exactly, I wasn’t there, but they were liberated in January of 1945, and I would assume by the time I was born in 1946, there was a certain normalcy for that era. In the way of bringing food, or getting food, and earning a living.

Q: How did the war affect your parents’ religion?
A: Obviously, my parents stayed together and they remained. You had people returning from concentration camps, who went through hell, one year, two years, three years of living subhuman life, who hadn’t at that time. You had this syndrome that you had later on in Vietnam, the prisoners, they treated them like dogs. Life meant nothing to the Germans. So they came back, obviously their religion was lax… or, they didn’t believe in anything. Many of them, after awhile, did return to it. But as far as my parents were concerned, they remained pretty stable, because they were able to. But that’s because of my parents’ situation, where they were. But these people, especially young people, who were separated from their parents, parents were killed, went to the concentration camp, they were 15, 17 years old. They lived for a year or two in slavery where every day was killing and a crematorium, and they came back… in retrospect, the humanity was lost for them. Only for a period of time.

Q: What was the longest period of time that your parents were separated?
A: I would say not long. Only that period that my father was in Serbia, which I don’t have a figure, but it must have been a couple of months.

Q: How did the war affect your relationship with your parents?
A: My sister asked my mother, ”How did you survive?” what was it that made people, that were dying left and right, hunger, murder everything. My mother said, ”I only live for the day”. Over here we are making plans, education for our children, for our grandchildren, we are making plans for our 401ks, and this and that. There was no such thing, the only thing there was, was a survival for the day… survival for the children. It obviously had a tremendous impact; they were thinking about it.

I know many people would not speak about it for years. My parents, well I never directly asked them a lot, my mother a little bit and my father whenever he opened up, but I never really interrogated my father into what it was. Occasionally he would speak of things but most of the things he spoke of were the religious aspects to… never give up hope, there is a God, and he his watching over us, we don’t know his methods, we don’t know what he is doing… but whoever was destined whoever wanted to survived. As I said, they were lined up to be taken to the Danube; they were there already the last minute and they were called. They were right next to the Danube, if they were to be called they were probably a quarter of a mile to the Danube or less so they were taken out and it was finished. Its not something that could have been saved… it was pure luck or God’s help. So this is something that they lived with all there lives and my father spoke very rarely, and the main thing that he spoke and explained to us about was to have faith… there is a God, we don’t know what he is doing… there are many cases and the last minute he survived. My father, rest in peace, was a very peaceful, very righteous man, let me tell you a story.

My father had a doctor who had a potion and if you inject the person with the potion, it made the person yellow, and it [looked like it was] very contagious. The Germans and the Hungarians were very afraid of it, if they saw someone they isolated them, they threw them out, if there was a concentration of Jews and someone was yellow they would kick them out. So it was a way out. Obviously this was poison and it was strong. My father got hold of this from the start, and he had some sort of percentage in which he shot many people with it, and I don’t know the number… if it was 5, 10, 15… I don’t know too many, and he did that and he saved people’s lives. My father never told this story, my mother did.

When my father was working at the airport it wasn’t an 8-hour work shift it was an 18 hr work shift. In order to get to and from work he put in probably more work also with that. So that day, when he came home knocked out there was just a person sitting there and his son was taken into a place where most of them were killed. My father came home as knocked out as a person could possibly be and my mother said that this man said that you have to come and administer this potion to his son or then they will ship out his son. Then my mother said to the man, ”Please, let him eat”… but my father said, ”no, I have to save him” and my father went… it wasn’t to far from the neighborhood… and he did that and the kid was thrown out and survived. The man came to my father’s home and said to him that because of him his son was alive. That was one story.

In Slovakia the deportation was in 1941, they took a big chunk of the gypsies there… From 1941 to 1944 there was a hiatus, the Slovakian people spoke Hungarian because Slovakia was next to the border with Hungary. Most of those people closer to Hungary spoke Hungarian, many of those young people escaped. A man that escaped from Slovakia went to relatives and said, ”can I please sleep here? I have nowhere to go” and the other man said, ”No, you cant, I can not risk my family”… They did come, you know, in the middle of the night the police came check papers. Despite the small house that we use to live in, he slept there many nights, refugees and other illegal… and my father took the possibilities and he brought them out food and he gave them anything they wanted and this was before Wallenberg. This is what my father did; they always say nice things about my father, always risking his life to save others.

Q: How do you feel about Raoul Wallenberg?
A: Very thankful, and obviously I am here because of him and so are my siblings and only because of him. He was a young person who came from a rich family and risked his life to save others and it’s a pity. It is crazy how today there is no way to try to locate him in.

Q: What would you say to him if he were here with us today?
A: I would thank him in any possible way. He gave me my life and as far as history says he had no particular reason to do it, only for humanitarian reasons. It’s not a question that he had no connections. He did a beautiful thing, came from a well-careered family and for no other reason… just to save lives.

Q: What do you think that Raoul Wallenberg would say to you and to the world?
A: Great people like this would say, ”I would do it again.” I would say that he would probably say, ”It’s still worth it.” What did the Russians want from him? Obviously Wallenberg had outside help, and had connections to foreign money, to Jewish estates and to U.S. and maybe the C.I.A. According to the legend he had abundance of money to buy his houses and he was bribing everybody. So this was a man who would be able to do it and even when Eichmann said, ”that diplomats even have car accidents”… that didn’t stop him. We are talking about a person who was willing to do it, and he did it.

Credits

Interview: Adriana Lee
Transcript: Christine Pacheco

Q: And where were you born?
A: In Budapest

Q: Did you grow up with your family there?
A: Yes

Q: Who was in your family? Who did you live with?
A: My parents, and we were 8 siblings.

Q: Did you grow up in a Jewish community?
A: Yes, sort of.

Q: Did you go to a Jewish school?
A: Partly, Jewish schools after a while were closed and we had to continue with schooling, so we were sent to public school.

Q: What kinds of activities did you do before the war?
A: It was not too much activities because anti-Semitism was all over, and our doing was very limited.

Q: Even when you were very young?
A: Even if we wanted it, it was very limited, they did not accept Jewish people in public places, so if you did something, they accused you that you were anti-German, so you better be quiet and unseen. And we lived, we tried to live to on Irish papers, but then it got really dangerous. Then we became Jews, we went to the ghetto, and before the ghetto we got the schutz passes. But it was very interesting; we never heard that name Wallenberg there publicly. Because he probably didn’t want his name to be used publicly. But we knew somebody very important was behind it, and he saved a lot of people because that schutz pass gave you courage to run. You felt you had something that would protect you. How much did it protected you, well… But we survived. And I think we owe that to the schutz pass, we owe that to Wallenberg, definitely.

Q: Do you know how you got a Schutz pass?
A: Well I’ll tell you, those people, Wallenberg’s people were dressed in German uniforms, and they’d ride their cars in the streets. And just as they saw a Jewish person that was really in need, they just gave it to them, from the car. But they were actually dressed as Germans, we knew, even Jewish people were with them; they all were dressed in German.

Q: Do you know if there were also Gentiles working with them?
A: Probably, but a lot of Jewish people were there, extra gentiles helped him out.

My schutz pass was given by a lawyer who we knew before the war, not personally but we knew he was Jewish, he was working with Wallenberg; he had a lot of people working with him on the underground. In the ghetto, the ghetto is again the same thing, whatever he could do he did. But the ghetto was a terrible, terrible place. People died, and people were 30, 40 in a room. The dead in one corner, the living in the other corner. They barely had time to remove the dead. Luckily it happened in the winter, and the bodies were frozen. But when spring came most bodies they tried to remove, but of course that was after liberation, otherwise it would be a terrible epidemic. And we went away from Budapest as soon as possible, it was very unsafe, health wise to be there. Because an epidemic could break out any time. You could see dead people mountains high. Mixed: Jewish, Russian, German. It took months and months to bury those people. It was something you never ever forget. Luckily, we were all saved. We left Hungary very early in the war and came to America.

Q: Was the Schutz pass an individual one for you, or did your entire family have one?
A: No, they just gave us Schutz passes without names, because he didn’t know any names. He just saw you in the car, riding, would see that you are in need of it, and he gave it to you.

Q: And you said that in the beginning you didn’t even hear Wallenberg’s name?
A: He kept a very low profile, because they were afraid that they would catch him and kill him. Whatever he did, he did it quietly, without a name.

Q: Did you ever see him later?
A: No, no, but I know that he was working on a project to take young children to Switzerland. It was also his undertaking. And a lot of people went on that train to Switzerland. We did not go; it was too complicated for a large family to be separated, we wanted to stay together. Which was not right, we should have gone. But luckily we survived. Which was really very, very rare, that a family should stay and survive together.

Q: Did you hear about the safe houses that he made?
A: Yeah. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard of them, sure. The Swedish houses, yeah. It was not as bad as in the ghetto. They weren’t as crowded, and they had more food. But it was very hard to get into those houses, because they were limited in the amount of people. Most people ended up in the ghettos.

Q: Do you know how Wallenberg got food and clothes to give to people?
A: No idea how he got it. I read about him, and I know about him and he was a remarkable person. And we all owe our life to him. And for us, he was holy.

Q: If he was in the room right now and you got a chance to talk to him, what would you ask?
A: I thank him that he saved my family.

Q: And what would he want to say to you?
A: I think he would be happy that he did it. He would not regret it. He was really a remarkable person. We all owe him a lot. His memory should be holy forever.

Q: What happened to you and your family afterwards?
A: After we were in Austria for a while, we got a visa to go to America. We arrived in America in 1951. We were in Austria for four years waiting for the visas to come to America. Austria was not so bad, because we were under the Americans. The Americans provided everything and they saw that we should come to America. Coming over was very primitive, in these little war boats, but we made it.

Q: And your whole family came?
A: Yeah. My parents were there and one of my brothers. But we came out as a whole family.

Q: How did what happened to you during the war affect your relationship with your religion, or your family’s relationship with your religion?
A: We more or less kept the religion. Not to the extreme, but it was possible, with food and everything. We tried to eat kosher, but… it was not 100% kosher. We tried to avoid things that were not forbidden. But it was not so bad, Austria was not so bad. But in America, we started again from the beginning.

Q: Do you talk to your children or grandchildren about Wallenberg?
A: Yes, they want to know. They insist that they interview me. And I have to tell them the tales of how I survived and how I was hiding because the street was full with Germans and I wanted to survive.

Q: And you tell them about what Wallenberg did?
A: Yes, sure. They know about it, from school. The new generation is very interested in it. They know that there’s not too much time for us. They want to continue. My children, I share with them everything. The grandchildren are not interested; they came to me to be interviewed.

Q: Are there any other specific stories?
A: I’m not strong enough to repeat it. You have to be in a certain mood. Today I’m not.

Credits

Interview: Aliza Klapholz, Daniela Bajar, Adam Esrig
Transcription: Sharone Tobias