Rácz Valéria

Rácz, Valéria Gabriella Erzsébet Vali Rácz was a famous singer and actress in Hungary at the beginning of the 1940s. She is remembered by many for her deep, warm voice, and for renditions of the popular songs of the period. Only a few people know that the famous star risked her life by hiding Jews in the closet of her villa in the Buda section of Budapest, during the German occupation. Szerén and Jenő Mandel were a Jewish couple who were on the Gestapo’s black list. Immediately after the German occupation, the Gestapo tried to arrest the Mandels, along with everyone else on the list. However, the Mandels managed to run away in time, hiding with various friends and acquaintances for several days. Through a relative, and with the help of Barabás Pál, a writer and a member of the anti-Nazi underground, Rácz found out about the Mandels’ predicament. She offered to help them, despite the risk to herself, and prepared a hiding place behind one of her closets. She hid the Mandels in the space behind the closet for seven months, providing them with food and everything else they needed. Rácz also did everything she could to encourage the Mandels and keep their spirits raised during the long ordeal of hiding in the enclosed space. She performed for the couple, reading them stories by the well-known humorist Karinthy, as if the Jewish couple were her audience and she were on stage. The Mandel couple did not leave their hiding place for months, and they became so pale they looked “like ghosts.” Rácz provided them with a tanning lamp, in order to both improve their appearance and to buoy their spirits. Eventually, Rácz hid additional Jews in the space prepared for the Mandels. These included Mrs. Herzog and her daughter Olga, Szerén Mandel’s sister. At the end of the month of November, Arrow Cross men raided Rácz’s house, searching for hidden Jews, but the hiding place was not discovered. Despite this, Rácz was taken for interrogation. The hidden Jews knew that danger wasincreasing both for themselves and for the woman who had saved them up until this point. Under the cloak of darkness the Jews left Rácz’s house, and found a different hiding place where they stayed safely until the liberation. After the war, the Mandels emigrated to Uruguay where their son son György lived. György (Amos) moved to Israel in 1948, and the Mandels joined him and his family there in 1952. They remained in contact with Rácz until the day they died. Rácz’s daughter, Monica Porter, a resident of London, wrote a book in which she described her mother’s wartime activities. On September 4, 1991, Yad Vashem recognized Valéria Gabriella Erzsébet Rácz as Rightous Among the Nations.