Tóth József

Tóth, József In 1944, József Tóth, (b. 1918) a Hungarian high school teacher, was serving in the Hungarian army and was billeted in Cluj (Kolozsvár) in Northern Transylvania in the home of Ludovic Weissberger. When the Hungarian authorities and the Germans began making preparations to deport the Jews of Cluj, Weissberger asked Tóth to save his family from the deportation, and Tóth promised to try to help. During the searches for Jews, Tóth hid Weissberger, his wife, Hermina, their daughter Clara-Luisa (later Erdelyi), their son Andrei and the grandmother, Etelca, in the kitchen. When gendarmes appeared at the door, Tóth told them there were no Jews in the apartment, and hung a sign on the house stating that it was under military authority. The Weissberger family received Tóth’s help even after he left their home. Tóth locked the house and left the deterring sign on it, but continued to visit the family, which hid in the cellar, to see that they had everything they needed. Tóth helped the Weissbergers for six months until the area was liberated. The Hegedus brothers, who were still children in 1944, were also rescued thanks to Tóth. Their family lived in the same street as the Weissbergers, and the boys, Petru and Andrei, were ten and six years old when preparations began to deport the Jews of Cluj. Their father, Paul Hegedus, was mobilized to a forced-labor battalion of the Hungarian army and later deported to Buchenwald. When their sick mother sought a way to save her children, she learned through Weissberger that Tóth was ready to hide them. Within a short time, Tóth arranged for the mother to be hospitalized, but she died in the hospital in July 1944, and after her death, Tóth, his wife, Margareta, and their baby daughter Maria moved into the home of the Jewish children. When it became more dangerous, the Hegedus brothers were moved to Gherla (Szamosújvár) in the Somes district, where they were hidden for a month by Margareta Tóth’s father. When they heardrumors that a search was being conducted for Jews in Gherla, they returned the two brothers to Cluj, where Tóth hid them again in their home, in a dark, locked room, until the Red Army entered the city. After the area was liberated, Tóth still looked after the two brothers, throughout the hard winter of 1944/5, fed them and sent them to school until their father returned from the concentration camp. Tóth also opened and ran the father’s printing workshop until his return. In later years, Tóth became a university professor. On June 2, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized József Tóth as Righteous Among the Nations.