Molnár Ilona

Ilona Molnár Klára Hajdu was born in 1937. During the war, she lived in a "Yellow Star" building in Budapest with her mother, her brother László and her mother’s elderly nanny, Anna Vógel. In April 1944, Klára's father was taken away for forced labor. At the end of October that year, Dr. Lajos Fodor, the lawyer who took care of a farm rented by the family before the war, warned them that he had heard that all the Jews were to be brought into the ghetto. He urged them to leave their home at once. Despite Mrs. Hajdu's reluctance, Lajos took them all into his home, which he shared with his wife Klára. There, Lajos was using his office to prepare forged identity papers, which he then distributed to Jewish refugees. He gave the Hadjus some forged papers, and asked them to find permanent shelter as fast as possible, so he could bring more Jews into his apartment. Feeling desperate, Mrs. Hajdu went out in search of a safe house, possibly in a foreign embassy. During her wanderings she bumped into another acquaintance, György Darányi, who before the war had rented a floor of the Hajdu family home at 107 Andrásy Út. She told Darányi about her difficult situation, and he gave her an address to go to: 7 Mária Street. The address turned out to be the Katholikus Háziaszonyok Országos Szővetsége (Catholic Housekeeping Women’s Union) convent, used mainly to host peasant girls who came to work or study in Budapest. During the war most of the girls had returned home, and the convent had soon filled up with Jewish women holding false identity papers. The Hajdus were warmly received, but 12-year-old László (today Zeev Hod) was forbidden to stand by the windows, as no males were officially allowed to stay at the convent. After a while, a female cousin of the Hajdus' also arrived, and they met another Jewish acquaintance there. The nuns took care of all their needs, and Klára believes that her mother paid nothing for their stay. One day, Arrow Cross militia came tothe convent, banged on the door and tried to search for Jewish refugees. The Mother Superior, Ilona Máura Mólnár, went to the door and yelled: "How dare you even think that I would dirty my name with some stinking Jews?" She then threw them off the premises. After they left, she came to the Hajdus’ room and begged their forgiveness for the "insult" – which of course had saved their lives. The family spent some six months in the convent, including some time after liberation until their bombed-out home could be repaired. They returned home in March 1945, and welcomed Klára's father back that June. On June 11, 2006, Yad Vashem recognized Mother Superior Ilona Molnár as Righteous Among the Nations.