Dobrovics Mária

Dobrovics, Mária Mária Dobrovics, a resident of Budapest, had been friends with the Kondors, a Jewish family, for many years. Dobrovics, while not a religious woman, held strong humanist beliefs that led her to risk her life to save Jews. After the Arrow Cross party came to power in October 1944, the Jews of Budapest were drafted into forced-labor companies. In the months of November and December, they were sent on death marches to the border, where they were to be handed over to the Germans. Dobrovics did everything in her power to save the Kondor family. Before the death march began, she came to the concentration center where the Jews were assembled. She held letters of protection, which she hoped would allow her friends to be released. (In fact, the mother of the Kondor family survived the war by hiding in a Swedish protected house in Budapest.) However, the guards refused to let her enter the area and she never managed to reach the Kondors. The Kondors’ daughter, Judit, although only 15 years old, was grabbed while out in the street by Arrow Cross men and sent on the death march. Amidst the horror there was one positive event: during the march, she met her father and they were able to remain together. Judit and her father managed to send Dobrovics a postcard from the road. They told her the name of the last station on the border where they would be turned over to the Germans. Using money she received from the Kondors’ rich relatives, Dobrovics rented a vehicle and drove after her friends, locating Judit and her father in the border city of Győr. Dobrovics provided the Kondors with clothing as well as Aryan identity papers. She gave Mr. Kondor papers belonging to her father, and gave her own documents to Judit. Under these assumed identities, she smuggled them out of the camp, then drove them to Budapest where they met Judit’s mother, who was still in hiding in the Swedish protected house. Judit immigrated to Israel with her husband (Mocsári) and two smallchildren in 1956. Her parents came to Israel in 1967, accompanied by Dobrovics. Determined to stay tied to the fate of the Kondor family, Dobrovics remained in Israel with the family until the end of her days. She died in 1998, at the age of 85. On October 15, 1968, Yad Vashem recognized Mária Dobrovics as Righteous Among the Nations.