Keresztes Károly & Erzsébet

Móricz-Keresztes, Erzsébet Keresztes, Károly Erzsébet Móricz was the adopted daughter of Zsigmond Móricz, a celebrated Hungarian writer who had been one of the very few public figures in Hungary to protest the first anti-Jewish laws in 1938, and who signed a petition against this legislation. Erzsébet Móricz and her husband, Károly Keresztes, managed an antiquarian bookstore and publishing house in Budapest. In the early 1940s, the store became a gathering place for liberals and leftist intellectuals who opposed the Hungarian government’s pro-German policies. After the German invasion of Hungary, the store became a hiding place for Jews, army deserters and for those who faced persecution because of their political opinions. In the basement of the store was a printing press, which Móricz, her husband and their assistants used to print forged papers that were then distributed clandestinely to those who needed them. Móricz gave her mother’s original papers to a Jewish woman named Mrs. Vezér, and with the help of these papers she was saved. Vezér and her cousin Lívia received forged documents produced in the basement of the store. With the help of these documents the two were able to escape from the ghetto, and subsequently, Vezér joined the underground activities of Móricz and her husband, distributing forged documents to Jewish fugitives. Among those saved by Erzsébet Móricz and Károly Keresztes was Mrs. Vázsonyi, today a resident of Paris. Another survivor was Béla Kallós, who received forged documents produced on the basement printing press, and was also hidden in Móricz and Keresztes’s apartment. Dávid Grosz, one of the leaders of the Hashomer Hatza’ir Zionist underground (who in Israel goes by the name of David Gur), was hidden in the basement of the bookstore for 24 hours in December 1944, during the rule of the Arrow Cross party. Erzsébet Móricz and Károly Keresztes actively opposed the anti-Jewish policies of the Hungarian regime, and risked their livesin order to save Jews and other victims of persecution. On September 2, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Erzsébet Móricz-Keresztes and Károly Keresztes as Righteous Among the Nations.