Kandó Gyula & Etelka (Görög)

Kandó, Gyula Kandó, Ata Ata Kandó trained at the Bortnyik School, a private art school in Budapest where she met her first husband, the painter Gyula Kandó. During the 1930's, the couple spent two short periods in Paris and Barcelona. Until the outbreak of World War Two Ata Kandó worked as a children's photographer. During World War II the couple lived in Budapest and were part of a group of intellectuals who were actively involved in resistance work and later, following the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, in saving Jews. During the period of the Arrow Cross party rule the group forged Aryan identification papers and provided Jews with money and hiding places. Ata Kandó had a close Jewish friend, Mrs. Gábor Bíró, who was in her last months of pregnancy. Bíró was alone because her husband had been drafted into a forced-labor unit that had been sent to the Russian front. After the German invasion, when all the city’s Jews were forced to enter yellow-star houses, Ata approached Bíró, and asked her if she had an escape plan. When Bíró answered in the negative, Ata gave her friend all her original papers. With the help of these documents, Bíró was able to live as a Christian under the name of Ata Kandó, and was admitted to a maternity hospital on Alföldi Street where she gave birth to a healthy daughter, Anna. The baby was registered on her birth certificate as the daughter of Gyula and Ata Kandó. Bíró remained in the hospital for five weeks. Except for the head doctor, no one knew that she was Jewish. At the end of her hospital stay, Bíró and her baby traveled, together with Gyula and Ata Kandó and their three children, to Lake Balaton, where the family had a summer house. Gyula provided Bíró with forged papers identifying her as Magdolna Liptai. They pretended that the baby was their fourth child, and that Bíró was the baby’s wet nurse. Although the Kandó family and Bíró were forced to change locations seven times, they managed to keep up this pretenseuntil the end of the war. In the meantime, other Jews were hidden in the Kandós’ apartment in Budapest. After the war, Gyula and Ata Kandó separated. Gyula remained in Hungary and Ata Kandó lived in several European countries. After the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, Ata Kandó wanted to offer help to the stream of Hungarian refugees. She traveled to the Austrian-Hungarian border and produced a book of photographs for the benefit of the refugee children. In later years she settled in the Netherlands. On November 1, 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Gyula and Ata Kandó as Righteous Among the Nations.