Testimony of Susanne (Perlgrund) Biro-Balazs, born in Bratislava, Slovakia, 1937, regarding her experiences in Budapest, Bratislava, Pliesovce and in hiding

Name of Interviewee: Susan Biro-Balazs

Name of Interviewer: Tami Katz

Cassette Number: VT-8919

Date: October 27, 2008

Name of Typist: Cheryl Balshayi

Names:

Bratislava

Budapest

Pliesovce

Wien

Q: (Hebrew) Born in Bratislava, Slovakia, 1937. Dr. Balazs will tell us about her childhood in Bratislava, about her move to Hungary in 1941, about her move back to Slovakia in 1944, about her hiding in a Slovakia village Pliesovce, in 1944, and her liberation by the Soviets in 1945. About her adoption by her mother’s sister, about her move in 1945 to Budapest, Hungary, about her escape from Hungary to Wien, Austria, 1956, her studies in the University of Wien in neurology and psychiatry, and her life in Wien until today.

Q: Hello, Dr. Belesz. Where and when were you born?

A: I was born on the 9th of May in 1937 in Bratislava. My parents were Ilus Perlgrunt and Giza Perlgrunt. My father had a shop for furs downtown Bratislava. I was the second child in the family. My brother was nine years older. His name was Egon.

Q: Your parents – were they also born in Bratislava?

A: Well, my mother was born in Bratislava, not my father. He was born in a small town near Bratislava. Its name was, when he was born, the name was Dunaszeredehely. It is a Hungarian name. Today its name is Dunajska Streda.

Q And his parents – who were they? What did they do?

A: His parents – his father, his name was Joseph Perlgrunt. He was a tailor in this small town. And his mother – oh G-d. I don't know her name. It is very bad because her father's family, I don't know very much because he died, I have to say, normally. He was a very young man, forty-two years old, and he died of cancer, so quite normally. So I don't have very many stories from his family.

Q: Did you know your grandparents on your father's side?

A: No, neither. No, because they died before I was born. Stories I know only from my mother's side, and here, until my great-grandmother, who was Mrs. Kohn, living in Princhen (sp?). It is Slovakia. And her husband was the – I don't know the English word – shachter (שוחט) from Princhen. She had at least four children. One of them was my grandmother.

Q: What was her name?

A: Her name was Malvin. She got married to Jeno Braun, and then they lived in Bratislava. My grandfather on my mother's side was…he had a workshop for electrical gears. He was one of the people who brought electricity to Bratislava. A great break in his life was the First World War because he had to be a soldier in 1914 and at that time his wife, my grandmother, was pregnant. She died by the birth of her ninth child. The child, it was born dead.

Q: So you didn't know her.

A: So I didn't know her. And it is very important that the seven children from this couple lived alone, half orphans, in Bratislava, and they had to get themselves through somehow. Father was in the war, mother dead. So the oldest girl – she was then fourteen years old – she was working for the whole family.

Q: It was your mother?

A: No, it was not my mother. My mother was the second child, but she had to work also, and all the others went to school, so it was really a very hard…not all the others. The two younger, the last children, the youngest children were two boys and they were at that time too small to go to school.

Q: And when the grandfather came back from the war?

A: Well, the oldest girls were grown up already, so then he had his separate life and the children had their separate life, after training, being alone so four years. This is what happened. But it was very important because these four years, when the children were alone, so the oldest girl was somehow the mother of them and they really two possibilities – to get some of them to families, some of them to the house of orphans, but they wanted to stay together.

Q: Before we go on with the family, what can you tell us about Bratislava?

A: Well, Bratislava is a very interesting city because it is on the border of three ethnic parts of Europe, so there were always German-speaking people, Hungarian-speaking people and Slovak-speaking people, and Jews, who were partly German-, partly Hungarian-speaking mostly. And the Jewish part of the city was at least ten percent of the inhabitants. It is very interesting – the Jewish community wrote every year a list of the members, so every year, with the newborn children. This list still exists and they gave out a book of it. I have it, so my whole family from my mother's side and the generation of my parents is in this book, and it is very interesting to see that.

Q: So did your mother learn any profession?

A: Yes, she learned. She learned sewing.

Q: She was a tailor?

A: Yes. And she made it for a while. Then she changed. She worked in Wien. She was a secretary somehow.

Q: This was before she got married?

A: It was before she got married.

Q: So where did your parents meets? In Bratislava? Or did they know each other…?

A: It is a lovely story. My mother went on her normal journey every day to Wien. Wien and Bratislava are not very far away from each other. So she got in the train and my father behind my mother got in the train and he thought, "Oh, what a lovely girl." And so in the train they met.

Q: They didn't know before?

A: No.

Q: They both came from Jewish families and they didn't…?

A: It was a great love story and so they got married.

Q: So when did they get married?

A: In 1927.

Q: And then you said you had an older brother, Egon.

A: Egon, who was born in 1929, sorry, in '28. And I in '37.

Q: And you said your father had a fur business.

A: Fur business, yes. Downtown Bratislava.

Q: They were well off.

A: Yes. Well, in the beginning not. My father was coming from a very poor family. When he was fourteen, after his bar mitzvah, he had to leave his home because it was not enough to eat for the family. He learned his profession .

Q: The fur business?

A: The fur business, from the beginning on.

Q: Any Jewish education?

A: No. Not that I would know. No, I don't think. Well, he was religious.

Q: He came from a religious family?

A: He came from a religious family.

Q: Orthodox? Real orthodox?

A: No. Not orthodox, but religious. And he himself was religious in a certain point of view. Not orthodox. He wanted for my mother to have a kosher household. On Mother's side, Grandmother was religious. When she died and Grandfather was away, the children ate what was here, you know. They were happy to have enough to eat.

Q: They had any relation with the Jewish community? Contacts when they were left?

A: Not really.

Q: They weren't taken care by the Jewish community?

A: I think they refused it.

Q: Because in Bratislava there were a lot of Jewish…

A: Yes. I'm afraid they refused it because they would take two children here, three children there, and they wanted to stay together. So they grew up, I must say, without religion.

Q: And when your parents got married and they had their own home, it was a religious home?

A: No. It's not true. Sorry.

Q: Traditional?

A: Traditional, but not really orthodox. A Jewish home.

Q: But it wasn't Neologue either.

A: Yes, it was. Yes, it was.

Q: Did your father have connection with the Neologue community?

A: Yes, he had. I can remember for some holidays, when gentlemen came and they prayed together with my father.

Q: At home?

A: At home. At home. It had to be, I think I was two, three years old, in my last memories. So it was, you know, '39, '40 already. Probably it was not possible anymore to pray in the synagogue, so they came in our home.

Q: Did they celebrate the holidays? Do you remember?

A: Yes, we did. Well, one of my first memories is Chanukah in our home, when I had to light the candles. I was singing with them. This is my only memory from one holiday.

Q: Do you know if they knew or studied Hebrew or anything?

A: I don' think so. I don't think so. Really, I don't know. My parents, I know that my parents never spoke Yiddish.

Q: What did they speak at home?

A: Hungarian.

Q: But they knew also German?

A: Well, yes. In Bratislava everybody knew at least two languages.

Q: And Slovak also?

A: I don't know whether they spoke Slovak or not. I couldn't speak Slovak. I know that I couldn't.

Q: You grew up in Hungarian? As a child.

A: As a child, I was bilingual because I had a nanny who was German-speaking. In Bratislava it was necessary to speak German also. It belonged to the society.

Q: And your mother – you said your father had a fur business. She worked with him?

A: She worked with him. She made the books.

Q: Bookkeeping.

A: Bookkeeping and bureau.

Q: But she wasn't sewing anymore.

A: No. She didn't.

Q: But she helped him with the business.

A: Yes.

Q: What else can you tell us about this home, the culture? Do you know what they were reading, listening to music? Did they go to the theatre?

A: Oh yes. Oh yes. Already my grandparents went to the theatre. In Bratislava there is a nice theatre and they went there. They had their fixed place already, the grandparents.

Q: In what language was the theatre? Do you think German?

A: I don't know. I suppose Hungarian because Bratislava was at that time, in my grandparents' time, in Hungary.

Q: Hungary, yes. And your parents?

A: And the parents went also. Well, my brother, who was at that time already a big boy, he had to learn piano and he had to learn languages.

Q: Did your brother – you were too small, but did your brother get any Jewish education?

A: I suppose.

Q: Because there were Jewish schools in Bratislava.

A: No. I really don't know. I know only that he went to the German-speaking gymnasium in Bratislava, until it was impossible. I don't know more, really. Sorry to say. I don't know. Well, he had his bar mitzvah. We have a picture above this.

Q: When was his bar mitzvah? What year?

A: It had to be…he was born '28. '41.

Q: In '41. You were celebrating?

A: We were celebrating, yes.

Q: Do you remember the bar mitzvah?

A: I remember.

Q: Because you were a little child.

A: I remember because it happened something terrible. I had chocolate ice and a new dress and the whole chocolate came on the dress. It was terrible!

Q: You remember that.

A: I remember that.

Q: It was in a synagogue?

A: The synagogue I don't remember. I remember the children's party. And the family in our home. You know, '41 was already wartime.

Q: Yes, we will get to it. Do you know who were your parents' friends? Jewish, non-Jewish?

A: Well, first of all, the family was great. The six sisters, brothers.

Q: From your mother's side.

A: From my mother's side. From my father's side I know at least three sisters, but they lived in Hungary. They lived in Budapest already, early. Well, we had connections to Father's family and they visited us in Bratislava. And I remember – no, it is a family story – that we visited the house where Father was born because one of his sisters lived there. As I know, we had mostly Jewish friends. Mostly. But I suppose not only.

Q: What about the neighbours? Do you know anything about them?

A: I don't remember the neighbours, but I know that one of our neighbours told, "The neighbours are Jewish." You know, it was the time and this was the reason, I was told this was the reason my mother and my brother were taken to Auschwitz.

Q: We will talk about that. Do you remember, at a very early age, if there was any connection to Zionism?

A: Yes. My two uncles, the two younger brothers – you will see on the picture. My mother's brothers – she had two. Both of them came at that time to Palestine. It was, I think so, in the last '30s. I suppose it was in '38. They left for Palestine at that time.

Q: Two brothers.

A: Two brothers.

Q: And your parents had any connection to any Zionist organization or any Jewish political movement or anything of that?

A: I don't think political movement. The oldest sister was a sports lady and she was in one of the Jewish sports organizations – I don't know which one. I don't know more about this topic.

Q: Your parents, you don't know.

A: I don't know.

Q: Your brother? Do you know if he had any…as a child, if he was in a youth movement or anything?

A: I don't know anything. I don't know.

Q: Okay. Now, when you were born, in 1937, Hitler, Germany, he was already in power. You were born already into this situation. Do you remember – you were very young – and then in '39, you were two years old, world war breaks.

A: That's right.

Q: Any recollection of that? Talking about it? As a child, do you remember anything? In 1939 Czechoslovakia declared, I mean Slovakia declared its independence.

A: Tiso's regime.

Q: Autonomy.

A: Yes, yes.

Q: (?) Situation than Poland. What do remember of that? Or do you know what was the talk?

A: Well, I remember two things. One was that Mother told, "You can't speak Hungarian on the street" because this was Slovak nationalism. And the second I remember, somehow I heard on the radio that the Germans were good friends of the Slolvaks. And I told it to my mother and she told, "Child, what do you speak? They are not our friends."

Q: Do you think or remember or know – were your parents worried personally what was going to be with them, or what was going on in Germany and in Poland? Was it something far, that they thought that would not reach them, that was there? Or do you think there was some tension?

A: Well, it was '41 when I came to Hungary. What they thought between '37 and '41 I really don't know. But there is correspondence and I have still the letters from my mother, which came to her sister, to Budapest, and there she wrote that, "I hear a lot of terrible things about Germany, but it can't be true. This is a nation of culture. How could it be? I think this is only fantasy." This is what she thought.

Q: And when the war broke, did you know, as a child, that there was a world war, or you were too small to realize such a thing at all?

A: Well, I was then already in Hungary by my aunt.

Q: I want to know how that happened, so we will talk about that in a minute. I am talking about even before '41.

A: No, no.

Q: You were too small.

A: I was too small, I think so.

Q: You were at home or kindergarten or what? You had a nanny, you said.

A: I had a nanny.

Q: You were at home?

A: I was at home. How I was going to the kindergarten? Not me. I can't remember that I was in a kindergarten. I was in home, I think so.

Q: In Bratislava you were at home.

A: Yes. I think so. Yes, I was at home.

Q: And in that period, we know that at certain times pogroms broke out in Bratislava. They were already doing, the Slovaks and the local…did your parents experience any of that?

A: This is what I don't know.

Q: Some Jews even in that period were expelled from Bratislava, even before the Germans came.

A: Yes, I know it now, but I didn't know it at that time.

Q: You don't know if they experienced it.

A: No. Nobody, as far as I know, nobody disappeared from our family or amongst the friends of the parents. Really, I never heard about such stories when I was small.

Q: And anti-Semitism? You were too young.

A: I was too young.

Q: And do you know, during that period, in terms of your father's business, he could go on with his business?

A: Well, what is the English name of it? You know, you could sell your shop to a Christian, but it happened later. It happened when I was in Budapest.

Q: What happened that in '41? You were four years old, and your brother was after his bar mitzvah. Thirteen? They smuggled you to Hungary?

A: It is another story.

Q: Okay What happened?

A: What happened? The point is, my father had an uncle in the States, in Chicago. And this gentleman came in the middle of the '30s to Bratislava because he was seeking somebody from the family who would help him in his business in the States and he hoped to bring somebody from Czechoslovakia to the States who would help to manage. He had a food chain and at that time he managed it. And he spoke to my father, who obviously was a good businessman, "Please come and help." And my father didn't want to go in the middle of the '30s and then the political situation changed and changed and then he thought, "Okay, probably we can do that." And he sent money and I don't know what to the States, my father, and he tried to prepare that all of us, four, we were going to the States, but it was too late. And he tried to get through Yugoslavia to the States and so they sent us two children, illegal, through the border to Hungary and they would follow us.

Q: I see. And who was in Hungary then?

A: My mother's sister was in Hungary. She got married also in '27 to Hungary and she lived in Budapest.

Q: So they decided to send you and your brother…?

A: To them, and we would wait for them and they would come, they would follow, and then we would go together.

Q: Okay, so this was in '41.

A: It was in '41.

Q: How did they manage to bring you to Budapest?

A: So how it really happened I don't know. I know only it was illegal. We had to walk through the border.

Q: Do you remember this experience?

A: I remember it. It was late at night. I was naughty because I had to walk.

Q: Did they explain to you that you were going to your aunt and they would come after?

A: Not really. Not really. We had to go first and the parents would follow.

Q: Were you scared?

A: No, because my brother was there and he was really lovely to me. He loved me very much. I loved him very much.

Q: He took care of you.

A: And he took care of me and so it was somehow…

Q: Did you know that aunt in Budapest?

A: No.

Q: As a child, before you left, did you ever leave Bratislava? Did you go on vacation or anywhere?

A: I went to vacations, yes, and there are pictures that this aunt holds me in her arms, but I was too small, so I can't remember.

Q: So you arrived in Budapest. By train?

A: Well, by train to the border, then going, walking, and then again train in Hungary.

Q: Who was with you?

A: There was a man who took us. Obviously the parents paid for it. And then we arrived in the evening to Budapest and my aunt was not at home at that time and we stood before the door, the closed door. But then we heard from neighbours that they were somewhere in the same house.

Q: She had children?

A: No. No, she couldn't have children, so this is then my later story. Well, we arrived there.

Q: What was her name?

A: Her name was Etta Biro, born Braun. Well, we arrived and we found them in the house. There was a great, really Jewish society party playing cards and I arrived and I saw a lot of friendly (?) faces and the gentlemen were crying to each other because of the card party, and I began to cry. This is what I remember. This was the only moment where I got scared really. Well, my auntie, later my second mother, came and…

Q: Took care of you.

A: Yes. Took care of me.

Q: So you stayed there for…?

A: Well, we stayed there until April '44. Why? The parents came after us and they tried to get in the same way through the border as we came.

Q: They came in '44?

A: No. No, '41. They came a few weeks after us. And suddenly my father couldn't walk. He fell and he couldn't stand up and he couldn't walk anymore. And it was very hard to get him back to Bratislava. He came to a hospital.

Q: This happened on the way to…?

A: It happened near the border, on the Slovak side. And at that time, to get in a hospital, for a Jew, was not allowed anymore, but Mother arranged it somehow. He got in a hospital and he had a spine cancer and so he couldn't walk anymore and one year later he died.

Q: In '42?

A: In '42 he died.

Q: In the meantime you are in Budapest.

A: In Budapest, with my brother, yes.

Q: How is your life organized there? What happened there?

A: Well, I started, at the normal time, at the school.

Q: What kind of scool?

A: It was a private school. At that time it was already hard to get Jewish children to the school, but it was a private school and they took me. I had even Jewish religion in the class. At that time I could read Hebrew. Not now, I am so sorry. And my brother, who was at that time already fifteen, he had to work. You know, in Bratislava he had to stop his school because being Jewish. And so he went to Father’s shop and he learned to make furs. He went on in this job in Budapest.

Q: What were your uncle and aunt doing in Budapest?

A: Well, she was at home and my uncle had a private bureau for social security and to make the bookkeeping for…

Q: He was Hungarian?

A: He was Hungarian, yes.

Q: And she came from Bratislava.

A: And she came from Bratislava. He was born in Budapest, yes.

Q: A Jewish family?

A: A Jewish family, yes.

Q: How was the situation in Budapest at that time?

A: Well, it was a very living and…before the war it was an interesting city.

Q: Yes, but while you were there.

A: Well, I had until – when was it? I think it was somehow ’44 that we had to wear the yellow star. Before I never felt that…

Q: In ’44 you just…changed everything.

A: Yes.

Q: You were still there. It was before you went back to Bratislava.

A: Yes.

Q: They were moved to the ghetto also?

A: No, not at that time. Afterwards. Aunt and Uncle had to go. They did, but it was afterwards.

Q: After you left?

A: Well, a few months after we left. A few months later.

Q: So you went to a school – it was a Hungarian school?

A: It was Hungarian school. Quite normal

Q: You had friends?

A: I had friends, I had friends.

Q: Hungarian, Jewish?

A: Hungarian. Well, Jewish and not Jewish.

Q: You used to go to their homes?

A: Yes, and they came to me. And I can remember several birthday parties.

Q: You got along well with your uncle and aunt?

A: Yes. They were very fine.

Q: Were you homesick for your mother in Bratislava? Was it hard to all of a sudden be away from your parents?

A: It is very, very strange. I cannot remember that I would be homesick. I cannot remember that I would cry after my parents.

Q: Did you know what happened, that they had to go back? Did they tell you these things?

A: Yes. I was told that my father was ill. I was told that he was in a hospital and I was told when he died.

Q: You were five years old when he died.

A: Yes. And it was told by my auntie in a very, very fine way. She took me to the balcony – it was evening. I can remember really every word. She took me to the balcony – it was evening, with stars in the sky – and she told, “You see? Your father died. It means you can’t see him anymore, but he sees you and he is there.”

Q: So what was your reaction? How did you take it?

A: I was wondering, you know. It was the time of fairy tales and I could accept it somehow.

Q: And your brother – how did he accept it?

A: I don’t know. He was older. I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Q: Can you tell us something more about your father? His nature, character?

A: Well, he was very happy that he got also a daughter. He was really very happy about that.

Q: When you were born.

A: When I was born. He was really happy that he had a son as a first child, but he was also very happy to have a daughter then.

Q: Something about his character, nature?

A: He was very fine to the whole family. Every sister of my mother remembered, when he died and after the war, when we could speak about my father, everybody told, “Oh, he was a wonderful man.” He helped everybody in the family. He was politically Left and one of my uncles had a very special thing. It was a guest book and everybody who came to visit them came in this book and wrote something in this book. And this uncle was very gifted in writing and drawing and he wrote a small play about the family and he characterized my father. He would like to drive. Well, we had, before the war, also already a car, so we were really well situated. But he would like to drive a Lancia and he would fit it with hermelin (?), with this fur and he would like to give for worker such a car. This was my father.

Q: Where was he buried?

A: Buried? He is buried in Bratislava and well, I know his tomb, so I go…

Q: (?)

A: No, it was not possible anymore.

Q: Everything was restricted, yes?

A: Yes. So he is buried in a Christian…I know his tomb. I go there.

Q: And what happened with your mother? She was left alone there.

A: Now she was left alone and she had to sell the shop. It was bought by a worker.

Q: She was forced to do it, or she felt it was…?

A: She was forced to do that.

Q: Or she felt it was difficult for her to handle it.

A: No, no, no.

Q: She was forced (?) by the Slovaks?

A: I don’t know. I suppose…yes, he was a Slovak. He couldn’t speak Hungarian.

Q: She was forced to sell it.

A: She was forced to sell it as all Jews were forced to sell. And she sold it, but the gentleman who bought it was really a gentleman because he bought it and she worked there and she participated.

Q: So he was the owner and she kept working there.

A: Yes, she kept working there and she even participated in the business.

Q: She was able to living in your house, your apartment, or she had to give up the apartment?

A: No, she was able until September ’44. She lived in our apartment and she worked in the shop every day.

Q: How was her life during those years? Do you know?

A: I don’t know because I was not there.

Q: Her husband died and her children were…

A: Yes. And then, when the Germans went into Hungary – it was on the 19th of March, 1944 – then Mother told to my aunt, “Look, the Germans are here, the Germans are…I mean, here is Tiso. You have the Germans. I am alone. I would like have my children.” And so we went, in April ’44 we went back to Bratislava.

Q: Before you went back, you said you had experienced already the yellow star. What else do you remember of that period, with restrictions beginning, with taking people to work camps? The Hungarians, I’m talking. Do you remember anything of that period?

A: Well, my memories are, people are pouring from Slovakia to Hungary and my aunt was…hid a lot of people.

Q: In her house?

A: In her house. It was forbidden, but she did it.

Q: People who she knew, or others?

A: Friends. Friends from Slovakia.

Q: So there was tension at home? Fear of what was going to be?

A: Well, it was tension at home, but not against the children.

Q: You felt like the life was continuing normally?

A: The life was continuing, well, normally. Look, what is normal and what is not normal? The oldest sister of my mother came also from Bratislava to Hungary with her husband. They were living in our apartment.

Q: In Budapest?

A: In Budapest. Then, the aunt of Chava (?) came to Budapest and for a while they were in our apartment.

Q: How come your mother didn’t consider all this time to come to live in Budapest with you?

A: My mother?

Q: Yes. She didn’t consider going to Budapest? She went with your father and he got sick and they went back.

A: Yes.

Q: She never thought after that to join you in Budapest?

A: No. I suppose the point was the money.

Q: The shop.

A: The shop where she participated. I suppose it was not possible anymore to get to the States because of the war, and I think she thought, “No way.” Father died in ’42 and two years later we came back to Bratislava.

Q: In Budapest yet, you were already going to school.

A: I went to school.

Q: You were still a little child, but you went to school. Your brother was older. Were you more aware of world war, of the Nazis, of what was going on with the Jews in Poland and all kinds of places? Do you have any recollection of talks about it? Your uncle and aunt – were they aware?

A: Never before us. Never before me. I don’t know what my brother knew.

Q: That war was going on in the world?

A: That war was going on in the world I knew.

Q: Because it came to Slovakia and to Hungary very late. In ’44 there were places it was almost the end of the war. And Jews in Poland and all over were exterminated by that time.

A: I didn’t know that. I suppose that through the correspondence between my aunt and my mother, that they didn’t really…I don’t think they really realized what was going on.

Q: Did they have contact, the family, did they have contact with any family in the States or in Palestine during this time?

A: I don’t know what was with the two uncles who were already here.

Q: They were from…

A: Brothers of my mother.

Q: You don’t know if there was contact during that time.

A: I don’t know. Probably they were corresponding.

Q: How was the contact between your mother in Bratislava to Budapest? It was letters?

A: Letters, and very seldom phones. From Bratislava to Budapest. Very, very seldom.

Q: Did you write letters to your mother? Do you remember? Or did she write to you? Or was it just between the sisters? You don’t recall.

A: No.

Q: So at that point, in ’44, your mother continued to work until ’44?

A: She worked until the last day.

Q: And do you know any more things about her life during these years, when you were in Budapest?

A: Well, she was alone, but not really alone because of the family. Chava’s mother was there. And Carmella who is living here, who is another cousin of mine. So her mother was also there, so it was still family support.

Q: So in ’44, after the Germans came to Budapest and to Slovakia, she wanted you to come back. How did they manage that?

A: Well, it was again managed by a man who took us again back. And it was again in the night and it was again walking. And we came on and…

Q: Were you excited that you were going home, you were going to see your brother?

A: I didn’t know it until the last day that I would leave.

Q: How was your reaction?

A: So, I don’t remember it really, but my mother wrote it and I have this letter also. That I am going to her in the bed, what I never did before. I mean, I had my own bed.

Q: You came to her bed?

A: I came to her bed and I was crying and I was embracing her. Yes.

Q: You didn’t see her for three years.

A: For two years. And I was a small girl. I was seven.

Q: Do you remember the excitement?

A: And I was surely very happy that I have seen her and it was in April and then in June I had to leave Bratislava to get hidden. Then I remember that I was very, very sad, that I had to leave my mother again.

Q: How was it to leave your uncle and aunt in Budapest? Was it difficult?

A: This I don’t remember. No.

Q: So what happened between April and June?

A: Between April and June I was at home. We were at home in my home, what I knew, with my brother. The three of us.

Q: What was going on in Bratislava at this point? The Germans were there at that point?

A: I don’t remember German soldiers.

Q: What do you remember?

A: Really not. It didn’t belong to the street, to the picture of the street, no. I went every day with my mother to the shop and she was working there as ever.

Q: She was not tense?

A: Well, she was in black and she took me to the cemetery, of course. She took us to the cemetery.

Q: During all these years there were Jews expelled from Bratislava and some of them were sent already to the concentration camps.

A: Never a word about concentration camps. I was even told that we had to leave Bratislava, not because of being Jewish and not because to get hidden, but, well, at that time – already ’44, of course – they were bombing. In Bratislava there is a “raffinery” (?) and they bombed it.

Q: This you were told by your mother?

A: Well, of course, I mean, we had to go to the cellar because it was alarm.

Q: But when you said that you were told that you had to leave because of the bombing…

A: Because of the bombing, that’s it.

Q: You were told by your mother?

A: It was told by my mother.

Q: That you were leaving, that was the reason. Not because you were Jewish.

A: No, because of bombing.

Q: But in Budapest, when you had to wear the yellow…

A: We had even to wear it in Bratislava.

Q: So were you aware of what was going on against the Jews?

A: Not really.

Q: Even wearing the star?

A: No. I had it here. I remember I had it here on my coat.

Q: What did you think about it? Why were you wearing it?

A: It is a terrible story. When I got it, I thought, “Oh, what a beautiful yellow star. It is decoration.”

Q: Yes, an ornament. You thought it was an ornament.

A: Yes. And my auntie even then told, “Oh G-d, child. It is not an ornament. It is a terrible thing and I am very sad that you have to wear it.” She didn’t tell me why I had to wear it, but it was a very sad something. And I must tell you, I can’t remember that I wore it in Bratislava, no.

Q: You weren’t aware.

A: No, in Budapest. Not in Bratislava. Really.

Q: In Budapest you wore it.

A: In Budapest I had to have it on my coat, yes. Not in Bratislava. I don’t remember.

Q: You didn’t wear it.

A: No. (end of side) I am aware now about the fact that the grownups around us were very careful to hide before the children what was going on in the world. I think it was very important for them to protect us.

Q: But your brother was much older than you were. He was already at an age that it was hard to…

A: You are right. I'm sure he knew.

Q: You were a little girl. He was a man.

A: Yes, for sure. I don't know what he knew. Sorry to say I had never then the opportunity to speak with him about all these things, so I don't know what he knew and what not. I suppose he knew everything. And he was a grown up young man, so he had to play the play.

Q: When you got back to Bratislava and knew that your father was dead and your mother…did you have a feeling your brother took a role of the man in the house?

A: No, not really. Not really. He stayed to be my brother as ever. I think he was very supportive of my mother.

Q: We got to the point when you came back in April. You said you didn't recall any Germans because the Germans hadn't come yet. But you stayed at home with your brother and your mother continued going to work every day?

A: And my brother also went to the shop, working with her. To the workshop.

Q: And you stayed at home?

A: No, I went with them every day and I was in the shop and I was reading there and playing there or sometimes I was in Chava's home.

Q: There was no normal life, going to school.

A: No, no school, so I had to interrupt my first class, what I left in April.

Q: When you think about it today – I know you were a little girl – how is it that you think your mother managed to escape all those transports from Bratislava even before the Germans came? When people were expelled and hurt. How do you think she managed to…?

A: This is a point what I don't know, but all my family – the two other sisters who lived in Bratislava managed it with their families. So the husbands, the cousins, everybody was here.

Q: Because there were families that were hurt, were expelled, were transported.

A: I really don't know.

Q: So you said that you came in April and by June it became clear that you had to…

A: We had to disappear from Bratislava.

Q: Because of the bombing.

A: They told me because of the bombing, but it was surely not the real reason.

Q: Did you think that your mother was sensing the danger, that the Germans were getting close?

A: I suppose, yes. I suppose because we went to a small village in the middle of Slovakia. I told it to you.

Q: Yes, I remember. I have it written here. We can go to it. Okay, we will get it.

A: I will get it.

Q: Pliesovce.

A: Pliesovce, that's it. By train it took about five or six hours.

Q: Okay. Who went?

A: Who went? The sister of my mother.

Q: What was her name?

A: Her name was Irenka, we told, so Irene. At that time Rosenzweig.

Q: She had her own family?

A: She had her own family – one daughter and her husband.

Q: And they went as a family?

A: And they went as a family and they took me with them and they took Chava also with them.

Q: What about your brother?

A: My brother stayed in Bratislava. He had to work with my mother.

Q: I am trying to understand. Your mother sent you with your aunt. Why did she not go there?

A: Everybody disappeared but my mother. I think she had to go on in her business and she supported the family.

Q: The whole family?

A: I don't know. I'm sure she supported Irene and her family, with me. I don't know whether she ever supported the Galandas, the other family.

Q: So she decided to stay to support because she…

A: She decided to stay. She had to work, she had to make money for all of us. But she told she would follow us.

Q: She told she would follow. With your brother?

A: With my brother, she would follow us and was really so that in September – I think it was the 23rd.

Q: Wait. Before September. So you left in June?

A: We left in June.

Q: Do you know how it was organized to go to that specific place?

A: How it was really organized for Jews, because we were not the only family in Pliesovce who were Jews. I know very good friends of our family were there also, so we were not alone.

Q: It was a village?

A: No, it was a village and we had to pay for an apartment where we lived.

Q: So you had your own apartment there?

A: We had our own apartment there.

Q: It was not that you stayed in the house of…

A: It was a part of a house, of a village house.

Q: So why would you be safe there? Because it was far from Bratislava, from the centre.

A: It was far from the centre, and I suppose that this part of the village…Look, this village was very near to Banska-Bystrica, where there were partisans who fought against the Germans. So I suppose that one part, at least one part of the people living there were against the Germans. So I think they helped.

Q: So the local population was more…But they knew that you were Jewish and that you were hiding?

A: Yes, I think so. I think so.

Q: So you came with your aunt.

A: I came with my aunt, my uncle and their daughter.

Q: And Chava.

A: And Chava.

Q: There were three girls together.

A: Yes, that’s right. And a few weeks later Chava went to her parents and they were hidden somewhere else in Slovakia and I stayed with my cousin, by Irene and Willie,

Q: What did you do there? Do you remember?

A: Well, I must say we played with the neighbours’ children. We were accepted there. At that time we didn’t see any Germans. They came in August and until they came we were in the village and this was for us, sorry to say, but it was holidays for us, summer holidays.

Q: They were just at home?

A: They were at home and my uncle was really very, very nervous, and today I can understand because at that time men at his age were soldiers when they were Christians. And so it was not so fine to be a young man and not.

Q: You were staying there for a few months?

A: A few months.

Q: Did you have contact with your mother?

A: No, never again. Never again. Never again.

Q: But she knew where you were?

A: Of course, and she wanted to follow us and to come here. If I remember, so Chava was already with her parents, I was with the family Rosenzweig. Then we knew – and this is already what somehow I knew – that now is war. And it was so that in September my mother and my brother would come and join us.

Q: And then the Germans came.

A: That’s it.

Q: The end of August.

A: Yes. They would come and join us.

Q: The Slovakian rebellion came. So what happened?

A: And we were waiting for them. We went to the railway station to bring them to our new home and they didn’t arrive.

Q: You set a date, you knew of a date that they were supposed to come?

A: Yes. So Aunt and Mother were surely corresponding.

Q: What happened to your mother?

A: The day before, the day before, they were taken to Auschwitz. This is what happened.

Q: Your mother and brother together?

A: Mother and brother together.

Q: Do you have any information how it happened? This was in September.

A: This was in September.

Q: They took them from where?

A: They were taken from their apartment.

Q: You got the information?

A: Yes. So I was told that the neighbours told, “Here are living Jews.” They came in, in the night. They were looking for money or for hidden whatever.

Q: The Germans?

A: This is what I really don’t know, whether it was the Germans or the Slovaks. I don’t know. Or a mixed group. Sure that they destroyed the furniture because of looking for money, and when, after the war, one cousin of mine from Father’s side came back from Auschwitz. She went to this apartment because she knew that, and somehow she could come in. I don’t know how. And she had seen the destroyed furniture and photos, family photos on the floor.

Q: How old was your brother then? ’44. He was sixteen?

A: My brother? He was sixteen, yes. He was sixteen.

Q: So they were taken immediately.

A: Immediately to Auschwitz.

Q: You know that?

A: I know that. I know that.

Q: How do you know it?

A: I know it through persons who came back.

Q: From Auschwitz?

A: From Auschwitz. And who knew them. My mother and brother were separated on the ramp, you know.

Q: In Auschwitz.

A: In Auschwitz.

Q: Do you know what happened?

A: My mother was taken immediately in the gas.

Q: What about your brother? Do you know about your brother?

A: My brother – he was a young man, strong and young man. He was taken to work and he got ill. Well, he had some inflammations in his ear and then he got really sick and this is what Dov…They were together and they were good friends at school, and he was in the same transport.

Q: And he survived?

A: And he survived and he told.

Q: Do you know how long he was there, your brother, until he died?

A: He didn’t die in Auschwitz. He was taken to Bergen-Belsen.

Q: Oh, he was taken from Auschwitz.

A: Yes, from Auschwitz, and he worked.

Q: In Bergen-Belsen he worked?

A: Yes.

Q: How long was he in Auschwitz?

A: I don’t know. I don’t know.

Q: And then in Bergen-Belsen he died of illness.

A: Yes.

Q: He was with him? This Dov was with him?

A: He was even there in his last minutes and he heard as he…Oh, I don’t know how to say it in English. He spoke about his hate against the Germans. This was the last what he said.

Q: Okay. So you were there in the village with your aunt. And your mother and brother…

A: Didn’t come. Didn’t come. I will never lose this memory.

Q: Did you know what happened then? Why they didn’t come?

A: No. I didn’t know it for a while, and it was really important that afterwards, when this happened, a few days later, we left the village. And we had to leave there and we got to the mountains.

Q: What did your aunt and uncle say to you when your mother and brother…?

A: Nothing, nothing, nothing. They didn’t arrive. They even didn’t’ themselves know what happened.

Q: Did they know that the Germans were already there?

A: I suppose. Yes, but they didn’t really know what really happened. And the latest story, what I want to relate now, that they really didn't know what happened. They supposed later. So we went to the mountains.

Q: Where exactly?

A: I don't know the name. It was not a village. It was a place in the mountains with probably seven or eight houses.

Q: You walked there? How did you get there?

A: No, we were taken by horse cart.

Q: This was a place of the partisans, you suppose?

A: No. It was surely not. Peasants. Agriculture. Animals.

Q: And it was a house (?) there?

A: No. We lived by an old lady who was a widow.

Q: Slovak?

A: Slovak. And we lived in her house. In the house was one room.

Q: She knew you were Jewish?

A: I think so, but from the beginning on we wore the same dresses like the peasants there. So it was told, "She is your aunt."

Q: And you were relatives.

A: And we are relatives. That's it. That was the story. What I had to accept.

Q: Do your remember her name?

A: No.

Q: Do you remember here?

A: No. I remember only an old woman who surely worked a lot in her life, who was a little bit crude.

Q: She was alone in that house?

A: She was alone in that house. She was a widow.

Q: She had a farm?

A: She had a farm with animals. Everybody there had a farm with animals.

Q: So the whole time also when you were in the village, the other village, in terms of food you got along.

A: It was enough. We were never starving. Well, when we were there we ate potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, but we had enough. And we were by this old woman.

Q: Your mother and brother didn't arrive. Did your aunt and uncle know anything about the rest of the family in Bratislava?

A: No, nobody. Nobody.

Q: Did they have any contact with Chava's family, who hid?

A: No. The only person who visited us was a cousin of mine on Father's side, who was a partisan and who brought from Bratislava…

Q: A woman or a man?

A: A man. A wonderful man.

Q: What was his name?

A: His name was, at that time, in Slovakia, Armin Kohn, but he got here in Israel, Hillel HaCohen.

Q: Oh, Hillel HaCohen! I know him.

A: You know him? Really!

Q: He died.

A: He died.

Q: I know his wife also.

A: You know Renee?

Q: She is in Switzerland.

A: Yes.

Q: So he was a cousin of yours?

A: Yes. Father's sister's son.

Q: So he came to visit you.

A: He came to visit me and he brought…it was a time before the Germans came, okay? He brought dresses for me because we lived….Bratislava was summertime and we had nothing for the wintertime, and so he brought warm clothes for me. And then I remember him, I remember his visit and how fine he was, yes.

Q: So how long did you stay in the mountains, in that village?

A: Well, we arrived there somehow in September and until…just wait. Until somehow April we were there, even when the Germans were out.

Q: So you were there for about eight months.

A: Yes.

Q: What else can you tell us about your life there? What did you do every day/

A: Well, I was just a peasant girl.

Q: You were working? With the animals? What did she have? Cows? Chickens?

A: Not really. Chickens and cows and swine. I played with other peasant children. I suppose they knew that we were Jews.

Q: You spoke Hungarian?

A: No.

Q: German?

A: No, Slovak.

Q: Only Slovak.

A: Only Slovak. When I came back from Hungary – it was very interesting – when I came back in '44 from Hungary to Bratislava, I could speak only Hungarian. I forgot. You know, children forget and learn easily. And then when we went to this village, to Pliesovce, I had to speak Slovak. You couldn't open your mouth in Hungarian. It was absolutely impossible. And I so I learned very quickly Slovak. I couldn't close my mouth, you know?

Q: So your cousin, that was with you – she was your age?

A: No, she is five years younger, so she was small sister.

Q: And how did you get along with her?

A: Well, fine, fine. I mean, I was a daughter of the family and really, you know. It is really fantastic in our family that when I…I mean, from the beginning on, I was a daughter of my aunt in Budapest, I was a daughter of my other aunt, so it was really fantastic. And the husbands accepted it. You know, that it also a point.

Q: You were very lucky.

A: Really. I tell always that I lost my small family, but somehow I fell on a pillow.

Q: Because you said that when your mother and brother didn’t arrive, your heart broke. And when you went to that village, did you keep waiting for your mother to come?

A: I was waiting for my mother all the time, even years later, years later, in Budapest. And not only me. I mean, I did it really in my heart, but also my aunt waited for her sister.

Q: After she knew she died?

A: They never accepted it, that she died. They never accepted that my brother, who was the first child in the family, that he died. They never could accept it. So they waited for years and therefore, the story for me, with my mother and brother, was never really finished. They never got buried, they never…the story was never really closed somehow. Therefore I was this year in Auschwitz, quite alone. Somehow I had to go.

Q: We’ll talk about it. So you were living there in the village.

A: Well, we were in the mountains, and it is a very important story. I have to tell it to you because I think it is a very important point I my life. So we were there and the Germans came in, also in the mountains. They came in.

Q: When was this?

A: It was somehow winter. ’44, ’45, I don’t know.

Q: The Germans got there. They came to the village.

A: They came to the village. They were after Stalingrad, going back.

Q: Did you hide when they came?

A: They came in. We were as the peasants and relatives. And in the house where we were, there came in some medical doctor for the group, for the corps.

Q: A German?

A: A German. A German medical doctor. And the other officers were in the other houses.

Q: It was the German army, the Wehrmacht?

A: It was Wehrmacht. Absolutely Wehrmacht. German-speaking. I didn’t understand a word anymore. But my aunt could speak German, of course. And when the doctor came, he had a bed in our room, in this room we were. The old woman, aunt, uncle, a cousin and me.

Q: What was the name of the cousin?

A: Familla. She is here in Tzahala. At that time we told “Katka”. Well, the German came in and my uncle told, and I heard this conversation in the evening. I was already in my bed and I heard that Uncle said, “I don’t think that Ilus”, my mother, “and Egon”, my brother, “are alive. I am afraid they disappeared in Auschwitz. And this is the reason they didn’t come.” I heard it. I sat up in my bed and I told, “Don’t say that! You can’t say that!”

Q: Did you know at that time what Auschwitz meant?

A: Not really. Dying in gas, but something very bad, and disappearing.

Q: He didn’t know that you heard it.

A: Yes. And I heard that they are speaking about that and I told, “No, it can’t be true. Don’t tell it. You don’t know it. Don’t say something what you don’t know.” Okay. They stopped to speak about that. And then bombing happened around in the near city, where was a very important railway point station. And suddenly – I remember the day – a young officer came into the house where we lived and he said, imagine, to the doctor…

Q: The doctor lived in the house?

A: The doctor lived in the house. He was a kind man.

Q: Do you remember his name? Did you know it?

A: No, I am so sorry, and I will tell afterwards why I am so sorry. The officers came to him and they…

Q: Only the doctor stayed in the house?

A: Only the doctor. And the other officers were in the other houses. And they came in the evening and they spoke and, I don't know, they ate and so. Together. And suddenly there were several officers in the house. A young officer came. He was a young man of – I remember his face – of about thirty probably. But he was really happy. He said, "Imagine what happened. The Americans were bombing the city, and there was a whole train filled up with Jews and the bombs fell on the train and the Jews died and imagine the hands and the legs were flying through the air." A terrible scene. Then they went and my aunt was shocked, really shocked through the whole scene, and she lost her nerves when the other officers disappeared and she told to the doctor, "I can't go on with this whole theatre. We are Jews and now do what you want to."

Q: Her husband was there?

A: Her husband was there. What made the German officer a part of the Wehrmacht, he told, "Be quiet, be quiet." He took my uncle in another house. He wrote there, "Take care. He has typhus." He stayed there and from this day on we children got every day cookies from me. Every day.

Q: I don't understand. Why did he take your uncle?

A: To hide him, because he was a young man and he was not a soldier and why was this young man here?

Q: Oh, he made him like he had typhus.

A: Typhus, yes. Okay? So really he saved our lives. And I don't know his name, I don't know wherefrom he came. I know only – and this is a story what our aunt told – that then he showed her a picture of his family and he told, "I hope that there is somebody who saves my family."

Q: Do you know from where he was in Germany?

A: No. Nothing. Nothing.

Q: You were present when this was happening?

A: No. I don't know. I didn't understand German, so I don't know when she told it, whether I was there or not. I don't have any memories of this, but she said that he saved our lives, yes. So I think that it had a very, very important influence on my life. It made me possible to stay in Austria when I came out of Hungary. And it was surely the influence that I studied medicine.

Q: That doctor?

A: Yes, I think so.

Q: The image of the doctor, that he saved your lives and that he was German made it possible for you to live in Austria and become a doctor.

A: Yes, I think so.

Q: And you never managed to find out who he was.

A: My aunt even didn't know, so we don't know. And it is a pity. Because, you know, here is his life.

Q: Yes, of course. How long did he stay still with you in that village? When did they leave?

A: Well, the Germans left the village a few weeks later. It was still winter and there was an interruption in war and foreign soldiers and then came in not the Russians, but the Romanians.

Q: They came?

A: They came.

Q: In '45, in May?

A: In '45. No. It had to be the end of March or April or something. End of March, I think so.

Q: You said that in that small village you were the only Jewish family hidden?

A: There in the mountains, Yes. We were the only Jewish family.

Q: And you think that the other Slovaks, they knew that you were Jewish?

A: I think so.

Q: Even though you were supposedly the relatives of that widow?

A: Yes. I think the widow knew it. I don’t know. Look, there was a very short interruption. I don't know really the reason why it happened. I was separated from the family and I was somewhere with other people, but only a few days. With my cousin, in the mountains. We were for a few days, with my cousin, in another house and I had to take care of my cousin and I was just six and a half years old. It was for me really a big, big, big responsibility to take care of her. Then, after these few days, we came in another house for a few weeks perhaps. I don't know how long. And then we came back to the widow. I don't know why.

Q: Do you remember any friends from there?

A: Yes, I played with the children there.

Q: Anyone in particular that you remember?

A: No. But they accepted it.

Q: It was winter. How did you manage in terms of that?

A: Well, it was winter. Well, this one room of the one house was heated by a small stove.

Q: You had food from the farm.

A: We had food from the farm. Potatoes, potatoes, but we had.

Q: This was high in the mountains?

A: It could be at about eight hundred, nine hundred meters.

Q: But you don't remember the name of the place.

A: No.

Q: So then you said you think the end of March the Romanians came.

A: The Romanians came.

Q: How was their attitude?

A: Well, in a few days they went more to the west. They moved, so I can't really remember. They came – they were never in this house. And a few days later they disappeared.

Q: Were you afraid of the Romanians?

A: No. But they were not especially kind to us. We had no real contact.

Q: Did you get the idea that the Germans were losing the war? Did you know? Did you feel that? There was talk about it?

A: No, I don't remember.

Q: So after the Romanians left, what happened then?

A: Well, there was no possibility somehow to move from there. I suppose the infrastructure was…

Q: But the family felt safe now to…

A: Yes.

Q: Did they know that the Germans lost the war?

A: Yes, somehow. I knew it. These soldiers were gone, other soldiers came. They were gone.

Q: Do you remember, in terms of your uncle and aunt, any expression of happiness? "Thank goodness we are rid of the Germans." Or a feeling of relief?

A: No. I suppose they had…it was hard for them not to know what was with the family. Because my uncle had also sisters and so…two sisters, and he didn't know what happened to them. My aunt didn't know what happened to the whole family. So I must say, when the soldiers left…how can I tell it? This very acute problem of hiding disappeared and the much greater troubles came. How to live? What is with the family? How can we move away from here? And where do we arrive, when we arrive to Bratislava? What is the future? What is waiting for us?

Q: So the infrastructure was so that you couldn't move.

A: We couldn't move until…a few weeks later we could move only. And first we went back to the village, to the apartment where we were.

Q: So when you were in the mountains, after the Romanians left, did the Russians come?

A: No. We didn’t ever see Russians there.

Q: So you went back to the village.

A: We went back to the village and well, my birthday is the 9th of May and this was the first free day, so it was really celebrated and everybody was happy. The war was over!

Q: Do you remember that?

A: I remember that. That is what I remember.

Q: That was in that village.

A: That was in that village. That is what I remember of Pliesovce. Everybody was happy. The war is over! The war is finished!

Q: There was a celebration in the streets?

A: No, no, not on the streets, no. Or even I can’t remember in the street. But I remember that they told, “It is not only your birthday, but the war is over.”

Q: You got a big present.

A: I got a big present. Imagine, at that time, somehow my aunt – I don’t know how she managed it. She made a chocolate cake for me. The chocolate cake was very bright. It was nearly white, but it was a chocolate cake! I remember it.

Q: You were eight years old?

A: I was, in ’45 I was eight years old, yes.

Q: So you went to that village. How long did you stay there? A few days, months?

A: No, a few weeks.

Q: In the same apartment where you were?

A: In the same apartment, yes, and then we left by a truck to Bratislava. A small story meanwhile. I have to tell it because it is also very interesting how children live in a world where they feel that their grownups are afraid. They don’t know exactly why, but they feel it. At the time, in’44 summer, in these few weeks when I was together with Chava, we made our own world. We imagined that somehow, under the earth, there is a wonderful world. It was our fairy tale and we waited every day for it, that we would be taken in this fairy world.

Q: It was the two of you?

A: Two of us. And we still remember now.

Q: You built an imaginary world.

A: An imaginary world, with a giant and with fairies and with a wonderful palace. Yes. We made our own world.

Q: It was only your imagination.

A: It was all our imagination, yes. It was wonderful for us. It was really psycho…(?) for us. It was beautiful. We still remember it.

Q: Well, obviously you didn’t have actual toys, so you used your imagination. So how was it to come back to Bratislava? What do you remember?

A: Well, we came back by this truck and the first station was the home of Chava. And somehow, in my memories, I stayed there by Chava. I don’t remember where I (?) and Willie and Carmella were.

Q: So you stayed with her family.

A: With her family. And we were waiting for my mother and for all who disappeared. And in front of the building where Chava’s apartment was, there was a centre for people who came back from the lagers.

Q: Who organized it? The Jewish community or the Joint or…?

A: I think the Joint. And everybody came there and this was the centre of the news, who knew from who what. I am seeking…my name…who had seen, and so on. So, my aunt from Budapest arrived also to Bratislava to look what is with the family.

Q: What had happened with them? How did they manage? In the ghetto?

A: First in the ghetto. My uncle was taken to this work camp. Then my aunt went and she helped him to flee from there. Then they brought somehow – not really in the ghetto – but an uncle of mine, who was married with the aunt of Chava in Budapest, he had a brother and they went to this house where they lived and they spent there somehow a few months. It was not a ghetto. They lived there like Christians. They had no star. They lived there. I mean, it was very, very risky, you know? And my uncle worked in a hospital. He pushed the sick people from here to there and from there to here, and the dead people and however. This was his job at that time. My aunt was the cleaning woman for this family and so.

Q: So that is the way they survived. So she came also to Bratislava?

A: She came also to Bratislava.

Q: Who else, besides your mother and brother, did not return?

A: Well, I told that the oldest sister came to Hungary and they were taken in Hungary after I went back to Bratislava, so it happened somehow in May ’44.

Q: Also to Auschwitz?

A: They were taken to a concentration camp in Hungary and my aunt tried to flee from there with my uncle, but the uncle had some disease in his eyes. He couldn’t see really and he couldn’t run as quickly as it was necessary and so they were shot. And this is one part. The second part is not…in my father’s family, the parents of Hilli, of Hillel HaCohen – they were taken, the whole family. So the parents, his sister and himself…

Q: The parents were what to your father?

A: Father’s sister and her husband.

Q: They were taken?

A: They were taken also to Auschwitz. The parents died very soon. My cousin Cili survived. She worked in Auschwitz for a time long. And Hilli escaped from the train with his friend and they went to the partisans. And Hilli got shot, you know?

Q: So you were staying with Eva’s family in Bratislava.

A: In Bratislava for a few weeks and we were very happy to…

Q: Can you remember in what condition you were? What was your mental state? You were waiting every day for you mother to show up?

A: Still I was four years old. I was waiting for my parents. I knew that my aunts, uncles, whoever were taking care of me, so I was never scared, but I waited for my parents since my fourth year.

Q: And so your aunt came from Budapest.

A: She came from Budapest. Now, my mother’s last wish was when would happen to her anything and she wouldn’t survive, the children should come to my aunt in Budapest because she had never children.

Q: She had no children?

A: She had no children and the other sisters had children, so she thought…and between all the seven children, they too were very good friends also, not only very good sisters, but also very close. She wanted that we should come to Budapest. Now, my brother couldn’t, so my aunt took me.

Q: Immediately?

A: Immediately, immediately. When she came, she was there for a few days.

Q: How did you feel about it? Were you happy to go with her?

A: Well, I knew her and the story was, “You are again with us until your mother is coming back.” So I came to Budapest, I lived with her.

Q: So after your moving to Bratislava, to the villages, were you happy to be back at her home? Did you feel like you were coming home?

A: I was waiting. I accepted…You know, when today I think back, I accepted everything. I accepted my family, I accepted the changes in my life. I spoke once this language and once this language.

Q: And now you were back to Hungarian.

A: And now I was back to Hungary.

Q: How was Budapest?

A: Well, it was destroyed. It was destroyed. And even the apartment where we lived, it was very nice. Three big chambered apartment. Even four chambers. And it got on one side a bomb, so it was not so nice.

Q: So you came back and?

A: But I came and I was again in Budapest. Now, through the war I lost one year at school, so I had to finish. My aunt was really very clever and it was really very good from her and the second class I made private with a teacher who came and she was a very fine lady. I loved her really very much. And she came every day and I learned the second class, whatever, and I had to make an exam at the end and then I came to the third class. Quite normally in the fall I came in the third class and it went on. When I came to Budapest I couldn’t speak any word Hungarian, so I had to learn again Hungarian and it was very hard, really very hard.

Q: You had no recollection of it?

A: No. I had to learn again. And in the first few weeks it was terrible and then Auntie took me to a movie. It was a very special thing after the war, going to a movie. She took me to a Walt Disney film and then we came home and I had to tell what I saw in Hungarian. I hadn’t the words. It was terrible!

Q: What were they living on after the war? Were they working at all?

A: Well, now I tell “my mother” and “my father”. They were really fine people to me, really very, very fine people. I was their child and I was adopted by them officially. Absolutely. It took a long time because of the papers, to get them. And finally I became Biro when I was ten years old. So I came when I was eight and I got it when I was ten.

Q: And what did they make a living after the war?

A: My father made, as long as he could, because then came the Communists era, but until ’49, I think so, he worked with his social security things and giving advice to different companies. How to make the bookkeeping for the social security and so on. That was his job and well, we had a relatively nice apartment in Budapest.

Q: And she was working too?

A: No, not in the first time. No. It came when the Communists came in.

Q: What happened when the Communists came in?

A: Well, it had different aspects. First of all…

Q: So actually, you went back to Budapest, it was still ’45?

A: It was ’45. Summer ’45, making the second class private ’45. Fall, third class. Then, ’46 was a terrible time. In Hungary…(end of side)

A: So the communist era began. I felt it from ’49 on because first my father lost his job and he had to change the way of working.

Q: You were thirteen about?

A: I was twelve.

Q: So before you continue telling me, I want to ask, specifically because you said you were twelve. Did you by any chance have a bat mitzvah?

A: No. My aunt, mother, in Budapest was very, very, very unhappy, of course, about that she lost a lot of persons in her family, so she told there is no G-d. And when there would be a G-d, he couldn’t allow that and he couldn’t allow Auschwitz and he couldn’t allow everything what happened. “There is no G-d.” But I had papers from Bratislava still from ’44 or ’43, that I got baptized. I never got baptized, but I had the papers, so my aunt told, because in school you had to have some religious lessons, so she told, “So now you go to the Christian lesson, religion lesson.” And so it happened. It was not uninteresting for my life because I learned a lot of Christian mythology and, well, it is interesting.

Q: And at home there was no going back Jewish life.

A: Nothing. Nothing.

Q: No holidays?

A: No. Well, only on Yom Kippur, but later, not in the beginning.

Q: Not in the beginning.

A: Later.

Q: Did they have any connection to the Jewish community in Budapest?

A: Not to the community, but well, the friends were Jews and my father had his relatives in Budapest. It was very interesting also at school. I never met really religious Jewish children at school. Never. But all of us, we knew who was Jewish and who was not Jewish. We knew it.

Q: You felt Jewish?

A: Well, I don’t know what you mean with feeling Jewish.

Q: Meaning that you knew that you were Jewish.

A: Well, I knew that I am and I knew who was in the class.

Q: But at home there was nothing.

A: No. Really nothing. I have never been…it is not right. I was only once in a synagogue in the whole time, by a wedding. No, nothing. Really nothing. When I have been somewhere, also it was a church where I had to be on Sundays in the morning.

Q: But they didn’t become Christians.

A: No.

Q: Just atheists.

A: Nothing. There is no G-d.

Q: But they didn’t celebrate any of the holidays.

A: No.

Q: At no time was…(?) any official Jewish community, any of the establishment of the Jewish community. They had no connection?

A: No, no connection.

Q: So you started saying – sorry I cut you, but I wanted… - when the Communists came into power your father, uncle…What did you call them, by the way?

A: I called him “Father”.

Q: They became father and mother.

A: It took a long. To Mother I never told “Mother”. I told her “Mommy”. Or I told her “Nunye”. This was a name I gave her before…in the wartime, in my first Budapest period. And then I told her “Nunye” or “Mommy”.

Q: So you said he lost his job.

A: He lost his job and he had to make…so he worked even then with social security somehow in different companies, but these were part-time jobs.

Q: Did it affect…

A: But these were jobs, and not his own office.

Q: And was it more difficult…?

A: It was very difficult economically. It was very difficult…It was anyway difficult because there was period you couldn’t even buy a piece of butter. Not because you hadn’t the money, but there was no…nothing.

Q: Did the family manage from Bratislava to get back some of the property or nothing? They lost everything? Your mother sold the shop.

A: Well, listen. This gentleman who bought the shop from Mother, he was going on working there, but the shop was under the name of my aunt, of Carmella’s parents, and they were my…what’s the name of if in English? I don’t know. When you don’t adopt a child, but you are the “mmm” for the child, managing.

Q: Apotropis.

A: Yes, okay. So they were my this and so they went on making the business in the shop somehow, in my name, because I was the child. And then came the communists and they took away, they took the second time away the shop.

Q: And the apartment also that your family had in Bratislava?

A: It was never again ours. I don’t know. So this was taken. The family from Bratislava came in 1949 to Israel.

Q: They all made aliyah?

A: They all made, yes. They came here.

Q: Your mother in Budapest?

A: In Budapest.

Q: She didn’t consider making aliyah?

A: No, because my father didn’t want to.

Q: They had no connection to Zionist…?

A: No. He told, Father told always, “I am too old. I can’t begin again a new life.” He was too tired. He was really too tired. I think he was depressive.

Q: They never had children of their own?

A: They had never children. They couldn’t. She couldn’t. So I was the daughter. First I went to a gymnasium in Budapest with one from the church. The communists took it away and I had to leave this school and I had to go to a school in my district and there I finished the eight classes. Then I came to a gymnasium what was not very easy. The communists changed the system. It was not four elementary classes and eight classes gymnasium. They told there eight elementary classes and four years gymnasium. It was not easy to get in a gymnasium. It was already politically influenced. But I came in because I was a very good student and until my eighteenth year I was there in the gymnasium.

Q: Did they have to, your parents, adoptive parents – did they have to belong to the Communist party? Did they join the Communist party?

A: It is all the communist story. My father was really a very profound socialist. His father – my grandfather’s brother, so Mother and Father were cousins – was really one of the first socialists in Hungary. And so his son became it also.

Q: What was his name?

A: Later Biro, Jeno, at first Braun. He Hungarized his name. I think you have seen “Sunshine”, that movie probably and it was very close to me, this film. Okay, however. He was a member of the Socialist party and they threw him out. No, he was not a party member. They would never accept him.

Q: Because he was Jewish?

A: No, because he was a socialist.

Q: Did you go to any communist movement? A youth movement?

A: I had to. I was a so-called “Pioneer” when I was fourteen.

Q: Did you identify with it?

A: No. It was not really…

Q: You weren’t involved.

A: I wasn’t involved.

Q: As you were brought up….

A: What happened…We had to go to the streets on the 1st of May, of course, and I got a flag and I had to hold it. You had to go with it so many streets and I said, “I don’t want to do it.” And I gave it to another girl – it was not very nice of me – and I disappeared!

Q: Were you punished? Did they know it?

A: No.

Q: Who were your friends when you were growing up there?

A: Well, I had a lot of friends. Mostly Jewish children, but not only.

Q: Do you still have contact with some of your friends?

A: I have still contact and I have very, very good friends still in Budapest, yes.

Q: During this time, when you were living in Budapest, before we get to the point where you lived with (?), were you still fishing (?) everything. I am talking about psychologically. But officially, were you looking for information about your mother and brother?

A: Yes, yes, yes. Not me.

Q: I mean, your aunt.

A: My aunt. Well, the point was that then my aunt, Chava’s mother, met people who were taken together in the same transport, so they had the information.

Q: But did you get any official information?

A: I don’t know.

Q: From the Joint.

A: Well, we had to. Oh yes, oh yes. Of course. I have still a paper in Slovak that the Slovak bureaucracy says that they accept that she died in Auschwitz. Yes, I have a paper from it.

Q: Can you tell us something more about your mother? About her character?

A: She was a very gentle, very fine…never loud, never. Laughing. A very good housewife. The whole family came on Fridays to us to eat in the evening because she cooked so well. Even when I came after the first time I was in Israel in ’57 and when I met my cousins, who were older than me, they remember how fantastic she cooked.

Q: There was a Kiddush also? Do you think there was a Kiddush?

A: No. I don’t know. No. It was never finished.

Q: But she was a very good housewife.

A: She was a very good…yes. And I remember still that I helped her in the kitchen when I was small and she made some cookies and I made on my small table. I remember it.

Q: So even when you got the official documents, you were still waiting for her to come.

A: I was waiting for her for a long time. But I loved very much my mother, aunt mother. I loved her very much really. And I have dreams and these dreams are so interesting, so cruel. I dreamt – not once. It was a returning dream until I was fifty, I think so, or even more – that I…one dream was that I am in the apartment in Bratislava and there is my father and I wonder that he is there, but I am very happy about that. And I tell him, “Look, I don’t understand it. I thought you were dead, but you are alive and it is fantastic!” And then I wake up. This is one type of the dreams which returned. The other one is very interesting for me really also from a psychiatric point of view. That I am dreaming that my mother is coming back and I am always in the actual age in which I dream it and she says, “Oh, how nice to meet you and I am happy that I have you again. And now you are coming to me and we live again together.” And then I say, “Oma, you can’t do that. I have my aunt and she brought me up and she was always here when you haven’t been here. And how could you do it, that you were not here.” So, excuse me. It is so not okay that you know how your mother died, because then I knew how my mother died, and you tell her, “What you did is not okay. You were not here when I needed you.”

Q: That she deserted you.

A: Yes. “And look how fine your sister is.” It is not okay. But I had this dream several times and it moved me afterwards, when I was…(?). It moved me so much, because I felt that, “What is this child in me which had the feeling that the mother did something what is not okay?”

Q: Did you also get an official letter or document about your brother, from Bergen-Belsen?

A: No.

Q: Because you mentioned that you got for your mother.

Q: Yes, I got it for my mother. Look, I got it for my mother because it was necessary for getting adopted. I needed a paper, but I never needed a paper for my brother somehow, so I have no paper about him. I have only what the friends said.

Q: Tell us something about your brother, about his character.

A: Well, he was not like Hillel – they were cousins. Hillel was a tough man. You knew him, how he was. He was a fighting type. My brother was not a fighting type. He was rather a scientific type. He was very interested in chemistry when he was a young boy and he wanted not to make furs. He wanted to study, but it was not possible. And he was so enthusiastic about the chemistry.

Q: You were also? When you went to study, you were also interested in chemistry?

A: Not chemistry. No. I studied medicine and in the medicine I specialized in something totally different. I made electrophysiology. It is totally different. But he was so enthusiastic about his chemistry that when I was five he told me so that I could understand it – and I know it still today. He related me about photosynthesis.

Q: Explained it to you.

A: He explained it to me and it was so interesting for me.

Q: You still remember.

A: I still remember. We went for a walk and so, hand in hand, and I remember even that he was tall and I was small, so my hand was somewhere way up. And he told it to me and I was very interested in it because he told it in a way that a five-year-old child could be interested in it. Well, I mean, at home in Bratislava, of course, I had to be silent when he learned or when he played piano. He had to learn. But yes, I was not so very happy when I had to be silent, but…well, it was a very good connection between us, yes. It was really very good.

Q: So let us go back to…Is there something else you wanted to say?

A: No, not really.

Q: So you were in Budapest. You went to the gymnasium.

A: Yes, and I finished it and I wanted to study and it was not possible in Hungary because of political reasons. Well, in Hungary I didn’t want to study medicine. I wanted to learn languages. Well, I closed my school with the best possible number of points.

Q: You were eighteen?

A: I was eighteen. Normal time I finished it, and then I had to make an exam on the university. I went, I made it. I had the absolutely maximum points that I could have and they didn't take me because of political reasons.

Q: Political or also the fact that you were Jewish?

A: No. Look, it is perhaps important to say that at the time at school I had never, really never, the feeling that I was less or I was somehow different because I am a Jew. Never. At that time really not. Today's Hungary is different.

Q: No anti-Semitism and no…?

A: No, not at school and…no.

Q: During that period, before you left Hungary, did your family, did they have contact with the family in Israel?

A: Yes. They wrote every week, every week. They exchanged letters, and it was forbidden. Well, it was not forbidden, but the Communists didn't like it and Mother told, "I don't care about the Communists. I have my family and I write."

Q: The whole family was actually here and she was the only one in Budapest?

A: She was the only from the sisters. She was the only one in Budapest. The rest, who survived, the two boys, were here already since '38 and since '48 were the two sisters, the rest, yes.

Q: But you also had family from your father's side.

A: From my father's side, who survived came also to Israel.

Q: And you also have some family in America.

A: Well, the family in America, this was an uncle from my father and I just heard that there was one other. I had never contact with me. Then, when I came to Vienna, he contacted me. It was very fine of him because he wanted that I should go to the States. I didn't want it.

Q: So you weren't accepted even though you got the best grades.

A: Yes, I wasn't accepted.

Q: So what happened?

A: Well, what happened? First of all, I went to the university to ask why. I was so stupid! And I wanted to meet the rector and I met him, by chance, in the building and he asked me, "What is your name?" I told him and then he said, "What? You are not taken to the university? Look, I have here a paper. You are on the first place."- and I have seen truly with my own eyes – "You are in the first place who should be taken to the university on empty places", which are left empty, but they didn't.

Q: This was for studying languages?

A: This was for studying languages. And the next year, so it was in '55. In '56, for the next year, and anyway they didn't take me even not…

Q: And what did you do there?

A: I was working in a factory, in a laboratory for special crystals which are built in electronic devices.

Q: So what happened then, after that?

A: Well, there I worked until the 23rd of October, 1956, and there was the revolution and I took part. I didn't shoot or so, but I took a little bit part in it.

Q: What did you do?

A: Well, at the university, there was a centre for it and I helped them, just paper.

Q: You weren't scared, being involved actively?

A: This was only what I did actively, in the centre.

Q: Yes, but you weren't afraid?

A: No, I was not. I was eighteen, G-d, no, I was nineteen.

Q: They knew about it, your parents, that you were involved?

A: Yes. My mother was proud of it.

Q: They were supportive?

A: Yes. And then the revolution was ended.

Q: How was the atmosphere during those days?

A: Well, it was terrible, it was really terrible. We lived on a street where the Russians came in and they shot, once to the left, once to the right.

Q: You weren't afraid? You were scared, seeing the situation? Invasion?

A: Well, not really. In the first invasion, it was very interesting because, well, when I was nineteen we learned Russian at school and we spoke to the soldiers that, "We don't want to shoot you and please, what we want is not so bad." And the first troops of Russians were taken away home. There were also troops which were in Austria, coming back from the West and they had seen what the Western world is. And they were stationed in Hungary, they shouldn’t come quickly home because the Russians were afraid that they would see the difference between West and East. So these soldiers had really open ears for us.

Q: But the mood was very anti-Soviet, yes?

A: Of course it was very anti-Soviet.

Q: …optimism?

A: Well, in the beginning I thought we would…And then came the end, the bitter end, and the end of the whole story was that in December 1956 I left Hungary. My mother and father supported it.

Q: How did you do that? After the uprising, were you afraid that you would be accused?

A: No, I was not, but I wanted somehow to study, to have the opportunity to study and somehow to be free. There is a small episode in my life, when I was fifteen or sixteen – an uncle of mine was the financial director of a factory which was in previous times Siemens, but it got communistic. There came somebody from Vienna to make business with this factory, so he had to speak with my uncle and then he took this gentleman to a dinner somewhere and he took me also. And I heard as the gentleman told, “Well, now I am here and then I go to join my family on the Riviera and then we go back to Vienna.” And then I realized that the world is not only Hungary and not only Budapest, and what I ever read about France or Italy, it existed really. And my mother told and I was for a few days totally silent. I didn’t speak anything. It went very much in me. Then I realized that I am closed in somewhere in a country. So I wanted to get out. But she wanted also that I should get out and I should have the opportunity for my life.

Q: As you were growing up did you read literature?

A: A lot, a lot.

Q: Russian or…?

A: Mainly English, French. Well, I enjoyed the whole…

Q: In translation into Hungarian?

A: Well, in translation Hungarian or English. I read also in English.

Q: French also?

A: French not. I learned French, but I couldn’t speak as well. I read English, yes, English literature. I read a lot of literature.

Q: So you were exposed also to the great…I mean, any living modern literature or only classical…?

A: Modern literature was not possible. I think the last was Thomas Mann, who I could read, and the newest one.

Q: During these years, your parents, they had contact with other Holocaust survivors?

A: Well, look. The sister of Hillel, she was in Auschwitz.

Q: She was in Budapest?

A: She was for a time, for a few months or even year – I don’t remember so exactly – she was in Budapest and she visited us a lot and I loved her very much. We had a very good contact.

Q: She was your cousin.

A: She was my cousin, in the same way, on Father’s side, as Chava is on Mother’s side.

Q: What was her name?

A: Cili. And Cili told only a few words, that she was there and she worked in the kitchen and it was a way to survive, but she told never about really terrible things.

Q: And your parents?

A: Until she got…one or two years before she died she began to speak. And it was very similar with many other survivors. They didn't speak about it. And I have until now a very good friend in Vienna who is eighty. He doesn't speak about it. He was a child in Auschwitz and he doesn't speak about it.

Q: In your home, with your parents, did you speak about what happened in the war?

A: Yes, of course. We did and we read about that. Yes, for sure. Yes.

Q: Did you have a yahrzeit, the date of someone dying?

A: I see, I understand. No. We didn't accept that they died. No, we waited and waited. This is why I told in the beginning – it never finished. It never finished.

Q: So this idea that you should leave Budapest came in…?

A: Came in December.

Q: How did you do it? How did you actually organize it? You didn't know anybody.

A: I didn't know anybody. Well, I had my family here, but it was here and not in Austria.

Q: Your idea was to go to Vienna?

A: First of all, of course, to Vienna. It was the first station for everybody who came out from Hungary.

Q: How could you come out?

A: By train until the border, then I got out. Well, it is a long story. Mother thought a nineteen-year-old girl shouldn't go alone.

Q: But it wasn't free, the border wasn't free.

A: No, it was…

Q: So how did you do that? By bribing? By what?

A: No, by walking. I was trained already in walking illegal.

Q: Everyone could go to the border and just cross?

A: At that time, well, it was a little bit dangerous. It was dangerous.

Q: It was illegal.

A: It was illegal. Of course. So with a boy, Mother's friend's son, came already two times back because he couldn't transfer the border. And so we went together and we met in the train a gentleman who couldn't through two times, but he wanted to meet his wife who was already outside. And he was really also a very jealous husband and he wanted to get out. It must be. The last opportunity. But he lost his whole money with these two times, so he asked us whether we would have enough money to take him with us and he had now a really sure address who takes us.

Q: In Vienna?

A: Not in Vienna. In Hungary, who takes us through the border. Then I told to this boy, "Look, I have the feeling that he is honest. It is not only that he wants to take our money away. It is really honest. He wants to get to Austria."

Q: Your idea was to get together…

A: My idea was to get out and everything else I would see.

Q: Alone?

A: Alone.

Q: Without the parents?

A: Nineteen-year-old girl – it is a little bit silly.

Q: Very brave.

A: Yes. I was never scared. I had the feeling I had the world. And I got out. I knew I would like to study, but how, where, what from, where I would live – nothing. The only point was Mother made somehow, through Stefan, who is my uncle, that he had some friends who could help me in Vienna, and I had an address, to go there as a first address in Vienna, but it was not told that I could live there or something. Only for the first orientation. So through this man in the train we had a good address and he took us really until the border and then he told, "You see this house. This is already on the other side." It was on the other side, so we came on in a village in Austria and in the first house they told the gathering place for all the refugees was in the school. It was a school free. It was Christmastime. So we went there. There were all Hungarians who knew already which organization were helping and how and so. Next day came from the Joint a bus taking people to the Jewish community, to the temple in Vienna. And we took, with this boy, the bus and so we came on there. Then the first question was, "Are you really Jews?" But they believed it.

Q: You didn't have any documents?

A: Nothing, nothing.

Q: (?) with you?

A: The only thing I had was my…from the school, that I left the school. Nothing more. It's not true, sorry. It's not true. First we went to the…how was it? Of course, I had my official Hungarian identification card. First we went to the police – so it was. First we went to the police. The police took the identification away and they gave another one, such a refugee card, and with this refugee card I went next day, I think, to the Jewish community. And then they told me. "Come to Israel." And I knew that I have here my family and I love my family, but somehow, I wanted to prove myself, that I could make my life alone. I don't know whether you can understand it.

Q: You wanted to be on your own.

A: I wanted to be on my own. In my whole life I was supported through my family and I thought it is enough now. You can't do that for your family, that they should support you. You are grown up. Make your life alone.

Q: But how did you think you would support yourself alone in a strange country?

A: When you are nineteen you think you can do it, and I did it! I succeeded somehow.

Q: So you decided you were not going to go to Israel.

A: I was not going to Israel, not because of Israel, but because when I would be here, so I would be dependent. Then I got a letter – I don't remember anymore how he could find me – from this old uncle of my father in Chicago, and he wrote I should come. And I wrote, "Thank you very much. It is very kind, but I don't want." He accepted it. And then I went to the university in Vienna to hear what was the news, where can you get and…

Q: Money?

A: No, I had just so much money that I could manage to get through, but not more. But then in Vienna it was wonderful. It was really wonderful. All the organizations who helped Hungarian refugees – it was really unique. It was unique. So I could eat. In the first few days I didn't need money, really money, because with the refugee card I could take a tram. We could eat. There were places where we could eat. So it was not necessary in the first days. And then I went to the university and I heard where you could study and how it worked. And to get to the stage it takes a lot of time and to get here and to get there. Then we learned really geography – which state is where and what is the capital of the state. This is what we learned. And from Vienna I called then my mother and father in Budapest. And Father was not healthy anymore, so this was the reason they didn't leave Hungary.

Q: Did it influence anything, the fact that you left, fled – did it mean trouble for them there?

A: Well, not really trouble because two hundred thousand fled, so they couldn't make to everybody in Hungary. There was no family where there was no…

Q: But you could call them on the phone?

A: I could call them on the phone. The point was that for my mother, it was really very hard to miss me, really, because when I went, you thought you would never meet again. This was the point. And she was so fantastic. When I left the apartment, she told me at the top of the staircase, she told me, "Now you are grown up. Please take care of yourself." So nice. But she also that, "I know that you can take care of yourself."

Q: She trusted you.

A: Yes.

Q: So in Vienna you decided to go to the university?

A: Well, I went to the university. First of all, it was a centre for news, where you could go and how does it work. And then somehow, after we spoke, I decided not to go overseas, because then I would be very far away, and probably sometime I could see them or something. So I decided to stay in Vienna. It was not really complicated for me because I could take the university and I got very early a stipendium and you could live from it. It was enough.

Q: At this point you decided to go to medical school?

A: And at this point, look, it was not really easy because I thought, "Well, now I am nineteen. Now I have to learn German."

Q: You had to learn German?

A: I had to learn. I forgot everything. My nanny in my childhood was a German-speaking woman, but I forgot it. And I had to learn it again and I thought I couldn't ever speak so good German that I wouldn't have an accent. And so it is not good to study languages or to get a teacher at school because I wouldn't speak well German. I wouldn't ever speak well German, I thought. And so, then I had the idea, well, Father wanted always that I should study medicine. I'll try it.

Q: Your…?

A: My uncle. My uncle wanted. And I thought, well, I'll try it and I will see. And I tried it and I liked it.

Q: Where did you live there? In a dormitory?

A: No. The stipendium was enough to have a small room. It was from the Rockefeller Foundation. And I had it until I got married. It was so that we had in the ten months of the university…

Q: So how long was your studying? How many years?

A: Well, it was very long because meanwhile I got married and afterwards my daughter was born, so I finished first in ’67.

Q: So how many years altogether were your studies?

A: Altogether ten years. It was very long.

Q: And then you decided that you would specialize in psychiatry?

A: In neurology and psychiatry. It came later. The child was born, I finished my studies and I stayed at home and I was not working until my daughter was four. Then I started to work.

Q: Before we get to that – you studied, you lived in an apartment with other people or alone?

A: I had always my own room.

Q: And you managed. You got new friends there?

A: I got new friends there.

Q: Jewish? Non-Jewish?

A: Mixed. Jewish, non-Jewish, Hungarian, Austrian.

Q: When you were in Vienna did you have contact with the Jewish community?

A: No. Never.

Q: Did you come back to traditional life or anything?

A: No.

Q: Okay. And who was your husband? Can you tell us? What was his name? How did you meet him?

A: Well, my husband. Dr. Otto Balazs. He was a chemist, born on the 15th of November, 1925, so he twelve years older than me.

Q: He was Austrian?

A: No. He was Hungarian. He was Hungarian, also a refugee at the time when we met.

Q: Jewish? He was Jewish?

A: Oh, and how. It is very interesting. His story, his family story is really very interesting.

Q: Did you meet him at the university?

A: I met him at the university. No, I met him private, by a friend of mine, but he worked at the university. Chemist, yes. And he worked on the chemical faculty, medical chemistry, at the university where I studied. And he worked there and then, through his profession we got for a while to Germany because it was so that he would be in Germany a professor at the university and then we were first in Bonn, then in Berlin, in western Berlin.

Q: When was this? After you got married?

A: After we got married.

Q: So when did you get married?

A: In ’62.

Q: In Vienna?

A: In Vienna. We got married in ’62 in Vienna.

Q: In a civil ceremony?

A: It was first a civil ceremony, of course. Well, to tell you…no, it was in a church. It was in a church, a Protestant church because of the family history of my husband. It is a very interesting history. It is a Jewish family, an old Jewish family, which had a lot of scientists and university professors, even a very famous man, whom all Hungarian children learn at school about him. His name is Ballagi. The name of the family was Bloch and they made it a Hungarian name. One part of the family got “Balazs”, with “B”, and the other part, “Ballagi”. And Ballagi Mor (?) was a big scientist and he was first in a yeshiva school. He was a very good student. Then he went to a normal gymnasium. His name in this gymnasium is still there and they have a big table on the wall: “Here learned Bology Mor”. And then he went to Germany to study and in Germany he converted. In Germany he converted and he…well, he was a rabbi. Ans then he converted in Germany in eighteen hundred something, then he came back to Hungary and he is one of the founders of the Hungarian reformed theology. And he is one of the founders of the school where my husband learned.

Q: So that’s why you married in a church. Did anybody come from the family in the wedding?

A: Nobody. Nobody. Not from mine and not from his.

Q: This was in ’62.

A: It was in ’62 in Vienna.

Q: But you told me before, I think you told me, that ever since ’57, first time you came to Israel.

A: It was the first time. I was invited by Stefan.

Q: Can you tell me about your first visit?

A: It was gorgeous, it was fantastic.

Q: It was a few years since you saw everybody from your family, yes?

A: Yes. Well, I saw them the last time in ’48 and then they came out and that was ’56.

Q: How did you see them in ’48? You came from Budapest to Bratislava in ’48?

A: Yes. Quite normal. By train. Quite normal.

Q: So you didn’t see them for almost ten years.

A: Yes. So I was happy to see Chava and to see Carmella.

Q: And they were Israelis now, yes?

A: And they were Israelis, now, as you tell it. Of course.

Q: You came to spend the summer with them?

A: And I came to spend the whole summer and I was with the girls and it was a happy time.

Q: What did you think about Israel? As an idea. About Zionism. Was it something you thought about or rejected?

A: Yes, we had a lot of discussions about that. First I told okay, I would like to finish my studies, but then I got married. Somehow it was a plan that I would come, but…

Q: You thought that eventually, after you finished, maybe you would come and be an Israeli.

A: Yes, yes, yes.

Q: So you were, in your idea or feelings, you were a Zionist. It wasn’t that you were against.

A: Zionist is too much.

Q: It was more of a family thing?

A: It was more family, it was more…I was always very happy here.

Q: You used to come in the summer to visit? Since ’57?

A: I came in the summer of ’57, yes, and I was here until the university began again.

Q: And then you got married in ’62.

A: I got married in ’62.

Q: When was your daughter born?

A: ’65.

Q: What is her name?

A: Her name is Aniko. Why? It is Anna. It is the Transylvanian form of Anna and Balazs is a very Transylvanian-sounding name. The point is that the part of the family of my husband lived there, in Transylvania, and when they came to Hungary and then…And my best girlfriend’s name was also Aniko.

Q: And she grew up in Vienna?

A: She grew up in Vienna.

Q: With a few years that you were in Germany?

A: A few years we were in Germany.

Q: How was it for you to go and live in Germany?

A: Very strange. Very strange. Look, okay, I told, “Okay, I will try it.” I told to my husband, “Okay, this is your career. I am still studying. We will go. I will try it.”

Q: You continued studying in Germany?

A: No, no. I was already very near to my last exams, so I made my last exams between Bonn and…

Q: How many years were you in Germany?

A: Six.

Q: Six years?

A: Six years. From ’63 until ’69.

Q: So she was born in Germany?

A: No, she was born in Vienna. I went to Vienna.

Q: And then you came back to Vienna.

A: We came back to Vienna in ’69.

Q: And you finished and you started your…?

A: I finished meanwhile my studies and then I went to Germany and I was at home after finishing my studies, and then I waited. I wanted really, I wanted to do it in that way, that I wanted to be at home until my child was four years old and then she went to the kindergarten and I went to work.

Q: Where did you work all these years?

A: I worked in a Vienna hospital, in several hospitals of the city of Vienna. (end of side)

A: You are like a Russian puppet and the big one and the smaller one and the smaller one and the smaller one and now we open the smallest one.

Q: So you were talking about your career. In the hospital.

A: Yes. Well. Of course. In the hospital I started ’69. At first, in the Austrian system you have to go through several departments and then you have to choose which specialty you want to make. And in the second semester I made a course of brain anatomy and it was so interesting for me that even at that time I decided to make something with neurology. So when I finished these three years in the different departments I could arrange to get a place in neurology and in Austria it lasts six years. And I am the last generation who could have both specialities, neurology and psychiatry and I am very happy about it.

Q: So most of the years you worked in the hospital?

A: The most. I finished in 2002.

Q: And then you worked in your own clinic?

A: I worked in a clinic. I was there the vice-director. I led a laboratory for electrophysiology. I took part in different conferences. You know, what a doctor is doing.

Q: And I understand that your husband passed away?

A: He died in ’97. He had a heart attack. He was smoking a lot so, sorry to say.

Q: So you are still living in Vienna.

A: I am still living in Vienna in my old apartment.

Q: Your daughter lives also?

A: My daughter lives also in Vienna. She is a fashion designer. She has her own showroom and shop.

Q: She is married?

A: She is not married, no. She is not married. She makes beautiful things and you can find her homepage in the internet, and I am very proud of her and it’s a very, very, very good connection between us. Really.

Q: Okay, we are coming to the end. Just a few more questions we want to ask you and then we’ll add the pictures. After the war, in ’45, there were the Nurenberg trials. Did you know about it? Did you read? Did you follow it?

A: Well, I heard about that and much later I read a little bit about it.

Q: In Israel, you know, in 1960 they caught Eichmann.

A: Yes, I know.

Q: Did you follow that? Did you hear about that? Were you interested in that?

A: I was interested in that, of course.

Q: Also in Israel, during the ‘60s there was a big debate. It was also political. There was a big debate about compensation money from the Germans. Did you know about this?

A: I knew about it. I get it, but it was…

Q: What did you think about it?

A: I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t have my husband, I wouldn’t take it. My first decision was, what I lost can’t be paid by money. And I told, “No, I don’t do that. I don’t do that.” And somehow, my husband told, “Don’t be silly.” And I did it. It was very interesting because I had a trial somehow to prove that I am a Jew. And then somehow, in the beginning of the trial, it was looking so silly. It was really somehow not realistic for me that I, as a Jew, I am standing here before a German justice and I have to prove that I am a Jew? Here? And it was really unrealistic and I gave really stupid answers. And then, in the interruption, somehow it came from my belly, I told them, “What do you think? At that time, when I was a little girl, I hadn’t to prove that I am a Jew. I was a Jew. What do you think? You make what you want. I don’t need your money.” And this was the point. And then they finished and okay, okay, okay.

Q: They recognized you as a Jew.

A: You.

Q: Did you talk about your experience during the war with your daughter, with your husband? Did she know the story?

A: Well, my husband knew everything, for sure. And he was very fine, he was really very fine.

Q: And your daughter?

A: I didn’t tell it to her for a long time because I thought a child shouldn’t grow up in a very sensitive period with all these terrible things. Because, of course, at that time, when she was born I knew already everything. But later, when we came to Israel, she came also with us, so when I came to visit Israel also with my family. So of course, then she was I think eight years old or nine years or something like that. Well, then she asked and it was very interestingly reflected in her. She says she is in a certain gratitude that I brought up her in this way, that when she was a little girl she didn’t hear about it and now she can work with it with her mind and with her consciousness. When I went to Auschwitz she wanted to come with me.

Q: Did she go with you?

A: No, I didn’t want it. I wanted to go alone because I knew when I am there I am very weak. It is the weakest point in my life.

Q: You didn’t want her to see your weakness.

A: And I knew that she would have also a very weak point and I couldn’t support her. I knew that I couldn’t support her in this state.

Q: So when did you go to Auschwitz?

A: So I was…I knew that it is a very profound something in me and I told, “I finish my work because when I will come back, I will be another person.” It is a long story, how I found a way to get there. I didn’t want to go by an organization. I didn’t want to go with other people. I wanted to go by my own. And on the way I found a wonderful lady. She is in the consulate, the Austrian consulate in Krakow. She accepted me without knowing me. I, myself, didn’t want to accept it. I wanted to go to a hotel, but through friends I got in her place.

Q: She is Polish?

A: No, she is Austrian. And she is in the Austrian consulate in Krakow. And she organized for me how to get from Krakow to Auschwitz. And I didn’t know that, that Austrian young men who spend their military time, but they don’t want to shoot by gun – I don’t know. Civil…

Q: Yes, we have the same. Civil service.

A: They are helping there. They are helping in Auschwitz. They are there for one year and they help for visitors and they show everything. You know, to spend there one year as a young person, it is not so easy. And I think it is really great that they do that. So when I came to Auschwitz there was a young man.

Q: It was this year that you went to Auschwitz?

A: He came with me.

Q: I am asking which year.

A: This year. 2008. I was there in…how was it when I came back from Israel. It was in May, still in May.

Q: So you went there.

A: I went by train to Auschwitz and then this young man was at the station and he accompanied me, but in a so fine manner that…he asked me what I would like to see and when he saw that I really was involved with all my emotions, he was in the background. It was really a human wonderful way, I must tell you. Well, I was there and I have seen Auschwitz and I have seen Birkenau.

Q: And you said psychologically it was…

A: It was terrible.

Q: For you, it closed.

A: Well, it closed…you know, when I stood there, somehow I told my mother goodbye. There is a great meadow where the gas was, you know. I suppose you know it. I took two small little flowers from there – my mother and my brother. That’s it.

Q: And you went back to Vienna.

A: And then I went back to Vienna.

Q: In your work as a psychiatrist, did you ever have a Holocaust survivor as a patient?

A: No. Strange to say, but no. Not in Vienna, no. But I had one son of a very engaged Nazi. It was very interesting.

Q: To treat him.

A: I thought this is my way to thank the doctor in Pliesovce.

Q: You really felt that. The doctor who saved you.

A: Yes. And I really could help for this man who was the son of a Nazi. I mean, he was a child as I was a child. And he had his problems with his father, his big, big problems. And I helped him to…well, the way was very interesting. I helped him to find a new father. After this period in his life he got very religious and he had G-d instead of his father and it was better.

Q: All these years that you are living in Vienna, you gave me an explanation why you didn’t leave Vienna. Does it sometimes…do you still ask yourself about it? Does it bother you sometimes? Or it is okay. Do you think this one was a Nazi, this one was this? Living among the Austrians, I mean.

A: I moved in the world and I spent even time in Germany. Six years in Germany. It was really interesting, really interesting. I don’t find the word. Of course I asked myself and of course I…anti-Semitism is, sorry to say, in the whole world. In the same way in the States, where I was for awhile, and in the same in England or France.

Q: Do you fell it in everyday France or Vienna? (?)

A: No. Not on my person. But, well, you can’t deny it. I mean, I wouldn’t also. And now the last elections, with thirty percent of Right wing, it is terrible. But in the whole world it is so and so…Not I am guilty that they are anti-Semites.

Q: Tell us one more word about your parents in Budapest. After the war did you manage to see them?

A: Yes, of course. I have really good friends.

Q: You said that when you left as a young woman, you didn’t know that you would see them again. Remember? So when did you get to see them again?

A: Well, I visited Budapest the first time in ’66, so ten years later.

Q: There was no problem to go?

A: At that time it was a not a problem anymore. We went the first time when we were sure nothing would happen.

Q: You were Austrian?

A: We were Austrian citizens, the whole family, and so we went to visit my mother.

Q: So it was ten years.

A: It was ten years.

Q: They were still alive, both of them?

A: Well, no. My father died. And meanwhile my father died. My mother lived there alone and I insisted I would like that she would come to us and be with us in Vienna. She didn’t want to. She told me, “Look, I spent my life here in Budapest. I have no friends, nobody in Vienna.” But on the way she wanted to come and then she died.

Q: In Budapest.

A: In Budapest, yes. She had a stroke and she died. So I told Rufus I lost two fathers and two mothers.

Q: During the years you tend to read things about the Holocaust? Do you read literature?

A: Yes. For sure.

Q: You do read?

A: Well, not in the last years, but yes, of course. And the most interesting point is probably – that is with the whole problem Holocaust – that my cousin Cili, sister of Hillel, didn’t say anything about that until she was over seventy and then I was visiting Israel and we had a long, long, long speech in Yaffa. I won’t forget it. We were in a restaurant, only we two. And she told a lot about Auschwitz and then she told, “You know, I don’t want to die when the world after me doesn’t know it.” So, yes.

Q: So you felt also it was important for you.

A: It was important. It was very important, yes.

Q: Also for you to tell today.

A: yes, for sure, for sure.

Q: We are at the end. Is there anything else you would like to say or what you think about your life? Anything else that you want to say?

A: Well, my life – I am content. I mean, my childhood was not easy, but as I told you, I fell on a soft pillow, so my childhood was, in the very end, okay because instead of my parents I had parents who loved me and whom I could love, and I had friends and I could learn and then I could study and then I could make something of my life and I have really a loving husband, I have a wonderful daughter, so what could I wish for? And I have my family here and I love them and it is wonderful to visit Israel. So everything is okay. But I have to tell you perhaps one thing more. After I was in Auschwitz I visited Yad Vashem. I brought friends of mine from Vienna who are Christians and they came with me to Yad Vashem and they made the same tour and they are wonderful friends. And I won’t forget this feeling. When I went, you know, two or three weeks after…no, I made a mistake. I was not in May in Auschwitz. I was in April. Afterwards I came to Israel and it was really good for me that I came. And when you are going through this long, long building which is in the form of a tent in Yad Vashem and you are going through all the rooms and then I sat at least fifteen or twenty minutes in the last room where these texts are going, and the music. And I cried like I don’t know. And then I got out to the balcony and you see the wood and you see Jerusalem with the sun- it was such a feeling. Really wonderful.

Q: I would like to thank you.

A: I would like to thank you.

Q: On behalf of Yad Vashem and myself. And I wish you (?) and a healthy life.

A: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.