Szentes Géza

Szentes, Géza Géza Szentes lived in Budapest with his Jewish wife, Mária. After the German occupation, his building was designated a yellow-star house in the summer of 1944. Szentes and his wife continued to live there, and Szentes was appointed the building supervisor. During the Arrow Cross period, when the Jewish men had already been taken away for hard labor, Szentes was notified that the Jewish women were about to be rounded up. Just in time, he managed to warn the Jews living in the building, telling them that they had to hide or run away. He hid a number of Jewish women in his own apartment. When the Arrow Cross members arrived to take the women away, almost none were to be found in the building. Szentes claimed that the women had already been taken away by other policemen. Szentes’s wife Mária, known as “Nurse Mária,” worked in the Swedish hospital on Tátra Street. Through her, Szentes obtained Swedish protection papers and distributed them to Jews in need. At one point, Szentes’s wife informed him that some Jews had been arrested and were being held at the infamous Arrow Cross headquarters at No. 2 Szent István Street. The headquarters was known as a place where Jewish prisoners were tortured and executed. Szentes put together a list of the prisoners, and arrived at the headquarters, together with a German soldier he had bribed for the occasion. Szentes approached the Arrow Cross commander and demanded that those on the list be released, because they were employed by the German army. The German soldier backed up Szentes’s story. Thanks to Szentes’s bravery, many people were saved from certain death, including Zsófia Jeremiás, Tibor Almási and others. On March 19, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Géza Szentes as Righteous Among the Nations.