Datasets:

wjbmattingly

/

ushmm-testimonies

like 0

RG-50.549.05.0008

When did you find out?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

1942. In 1942 I found out through friends from Uzhorod, that all that, I don’t know how many friends together there went. They took them to Russia. And that maybe they killed them the same way as my parents. I don’t know. They put them on the trains and they were in labor camp and that they were killed in 1942. I really didn’t know about to whom first, you know? To think about my parents, to think about him, to think about my husband, my future husband. I really didn’t know. I was terribly mixed up, terribly. And always worried, terribly worried. That fear was unbelievable, that now they are going to get me, now they are going to... because I saw what they are doing. If you didn’t wear the star, for instance, the Hungarian knew you. And that was only in ‘44, when we had to start to wear the star, when the Germans came in. But still, if you, I didn’t look Jewish, I could have gone wherever, but they knew me and they could tell it to please the Germans.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Did you think about being Jewish?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

That time? I knew I was Jewish. I couldn’t think different way. I knew that I was Jewish. I knew that I am in trouble with all other Jews.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Did you...?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

I never thought about converting. It wouldn’t help me. Conversion. It wouldn’t help me. But I found lately, I found that Christian... I don’t even know whether I told George, because the last time when my husband went to Hungary—he went many times when he was retired—he went to Hungary because his sister was very sick for years and he said, “I want to see my sister.” But his excuse was, because we had two little children buried there, he went to the grave. And I was saying always, “Frank, they are in our hearts, those are only stones.” I couldn’t say he wants to see the grave. He wants to have it redone, the letters if they were in bad shape or whatever. But his sister, he had that only sister and she was very, very sick, but her son-in-law was a doctor and he kept him alive, her alive. And he was telling me, “If not me, she would be dead ten years ago.” I think she had cancer of the liver, because on the end they had to operate on her. And I saw her, the last time I saw her, that summer in ’89, and January she died. And we came back in 1990, January. They had to... she became yellow and he couldn’t help her anymore. But he was telling me himself, if not me... because my niece was unbelievable. She called him from every meeting and everywhere, “Come right away because mother has fever,” and right away the injection. Unbelievable. She was a very good daughter. And I was surprised how he was talking to him over the phone. I says, “Marie,” her name is Anna Maria, “everybody can hear you.” “I don’t care. My mother comes first,” and that kind of a thing. So, he kept her alive, really. My husband went to see her every year, and that year when he went, in ‘82, in ‘81, February, he had a heart attack, and he lived 17 months. And in ‘82, June, he says, “I’m going to see my sister.” And I spoke, I knew that three-quarter of his heart was gone. And I spoke to his doctor, I says, “What should I do? How shall I tell him that he cannot go?” He says, “You know what, he can go. He has a doctor there. He will be safe. But he cannot go rowing around nowhere in Europe. He goes to one place and he can go. And June 13" is his birthday, but I called him many times. But I called him on his birthday. I’m sorry, June 17. He was born, 1913, 17. And I called him and he says, “I feel wonderful. I feel very good,” and I always gave the report to the doctor, because he was from the same hospital were I worked, the doctor. And he says, “Yes, he has around him more sick people than he is, so he’s feeling fine.”’ And he came home and every first of July, we went out to the country house. They were there already, here in 1979. And we met there and I spend one week vacation there, because Ilona was born third of July. And we spend her birthday. And my husband came back end of June to spend the week in the country for her birthday. And after that, we supposed to go to Canada, all of us by car. And he said, “You know what? I came from a big trip. You go with them to Canada.” And she was pregnant with Anna that time. She was pregnant with Anna, Ilona. She knew that he wanted, because he always wanted children and the two died. He always wanted children, so at least George should have more children. So she was pregnant with her, and we went to Canada. He said, “You go to Canada and I go home.” And he was alone, traveling home. And then I got a call from him in Canada that please bring a present to one of my co-workers. I says, “Why to her?” She says, “Because I was sick and she took me to the hospital.” So we packed and we came right back. He was a few days in Intensive Care or in Coronary Care, I don’t know what happened. He didn’t feel well. And August 12, August 12", he died. And I wasn’t home. I was working and after work I went to the dentist and I had to have a tooth pulled. And he was very upset about that and he came with me. I went by bus. They had private buses, because I went to the city periodontist. And he came to the door and he looked so beautiful. He had brown pants and a yellow shirt on. And he said, “Nothing, nothing hurts me,” because he had back trouble, too. He had a spine operation. He said, “Nothing, nothing hurts me.” And you know, you don’t think if it’s about your own, that the last day when you live, nothing will hurt you. And that’s true. But you just don’t think. And I’m so happy that he said it... End of Tape 3, Side A Tape 3, Side B

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

...9zekely, took a little break for a few weeks there. And now I wanted to just ask you, because I was reviewing the interview that we did last time and going over it, I had a couple of questions. And one of them was, right at the beginning you were talking about the cousin of yours, who was the painter, who lived in Odessa. And I wanted to make clear, was it his daughter that came over and stayed with you? It was his daughter? Okay.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

It was his daughter that came over and stayed with us. We had an apartment here.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

You told the whole story, so I don’t want you to go through that again. But I just wanted to clarify...

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

It was my cousin’s, my father’s brother’s daughter and her family. And he, himself, lives in Boston.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Okay. Did he come over at the same time as her?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

No, no. He came over five years ago, six years ago because he is a citizen already, so it has to be five years ago. He became citizen last year, ‘99. So, five years ago, because he came with his sister and sister’s family. Husband only, sister’s daughter and husband, because the husband had the parents there. And they always, he and his sister lived always together and a niece and a husband. So he belonged with them. I couldn’t bring him, because only you could bring parents or sisters or brothers. So, he went with them because he lived with them and he had his son... it’s not brother-in-law actually, because his husband... they had the parents there already, and through them. That’s why he didn’t come here. But his aim was if his daughter is here and their family is there, everybody to be in Kentucky together. That’s what he wanted.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

And tell me what his full name 1s.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

He is, Isislav (ph) Klugman. That was my maiden name.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

I see, so he was your father’s brother.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

My father’s brother’s son.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Okay, and we, last time we were going over mostly some questions about your childhood and some things that weren’t covered in the interview that the Shoah Foundation did. And what I wanted to do mostly today is to talk about your experiences after the war, after the war ended. But one of the things that wasn’t clear to me from the Shoah Foundation interview was, tell me if I have this right, when you were on the transports from Hungary to Auschwitz, you were with your grandmother and your Aunt Ilona.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

With my Aunt Ilona and other aunts, too and her son. My mother had four sisters, so I was with three of them. But the closest was to me always Ilona, because when they took my mother and they killed them in, my parents in 1941. So, she was the one who was unbelievably helping me. And then the last year, before the Nazis came in, she didn’t let me go to hiding and she said, “You are our child, no matter what. You stay with us.” And so for one year I was with them until they took us all. And after, when she survived and I survived and her husband survived, but not her son. And my son was born. To my son she was like a grandmother. So when we left, we left to Vienna and we left them in Hungary, but we knew that they are coming after us, three weeks. Because they had, they were elderly people already and they had visa to Israel and England and we knew that they are going to come. And the time came then we came to America and we left them there. And my son, he was so blaming me and he was so crying. How can I do it, to leave them there? He was nine years old. He was the only relative whom he knew. Like, she took care of him when I had to go to work. Because under the communism we had to work. And she was everything to him. And my heart was going out and I was explaining to him, “When we get to America and we become citizens we are going to bring...” and that was the plan, that we are going to bring them over. But she died, unfortunately, from a gall bladder operation. But I think that she had already liver cancer, but they don’t tell me, because nobody dies from a gall bladder operation. It must have gone to the liver and the operation was okay. She was alive for a few days. And one day my uncle and his brother went to visit her. They went every day, but one day when they went, she was dead. I didn’t go, to the funeral. Because we were here in ‘58 and that was in °63 and in ‘59 I got a job in the hospital when I was working and I says, “We don’t have either the money for the three of us to go,” so we couldn’t go. But it was in the summertime and George was with some of our friends in the country. They were having a bungalow they rented and we went over on the weekends. We went to Poughkeepsie. And he was there and I was afraid to tell him. I was afraid to tell him. And he wrote to his pediatrician in New York, who was the head of the Pediatrics in the hospital where I worked, and asked him to find out from me the truth, because he thinks that something is very wrong. And he showed me the letter and he said, “You have to tell him.” So, I was very, very upset to tell him. And I found it out, my husband did, he got the letter and he didn’t want to tell me. And we are driving out to the country and when he told me, we made an accident with the car. I was, you know, so upset, we made... and it was an old car and we had the first car. It was a big Pontiac. But somebody ran into us. It wasn’t our fault, and he ran away. The guy ran away. But I was so upset that how I am going to tell him, because it was like the end of the world. He didn’t know no one from the family and he was the kid of the family, because his brother, my uncle’s brother lost his four-years-old child and the second wife never could have children. So he’s named after my, Ilika’s son, he was George, too. And he was everybody’s child, only child. And when I had the other little boy, he was five months old when he died. I named him after the four-years-old, who died. He was Paul, he was Paul, my little one, who died in one day from the croup.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

At one point in Auschwitz, you told in your interview with the Shoah Foundation about how you arrived in Auschwitz and how you were there for, I think two weeks before you were given your tattoo and before you started working. When were you separated from Ilona?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Three weeks later. She was, when we went to the barracks, she was put in the next barracks. Because they put 60 people in one and she would be the 61. So she was put in the next barrack. But when I came back from work, they didn’t get food, those people who didn’t work and I gave them my half of the bread and I dressed them up. I’m saying “them,” she was there with one of her friends, who had two twin sons and they are alive. They went through all the... I told you that, no?

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

No.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

No? She had two twin sons, her friend and they went through all, all the experiments with Mengele. They are alive. They are in Israel. One is in high... he has, I don’t know what kind of position, but they are not men. They cannot get married, that’s what they did to them. And I met them when I was in 1976, I was in Israel. And that was one... we went to restaurant and my uncle’s brother was there with his second wife, who is alive and she is in Vienna. She married him when George was born, the second wife. And she was much younger than he was. He wanted children and she couldn’t have children. When we went to the restaurant then, I didn’t know what’s the surprise. My aunt’s friend was there with her husband and she said she would never forget it, what I did for them. Because they were naked. I was, but my aufseren (ph) and the forewoman, she let me take out clothes, because I told her that my aunt is in the next camp. And she let me take out clothes. And I dressed them and I gave them food. And one day when Mengele came to the camp and he was sorting out, because he came every week and sorting out people. We had to get undressed and walk around him. He had a stick in his hand and he’s pointing one here, one there and I was one here. I knew I go back. And she was on the other side and I didn’t know what happened to her. I thought she goes to gas. I didn’t know about nothing else. And I knew that that’s gas there. It turned out that they took her to Theresienstadt with her friend. And they were working at an ammunitions factory and at night they stayed at Theresienstadt. And only when I went back, I knew that she is alive. And she was everything to me.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Why don’t we jump forward to that time, because you described the rest of that experience in your Shoah Interview. And then you, so after the war eventually you returned to Budapest and you were reunited with your, with your Aunt Ilona and your husband. Talk more about that time, talk about the reunions with those people and how you were feeling and what your thoughts were.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

I came, I think that’s in it, when I came to our station, people were standing there and waiting for people to come, because in whole Europe they were waiting for people to come because they knew who is alive, because Eisenhower... that I said, that he made a list from everybody and send it to the places where they came from. So, they knew I am alive after liberation, but I didn’t know about no one. And when we got to our station, I saw there are many people and I didn’t know no one. I was shaking and I went to one of them and I says, “Excuse me, do you know someone by the name of Eugene Schwartz?” And he started to scream and he says, “You are Emilie?” I says, “How do you know it?” He says, “Your uncle is waiting for you every day. He was here today, too, but he had to go for some kind of a business.” I says, “Business?” It was October fifth, °45, and they were liberated in April already. And he says, “I’m going to phone him.” And I says, “Telephones?” You know. So, he came in ten minutes. “He has even a car,” she said, he said. And I knew that he doesn’t drive. He had a chauffeur. They were very wealthy people before the war. And they started to pull themselves together. And he came and we were just, we couldn’t talk. We were crying and crying and crying. He loved me very much and he was just crying. And finally when we stopped crying, didn’t stop, but we could talk, he said, “Your aunt is alive, but not my son.” But I knew that 13 years old wouldn’t be alive. I had one of my uncles, my mother’s brother, that was the only man in the family, who was never married because my grandmother was 35 years old when she was a widow and left with five children. And he didn’t get married because he was supporting the family and he wanted the girls to get married and probably... but he was never married. He was 54 years old. And he was in labor camp in Hungary, but at the last minute when the Germans left, they managed to take him and he was in Buchenwald. And he was alive. And they all lived together when I came back. And he came...

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Who all lived together? What was the whole group?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

My... Ilika, her husband...

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

I’m sorry, say the first one again, because the mike...

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Illie, Illie, Illie, Ilona, Nona, Ilona. Ilona, her husband, his brother...

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Give everybody’s names, if you would please?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Laszlo, Laszlo was his name... Laszlo is Vladislav... I don’t know what is Laszlo in English. I have no idea.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

That’s okay.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Laszlo. And my uncle, Joseph, they all lived together, because his brother wasn’t married yet. He lost his wife and four-years-old child. My uncle’s brother wasn’t married. And they live, they lived, before the war, it was a beautiful new house. And the two families, my uncle and his brother lived in one house, two exact, the same apartments, the most modern. And the German soldiers were in it when they came back and they ruined the whole house. So they had to re-do it. So, they lived next door, was my uncle’s parents’ house. And they lived... that was an older house, and they lived in that apartment in his parent’s apartment, my uncle’s. And then we came, I came back, and my husband. I think it is there how I met my husband when I came back. Okay, so we stayed there, but only for a few days because it was no room for us. So we went to Eger, to his sister, what is another city. It 1s about, I don’t know how many miles away. It was a very nice town. I knew that town before the war, because I went to visit his mother there, his family, his mother and father, who lived already with his sister, who was converted. That story is in there, no?

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

You mentioned, you talked about the sister last time, last time we were here, his sister.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Okay. His parents lived there. And part of the house was my husband’s house, because that house was inherited. And there were other relatives there from that part of the family and they wanted the part of the house. And they shouldn’t get it. My husband paid it out. So a part, it was a very big house, it was his. So we had like a separate apartment, but together with them. The kitchen was together, but we had two rooms and after the two rooms was the big dining room what separated us. And in that apartment his parents lived, because they took away their farms. They were big farmers, not in Eger, it was in another city, I mean village. And they took away everything from them. They took away, it’s interesting, first the Romanians before, after the first war, they took away, then the Russians took away. The Germans took away. So, they went back and forth and on the end, the Germans. When the Germans took away, they had to leave. And they let them leave and they left to their sister and their daughter. And their son-in- law couldn’t save them, but he saved his family, my sister-in-law and his daughter.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

I have a few questions about that time. One, did you have any hope at all that your parents and your sister were alive?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Hope? No. After Auschwitz, no, but before Auschwitz, I thought that they must be somewhere alive. And when we went to Auschwitz I thought we go somewhere, where I’m going to meet them. I had no idea. I think I said it then, that once I went to a fortune teller, I said it, and they said that my parents are alive, but they are very far away. And it turned out that they were really alive when I found it out from the Museum. Because I thought after I came back that they were killed right away in June, July, when they took them. August 24" they were killed, according to the Museum. And they showed me pictures and where they took them. And they knew about it. 30, what did they say, 130? I don’t know how many. How many people, one day they were killed, because they were not only from Czechoslovakia, that part where we lived, but they were from Romania, what belonged once to Hungary, where Elie Wiesel comes from. They were people from there, too. And they were there, too. So they were, I think, 38,000 in one day they killed. Because they took them to Poland first, no, I know from them. And they didn’t know what to do with them because all the Polish people were in the ghettos and they didn’t know what to do with them. That’s why they were killed.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Can you tell me when and how you found out what had actually happened to your parents?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Actually I found out in 1948, because one of my first cousins was taken in 1941 to... we didn’t know where. They took him from the street in 1941. He was an engineer. And he just disappeared. And in 1948, he came back from Siberia. And when he came back and we met, that was my first cousin, my mother’s sister’s son, and when he came back, he asked me, “Where are your parents? What happened to your parents?” And I was telling him that I have no idea. I got a card from my sister from Kamenetz Podolski (ph) and she’s writing, “We are here. We don’t know what are we going to do. When do we get an apartment or something to eat. We have no idea.” And the card had a Hungarian stamp on it, so I assume that she sent it with a soldier, a Hungarian soldier, back. And from then on I didn’t know nothing. And then my cousin was telling me, “My God, I was there when those people were killed. I was on a horse and carriage.” He was in... he went to underground with the Russians. And how, I don’t know up to today, how he was riding a horse and carriage, and he was there, he said. He saved a lot of people. He put them under the hay. He had no idea that my parents were there. That was the first when I knew how they were killed, in 1948. And I was back 1945 already from concentration camp. And I still didn’t know what was happening.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

During those three years then, before you found out and after you got back did you make any effort to find out what had happened to them?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

I didn’t know where. We became right away communists. In 1948 we were communists. I didn’t know where to ask, no idea. And George was born in 1946 and my mind was... I am not saying that I was happy, but you know, I was happy that I have a family. I always wanted a family and I never knew that I can have a family. I never knew that I can have a child anymore, so I was very happy that I had a child. And I never knew. Never, and I didn’t come with no one. Because a lot of people I met from my, from the place where they were home when they took my parents. I have in Brooklyn two friends, only two, who knew my parents, in this whole world, only two. Those people knew my parents and my sister. And they knew what was happening to the non-citizens. Because we were not citizens that time. We were Czech citizens, but the Hungarians took it over, so We were now citizens. And those people were Hungarians. I don’t know, yes, they were Hungarians. Hungarians. They weren’t Russians. They took only the Russians, no other citizens. And so they knew that they took them somewhere, but they didn’t know why, because I was questioning them in Brooklyn. I said, “Did you know what happened to them?” They said they never knew what happened to them, they just knew that the transport went and never came back.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

And I wanted to go back again and ask you a little bit more about the time right after the war had ended and you returned to Hungary. You talked about how you wanted to have a family. What else, what were your hopes at that point? Were you thinking about the future? Did you want to stay in Hungary? Did you and your husband talk...?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

We couldn’t go, we couldn’t go, we couldn’t go nowhere. We had to stay in Hungary. It was no way under the Russians, that we could get... I got in touch with my uncle, here in America. And he wanted us very badly, but it was no way that we... maybe old people got visas already at that time to Israel, but young people didn’t. And we were young people, so it was impossible. And then in ‘49, I had the other boy, so I didn’t even think about it that we should go anyplace, to try. And we didn’t have a bad life until it was really communism. Because I had a maid, sleep-in maid. I didn’t have to work. And in 1948 when it was really communism, I had to let her go, the girl, and I had to go to work. Because everybody had to show what they are living from, because my husband was in private business and he couldn’t show how much he is making. And he made nice money. But I had to go to work.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Did your husband lose his business at that time?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

No, well he lost it after, yes. After he lost it. And he couldn’t get a job, because they said he 1s a Capitalist. It was very hard for him to get a job on his profession, but then later on he got a job. He got a job later on, but it was not a state job. It was again private. He went together with somebody and they had... he was actually, he finished business college, but actually what was his business before the war, he was [laughing], I have to always laugh that we eat the oats, because that they gave to horses in Hungary. And he was in that business, feeding, oat feeding, because everything was horses, not cars. The transportation was horses and it was a big business, the animal food for the horses. And they connected with the, with the... gosh, with the market.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Stock?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Stock Market. So he had a big business and he made a lot of money, but whenever he made the money, we bought a Persian rug or we bought silver. I have 40 kilo silver stuff. I had a beautiful case and it was everything silver in it, because we couldn’t show the money. We couldn’t put it in the bank or something. And then they didn’t bother us. They bother us in one way: that we had a big apartment. Because when my aunt’s apartment was ready, they renovated it, we moved in, in the old apartment and it was a very big one. I mean large rooms, there were three large rooms. And actually the fourth one was a room, too, the foyer, because we had furniture in there. And we had a kitchen and bathroom and we had a room for the maid from the kitchen. And the third room was a very big, it was so big that George when he was little, he could bicycle init. That was his room. And they took away from us that room. You know? And they made an apartment from it, a one-bedroom apartment. And they put in a family, only with one son. A family with one son. It was so big that they made kitchen, bedroom, bathroom... I don’t know, I never went in, what is it. They were our neighbors. But otherwise, we didn’t have trouble. They took away the business of my uncle. He had 40 pairs of horses and two big trucks. They were the first ones, because they were in... in... how do you call it, that business, when people moved. It’s a moving, not moving, actually it’s not moving. But with the horses, too, they were renting it or whatever, to companies. And very, very big business. 40 pairs. And when it happened, they took my husband and he worked for them. He loved horses, that was his life, the horses, horseback riding actually. He loved it. And so he worked for them. But then they took away the business from them, from my uncle, so he had to... they didn’t work anymore because they were elderly people. And when the opportunity came after the Hungarian Revolution, my uncle’s brother escaped to Vienna with his wife. And family is supposed to go after them, but we didn’t succeed.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

You did tell that story. So your husband, what was the name of your uncle, who your husband worked for?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

That was my uncle Eugene.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Okay, Ilona’s husband.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Ilona’s husband and his brother, they were together. And that was the business what they inherited from their parents. It was a very old business.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

And 1s that the same uncle, your uncle’s brother, who got out after the Revolution? Is that the same one?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Okay, no. He started to work with them too. He was in an entirely... End of Tape 3, Side B Tape 4, Side A

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

This is tape number four, side A of an interview with Emilie Szekely.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

My uncle, my mother’s brother was in labor camp in Hungary and when the Germans were leaving, they managed to take him to Germany and he was in Buchenwald. And one day I was prescribing, I got always the Smithsonian magazine and it was a picture there, a nice article about the Holocaust. And the picture showed Buchenwald and a part of the bunk beds, a part of the, it was the...

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Barracks?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Ya, and on the end of one of the beds, on the end was, the picture, they were all looking in the camera because it was after the war, and it was marked, Elie Wiesel. And on the other side there were three men, between them, it was my uncle. I recognized him. It was my mother’s brother.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

And his name was...?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Joseph. And when Elie Wiesel was here about, that’s now four, five... Ilona was a senior, that’s four years ago. Four years ago, he was here in Lexington and he had a wonderful, wonderful speech. It was the Jewish Federation and the UK, they did it together. And it was in UK, in the Memorial Hall. Before that, they had a dinner in the club, but it was 150 dollars a plate, and I didn’t have 150 dollars for a dinner. And people were coming out and they were telling him what a wonderful thing it was just to shake hands with him. And I was very upset that I know that man from my co-worker, who was a very good friend, her father was very good friend, her husband, of Elie Wiesel and I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t talk to him. So when it was everything over, Ana was telling me, “Wait, wait, maybe you can see it, go to his dressing room.” So, a gentleman was standing there from UK, they didn’t let nobody to see him. And I went there. It was the rabbi’s wife, that time, Rabbi Slaten’s (ph) wife, and she was talking for me. And she says, “Would you let that lady in only for a few minutes? She is the only survivor here in Lexington and she would like to talk to him, only for a few minutes.” So he says, “Yes, I will do it, but she has to wait until the hall is empty, because if people see somebody’s going, they want to go, too.” So, I was waiting, I says, “I gladly wait.” So, I was waiting and he helped me down the steps, because they were wooden steps in the basement. It was the... I couldn’t believe it. He says, “Yes, we are hiding people.” [Laughing.] And it was nothing to hold onto and they were wooden steps and he was helping me to go down. And suddenly I came and the door is open and he’s standing there. He was a very, very attractive man. And my heart was beating, that I couldn’t say nothing, so I says, “Hello.” He was very friendly. I says, “Hello.” He says, “Who are you?” I didn’t say even my name, I was so excited. I says, “I am a Holocaust survivor and I am the only one here.” He says, “If you are a Holocaust survivor, you must be from Europe.” I says, “Yes.” He says, “Where are you from?” I says, “Budapest.” He says, “Budapest?” And he starts to talk to me, Hungarian. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “You speak still Hungarian?” Because he didn’t, I mean, I don’t know where he learned, because where he was, they were very religious people, his parents. And I think they spoke Yiddish and not Hungarian, but he spoke Hungarian. And he was 15 years old, maybe in school, correct, in school, probably he learned. He spoke wonderful. And he says, “No, I can, because I have no one to talk to.” His wife is French. I says, “Don’t tell me, you speak Hungarian.” And from then on he spoke Hungarian to me. And he asked me where I know him from. And I mentioned his friend’s name. And he says, “Korman! (ph)” He says, “I saw him last week!” That’s what he’s telling me. I says, “Yes, because of you he didn’t want to retire to Florida, because he was often...” he lives in New York, actually, and teaches in Boston. And they had from that part of the town, Sighet (ph), they had an organization. And that my friend’s husband went always there because he loved him. And she then was telling me what went on in that organization and what happened at that organization [laughing] when they were together, so I knew a lot about him. And I was telling it to him. He says, “Because of you, he didn’t want to move to Florida.” He says, “You know what? I saw him in Florida.” When he was down in Florida, he saw him. So he was very nice, and then he says, what I am doing, and I told him that I am talking in schools, and he says, “Wonderful.” He says, “What grade are you starting?” I says, “Sixth.” He says, “That’s the right grade to start, don’t do younger ones.” But I did, because they were begging me. Lexington School for five graders. Ana went to SCAPA, they were four graders. They were begging me, especially in SCAPA, they were very smart kids. And here too, in Lexington School, they are very, very... I spoke twice already there. And now I, the teacher was always asking me whether I know a book for children. I am reading now in a magazine that he, Elie Wiesel, wrote his first children’s book about the Holocaust with pictures. So, I try to get that book and I try to call that teacher in Lexington School, because she 1s very intelligent. She is teaching fifth graders. And they understood it. What kind of letters I got from them, from the fifth... I just cannot believe it, how they understood it and how sorry they are for me. And they cannot believe it, that I lived through that. Fifth graders. So I tell you the truth, that I spoke about 150, 160 times since Iam here. That if I cannot do it, because I will be the most unhappiest person in the world, because I feel the commitment that I have to do it. I still have to do it, because there are many, many people, who don’t know it still and those are adults, mostly adults. The children are starting to know me in schools, because I go back always, because they are different classes, and most of them they know. In the colleges, too. I was all over in every college, Berea, Midway, and the private college, Transylvania, twice, UK three times. Community college. So, they know all ready. But the adults, lot of adults, in churches, they don’t know. So, I will be really... and even if they call me to schools, next graders who didn’t hear me and I cannot do it, I am depressed and I always think about it. That it give me... I cannot explain it, when I talk, I am very enthusiastic and I live it through again. That’s true. And I have to take a tranquilizer, I must take before I go. And I never spoke about my parents, because I couldn’t. I was always crying. And lately I am even showing the pictures of my parents. And if they give me enough time to tell them that story on the end, I am including it, what happened to them and I am showing their pictures. And I was so relieved that I did it. Okay, I didn’t sleep at night, but I was relieved that I did something good for them who died. You know? I took it in my head that they died and they won’t be at peace until the last survivor is going to tell their story. It’s... I cannot explain it, what happened to me, because I never spoke. I never spoke.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

So, in those years immediately after the war that you were in Hungary, you didn’t speak about your experiences at all?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

I didn’t speak, even in New York, never. New York, I didn’t have to, because there were so many, I never heard denial. And here I started only because I heard denial. In Hungary I never spoke about it because the Hungarians are very anti-Semitic. And they told you that “Too many of you came back.” It’s a Catholic country. I am not saying that the intelligent people, but I heard it from people saying it. So, in Hungary, I even went to a doctor, I wanted to take off my number because it was so uncomfortable when I was holding onto the train. I went to the city. I worked for the book publishers, you know, the dictionaries. And that’s where they were telling, they were looking at those numbers like, “I would kill you,” you know? Maybe it was in me that I thought it, but no. Even today, even I told you, I was in 1978, in Hungary with Ilona... 1978? What am I talking about? She was born in 1970. 1989 I was with her. I told you that story, no? And we lived there for months?

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

You mentioned it.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

We lived, my sister-in-law was still alive at that time, my husband’s sister and she took an apartment for us, because they had only a one bedroom apartment. A very beautiful place. And he took us for an apartment, a rental, close to them. And it was a woman, whose husband was a school principal, but they were divorced. And she had a son, an engineer and he didn’t live home and she had three rooms, two bedrooms and a living room. One bedroom was separate and then she had a room in Bolotow (ph), near Lake Bolotow (ph), that she went there. If she rented the apartment she went there, that she shouldn’t be home. But we were always begging her, that it doesn’t bother us, she should stay home. Because she was the only person who spoke English and Ilona could spoke to her English. She was the only person. And she worked for the... she was babysitting in the Canadian Embassy for somebody. So, she spoke English well. We were glad when she stayed home and when she stayed home she went down and she brought us always fresh bread and milk, and she was very nice to us. We didn’t speak about religion, absolutely. And the last day, the last day before we left, she came to me and she said, “I didn’t sleep the whole night.” I says, “Why?” She says, “Because I just find out, I just notice your number that you are Jewish and I am Jewish, too. Nobody knows it in the house.” In 1989, nobody knows it in the house. “They are suspicious,” she said. But her husband, I don’t know. I don’t remember already her name. But it was a Hungarian name. But he changed his name because it was a Jewish name. He changed it when he was a school principal. And once, she was telling that she was here in America in Los Angeles for a month and she’s mentioning a name, who invited her. And I knew them, those people, that they were Jewish people. In New Pest, you know? But still I just didn’t realize it that she’s Jewish. And she wouldn’t ask me and I wouldn’t ask her. But one day, she wasn’t home and I see... I took the mail, and a letter came from Israel. And when I gave it to her, she right away put it in her pocket. Because she knew that my sister-in-law was converted and married to a non-Jew and she got that apartment and she thought we are not Jewish. She was afraid to say that she is Jewish. So then... it was unbelievable. And when we came home, I sent her some nylon panty hose because she couldn’t get it. And for two or three years I was writing her. And I didn’t realize it, she said, “I mentioned to you so many times who took me, who took me, who invited me...” and her son was there too. I don’t know how long he was in Los Angeles, in California. And I didn’t realize it, he went out once with that man, but he was married. And both of them, he and the wife, invited her, but I didn’t... you know? [Laughing.] I didn’t know him personally. But I knew, and I knew his name, those people who were in Los Angeles.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Did you...

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

So that’s the situation, and even today, they are hiding people, they are Jews. They are... it’s no good, it’s still no good in Hungary. Under the communism, it was no Jew, we couldn’t say, no religion. They were forcing us to work. A Jewish boss, he was forcing us to work on the Jewish holidays and he was a lawyer. And one day, I thought it? I said it? --One day... his secretary was a very nice person. She was Jewish, too. But many people worked there, they were all intellectuals, because they were... whatever we had intellectually, if it’s something medical, the doctors that were there and engineers or whatever. It’s very interesting. And he, on the biggest holiday, Yom Kippur, he called us to his office, me and his secretary and he made us eat. He was in the Party, the Communist Party because of his job. But who saw it? Why did he have to do it? I couldn’t go to the synagogue, so I went home by bus, I remember. Because it was, we lived in New Pest and that was in mid-town. We were passing the street where the synagogue 1s, I jumped off the bus at that station and after work I went to the synagogue. And in the concentration camp I didn’t know that it’s holiday or not holiday, but the Polish people knew it. And they were telling us when it’s Yom Kippur. They knew it from outside the world. Because people who went to work outside, they somehow got in touch with Polish people. And then they said that tomorrow is like Yom Kippur, so I didn’t eat. I was used not to eat, because eat, the food was only bread when we got off from the work, you know? I was fasting there and I go back and I have to eat.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Did you have a sense of faith at the time?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

At the camp? I lost my faith.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

After...

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

In camp, I was always saying, “Where is God? Where is God,” when I found out what is going on in camp, that they killed all the little kids. And I says, “Where is God that he let, that he let it do those people? Where is God? Is ita God?” I absolutely didn’t believe it. I just... I was saying that too, always, that I was, at night when we couldn’t go out after work, when we were already inside, but if we had the chairs just to look outside and look at the stars. And I was unbelievable homesick, unbelievable. And I was just always saying, I says, “My God,” —‘my God’ I didn’t say. I just said, “Does Frank,” Frank was my husband, “see the same stars what I’m seeing?” Terrible homesick, and never, never thought that I can survive from there. Never. It was so impossible, you know? It was impossible. First of all, I didn’t know where is Auschwitz. I didn’t know that we are close to Krakow, we are in Poland. I knew that we were in Poland, but I had no idea where we were. And I never thought that 1t can happen, that the Russians are going to liberate it and we have to go.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

So after the war when you went to synagogue, did you just go because of tradition?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Oh, no. After the war, no, after the war, we lived under communism and we went to synagogue secretly. And it was a, a nursery, a preschool in the synagogue, and George went there. But it was everything secretly. When he went to school he had no religion. He wasn’t allowed to say that he has religion. No religion. When we went to Vienna, for 17 months we lived there. He was the only Jewish kid there. And they were suspicious because they were praying every morning. And once the teacher called me, “Why does he doesn’t pray?” I said, “Because he has no religion. We lived under communism, that’s why he doesn’t pray.” And every day I was dying until he came home from school. I was so afraid what’s going to happen, that they find out that he’s Jewish. It was terrible, terrible. Hitler came from Vienna. I told you that. That even in 1957, when we went to Vienna, the workers, when they worked, they started with a bottle of beer and “Heil Hitler.”

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

So, when you went, but did you go, you didn’t go to synagogue because you had religious faith?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

No. When I went back and I found IIlie, Ilona, when I find her and I find her husband, her husband, they weren’t, they weren’t religious. They were religious and not religious. We didn’t have nothing to eat. So my sister-in-law managed to buy every year a... she was close to the countryside and everybody knew them there where they lived. Her husband had a very big position with the state. And he, himself, was an anti-Semite, my sister-in-law’s husband. It’s unbelievable. I was telling you about it. Okay. But they managed, somehow, I don’t know how... we got every year a pig. Pig! So, and it was a butcher, who came to the house, and they made for us and for Ilona, for them... my uncle wasn’t alive at that time, Joseph. Because he was very religious, you wouldn’t believe it that he went with a little prayer book to Buchenwald and he managed to bring it back with him. Because that time already, they weren’t killing there, in Buchenwald, when he got there. And he brought it back. He was very religious. That’s why he stayed with us, and not with Illie, Ilona, because of the pork. But we ate the pork, too. We had it, too. Especially when he died, it was... we ate it because there was nothing else, and we had food for the whole year. George doesn’t know it. He doesn’t remember it, so I am not telling it to him. And I am not telling it even to the grandchildren. Ana is crazy when she would hear it. She’s watching always what you are ordering. She is... yeah. But he was the president of the synagogue, my uncle, and he was helping many, many Jewish, young boys to go to Israel. That time it was secret. Secretly, they went through Czechoslovakia. So, that way he was religious, but, you know? But we couldn’t show it that we were religious or not religious. But we ate pork. But I got back my religion. I got my belief. I got it back slowly, slowly I got it back. I was always thinking about my mother, how he taught us, she taught us to pray in Czechoslovakia. And when we went to the synagogue like Friday night or something, I was always thinking about it, how we were crying, but every week we had to read one more page. And it was so hard for us, myself and my sister. And I was thinking about them. And as I was thinking about them always, you know, I got back my religion. And especially when I came to America. When I came to America and my uncle was... he wasn’t, he ate everything. I’m not saying that they didn’t cook pork, but he was religious. And I remember him and my father when they were together and Passover, when they were together. And every Saturday they went to the synagogue and then they came to us and they were singing after lunch those songs that you are supposed to. And when I thought about those things it came back to me, you know? It’s very interesting. And now I love to go to the synagogue, and I am so heartbroken. I wasn’t there now three weeks, I think. I am missing it. And I’m missing it. We don’t have a rabbi now. He left. I loved him. It’s interesting that he’s near Cincinnati and Ilona was teaching here Sunday school art for four years. And now he’s teaching in his new... she goes down to the new congregation and she’s teaching, but only twice a month because it’s 40 miles away. So, and it’s, but... she sees him. And I cannot see them. I was very good friends with... she’s a very young woman. His wife is from Cincinnati. He’s from Minnesota, the rabbi. And his parents were Czechoslovakians, Czechs. His father, I met his father many times, he’s an optometrist. When he came visit he still speak Czech.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

What was his name? The Rabbi.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

The Rabbi? Slaten (ph).

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

And he was at the Orthodox, no it’s ...

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Conservative.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Conservative.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Conservative. Slaten. He has three sons and he was here 11 years. My grandson was the first Bar Mitzvah with him.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

About the question where was God, did you just stop asking it or did you come up with some kind of answer?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

No, I didn’t get no answer because I knew what was happening. I didn’t get no answer. But I was just always questioning, “Where is God? Is there a God,” that’s what I was saying. “Is there a God, does he see what’s happening? Why, why is it happening?”

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Do you ask yourself those questions anymore?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Yes lam. Why did it happen, actually? Why did it happen? For those innocent little kids, what could they do? What kind of sins they had? Babies. What kind of sins they had that it happened? And then I am going back to Spanish Inquisition. [Laughing.] So what was there? They killed the Jews all over. Always. The Jews are always the [laughing]... for everywhere and everything they are blaming the Jews. So, it’s no answer. It’s no answer. First the Blacks came and after that the Jews. Some places they... when they are no Blacks, there are no Blacks, then there are the Jews the first who are blamed for everything. Why? Does anybody knows why”? I lived under democracy in Czechoslovakia. It was a real, real democracy. Nobody knows what’s democracy. Only if somebody lived under that time Masaryk and Benes. They always said, “We cannot be anti-Semitic, never. Because we have the brain, and we are businessmen and we are everything what the Jews are.” So I was thinking about it, that it’s jealousy. It was jealousy from Hitler that they, he took it from... they were supporting him, the Jews in Germany. They made him big. And then when he knew what they are doing and why, then they killed them and he wanted to have it. Why are they anti, I don’t know, anti-Semitic here, I don’t know. I never heard it from no one, but I can imagine that the Southern Baptist are anti-Semitic. I am thinking it only because I was invited [laughing] to every church, every denomination, but never to a Baptist church. So it must be something against the Jews. They won’t say it to your face, but it must be. They know it. They saw me in the paper. They know it. And I was never, never, and I was on every Christian church. What is that? How do you call it? What is it? And I’m telling it to the children. I’m finishing my speech, and I’m saying it to them that why I am doing it, I’m doing it that you should learn not to hate and you should teach your parents not to hate, because I don’t think so that a little kid knows what is to hate. It’s coming from somewhere, from the adults. Correct?

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Can you remember and describe the events of the 1956 Uprising?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

Yes. In 1956...

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

From your perspective.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

...Nixon was in Hungary at that time. And the students from university, they got in touch with him. And what was discussed, what wasn’t discussed, I don’t know between them, but when Nixon left, next day, it was the Uprising. The students, the college students, they took over the radio station. That was the first. We didn’t have televisions. That was the first. And the Russians actually never left Hungary and they were all over scattered in the woods and around. But we didn’t see them in the cities, but they were there. And it was communism. And Nixon was telling them, “Do it.”” How do we know that? Because the last Prime minister, Nagy, Imre Nagy, who was killed by the Russians. He was on the radio and he was begging, he was begging America and he was begging Nixon, he was telling him, “Okay, do it.” He thought that we get some help. So they came in with their tanks and with their soldiers. It was a war. They bombed... End of Tape 4, Side A Tape 4, Side B

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

...the apartment that we lived in Budapest, yes. We lived there. And so when they came in in 19... no that was 1956, the uprising. Up to that point it was all right. We worked and we were communist, but we worked. I mean, the wealthy people were very afraid and we were very afraid with my uncle, that they are going to take them. Because they came at night. They knocked on the doors, and taked people on they, on their cars, on their... the Russians, with machine guns. And they took them to villages, and they took them to villages and they left them. There were certain villages where they were designated where they took the wealthy people. And they couldn’t come back to Budapest. But thank God, thank God it never happened. Because that was against... again, it was somebody had to tell them who are the wealthy people. And they were in very good friendship with everybody from the higher-ups there. Because that was a borough, New Pest, where we lived. And like New York has five boroughs, the same thing Budapest has. And so they knew everybody, and they were friends with everybody, and so nobody told on them, so they weren’t taken away. Their business was taken away, but they didn’t. They weren’t taken away. What was done to them, they had to move together, the two families, in one apartment, because it was too big for two people. Gorgeous apartment. House. And they took away they apartment and they had to live together, the sister-in-laws and brother- in-law, two brothers. And they had to rent the upstairs apartment. They decided that they’d take the first floor and the second floor, it was a doctor, a gynecologist with his family. But they didn’t take them out. And from that, that they take out many wealthy people, many wealthy people married non-Jews, but not that non-Jews, but it wasn’t a match. Just only because those people were giving them stay, somewhere to stay. Because it is an example, my cousin, I have a second cousin in Budapest, my mother and her mother were sisters, cousins. I’m sorry, first cousins. And she is the only one who survived from that family, nobody. She had two uncles and the grandmothers were sisters, my grandmother and her grandmother were sisters and that’s how the mothers were first cousins, my mother and her mother. And she was an only child and the only survivor. She survived. Her parents put her in a factory. I didn’t tell you all that? I don’t know. To a factory where they were making like General Electric. They were making light bulbs. It was Tungsraum (ph), it was a very well known company. I think, in fact, now after the war, they are together, Tungsraum and General Electric. Something, I don’t know. But young girls, they worked there. And when they took her parents, she was working there and they slept there and everything. So they worked for the army and when they finished with the work, when the work was finished, they let them go. But they didn’t have where to go, because they were, nobody was there already, we were all gone. And that’s... I think I, somewhere I said that story, that she was hiding. One of her aunts had a maid and she recommended where to go, to a woman, who was non-Jewish and her husband was Jewish and he was in labor camp. And she had a house. And she took in about eight people, Jewish people. It was a doctor, it was my cousins and her boyfriend and I don’t know, about eight people. And she was hiding them. I told that story?

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

You did mention that story.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Okay. So why did we say that?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

So, going back to the 1956 uprising... remembering the events of the uprising.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

... 1956, okay. They came in with their tanks and they were horrible. They were raping girls, the soldiers, the Russian soldiers.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Did you see that happening?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

No, no, but we were very worried, because we had a maid at that time. We were very close to her. And it was terrible. I remember that it was George’s birthday and he wanted a car. Before that he knew what he wants in the toy store and we went, we went there and stood on line to get him the car. And the tanks were turned towards us. The end was so close to us. Every minute, or when we are standing for bread, the tanks were turned always to shoot us. It was terrible. Then, one day, I don’t know what happened... not one day, they did it many times. But they were very close to us and they were shooting during the night. And we were in the apartment and basements were on the other side of the building, the basements, and we had to run to the other side with the children. I had at that time my cousin’s, who was in Russia, his two daughters. They were with us because they went somewhere for vacation and it happened under the vacation. And they lived far, very far from us. They lived in Buda, what was very far from us and they couldn’t pick up the children. And they stayed with us, two little girls. We had to go to the basement because they were shelling in the backyard. Terrible. I don’t know how many nights we spent in the basement. When it stopped, when they already were in control, I don’t know how long it took them. It took them a long time, and they were in control. Then Austria opened the borders, their borders and people who lived close, they could just walk over to Austria. And thousands and thousands, and mostly the peasants, because they were all farmlands around the border, you know? They went all over to Austria and in Austria they put up camps for them and America was sending money for it. We were far away, we couldn’t go, because we were 400 miles away from the border, in Budapest. So we couldn’t go. That story is in. How did I get out, and the Russians. That’s in.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

I wanted to ask you... we’ll go on to Vienna and then talk about your journey to the United States. But I wanted to ask you whether you wanted to say anything about your husband and your relationship with him, because last time we talked you said he was a stranger to you and then all of sudden you met him after the war.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

He was a stranger to me 1n that way, that I knew him for three weeks, when he wanted to marry me. And then he couldn’t marry me because I was underage. And then they took him in labor camp. He was away, and I don’t know, a few times he wrote me cards. But I didn’t know what’s going to happen, whether he stays with me whether he will wait for me. And he was four years in labor camps, so I didn’t know what’s going to happen. But I really... that’s why I say that I really didn’t know him. I told you about the other boy, whom I went with somebody for four years. So, I was very mixed up. I was very mixed up. I don’t know whether I fell in love with my husband right away. But my heart was broken when the other one find out and then wrote me a letter, “Why did I do it?” If he would know that I need a name, he would marry me right away. And... but it was late already, everything was arranged that he fell in love with me, my husband. So... he was seven years older, and I knew he was very good looking. And I knew who was the family, first of all, because my aunt and his aunt were very good friends. So, I knew the family from my own... and I didn’t know what’s going to be, and when I met him, you know, when we came back, I was terribly crying and he was crying, too. But he knew I’m alive. He knew, because he knew months ago already when they got the notice. But he was waiting for me. But I wasn’t sure whether he has somebody in between or not, though we got married. We were married in 1944, in February, when we got married. For two weeks we were together and that was that. And I was always, you know, afraid that they are going to take me still. I am married, but we went to a hotel, I remember on the marriage night. It was unbelievable. We went down to eat. It was in the city, a beautiful hotel. And everybody constantly was afraid that they are coming and asking for identification and that kind of a thing. It was horrible. So I said, “Let’s check out. I don’t want to stay here.” We went back. We went back, and we stayed with my grandmother, and then we stayed with Ilika, too, with Ilona. I[lika is a, in Hungarian, I don’t know what it is in any language. If somebody has a name, they make it like softer. Ilika is softer than Ilona. You know? But that’s from Ilona, so we called her Ilika. And I was Milika, my name was Millie, I mean my nickname is Millie. Nobody knew me as Emilie, only in school, and at work. But otherwise, the whole family and my friends... and then we came to America, I didn’t know that it’s an American name, too. And I never mentioned it. It was always Emilie and that was it. But my friends are still calling me Millie on the phone and my cousin and everybody is calling me. I have a cousin in Canada. My cousin who was eight years in Siberia, seven years, from ‘41 to ‘48. He hasason. And he escaped after ‘56, they sent him, the parents. He went to University at that time already, two years as an engineer. And he was, when he came back he was a communist. He wasn’t a communist, he was in the party and because of that, that he was in Russia and spoke already Russian, he got a very big job in the Ministry. He was... as an engineer. He knew that he never can come to America, because he was in the Communist Party. So when it was finished, the communism, when the... I mean, when they opened the borders, he sent his son alone to Vienna. But he had to go to Israel, because the plan was that the parents are going to come after him to Israel. They knew that he cannot come to America. We weren’t here. And so he went alone to Israel, but the mother had there a lot of friends, his mother, and he stayed with the friends. And he went to the Israeli Army and he was an officer, too. And the parents went after him, they got passport. Parents and two sisters, who were born after he came home, the two sisters. But he escaped with his mother’s mother—grandmother, grandfather and he—they escaped the middle of Budapest. I don’t know whether you heard about Wallenberg, that Swedish man? He was hiding them. He was from that group and his mother, and his grandmother and grandfather. Grandmother. Grandfather died before they went to Israel. The grandmother went with them to Israel and she died in Israel. My cousin went with them. I mean of course he went with them. He died in Israel. And it is very interesting that his father was in the First World War and he got... he was in Siberia, too, his father. And he got a nerve disease, nerves. It was terrible. I remember him very well. That was my mother’s sister’s husband. And he got the same disease in Israel. He was a young man. He was 60, 62 when he died. And he got a job as an engineer, but in a different field. It was a margarine factory where he was in engineering, like making colognes and that kind of, you know? Entirely different. But they were okay. Her father gave a lot of money to Israel, so they were okay in Israel. The two sisters, my cousin’s two sisters were in Israel, the two sisters. And the mother, she was here. When she was 75 years old, she came to Canada and she came to me here and it was winter and she says, “God, I love to see the snow. I never snow since I am in Israel.” It was a big snow when she was here. And she spent her 75" birthday here. And two years later she died. She had diabetes and she didn’t take care of herself. She ate everything in the world, but she lived well. I spoke to her daughter and she said, ““That’s the only thing, we are happy that she lived well.”

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Let’s go back, because we got off the subject, you were talking about your relationship with your husband.

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

So again. So, I wasn’t, when I came back. So I said, this was a long, long time. I don’t know, maybe he find somebody. I don’t know. I was two weeks his wife, that’s it. I got back. I met him before they came, before they took us, he came to the ghetto. I told you that. But it was just that, nothing, no relationship, we just met. [Laughing.] And then he left the ghetto and five minutes later we were surrounded. But he was telling me that, “Don’t let you take them to the wagons.” I didn’t know what he’s talking about. He saw it on the way from Romania, of course, Romania, it was near the border there where they were. What they are doing, they’re putting people... and when the wagons came, I remembered his words, I says, “Don’t let you put yourself ...”» Does he know that there are guns involved here? He didn’t know that it was done with machine guns. But he told me that “You are going to get a Christian birth certificate and you come with me.” It was true, everything. I told you that I find the birth certificate here. I didn’t know about it. Last time when he was in Hungary he brought everything. His sister was very sick for ten years, but her son-in-law is a doctor and he kept her alive. Because he was telling me when we were there, if not me, she wouldn’t be alive anymore. Because the daughter was always hysterical and even from meetings she called him. He was in a hospital like here, Walter Reed. He was there, a pathologist, under the Communism. So, he had a big job. And she called him, “Right away come and give mother injections,” she yelled. And I was there when she did it. And he right away left everything, came and gave her injections. I think that she had liver cancer, that’s what I think. Because she had diabetes, diabetes, I don’t know whether it counts for me, that that family had diabetes, but my father’s sister had diabetes in Russia. So it was in the family. I always forgot about it and when they were asking me, “Did anybody have it in the family?” And I always say, “I don’t know, they were killed when they were 45 years old.” And I know my grandmother didn’t have it. I know the other sister didn’t have it. At that time I probably... I didn’t know even that his sister had it, because she was writing, my father, always to his sister. And he translated the letters to us, but I didn’t think about it, you know, that she had it. And now he was telling me, my cousin, that she had even a leg amputated because of diabetes. So it is in my family. But I don’t know whether I got it. I don’t know. Because it was really, I had such a good doctor for 27 years and he never said that’s diabetes. Only my periodontist always said that I have diabetes because of my gums. It was always, he said, “What are they talking about, you have diabetes?” And he always said, “No, you don’t have diabetes, it’s just elevated because of the medications what you are taking.” Here the urologist was arguing with me, that I don’t have... I had urinary tract infection. And he said, “You don’t have diabetes. What are they talking about? Because it’s not in your urine.” Would you believe that? Well, anyway. So then, when we lived in Eger, and we started to know each other. And right away, I got pregnant, a month later I got pregnant. We got very close and he was a very, very good man. Very good. He had such a heart. He was so good. He never said, like George, he never said nothing bad about nobody. And he tried to help people and he was a person like, he worked in a hospital, and he... like nobody, you know... even in New York they don’t care about the Blacks. He shook hands with the elevator man or whatever. You know? He was unbelievable good. Unbelievable. And when he retired, even before he retired, he went without me to Hungary, because I right away had four weeks vacation with the hospital. And when he retired, he went every year back to Hungary to see his sister. But the main thing to see the children’s grave. And one day I told him, “Listen Frank, you see I am the mother. You think that I don’t think about them?” I says, “You go only to the stones. You must realize it, that you go only to the stones.” He says, “Yes, but at least I can fix up the letters if they are, you know, not in shape.” They are not buried separate. They are buried with my Uncle Joseph, in the same grave, the two little kids. And then that was that reason, that he has an only sister and she’s very sick. And then when he was very sick, he had a terrible heart attack in ‘81 and in ‘82, 17 months he lived. And in between that he went to Hungary. I said to the doctor, “What shall I tell him, that he cannot go?” He says, “No, he can go, but he cannot go around nowhere else, just to Hungary. And he’ll be all right there because his nephew is a doctor and he will be very safe there.” And I called him every week on the phone. And he said, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” Three- quarters of his heart was gone. “I am fine,” he said. And I always gave the report to the doctor. And he says, “He’s fine because probably he sees sicker people around him, and then he has the nephew there’. And that was the reason, because when he came back in July, end of June... every July we were in the country for Ilona’s, Ilona was born July 3™ and I left a week vacation for that, and we went to the country house, and he came back before that and he came with us and he was fine. We wanted to go, all of us, to Canada after. It’s not close, but it’s on the same highway to go to Toronto, where it’s close, like a country house. It was a long ride, but still it was... I don’t know about four, 500 hundred miles, through Niagara Falls. We wanted to all of us go, and he said, “You know what? I came from a long trip now, I go home myself. I drive home myself. And you go with them.” Laura was pregnant with Ana. And he was so happy, because he always wanted a lot of children. He was crazy for children. And George was an only child, because the two others died. And he always, he was very happy. He loved them so much. That’s the last picture from them before he left. That was only Jacob and Ilona. And he... 1t was in April. No. No, because George took him to the airport. It was before he left. He died in ‘82. While we were in Canada, he got sick and he went himself to the hospital. They took him in Intensive Care, Coronary Care, I don’t even know. But I called him when he was already home. And he said, “Bring a present to so and so.” I says, “Why?” He said, “Because he helped me. I was in the hospital.” So right away I packed and I went back. And in August he died. I wasn’t even around. You know that story? It was terrible. He was so good. And he was so worried about me, because when I was sick, he didn’t get undressed. He was... the whole... because I had two heart attacks, in ‘67 and in ‘70. So, it was always me they were worried about. So, he was always, he didn’t get undressed and he was... unbelievable nurse, you know? He was very, very good. And with the children, everything they... what we had, and every vacation they were always for those two children, because they lived upstairs. They lived in the same house. He loved them. He loved George. He loved them. He was very upset that he’s an artist, because he thought that, he always of the Hungarian artist, and he was always telling them, “You know how the artists are living? They are going barefoot because they don’t have money for they...” [Laughing.] You know, he was always worried. But when he said that “Don’t worry, I am going to teach.” Then he was very happy, and he was always the first one whom George called. That “T got tenure, I got even...” no, he wasn’t alive when he got full professor, only when he got tenure. He was alive. And he was very happy, and with every exhibition, though he didn’t like his paintings. But he said he loves it, because he went from that kind of a, ultra-modern. But he was supporting him. And that was everything for him, George was everything. That’s why we bought the house there, that he should have a studio. But he always said to him, “If you want to be a real artist, don’t get married.” But he wanted to be an artist, but he... I mean, he didn’t have no one else but us, that was a family, so he wanted a family. So he got married. And he loves his children. He’s a very good father, and he’s very good to me, unbelievable good to me. And nobody can understand it.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Why is that?

question

RG-50.549.05.0008

His wife cannot understand it. And I, I... because they don’t know what 1s it... we went once to a psychiatrist, because she was very jealous of his love towards me. She cannot, she cannot understand it that somebody can love two people different way. And the psychiatrist explained it to me. She would never understand it, because she never got along with her mother. She loved her father, and the minute her father died, she left home. So, she would never understand it. So, I said to him, “So Iam here, why I am here? You won’t understand me either.” It was an Italian guy. I said, “You wouldn’t understand me. What is it to be in the world alone? Two of us, nobody, no family, just two of us. Would you understand that?” So he says, “I didn’t know that, she didn’t tell that.”’ The trouble was, I walked in, he said... walked in. I was in wheelchair, because I fell on the steps here. 18 steps, and in the wheelchair I was forced to go to the psychiatrist. And he said to me, when I walked in, he says... Laura wasn’t there, we went together and separate. And he says, “How many times your son called you when you were in New York?” I says, “That’s the complaint?” I says, “If you are a good son...” You. That’s how I talked to him, “‘and your father would die, and your mother is alone in the world, you wouldn’t call her every night? And I paid the telephone bills.” So, that she was complaining that he’s calling me every night when the father died. And sometimes saying, and it was something, no, between us and Ilona, which I thank God, Iona... he always told me, “You can always count on Ilona.” He loved Ilona. Jacob was very little. He loved Jacob, but Ilona was six... ‘82 and she was born ’76, six years old. So Ilona was already a bigger girl. And she always said, “You always can count on Iona.” And I must tell you, he was always teaching me if he dies, what 1s going to happen and how much I should divulge. I says, “Frank, please don’t talk about that.” He says, “I know I am going to die when I am 69.” I says, “What are you talking about?” He says, “Because my uncle came home from hunting, he was fine, too. And he dropped dead when he was 69. And he had a heart attack,” so every night—I didn’t sleep many nights with him— every night he got shaved, he got dressed, and he was sleeping in that chair. He was always prepared that he has to go to the hospital or something, after the heart attack. It was terrible. And he was always teaching me what to do and how to do it. “And I leave you enough,” he said, “that you can live like a princess if you want to, but if you want to live with your daughter-in- law...” End of Tape 4, Side B Tape 5, Side A

answer

RG-50.549.05.0008

Okay, tape number five, side A of an interview with Emilie Szekely. And you told on the other tape about your... how you got out of Hungary. And then you went to Vienna? Can you talk about what you did in Vienna?

question