Written by György Adler
For an Introduction
My parents come from different settlements in the country, but life brought them to Győr when they were young, they became citizens of Győr. They lived here for a long and important period of their lives. Everything that is about Győr, about the Jews of Győr, is also about them.
I had a beautiful and cheerful childhood. My parents sometimes talked about their family and the past, but very little about 1944-45. On the wall hung a picture of a little girl. When I asked about it, they would give me a short, reluctant answer: she had disappeared and never came back. I didn’t ask enquire further, and I didn’t ask why I didn’t have grandparents. I have no clear answer for not asking questions. Sometimes a comment was dropped: X was an Arrow Cross, Y was a good man, Z kept and returned the carpet… If a word about war or the camps was spoken in the company of adults, there was a deflecting, averting sentence: well, let’s talk about something else. Then silence. When Eichmann was captured, there was great excitement, perhaps even joy.
I lost my parents between 1978-1982. They left without ever having heard of the word Holocaust or the word ‘ Shoah’. Those were not “in fashion” then. The word deportation covered everything. The world has changed a lot since then. Surviving victims and sometimes contemporary outsiders have started to speak out. And I have grown old, and now I would like to recall seldom uttered sentences, to piece together memories, to record them. When I was young, and even later, there were people I could ask about my family from before 1945. I did not, and now I am faced with the irreplaceability of the answers I could have hoped for to the questions I never asked. How can I answer to my children and grandchildren if they ask?
As in many families, the suitcase that had long been put aside has turned up again. Letters, ID cards, photos, scraps of paper. From these and fragments of sentences from decades ago, I try to write my family’s story. There will be parentheses and question marks. It’s the only way.
The Adler family
The Jews of Kőszeg originally came from the famous Seven Communities (Seva Kehilot) of the Várvidék region, which existed until 1938. The seven villages were Kismarton (Eisenstadt), Nagymarton (Mattersburg), Lakompak (Lackenbach), Sopronkeresztúr (Deutschkreutz), Boldogasszony (Frauenkirchen), Kabold (Kobersdorf) and Köpcsény (Kittsee). Jews from the surrounding smaller villages belonged to one of these seven communities.
I can trace the written records of the Adler family back to 1834, to my great-grandfather Abraham Adler and my great-grandfather Max Adler (Mordechai). My grandfather, Simon Adler, was born in 1863 in Répcebónya (Piringsdorf), which was part of the community of Lakompak (there were six brothers and sisters, Simon, Lipót, Jónás, Zsigmond, Adolf and Amália). My grandmother, Röschen Steiner, was born in Kismarton in 1875. She and Simon were married in 1896. My grandfather had previously moved with four other brothers and a sister to Kőszeg, near Répcebónya. At that time they were quite poor.
The brothers mainly traded in crops and had little land of their own. Gradually they became somewhat wealthier. My grandfather Simon became a textile merchant. He became relatively better situated and respected, and soon became vice-president of the small community of Kőszeg. I have family photos of the Adler boys. No hats, no beards, no sideburns, just a serious moustache, like everyone else at that time, while they were very observant of religious rules.
Grandmother had a small grocery shop in Kőszeg, in Várkör, where she roasted and ground coffee fresh early in the morning for the waiting women. My father was born first, followed by his two sisters (Dóra, Riza) and two brothers (Elek, Ernő). He was the only one to survive the summer of 1945. Riza died of diphtheria at the age of 13, Dóra of pneumonia at 20, Ernő of kidney disease at 35, and Elek in a concentration camp.
Father was born in Kőszeg on 2 February 1898. The following is his story.
Schools
As the family was German-speaking, in 1904, before primary school, he was sent to relatives in Berhida to learn Hungarian. In 1916, he graduated from the Benedictine High School in Kőszeg. Yes, that was still possible at that time. World War I was already in full swing and students in military uniform were photographed for the graduation tableau. As a graduated conscript, he was trained in Bruck Királyhida (now Bruck an der Leitha) and as a flagman of the 83rd Infantry Regiment of Vas County, he ‘stood guard’ at the funeral of Franz Joseph (emperor of the time – ed.) in Vienna. What is more, he saw the then new Tschardasfürstin (operetta by the Hungarian composer Imre Kálmán – ed.) at the Johann Strauss Theatre.
The First World War
He was sent to the Russian front in Galicia. His company was lucky to escape combat. It was here that he first met Polish Hasidic Jews, which, as he often recounted, remained an everlasting memory. The image that he retained was of an old Jew in a caftan and hat resting on a roadside embankment, with a huge stone crucifix behind him. From Galicia, his company had been ordered to the Italian front, near the Piave, where bloody fighting was already taking place. They spent months in trenches and they wore handkerchiefs soaked in rum and tied to their faces to protect them from the smell of dead bodies. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, awarded a silver medal for valour and the Charles Cross. In 1942 he was ‘ceremonially’ stripped of these at the military headquarters in Győr, where he was personally posted.
When the Italian front collapsed, everything fell apart. He escaped being taken prisoner of war by the Italians. An acquaintance, a certain Antal Lehár, colonel, brother of Ferenc Lehár (Hungarian operetta composer – ed.), picked him up among the retreating soldiers on his horse-drawn chariot and helped him on his way home. He arrived in Szombathely full of lice and in wrecked condition, and was discharged and sent to Kőszeg.
In Kőszeg he helped in the business of his uncles (Lipót, Zsigmond and Adolf) until the beginning of 1920. His aunt “Mali néni” ran a kosher household. The brothers, I don’t know the reason, it will always remain a mystery to me, did not have their own family, but helped their brother Simon’s children in everything. She and her sister Dora lived with them.
Architect
In the autumn of 1920, he went to Budapest to enrol at the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Budapest, but the student pickets of the “Turul movement” and the “Awakening Hungarians” (extreme right political gatherings – ed.) who stood guard at the gate would not let any Jew into the building, even in a lieutenant’s uniform… So, he went to Vienna and enrolled at the Technical University there. His studies were supported by his uncles. At the end of 1925, he graduated as an architect. He always liked to talk about the happy years spent in Vienna. He fell in love with Vienna, its music and culture. The Anschluss was the turning point. The last sentence of Chancellor Schuschnigg’s farewell radio address on 11 March 1938 was: “Gott schütze Österreich!”
As a young graduate architect, he returned to Hungary. On 1 May 1926, he found a job with the Stadler-Hornek-Reich construction company in Győr. He said that ‘it was here that I learned how not to work’. A year later, he continued working for Ignác Bruder, a certified civil engineer and master builder, as a construction foreman. He was involved in the construction of a huge five-storey apartment block in Nádorváros, in Péter Eőrsy Street. Bruder, the owner of the company, died suddenly in January 1930; his grave can be found in the Jewish cemetery in Győr-Sziget.
From 1 April 1930, he became self-employed as an architect and contractor in Győr. He was now a real Győr resident, with friends and rowing companions. One of his first commissions was the redesign of the apartment building at 2/a Rónay Jácint utca in Révfalu. At this time, the economic crisis was already raging and he strongly advised the reluctant builder that the planned multi-roomed apartments for the upper middle class would not be leasable. Smaller ones were needed. “Well, but … Mr. Engineer, I don’t want apartments for proles” was the reply. Finally, my father’s arguments won the day. The two-roomed, apartments with a tiny staff room were all taken. “Mr. Adler, why weren’t you more violent?”, the landlord said accusingly.
As far as I know, years of labour followed. He was not bored. Orders kept coming in from factories in and around Győr. The Linum Tauszig Textile Factory was expanded, the Grab Max and Sons Linoleum Factory, the Perutz Cotton Spinning Company’s staff apartments in Pápa, the Yeast Factory in Ászár, the Alumina Factory in Magyaróvár were built under his guidance.
Among his residential buildings in Győr are the multi-storey Kiss J. u. 23/a, Aradi Vértanúk u. 13. and Árpád út 41. The ground floor of the latter was occupied by a printing shop with heavy machinery, now a clothing store.
Family life
He married in 1931. His wife was Manci Schwartz (Margit), the daughter of a textile merchant in Sopron. In February 1933, my sister Marianne was born in the Csillag Sanatorium. By 1934 he had completed his two-storey, four-unit apartment building of his own design and construction at 11 Dugonics u., on the upper floor of which his family lived and his office was located with a separate entrance. This house was also built in a simple Bauhaus style.
Years passed. With all the work, as he used to say, “only during the winter frost holidays could Manci and I enjoy a vacation, and in the summer I really worked my head off”.
Marianne attended the Jewish elementary school in Győr. In September 1943, with great difficulty, she was enrolled at the Count Albert Apponyi Girls’ High School in Győr. (Numerus clausus, 6% ceiling!)
1944
On 19 March 1944, he stood stunned on the pavement of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Avenue, staring at the German military convoy marching towards Budapest. “Pista” he said to his friend István Udvaros, the leader of the Social Democrats in Győr, who was standing next to him, “This is an occupation!” “But come on, my dear friend, Manó, what do you mean?! They are just marching across the country” was the reply.
I will not write about the events of the following months, about the scandalous world record of the collaborationist Hungarian administration. Many people have written about it many times. Many more have whitewashed it and still do.
The Jews of Győr were first rounded up in the Győr-Sziget ghetto and then, at the beginning of June, they were herded on foot to the barrack camp on Budai út. Here too, he stayed with his wife and little daughter. Around 10 June 1944, the Hungarian army came to the Budai út barrack ghetto in Győr and “were recruiting volunteers”. „Those who signed up for auxiliary labour service would have their families exempted from deportation to Germany” they said.
He made up his mind, applied in agreement with Manci and said goodbye to his wife and daughter in a couple of minutes. So, he first became a resident of the Igmánd fortress in Komárom, then a member of the 102/209 and 102/303 labour force units.
His loyal construction supervisor over the years, József Hambeisz, was brave and honourable. He rode his bicycle between the Budai út and Komárom. He carried the letters between my father and Manci. I don’t know the “how”. Manci’s letters have survived. They were full of hope, strength, optimism and total ignorance. She suspected nothing. Her last, pencilled, disappointed farewell letter was written on the night of 14 June: ‘We nevertheless have to go. The alarm is at four in the morning and we are leaving. But I am strong. You must be strong too.” Manci and her 11-year-old daughter arrived at their final destination with the second Győr transport on 17 June.
I can follow his labour service time because he corresponded with his brother Elek from Szombathely, also in labour service. Elek’s last letter was dated 7 November 1944 from Abda. After that he disappeared without a trace. My father visited Abda in 1945 when the Radnóti (a Hungarian poet – ed.) was exhumed. Maybe. But in vain… I learned the truth in 2011. Elek’s company was handed over to the Germans. “On 24 November 1944 he was registered in Sachsenhausen concentration camp under number 116509. From there he was transferred to Ohrdruf KZ. His further fate is unknown,” said the documentation museum centre there.
My father’s fate was more fortunate. He worked in the bauxite mine in Gánt. The commanding officers and the company’s soldiers seem to have been humane. One of them was the military officer, István Dobi from the small farmers’ party. Father befriended him who helped where he could. They met again after 1945. József Hambeisz faithfully followed him here too. He brought food and clean clothes. In November 1944, after the Arrow Cross’ coup d’état, the labour service companies under the jurisdiction of the army were abolished. They had to be handed over in groups to the Germans. His company was lucky for some reason unknown to me. He kept his ‘demobilisation ticket’ 1460/944 dated 19 November 1944, which meant the end of his labour service.
After liberation
From Gánt he set off for Budapest. A passing German military truck picked him up. Austrian soldiers were sitting in the back. They opened up to his impeccable Viennese dialect. “They hated Hitler, the bastard, a lot,” he recounted to me. In Budapest, he found refuge at 19 Dob utca, where several of his Győr acquaintances were already squatting. Somehow, he also got a ghetto security card, which gave him access to the ghetto day and night. But that was no life insurance either. On one occasion, the Arrow Cross troops broke into the house and took 10 or so people on the ground floor to “loading work”. Kata Tenner (later Mrs Vadas) from Győr, who was just stirring up some porridge there, suddenly made my skinny father duck down in the corner and put a big pot over his shoulders. A returning Arrow Cross was looking for him: “Where is the man with glasses?” “He went out with you!” was Kata’s reply. The men who had been driven out never returned. On 18 January the ghetto was liberated.
As an architect, on 22 January, he received a printed (!) identity card in Russian and Hungarian, “… indispensable at work, not to be arrested on the street, not to be taken to another job …”. The liberated Pest side was only slowly crawling out of the ruins when he was approached by the Pest management office of Magyaróvár Alumina RT. They knew him well from his work in the Mosonmagyaróvár. He was honoured, it was a real “kavod” (כבוד– ed.), to immediately receive perhaps 1 000 Pengő (Hungarian currency of the time – ed.) as an advance for future work. At that time, it was still an important amount. He bought himself some decent clothes and a handful of Versatil pencils in a doorway. He was already thinking about work.
On 28 March 1945, Győr was liberated. He returned home in mid-April. József Hambeisz somehow managed to keep his flat in Dugonics Street, which was empty, though after the bombings all glass windows were broken. It was not easy to get glass then. I remember that even in 1960 there were two or three pieces of glass in a window frame stuck together. The house across the street was bombed.
Waiting. He waited for his family to return. “I’m waiting for Manci and my playmate, ‘Mamika’, Marianne,” he wrote to his brother-in-law in Sopron, who had also escaped. I don’t know what he really knew, what he wanted to know, since the deportees had already started to return during the summer. The JOINT in Győr was assisting the returnees and those passing through. He got typhoid fever and was admitted to the hospital in Győr. István Udvaros, the local leader of the Social Democratic Party, who was then mayor of Győr, ordered nuns to his bedside 24 hours a day. He recovered. “It is not thanks to my wits that I survived”, he said recalling those months.
He survived, alone of his immediate and extended family. 47 years old at the time. His life was far from over after the terrible tragedy, but that is another story.
In 1946, the following names were carved on the back of my grandfather’s gravestone, who died “just in time”, in the cemetery of Kőszeg: father’s wife, Mrs M. Adler, Manci Schwartz (1910-1944); my sister Marianne Adler (1933-1944); my grandmother, Simonné Adler, Steiner Röschen (1875-1944); my grandfather’s brothers and sisters,: Adolf Adler (1866-1944), Amália Adler (1871-1944), Zsigmond Adler (1873-1944), my father’s brother: Elek Adler (1901-1944) and his wife Olga Koritschoner (1909-1945).
The photographs were provided by György Adler.
Edited and translated into English by Péter Krausz.
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