Karig Sára

Karig, Sára Sára Karig lived in Budapest and was a member of Hungary’s Social-Democratic party, which operated legally until the German invasion. After the occupation, Karig worked to rescue people who were being persecuted because of their religion or their political opinions. She opened her house to Jews who had escaped from labor-service companies, or from the ghetto. She was associated with an underground organization that forged Aryan papers, and as the situation worsened, she provided Jews with documents, money and hiding places. Among the Jews rescued by Karig were János Holló, and the mother and the cousin of Fanny Radnóti, wife of the Hungarian poet, Miklós Radnóti. During the rule of the Arrow Cross party, Karig worked to rescue Jewish children within the framework of the Swedish Red Cross. In December 1944, Arrow Cross members attacked the Red Cross children’s department. Asta Nielsen, a Red Cross worker from Sweden, was arrested and sent to the closed ghetto. Karig escaped just in time. Despite the mounting danger, however, she continued in her efforts to save Jews. One of the children rescued by Karig was Magda Székely, who was eight years old during the last year of the war. When Karig met her, Székely was alone in the world, because her mother and father had been taken away on a death march, and never returned. After the war, Székely testified that when she and her cousins were taken in at the Swedish Red Cross center, a woman asked her whether she was familiar with Christian prayers. When Székely answered in the negative, the woman taught her to say the prayers, so she could “prove” that she was not Jewish if the Arrow Cross tried to arrest her. Only after she and many other Jewish children knew the prayers were they transferred under false names and bearing forged papers to monasteries or to private homes. In 1947, Karig was exiled to Siberia. She remained in the Vorkuta prison camp until 1954. Magda Székely survived the war, and became apoet. She worked together with Karig at the “Európa” publishing house, and the two had been close friends for years when Székely discovered, in casual conversation, that Karig was the same woman who had taught her the Christian prayers when she was eight years old. Székely memorialized Karig in her written work, calling her the “first and foremost on the list of the ten righteous ones.” She added, “It is thanks to Karig that I can consider Hungary my homeland.” On January 14, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Sára Karig as Righteous Among the Nations