“… if he’s to be a Jew, then let him be a proper Jew…”
Dr Lajos Rothauser (1865–1944)
In this article, I draw primarily on an interview conducted in 2005 at Centropa (Centropa Foundation Archive) with János Menczel (1926–2023), a journalist and former prominent television personality, to highlight key details concerning his grandfather from Győr, Dr Lajos Rothauser and his family. The history of the Menczel family from Upper Hungary and that of János Menczel are both extremely fascinating, but here and now I have exercised editorial discretion with tact yet firmness: this material, albeit in fragmentary form, serves as a tribute to the Rothauser family of Győr. I have supplemented the excerpts from the memoir with information drawn from one or two other sources.
Péter Krausz
A Brief Overview of Lajos Rothauser
Artificial Intelligence (AI) summarises the information available on the World Wide Web about Lajos Rothauser as follows.
Dr Lajos Rothauser (1865–1944) was a renowned doctor from Győr who, from the years leading up to the First World War through to the interwar period, served as a Senior Medical Officer and District Medical Officer for Győr County, first on active duty and later in retirement. The story of his life and that of his family faithfully reflects the fate of the bourgeoisie of Győr at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, as well as that of the rural Neolog Jewish community.
He began his career as a district medical officer. In April 1911, he was appointed medical officer for the Tósziget-Csilizköz district of the former Győr County.
In 1913 (?), he was elected Chief Medical Officer of Győr County. Towards the end of his active career, he served as Deputy Chief Medical Officer and subsequently as Retired Chief Medical Officer of the county.
Dr Lajos Rothauser was not a theoretical research physician, and so he did not publish any independent scientific medical articles or specialist books. (MI) He spent his career not in the academic sphere, but in practical and public health administration.
His name is primarily recorded in official reports, appointment documents and policy statements in the medical journals of the time (epidemiological reports, vaccination campaigns, and official reports on the hygienic conditions in the Tósziget-Csilizköz district and on the inspection of public wells and abattoirs).
The Orvosi Hetilap and the Budapesti Orvosi Újság regularly reported on official news concerning him: In 1911, his appointment as District Medical Officer for the Tósziget-Csilizközi district was announced; in 1917, the Orvosi Hetilap reported that he had been appointed Honorary Chief Medical Officer of Győr County.
He played an active role in Győr’s cultural life and the Neolog Jewish community. He contributed to local charitable initiatives and supported those in need. As a respected, secular leader of the Neolog Jewish community in Győr, he wrote speeches, welcoming addresses and appeals for charitable donations. Contemporary religious newspapers (such as the archive of the Zsidó Szemle) have preserved his name as a speaker at ceremonial occasions and gatherings. (MI)
He married Irma Lengyel. They lived and practised on Árpád út in Győr. They had two children.
Their daughter, Olga (1899–1944) married Dr Félix Menczel, a medical doctor from Vágsellye, in 1925 (Vágsellye, Šaľa in Slovak, Schelle in German: a town in Slovakia, 75 km north of Győr – ed.). This is how the destinies of the Rothauser family from Győr and the Menczel family from Upper Hungary became intertwined. János Menczel, the author of the memoirs, was born of this marriage.
Their son, Dr György Rothauser, also chose a career in medicine and worked as a renowned obstetrician and gynaecologist in Győr (MI). As a specialist, he was a prominent figure in Győr’s healthcare sector between the two world wars. According to entries in the official Győr telephone directories and address registers of the time (for example, the 1943 Győr address register), his private practice was located in the city centre at 22 Árpád út. In addition to his private practice, he also worked at the Győr public hospital. According to historical documents from the Holy Trinity Hospital in Győr, he had been a member of the hospital’s medical staff since the early 1920s, where he established himself professionally.
Unlike his father, he also engaged with theoretical issues. He is credited with the study and lecture entitled ‘Defence against Abortions’, which appeared in contemporary medical journals and provoked significant debate within the medical profession.
György was also a renowned local Bridge champion and an active member of the local Jewish community; he played an active role in the cultural events organised by the local Jewish Community.
The family’s peaceful, middle-class life in Győr collapsed during the Second World War, following the German occupation. In 1944, the 79-year-old, highly respected retired Chief Medical Officer, Dr Lajos Rothauser, and his wife were deported from Győr to the Auschwitz concentration camp, from which they never returned. Their daughter, Olga, also met her death at Auschwitz, whilst their son, Dr György Rothauser, lost his life in 1944 whilst serving in a labour camp.
Grandson János Menczel’s memories of the Rothauser family
„My mother was born in Győr.
My grandparents lived in Győr. My grandfather was the Chief Medical Officer for Győr County. When the post of Chief Medical Officer for Győr County was advertised before the First World War, two people applied: one was Jewish, the other was a convert from Judaism. The Hungarian aristocrats who made the decision did not consider which candidate had what qualifications or experience; instead, they said that if he’s to be a Jew, then let him be a proper Jew, because such a person would not wish to sit amongst the gentry.
That is how my grandfather became the Chief Medical Officer. He retired in 1920, but even as a Retired County Chief Medical Officer, he remained a prominent figure. At that time, the relationship between the state and the religious communities was such that on public holidays, celebrations were also held in the synagogue, to which the county was always invited; and since my grandfather was the county’s sole Jewish member (office holder – ed.), he always represented the county in the synagogue, even after his retirement.
The Rothausers’ family life
My grandfather was a real gentleman; my grandmother wasn’t even allowed to work in the kitchen – at most, she could give orders – and, being a woman, she didn’t have a say in matters beyond the daily market shopping. She decided what we’d have for lunch, and she paid for these minor expenses herself. The potatoes, flour and firewood for the whole winter, on the other hand, were procured by my grandfather, as that was no longer a matter for a woman to handle.
In Győr, the cook and the maid were one and the same person. Only large families employed a separate cook and a separate maid, or maids, footmen and the like. Our family had one domestic help, who was called a ‘servant’ at the time.
My grandparents took their religion quite seriously. They were Neolog, but they still observed the various rules. In Győr, they had a separate Passover set of tableware, and my grandmother kept a kosher household. The only festival I remember, and which we always observed there, was Passover, when, as I was the youngest, I was the one who asked the questions. The truth is that back then – I think – I could still read the Hebrew text, but I can’t anymore. I don’t even recognise the letters.
My grandfather had his own house in Győr, and my grandparents lived on the ground floor. There were five rooms on the ground floor, arranged in the following order: the hall, the surgery – because it retained its function as a surgery, even though it became a study after my grandfather retired – the dining room, the bedroom and the so-called ‘small room’, which was originally the children’s room. Until my uncle got married, that was his room, but there were two beds in it, so I used to sleep there too when we were visiting in Győr. The first floor was, of course, just as spacious. It was initially rented out, but later my uncle had his surgery, waiting room and a bedroom up there.
My uncle was also a doctor, an obstetrician and gynaecologist. When he got married, he took over the whole first floor, and they wanted to live there, but nothing came of it. After a very short and unhappy marriage, he remarried in 1942. His wife was a Schnabel; I can’t remember her first name.
They had a Jewish wedding, but this marriage was also short-lived, though not through any fault of their own: after a few months of marriage, my uncle was taken to Ukraine (for forced labour – ed.), and he never saw his newborn daughter, who died in Auschwitz with her mother.
Olga Rothauser and Félix Menczel’s encounter
My father, Félix Menczel, was born in Vágsellye (Upper Hungary) in 1894 and died in 1983. My grandfather Menczel’s family only sent the youngest child to school, that was my father, who attended the Barcsay Grammar School in Budapest, then enrolled at medical school, whilst working and giving private tuition; he was a member of the Galilei Circle (an association of atheist and free-thinking university students in Budapest between 1908 and 1919 /Wikipedia/ – ed.).
Father was called up during the First World War; by then he was already a medical student, so he served as a doctor at the front for thirty-six months. He was discharged as a battalion doctor.
When he came home, he became a member of some medical committee during the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and after the fall of the Republic, the ‘Whites’ – one of those young men with a goose quill in his hat – stood in front of him on the university steps and said, ‘You’ve got the nerve to come here?’
He thought it wiser to walk away, given that quite a few people were dying sudden deaths at the time [see: anti-Semitic sentiment in the early 1920s]. He returned to what was, in effect, his family’s home, the Upper Lands – though not directly there, as he had not yet completed his university studies; he eventually graduated in Prague and Bratislava. He was subsequently appointed as a public health doctor for that region, in the district where his entire family and ancestors had lived. He settled in Vágsellye, which is the centre of the whole area, the district. There he became a doctor, and later a District Medical Officer.
My father was a left-winger. In his case, it was true that the word socialist derives from the word social. Because my father was capable of doing this: if a patient came to him – a poor person – he would write out a prescription and say to them, ‘This will cost you three crowns or three pengő; do you have that much money?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well then, here are three Pengő; go and get it!’
My mother, Olga, was born in Győr; my maternal grandparents lived in Győr (as has already been mentioned elsewhere – ed.).
When my mother was due to start primary school, she hid under the bed, and had to be dragged out from there so she could be taken to school. She was the cherished little girl.
Olga was matched off in 1925 [see: matchmaker, shadchan]. A member of her maternal extended family, Dénes, lived in Győr. He manufactured the so-called ‘Rodegum’, a name which stood for Rothauser Dénes Gumi. This was a type of shoelace made of rubber, so there was no need to thread it through the eyelets, as there was a small metal ring at the end, in the first eyelet, and you could simply slip your foot in and out of the shoe. Dénes knew my father from somewhere, and he told my maternal grandfather, Dr Rothauser, that there was a very decent Jewish doctor from Upper Hungary who lived alone. That is how my parents met.
Part of the story is that at that time my father … was invited to lunch with the Rothausers. They said that my mother had cooked the meal, though that wasn’t true. My father, however, went on telling the story for years that my grandfather had accepted him because the doorbell was broken at the time, and he had used a screwdriver to put the wire back in place that had fallen out, thereby fixing it. My grandfather expressed his admiration for technology in this way: ‘… anyone who can fix this has done more than if they’d performed brain surgery.’
I was born in Győr in 1926, because my mother went home there; her father was Chief Medical Officer, her brother was the town’s best obstetrician and gynaecologist, and the sanatorium where my uncle’s patients were staying was in the house next door. So, it was more convenient for her to give birth in Győr rather than at home [in Vágsellye].
János Menczel remembers his mother, Olga Rothauser, and his stays in Győr
My mother, who came from a religious family, ran a kosher kitchen and observed the Jewish festivals (in Vágsellye, in the Upper Lands, even after her marriage – ed.). In the countryside, it was customary for relatives and friends to drop by on Saturdays for a cup of coffee or some cake or whatever. My mother prayed too, and I even had a bar mitzvah. We went to the synagogue, but the Jewish festivals left no lasting impression on me. We observed the holidays, but certainly not for multiple days. So we didn’t sit there for long in the synagogue. This was back in Czechoslovakia [see: First Czechoslovak Republic]; in rural society there, so to speak, it was expected that a Jewish boy should have a bar mitzvah. …
However, in the village, the peasants would always bring the doctor a piece of meat from the slaughter to taste. What happened was that my father bought himself a separate plate, a knife and a fork, whilst my mother bought a separate pot [see: dietary laws]. And whenever there was something like that, my mother would carefully cook it in that pot. Potatoes could only be added by using the kosher spoon to fish them out of the pot, shaking them over the plate – you weren’t allowed to touch them directly. And I would wait with hungry eyes whilst my father ate, because afterwards I would be given that plate and that knife; there was only one set like that. Later on, I got another one: … I bought myself a plate, a knife and a fork, … and left them with my uncle, Dezső Menczel, who was the chairman of the Jewish community, saying I’d come back for them – we used to get together regularly with his son and daughter. They were my cousins, so to speak: my ‘designated siblings’, because I was an only child. When I went back for the plate, my uncle said that they were coming to see Mum the next day anyway, so they’d bring it with them; I should just leave it there. I left it there.
My mother had her – and I say this in inverted commas – ‘visiting day’ on Saturday afternoons. That’s when relatives and friends, specifically Jewish people, would come round for a coffee and some cake. On Saturday afternoon, my uncle, the chairman of the Jewish community, turned up with my other uncle, Sándor Menczel, who was the chairman of the school board. They stood solemnly in front of my mother and, in a ceremonial speech, announced that her son was so religious that he had asked the Jewish community for a genuine kosher plate and fork. They opened the parcel, and the bottom of the plate was stamped with all the congregation’s seals. This shows a certain light-heartedness; they were joking. They knew why I needed it; everyone knew.
I spent my childhood alternating between Vágsellye and Győr. I used to go home to Győr; as a child, my motto was: ‘How lucky I am – I’m just travelling home from home.’ Because Vágsellye and Győr were both home to me. When I was at school, if there was even just a three-day break, we’d head straight to Győr. In fact, my real circle of friends was in Győr, as we always spent the school holidays and the summer there, unless we were on holiday at Lake Balaton or visiting relatives in Budapest, and later on, going to the theatre or the opera from time to time. I have so many memories of Győr that it is people from Győr in Israel who keep track of me, thanks to my mother and because I spent so much time there. There isn’t even a Vágsellye group there, as hardly anyone from that town is left, but there is a Győr group in Israel. And I regularly receive their newsletters, albeit sparingly. These now increasingly consist only of news of who has died, since we are the survivors.
Győr had a very nice swimming pool. A proper swimming pool – I can’t remember exactly how many metres long it was, but I think it might have been fifty. We used to swim a lot; back then I even swam a thousand metres a day. My grandfather gave me a season ticket, so I didn’t even have to pay. But the whole group was like that; almost everyone had a season ticket. It’s actually understandable that the circle of friends of the county chief medical officer’s grandson consisted of children from well-off, assimilated Jewish families. We’d walk together in the evenings along Baross Street, which was the main street back then. And we had a great time chatting and messing about. Later on, we’d sometimes have a drink or two. We didn’t get drunk, but there was certainly some alcohol involved.
That was the group of friends – boys and girls mixed, of course. And the usual childhood crushes, naturally. I hardly had any time for that in [Vág]Sellye. After all, there was school there; I had to study. Love was in Győr. A love story began when I was about fifteen or sixteen. It’s typical of a young girl’s innocence that once, when her friend’s parents weren’t at home, the four of us – because the other girl had a boyfriend too – went up to their flat. The two girls sat on our laps and we kissed. Afterwards, they panicked, wondering if this might result in them having a baby.
We went for walks, to the swimming pool and to the café, and we visited each other’s homes. What they call a ‘party’ today was back then called a ‘get-together of youngsters’, and our mums would organise these events, to which they’d invite the boys from our circle – about six or eight of them. Strictly only until dinner time. It was an afternoon gathering. I could sometimes go for a walk in the evening, but nothing out of the ordinary. I didn’t go to cafés; I felt I was still too young for that, and I didn’t feel the need anyway. I went to the cinema very rarely. I was never really a cinema-goer.
I didn’t go to the synagogue in Győr. My grandfather accepted that my father was bringing me up differently. The enlightened intelligentsia of the interwar period didn’t seek to bring up their children in a religious spirit. I, too, was given philosophical ideas about religion rather than faith. I learnt the art of social hypocrisy: you have to go to synagogue on every holiday, because what would people say?! I’m actually glad of this: it was probably then that I developed a lifelong aversion to hypocrisy, and I subsequently endeavoured to organise my life on my own terms.
I read a great deal. Whenever I was staying with my uncle in Győr and a patient came to see him, I’d go into his room, where there was a bookshelf above a chaise longue; I’d take something down and read it. In 1945, I found my reading list, because I was such a well-behaved little boy and I’d kept a list like that. Among the poems, if I remember correctly, there were two hundred poets listed – there were anthologies amongst them too, so it wasn’t necessarily two hundred poets’ individual volumes.
I loved poems very much. Like every child, I suppose, I wrote them too, of course. Sholem Asch, Egon Erwin Kisch, Attila József, Jiří Wolker: these were the ones my father first put into my hands [Sholem Asch (1880–1957) – a Yiddish novelist and playwright of Polish origin; Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948) – a Czech journalist and reporter who wrote in German and travelled the world as a correspondent; Jiří Wolker (1900–1924) – a Czech poet and playwright. – Ed.]. I still have one of my old books with a water-stained cover: the German edition of Salom Asch’s novel “Moskau”. It was published in 1930. My father gave me this volume a very long time ago, and I read it in secret so that no one would see me, especially not my mother. Then one day I hid it poorly; she found it, and it turned into a serious family row. She didn’t even tell me off, but rather my father, asking why he was putting political books into my hands.
Reading and the radio. My father listened to the news regularly; I mostly listened to music. We were always listening to Budapest 1 at the time, which played the national anthem every noon, but in Czechoslovakia this wasn’t such a problem that our national anthem could be heard loud and clear through an open window in the summer. So what? Everyone knew we were Hungarian. There was no need to hide it.
Fragments of memories relating to Győr by János Menczel, a forced labourer
…
As for us, however, who stayed behind, we were crammed into a railway carriage (this took place in Budapest – ed.). There were eight or ten of us young people who wanted to escape, despite the barbed wire on the windows. The train stood in Kőbánya for a whole night, so we could easily have slipped out, but the older people wouldn’t let us. They were afraid. Because if we escaped, they’d be decimated and held to account, and I don’t know what else. …
It took eight days before we managed to convince them that it really didn’t matter. We were past Győr, at a place with bad memories, in Abda [in 1944, many forced labourers driven westwards from the copper mines at Bori were shot dead here by the Germans (including Miklós Radnóti). – Ed.], where we pried open the window and the first two lads jumped out. The last carriage was occupied by the gendarmes. We heard something; I looked out and saw that they were using searchlights from the last carriage, and those two boys were shot. So, we had to wait. We passed through Abda station; after that it got dark, they weren’t using the searchlights anymore, so let’s get out!
I knew it was dangerous to walk through the meadows and woods, because that would obviously mean I was in hiding. So, I went out onto the country road. I’d been trudging along the country road for quite a while when I heard the rattle of a carriage. I turned round to have a look: it was the milkman. I stopped, he stopped too, and he said, ‘Are you off to Győr?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, hop in!’ I jumped in.
I was lucky with the milkman; I’ve no idea if he suspected anything – he couldn’t have known for sure, but he might well have suspected who I was. He told me that things were really bad in Győr at the moment, because, for example, there were gendarmes at the station, and anyone who went there was asked for their papers; what most people did was head out to the petrol station on the outskirts of town, because that’s where lorries usually stopped to refuel, and they’d get a lift on a lorry for a bit of money. I was lucky with him in another way too. I didn’t know there was a checkpoint on the outskirts of Győr, but when we reached the guard’s hut, he shouted at the top of his voice, “Milkman!”, and we carried on without a hitch, without stopping. Then, as he was going from house to house, he dropped me off, and I, avoiding the railway station as far as possible, made my way to the outskirts of the town.
I managed to get onto a lorry; I think it was heading for Komárom or a bit further on. In Komárom, I asked for a lift on another lorry. I’d just lied down on the flatbed when suddenly a whole bunch of Hungarian gendarmes got on board too. Good heavens! By then I’d had plenty of practice with the story, so I immediately told them – we were in Komárom – that I was a lad from Érsekújvár, I work in Pest, but my mother has fallen ill, so I’ve come home for three days; now tell me – since you know all about these things – what I’m supposed to do if, in the meantime, the factory has been relocated to Germany, and I’m standing here innocently as a fugitive? Tell me who to turn to, or where to go!
Well, they gave me all sorts of excellent advice; we got on really well, and in the end one of them even invited me to his flat and gave me his address. They dropped me off in the centre of Budapest, and the gendarmes took me through all the checkpoints. At that time, people were mostly just fleeing Budapest; very few trucks came this way.
…
The only members of the family who survived were those who were in Pest. That’s probably why I survived too. The only one who came back from Auschwitz was my father. The others were in the ghetto, just as my future wife had been in the ghetto as a little girl; there was a six-year age gap between us – I was eighteen at the time, so she was twelve [see: the Budapest ghetto]. My grandmother starved to death there; her son, my Uncle Muki, managed to get her out, but we buried her on the very day she was brought out. In a square, of course, because back then people were buried wherever they could. I don’t know where she is; she may still be there to this day – her son arranged it. As for visiting the graves: my mother has no grave, and I don’t even know the month she died in. I remember her on her birthday, because I know that.
…
I had a sweetheart in Győr; she was a Jewish girl too. I met a man from Győr to whom I gave a photograph; I’d written my sweetheart’s name and my address in Budapest on it. It was common knowledge that everyone from Győr had been taken to Auschwitz.
But she found me too. She came up to Budapest. Her friend came to see me, asking me to go with her on some important business; she said nothing more than that, and in the stairwell my sweetheart threw her arms round my neck. She whispered in my ear, ‘I’ve come back just as I left.’
Now comes a minor tragedy, which is nothing compared to those of the past, yet it is still a human tragedy. Having lived through this horrific era in two different ways, we had become such different people that we could not understand one another well enough for this love to remain love. He lived a subhuman existence as a prisoner in Auschwitz. If I say that a stray dog is a gentleman by comparison, I’m only coming close to the truth. I, on the other hand, was strong, and I had a weapon; I was able to resist. So, we simply couldn’t understand one another, because we reacted differently to everything. The horror of the camp was ingrained in him. Which means: fear of everything. As for me, I’d become more aggressive than I’d ever been – just as I am today. Because we didn’t expect to survive – so at least I’d send a few of them to the other world before I went myself.
So, I was filled with aggression, whilst she was filled with terror. In short, we’d become two people who were psychologically completely different. We said a very friendly goodbye, and I said: ‘If you need anything, send a telegram and I’ll come.’ Incidentally, the young girl went on to get married; they moved to Israel, and she’s been back to visit since then. She worked as a surgical nurse in a parachute unit.”
We pay tribute to the Rothauser-Menczel family.
The comments in brackets [ ] were added by the editors at Centropa.
Edit and English translation by P. Krausz