Singer Krisztina (Halász)

Singer, Krisztina Simcha Weiss was born in 1930 to a relatively assimilated family. His parents, Béla and Zseni, educated their children to embrace Hungarian culture and encouraged them to love theatre and music. Béla Weiss owned a bakery in Budapest, which he ran with the help of his wife and his older son, Lóránt. They were a well to do family, and lived in a beautiful house. Like other Jews, the family suffered from the Hungarian anti-Jewish legislation, but their life changed completely when the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944. Béla Weiss was allowed to keep his bakery for some time, because it was considered essential for the Hungarian war effort. However, after he was wounded during his work in the bakery, the protection he enjoyed was annulled. 20-year-old Lóránt was taken for forced labor in the copper mines in Bór, Serbia, where conditions were terrible. In October 1944, when the Arrow Cross movement took over, Béla and Zseni Weiss, fearing for Simcha’s life, decided to take their son into hiding. Simcha’s friend, Tamás Vadas, planned to go into hiding at the home of an acquaintance, Krisztina Singer, and suggested that Simcha join him. Singer, originally from Kiskunhalas, was a communist and therefore under particular danger from both the Hungarian Fascist regime and the Germans. Nevertheless, she took the two youngsters into her home, where they stayed for six weeks. In his testimony Simcha said: “Of course we were not allowed to go out, and I remember that we would walk around without shoes, so that the neighbors would not hear our steps – we were not allowed to make any noise. This went on for several weeks, until she simply became too scared. It was known that she was in the communist underground…” After Simcha left Singer’s home, he found refuge in a Jewish orphanage, where he worked in exchange for room and board. After liberation Simcha went to look for his parents. He later learned that in early January, a neighbordenounced them and they had been taken by the Arrow Cross militia to the Danube river banks, where they were shot. Simcha, the sole survivor of his family, was first taken in by a relative, and in 1947 immigrated to Israel. Simcha never forgot his rescuer. While he was still in Hungary he would visit her in the public kitchen she ran for the Soviet authorities, and in later years he went back to Hungary for visits several times, and would go to Singer’s grave. Following his death in 2008, his widow found a note he kept among his papers: “Halász Krisztina, Kiskunhalas 1902, residing in 1944 in Budapest, Dembinszky st. 36, died 1975. She was a Catholic Communist who hid my friend and me for several weeks and helped other Jews”. On 3 October 2012 Yad Vashem recognized Krisztina Singer (née Halász) as Righteous Among the Nations.