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2-Rise of Hitler

Were you aware of the rise of Hitler?

Yes, we were aware, but I'll tell you something, I was too busy probably, with school and friends, and boyfriend, at that time—during school time—and working, to pay attention to politics. But my parents were worried some times, there were rumors. Only latter, after my graduation. I graduated high school 1940. It will give you a little historical explanation, this is when things started to happen to us, after graduation of high school.

When did the anti-Semitism become more extreme?

We knew that there is a Hitler. We knew when he came to power. I never read newspapers at that time. But by 1940—I will tell you the events of 1940, because it was already war time, right, by 1940 Hitler has asked our neighbors, the Hungarians, to be his allies. The Hungarians accepted, but there was a price to it. They got an award and their award was to get northern Transylvania to become Hungarian again. This is when everything changed for us. I graduated high school in June of 1940. I took my baccalaureate, which was a very strenuous exam, and had to be given in larger cities. I had to go to a city called Satu Mare—you've probably heard of Satu Mare Hasidism—which was about eighty kilometers from us—to take my exam. I was very happy that I finished with school. In September our whole area given to the Hungarians, and the Hungarians marched in. This is when the war actually started, with us. The war, not the Holocaust.

What was happening around you at that time with family, and friends, and your boyfriend.

In 1940 everything was still okay. What really happened, was after the Hungarians marched in, because when the Hungarians came it was already a fascist regime, and they tried to apply all the laws to us. There was a lot of discrimination. They came and every day there were new rules and regulations to make life of Jews more difficult. they came and they confiscated—in a few weeks or months they confiscated all the businesses, every Jewish store had to take a Hungarian partner, lots of people were fired, they lost their jobs. My father lost his job. Who would make life insurance during the wartime? He did life insurance for a so called Wernicke Company, from Vienna. Then some people were evicted from their homes because they needed it for offices. Then they decreed—when the Hungarians came and they took over the administration obviously—they decreed that Jewish children cannot attend anymore public high school. That was really a blow for the Jewish parents. Its important to understand that at that time in 1940, only two brothers were home out of seven brothers, and this will seal their fate, more or less.

In 1940 one of my brothers was already in Italy studying medicine. Another brother—want to know more about my brothers?—another brother went to Budapest to become an apprentice as a printer. Another one was already there. A third brother, I mean one brother, this was something very special—when the Hungarians came in, my little brother—my closest, he was one year younger then me, he was seventeen—he was very reckless and restless, and together with a group of students—friends—with a group of friends, they wanted to run away from the town, because with the Hungarians, the border of Russia came very, very close. It was the Soviet Union, and they thought that the Soviet Union gives a lot of chances for young Jewish men. So the group of young men—it was just in the 40's—they ran away, and they went toward the Soviet Union, and they had to cross the Carpathians. It was very difficult, but they got all the connections. But then it turned out that when the arrived in the Soviet Union, they arrested them and sent them to camps in Russia. But we didn't know this, we just knew that he left, and we never heard of him. In all the war years from '40 until my parents lived they thought that he was not alive anymore, that he must have died crossing the Carpathians, frozen to death. This is why my brothers were not home.

My two brothers who were home were Moshi, my older brother of twenty-nine who was very handsome, a very talented artist who made caricatures—and was in some exhibits before the war—of the important people of the city. He was the only one among the older brothers. Among the younger brothers, Yoncu was fourteen, he was too young to be an apprentice, so he was home. We were very lucky when the Hungarians came that Moishi and I could work. At the beginning, everybody needed the signs to be changed into Hungarian so we both worked on the signs. Then he got a job at the movie house and it was really a very happy fact because, not only did he enjoy his work, I also helped him very often. He made the posters, the placards—everything that the movie house needed, even slides. And then we could go to the movies—me and my mother—whenever we wanted because he took us in. And I helped him quite a lot.

But then when the things were cleared and the Jewish kids they could not go to high school anymore, the Jewish parents came up with an idea of what to do with the children to continue studying. So those who had money moved—went to other larger cities that had private schools—Hebrew schools—and they stayed in school—there is another name for it, not campuses—so they stayed in school. But those did not have money—most of them did not have—registered their children in those schools and they would study at home with a tutor and then at the end of the school semester they would go and take exams. Most of the children were private students and they needed a tutor. I became one of the most important tutors in the city because I graduated high school and I spoke Hungarian. And indeed, for years I was working with the students and helping my brother. I had students in my home, like a school, from the morning 7:00 the first student. They came in twos or threes or fours, depending on how much they could pay. This helped support my family, me and my brother. So there was a lot of hardship. You couldn't travel anymore. If they found elderly Jewish men traveling—they were in Jewish garbs—they throw them out of the trains. It was hardship.

Did tutoring make enough money for the family?

Tutoring? Well, tutoring—and he getting more money from the movie house—was really better than before. I remember it was the first time that I could buy for my little brother a suit from scratch, not only wearing the suits of the older brothers. Moishi, who was very handsome had girlfriends, bought two beautiful suits. You will see later on what happened to those suits. So we made good money and the students did very well in school, they worked very hard. It was strange that we didn't have libraries, atlases, nothing, it was just text books. But they studied so hard that they always passed. We worked hard. Until my brother Moishi was drafted, but you probably have some other questions that you want to know.

Anti-Jewish Actions

What were other anti-Jewish actions that affected you and that you experienced?

I'm getting to that. About one or two years after the Hungarians came in—it was, I told you a fascist government—they started to arrest young Jewish men, beginning the resistance. How much could you do? You couldn't sabotage the war, but they started look for the literature which was prohibited, like socialist and communist literature. The boys were taken, they were arrested and my boyfriend was among them, he was also arrested. And later on in the following year, they took them first to a Hungarian concentration camp—political camp. Then they brought him back for trial. He got five years. It was quite an event, right? He was under escort when they decreed the five years. If you want the story, the court house was the third building from our house—we lived on the second floor of a long building, and between us and the courthouse lived a priest, and there was backyard, and then came the court house.

I remember how—I was working then, I got another job, I was working for the local newspaper. It was a very fascist newspaper, but they had to hire a Jewish girl as secretary and a Jewish reporter as a writer. The manager of the newspaper knew how interested I was in the trials of my communist boyfriend, so he took me to the court when the trial was decreed. Then when they said it was five years, I ran to the corridor where the windows faced my building—my father was reading on the hall—and I waved him from the window until my father noticed me, and I told him, "Five," that he got five years. Now, just imagine, my father having an only girl waiting for her to get married to a man who is not a communist and who is settled and has a job and so forth, and now he is a communist in jail for five years. And then, I remember I went back waiting for the jailed boys to come and I ran to him and kissed him, and he left. Later on he ended up in a military jail in the capitol of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca. This was one of the things—in other words, they drafted the young men. My brother Moishi was drafted to go to the front. And those draftees, the Jewish draftees, they were sent to the front without being given uniforms, without arms. They were supposed to walk in front like scouts—in front of the German Hungarian army—to sweep the mines and to dig ditches. Many of them were hit by the mines, and were injured, and some even died. When Moishi was there he was lucky, the people discovered he was so talented. Officers asked him to stay in the office and make them all kinds of mementos for the war, so he really was not in danger. He got more food, and he came back just when we were taken to the ghetto.

cleaned to here

Then I was all the time with my little brother at home. This was the hardship of the year—we were worried about Moishi, we didn't know what happened to Yossie who went to Russia, we didn't hear about Miki—Michael, who was in Italy studying medicine. It's very interesting, many, many years latter I found that my brother—who was in Italy—I found a letter from my father, who wrote him at this time, and he talks about the hardship, and how I am working so hard to support the family because my brother was taken. He said, "Dori," this is how he called me, "Dori wanted so much to study, and she applied to Cluj—we know she will never enter, but why shouldn't she try." I have to tell you, when my brother was drafted we were very sorry for the job at the movie house, it was a very good job, so he went to the manager and told them, "I have a little sister who is a good draftsman, why don't you take her in my job?" And he took me! I was not good, I was very nervous about it, and since he was so smart and talented and so creative, he got from the manager the list of movies that would be coming, and he made me little sketches. So at least for a few months I had sketches, which is very good. But then I didn't have—by then I had learned the lettering, I knew how letters can cry, and letters can laugh, and letters can smoke, and letters can burn—those kinds of things. I remember some of the movies which came like Pinocchio, I remember how I did placards for Pinocchio. At the same time I could take my mother to the movies and my little brother. It was a dream job, under the circumstances.

Did you get to see your boyfriend while he was in prison?

At the end of this period—before the Holocaust—my boyfriend was Cluj and I went to visit him. My parents were very unhappy with me going to visit my boyfriend, but since I was the only breadwinner, they allowed me to go and visit him. I went with his little sister, Gugi, you will hear about Gugi latter. We went to Cluj, and I visited him. Luckily, those who were in the military—in the military jail—they worked at the city nursery, so everyday they took them to the nursery and there I could meet him at the nursery—they planted trees. So we could meet everyday. One day—he had some relatives in the city and they surprised me with an opera ticket to Tosca. I had never been to the opera so I went to see Tosca. You know the story of Tosca? Cavaradossi was the man who was jailed because he was for freedom—no, I'm sorry, Cavaradossi hid his friend who was a freedom fighter, and he wouldn't say where he hid him, so they tortured him. The beautiful songs when he's tortured and when Tosca is crying for him. I cried on my way because I thought of my boyfriend who was tortured just like Cavaradossi from the opera. It was my first opera. I didn't see him for a long time, before that and after that I didn't see him.

After you saw your boyfriend, what was the next major change in your life?

By then I was alone, right? I was alone with my parents. By then the fear started to grow because war had broken out in 1939—you know this—the Nazis attacked Poland and by then Czechoslovakia was occupied. There were lots of refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia who came to our place and then they were deported—those who were from Poland. We knew France was occupied. We started to hear horror stories. We knew that there were very bad things happening in Poland and in Czechoslovakia and all the other countries. We were sort of happy that in Hungary we were still at home. And probably, we were the only place in the whole Europe that the Jewish population was still home.

How did you prepare for what was coming?

I did not know what was coming, I did not prepare—until '44 nothing happened. I just remember that I had those friends and we were so eager to continue studying that we went to the library and got chemistry books. We still tried to study, but I was so busy with so many students in the house and with the movie house and—it's extremely—I was working very, very hard. And my father was so sorry that I had to—I remember how he was up at night with me when I had to prepare for the lectures for the following day. He tried—when I didn't know enough Hungarian, he looked in the dictionary how to spell this and that. He felt very bad that I was the breadwinner. I was only twenty-one, twenty-two.

Is there anything else before '44?

This is the period between '40 and '44 when war was going on, but we were still in Hungary. I really don't know—I still don't understand how the Hungarians were able to stand up to the Nazi's request to open the the doors because the Hungarians very much were the allies of Hitler. And apparently very often they came—Eichmann—came to Hungary to ask to open the doors. The Hungarians said something that they want to Jews to work for them in Hungary, not in Germany. We knew that something was going on, but not exactly—the political situation. I still have to find out how the Hungarians were able to keep the Jews a few more years.