HOW MY FATHER SURVIVED THE WAR

 

My Father at age 4
smoking and drinking beer

 He was born in 1923 and was an only child. It was not him but his father who was told: “Mr. D. your son is STUPID”. Although looking at his transcripts (if there were any to look at) might suggest that the description would fit him perfectly. Mildly put, his academic achievements amounted to nothing. Yet it was not really the result of him being stupid, but it was due to boredom. In fact, he was so bad that he attended 5-6 different elementary schools in order to finish the first 8 grades. The teachers let him pass only if his parents agreed to send him to another school next year. He only excelled in gym class and in religious studies; the bible stories seemingly grabbing his imaginations. The bad results may have been affected by the fact that he usually sold his books shortly after the school years started to augment his allowance.

By the age of fourteen he was expelled from all schools in Budapest proper. It so happened that one of the teachers was expressing his unfavorable views about the Jews in class, and for reasons unknown to anybody, my father did not appreciate the assertion. So to make sure that the teacher became aware of his disagreement, he slapped him around a bit. Luckily the injuries healed inside of eight days but under the circumstances it is understandable that the schoolboard felt that my father had learnt everything there was to know about life in Hungary and decided that he did not need to continue his education. Effectively they banned him from all schools in Budapest.

He ended up starting to work for a chemical company at the early age of 14. At least his job was glamorous and offered quick advancement. He was the first shovel in the basement, moving tons of soot every day. The reward for this was cancer of the larynx later in his life. But he became stronger which helped him in his next experience with anti-Semitism. In Hungary at that time, young boys had to participate in semi-military education under the auspices of the “Levente” movement. Anti-Semitism was rampant. So my father and his friend received special treatment in this movement. After one of his meetings, when he was particularly upset about the way his “education” was going, he and his friend waited behind the corner for some of the boys that harassed them earlier. They looked around and when they felt that nobody saw them, gently, mostly using their fists, explained the boys that they did not really appreciate the special attention during the Levente exercise earlier. They sealed their arguments with a final blow and blood was flowing from the noses of their victims. They just started to feel good about themselves when the Levente leader, seemingly from nowhere, showed up. He took them to the police station and left them with a big, brute-looking, screaming officer. The officer promised to the Levente leader that he would take care of these stinking Jews. Things did not look good. But after the Levente leader had left, satisfied that my father and his friend would be dealt adequately by the brute police officer in a dark cell, things changed. The face of the screaming brute changed and a wide smile appeared on his lips. He no longer looked frightening. But the biggest surprise came when he started talking: “Son, I think you should have beaten them up a bit more”. Luck was on their side, at least for now.

As I write now, I feel I need to note that growing up I knew nothing about all this. My father almost never talked about these events. I knew he had back pains due to the fact that his spine broke at an early age. I was told that a tree fell on him and smashed a couple of his disks. Not so.

I took private English lessons from a young woman, the sister of a classmate of my brother. One day, during a not so much English language related conversation, she brought up the subject about how my father was beaten and his back broken by the Arrow Cross (The Hungarian Nazi Party) men. I did not believe her and told her the “real” story about the tree. She smiled at me, I was only ten, and chill ran down my spine, realizing that she knew more about my father and his past than I.

Years later, I learnt the truth about this and about many other hair-raising stories of suffering and survival. I am sharing the ones I recall.

So yes he was beaten by the Nazis and practically left crippled. Somehow he managed to get to a hospital and he was put in a full body cast, leaving only room for his stomach to grow. He was supposed to lie there for at least a year. But a couple of months later, an inspection took place at the hospital.  They were looking for Jews who were hiding, pretending to be sick. A doctor examined my father and read the diagnosis. He smiled and said: “Do not pretend to be sick.  You cannot hide here. Get up and leave”. Normally, if they found somebody who was hiding, they would have right away notified the Arrow Cross. But this doctor was really amused watching my father struggling to get on his feet and wanted to see him walking out on his own, believing that he would never make it. My father somehow made it to the tram and was heading home. With no money and ticket or identification paper, barely able to walk, he had not much hope of getting far. Everybody in uniform posed a threat. And sure enough the conductor asked for a ticket and consequently for identification. He had none. By then others noticed the problem and some young hoodlums were ready to beat him up again. The first punch landed on his chest, but the body cast performing as body armor, did his job. The attacker screamed, might have broken his fingers. My father somehow escaped. And when a week later a friendly doctor removed his cast, he remarked: “That Nazi doctor may have just saved you from being a cripple in a wheelchair for all your life. Your best chance to recovery is getting up and walking”. Get up and walk – as Jesus said.

Jewish laws were in effect early on in Hungary and the situation rapidly changed from bad to worse.  Yet, for a while young boys and women were left alone. Men, 18 years old or older, had to report for “Munkaszolgálat”, Military Forced Labor. My father tried to join, but his utter hatred towards uniforms and anything forced, prevented him to obey the law. He took the train to the camp where he was supposed to report, but never got off. He returned home and went into hiding. He was caught walking down the street with my grandmother. They took him to the infamous building of Andrássy Street 60. It was the Headquarter of the Arrow Cross and was also used as a prison. Later the Communists utilized the facility much in the same manners as the Nazis. Today it is a Museum for the House of Terror. During the night there was a call for women and children to leave. My grandmother, having fair complexion and blue eyes was already something of a non-fitting Jewess in the crowd. When she asked if she could leave with her “little son”, there was no objection.

My father had an old friend of Swabian origin who joined the Nazi party early on, when most people had no idea what they stood for. Once he realized what it really meant to be a Nazi, it was too late to quit. So he stayed in the Party, but used all his energies to save Jews. He got a job for my father working in the garage of Wessenmayer, one of the highest potentates of Hitler, stationed in Budapest. My father could even sleep in the garage. Who thought that a Jew would hide there? It was the safest place in the city.  But fear got the best of my father and he left this cushy job.

There were few who risked their lives to help Jews during the German occupation and even fewer once the Arrow Cross took over the government. My father came across a friend who was a member of the Communist Party. My father did not know too much about Communist theories and what they stood for. He knew they were the only ones helping Jews and had many Jews among them. He knew they were atheists. So was he.

In spite of growing up with religious parents, my father chose to be an atheist. So much so, that I never even knew that my grandparents actually practiced religion. He practically forbade them to tell me. When my father was 16, in 1939 he decided that there could not be a god, because if there were one, all this bad things would not happen. His belief was strengthened as things got worse in Hungary. Even though he had no formal education, he read philosophy, and made a note in Spinoza’s Ethics, marking the day when he decided there was no god.

So maybe, he had the first requirement to become a Communist. In any case the Communists gave him a fake document, in which all the major biographical data were correct, except for two. He was an Aryan and he was born in Pásztó, instead of Székesfehérvár, his actual birthplace. Easier to remember, less likely to mess up. This big and strong man told me that during the one time when he had to use this ID, he almost fainted of fear, his mind went blank and he probably messed up naming Pásztó as his birthplace, yet he was let go. The man who stopped him assured him that he could smell a Jew from 5 miles away. I guess the wind was blowing from the wrong direction, because his otherwise infallible smell let the man down.

He was not always this lucky. Not sure about the circumstances but one time he was taken to the lower quay of the Danube together with about a hundred other Jews. This was shortly before Budapest was liberated by the Red Army. (For Jews, the arrival of the Red Army literally meant a chance to survive, thus they still call it liberation, going against the current tendencies of Hungary that does not consider the arrival of the Russians liberation). The Arrow Cross routinely shot Jews into the icy water of the December Danube. My father did not wait, he “dodged the bullet”, by jumping into the freezing water. He stayed down quite a while and it is a miracle that he did not freeze to death.

But that was it, he decided, Budapest was no longer safe. Somehow he crossed the front line, by then Budapest was circled by the Red Army, and happily told the first Russian troop that he was a Jew, running from the Nazis. The Russian was not impressed even after my father confronted him with the only indisputable evidence of his Jewishness. And once again, luck was on his side. The commanding officer was a Jew himself. Of course a Russian Jew, and as such, he loved to drink, which meant my father had to join him and for the first and last time in his life he drank vodka from a regular size glass. After the feast, the glasses did not have to be washed; they were all just smashed to the wall. This officer wrote a pass for my father in case he would encounter difficulties with the new occupying army. As it happened, the pass was used already next week. But it may not have been filled correctly or for sure it did not impress the next Russian officer who just looked at my father and declared him an enemy deserter. He was heading to Siberia. The Russians collected men to make up their quota to be sent to labor camp. They may have even enjoyed throwing in a couple of surviving Jews. Once on the truck, the would-be new Siberian residents decided to jump and run at the next opportunity. And so, my father escaped for the last time.


He could not escape from the memories. For a short period of time he lived for revenge. I do not pretend to understand him, but I also cannot judge him. He walked the streets in search of Arrow Cross members.  He vowed that he would hit first and ask questions afterwards if he found one of those criminals.  And he mostly kept his word. One year after the war he recognized a man on the train, and he saw that the man recognized him, as well. He started walking slowly towards the man.  He could not reach him because he jumped off the moving train. He went to watch how all the major war criminals got hung. He offered to bear witness against those who were particularly brutal with the Jews in Labor Camp. The law said that at least two eyewitnesses were needed for  conviction. If a friend asked him to help, he even lied in court in order to secure a conviction. There were few Jews left who could talk for the dead, so he decided that it was his duty. Strange as it may sound, this was part of his healing process for the beatings, for living in fear, and at that time he believed it was revenge for his dead father.


He joined the Communist Party and he did believe that they would rebuild a better Hungary one without anti-Semitism. This angry man needed to fall in love to live a meaningful life.