Pátzay Pál & Herta (Fuchs)

Pátzay, Pál Pátzay (Fuchs), Hertha Pál Pátzay (b. 1896 in Kapuvár) was a great artist, whose sculpture was known throughout the world. Hertha Fuchs was his student, 22 years his junior. Pátzay and Fuchs fell deeply in love, but they could not be married, because at the time Pátzay was separated, but not yet divorced, from a Jewish woman. Pátzay delayed filing for divorce in order to safeguard his wife’s life; the fact that she was married to Pátzay shielded this woman from the full force of the Hungarian anti-Jewish laws, passed during the early 1940s. After the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, the lives of Hungarian Jews were in danger. Because he sympathized with the Jews’ plight, Pátzay turned his home and studio into a hiding place for his Jewish friends and acquaintances. In order to safeguard the secret, the artist’s mother and sister, who had lived with him up to this point, moved out to make room for fugitive Jews. Ágnes Fenyő and the sculptress Erzsébet Forgách Hann were hidden in Pátzay’s apartment from the day the Arrow Cross party took power in October 1944 until the liberation in January 1945. Other Jews found temporary refuge there, arriving at the apartment under cover of darkness and leaving the next day. The sculptor Ödön Fülöp Beck and his wife found refuge under Pátzay’s roof for an extended period. However, since the building was close to the Ganz factory, which was a frequent target of allied bombings, air attacks were constantly rattling the area, and Pátzay’s apartment sustained damage. Mrs. Beck could not withstand the constant tension of the bombings, and she and her husband finally left the apartment for another hiding place. They were fed and cared for by Hertha Fuchs, who also lived in the apartment. Together with Pátzay, she shared the risk of hiding the Jews. She was responsible for managing the complicated housekeeping, during the period of the bombings and the battles for Budapest. At the end of the war, Pátzaydivorced his Jewish wife, and he and Fuchs were married. Pátzay’s first peacetime work was the first statue of Raoul Wallenberg* (see Sweden), a great man who saved many Jews. On March 5, 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Pál Pátzay and Hertha Pátzay (née Fuchs) as Righteous Among the Nations.