Mallasz Margit

Mallász, Margit Eugénie Margit (Gitta) Mallász was born in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (today Slovenia). Her father was an Hungarian aristocrat who served as a general in the Hungarian army; her mother was a native of Ljubljana. In 1926, Mallász began to study art in Budapest, and specialized in the design of theater sets. Alongside her professional career, Mallász excelled as a swimmer, and in 1926 became Hungary's backstroke champion. In the course of her sporting career, Mallász befriended Lili Strausz, a Jewish sports teacher. In 1943, the two women joined a graphics studio in Budaliget, a small village near Budapest, established by two other Jewish friends of Mallász, Hanna Dallós and her husband, Joseph Kreutzer. The German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 brought an end to the studio's activity; it was closed, and the four returned to Budapest. In June 1944, the Jews in Budapest were ordered to move into "Jewish houses," and the ghetto was created. Soon after, Joseph Kreutzer was arrested and disappeared. One of Mallász’ friends introduced her to Father Pal Klinda*, who was sheltering Jewish women in Boldog Katalin, a college that had been turned into a sewing workshop for the production of military uniforms. Klinda asked Mallász to take charge of the workshop and Mallász agreed, on condition that she could bring along her two Jewish friends, Hanna Dallós and Lili Strausz. The workshop was legal and permitted to employ Jews because of its contribution to the war effort, but the Jewish workers had to be registered, and their number authorized. Father Klinda and Gitta Mallász employed Jewish women in the workshop but also brought in unauthorized extras, including the women’s children. Following the Arrow Cross rise to power in October 1944, a reign of terror shook Budapest, with many Jews killed on the streets and others deported on foot to the Austrian border. Arrow Cross militia carried out manhunts across the city, and the situation in theworkshop became very dangerous. Furthermore, a group of SS men were housed in a villa next to the Boldog Katalin. On November 5, 1944, Arrow Cross men, headed by Father András Kun, a notorious antisemite, broke into the Boldog Katalin, claiming that the workshop had no permit. Kun ordered Mallász to hand over a list of the Jewish workers, threatening to shoot her if she didn’t comply. Knowing that some women had managed to escape, she gave a reduced number of names, and the remaining women were taken away. Fortunately, one of the women managed to warn Father Klinda, and he was able to free them and bring them back. Following this ordeal, Mallász convinced a German soldier to give her a document certifying that the workshop was under the auspices of the SS. Mallász even went as far as to approach the SS men in the nearby villa and complain to them that her workshop was being harassed by the Arrow Cross. Nevertheless, at the beginning of December 1944, the Arrow Cross militia returned. Mallász called the SS soldiers, and began negotiating with the intruders in order to give the Jewish women time to flee from through a hole in the wall which she had prepared earlier. Thanks to her tactics, all but 16 women managed to get away. Among those caught were Dallós and Strausz. After the war, Eva Langley-Dános, the only survivor of these 16 women, returned from Ravensbrück and wrote an account of their fate. Together with testimonies of the women and children who were sheltered in the workshop and managed escape, her statement enabled Yad Vashem to reconstruct the events. In 1960, Mallász fled from Hungary and settled in France. That year she married Laci Walder, a Jewish communist and veteran of the Spanish International Brigade. Mallász passed away in 1992 in Ampuis/Tartaras (Rhône District) and, according to her wishes, her ashes were scattered upon the Rhône River. On February 16, 2011, Margit Mallász was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.