Author: Jewish Roots in Győr - Zsidók győri gyökerei Alapítvány, 1137 Budapest Szt. István park 20/a

For decades, Holocaust survivors rarely, if ever, spoke about their horrific experiences, even then only among close family and friends, never publicly. My parents were no exception. While today there are countless memoirs or oral history accounts, that was not the case in the past. Personal experiences were hardly ever reported in the media. I was, therefore, more than astonished when, in early 1984, upon their return from a holiday in the picturesque Giant Mountains in today’s Czech Republic, they told me that they had made a one-day train trip to Trutnov where my mother was a Häftling, a concentration camp prisoner, during the war. I was even more stunned when my mother sat down at her typewriter, summarized her memories, and sent them to the most popular women’s magazine, “Nők Lapja”. And to my greatest surprise it was published!

This is what she wrote.

György Polgár, a son of Gabriella Vágó

NOT FORGOTTEN

Nearly 40 years later, I returned to Trutnov, at the foot of the Giant Mountains, where I was a forced laborer. At that time, the town was called Trautenau, and the surrounding countryside was the Sudetenland. Where did I arrive from? From Auschwitz.

Not a Bite to Eat

On June 9, 1944, we, the persecuted were herded into cattle cars in Győr. An SS officer announced that we will report for labor service. The train didn’t stop before arriving in Auschwitz.

The horrors of the journey have already been written about many times. Everything was true. In Auschwitz, we marched by Dr Mengele and his magic wand. This wand – we did not know then – made the difference between life and death. I was lucky: with my mother, I was ordered to go to the side that meant life. We were first kept in a toilet barrack for two days, and later we were wet, cold, and starving for another six weeks. We slept on the bare ground when we didn’t have to line up for the “Appell” in the “Birkenau B Camp” barracks for hours. We saw the chimneys, and by then, we knew why they poured smoke day and night. We saw crutches stacked in piles and women kneeling, half unconscious. They most probably did something wrong in the eyes of the SS commandos. We feared the clubs, the dogs, the men, and women in uniform. Shyness and feminine vanity did not matter anymore.

In August, (we even didn’t know what day it was) the SS commando came to the block to sort us out. My only thought was not to be separated from my mother. I managed to stay with her because I had grown old in these two months, almost like her, although I was only 19 years old.

They tossed black clothes and a pair of sandals at me. We were forced into cattle cars again, but we were indeed taken to work this time. After a few days’ travel, we arrived at the town of Parschnitz on the outskirts of Trautenau.

We were taken to an empty, unused two-story factory building. It was furnished with high bunk beds. We were given mugs, plates, and brown tin spoons. We had covers – a blanket to be shared by two of us because two women had to sleep in a single bay.

We worked in the AEG plant in Trautenau. First, we had to clean, practically with a toothbrush, a freshly painted hangar, carrying two buckets of water for 12 hours without a bite to eat. At four in the morning, we were given some warm water they called coffee and 100 grams of bread. In the evening, we received a so-called “Eintopf” (one-dish soup), which was no more than a thin soup made from potato skins.

Yarn for Bread

I lost weight and was no more than 40 kilos. At a particular moment, my mother mustered all her courage and asked the “Lagerführerin” to transfer me to some easier work. Apparently, the woman was in a good mood because she did. 

From then on, I had to assemble spare parts for airplanes. My mother worked on a big machine. We met in the evening. Winter came, and we walked two hours a day to the factory and two hours back to the Lager. Wooden clogs replaced our sandals. The wooden shoes often fell off my feet from their weight when the early snow grew to several centimeters. I limped along with my comrades.

In our camp, there were political prisoners from Kistarcsa, internees, women from the cities of Hatvan, Miskolc, Mosonmagyaróvár and Győr. Polish women also stayed with us. They worked in the textile factory. We exchanged with them yarn and knitting needles they made for bread, so we had scarves and caps for the winter to cover our bald heads.

We went through various hardships. A commando came to take away the sick every two or three weeks. We never saw them again. Pregnant women were taken back to Auschwitz to be gassed. Several of our companions went mad. We looked after them as long as we could cover for them, and they stayed with us, but this couldn’t last too long.

Once We Get Home

From early spring 1945, we were not taken to the factory but to the nearby forest to dig a bunker. One day, we, desperate wrecks of women, who no longer cared about life, spotted a barracks camp when marching to the bunker site. Men stood at the gate shouting at us, showing the number 15 with their hands and fingers. As we dug, we asked each other what that sign could mean. Then, by chance, we found a newspaper clipping torn from some French journal. We read that Budapest was liberated. The sign language continued, and after five days, when the men flashed only ten fingers, we realized that they were indicating how many more days they thought the war would last. We learned that they were French and Belgian political prisoners. 

It was May. One day, returning to our barracks, we noticed a shop window displaying a black mourning ribbon on Hitler’s portrait. We could hardly conceal our joy. Walking along the center of the road – we were not allowed to use the sidewalk – we kept looking back at the display. A black flag hung at half-mast at the camp gate. From that day on, we hoped that something good would happen to us.  

From far away, we heard cannon fire. The next day they didn’t take us to work. For days we were kept locked up. No one yelled at us anymore. We talked and cared for our sick who couldn’t get to the “Revier” (sick bay). We dreamed of nice food. We decided that if we ever got home and ordered mille-feuille at the famous Gerbeaud café in Budapest, we would sit at the table next to the lavatory, remembering the two days we spent in the Auschwitz latrine, being fed with slop from a bucket.

On Our Way Home

On May 7, 1945, at around five o’clock in the afternoon, we heard voices, together with the noise of heavy combat vehicles. The gate opened. A tracked armored vehicle stopped in the yard. Soviet soldiers got off it. They entered the building. By then, the Germans were nowhere to be seen; they had probably fled in the night.

Two young Soviet soldiers came in and greeted us. They told us that the war was over for us and that we were free. All the ragged women surrounded the two soldiers. We kissed them where we could and shook their hands. We saw sympathy in their eyes. They gave us some food. There was an interpreter, as a couple of women among us spoke one of the Slavic languages.

They asked us to strengthen ourselves for a few days, not to start the long journey, because the forest in the Giant Mountains was still full of Germans. After two days, we set off for home. In the Czech villages, the peasants put milk and bread in the windows of their houses. We realized that we were not the only inmates kept by the Germans; hundreds of political prisoners, French and Belgians, were also suffering in the camps of Parschnitz-Trautenau.

A Housing Estate at the Site

And now, after almost 40 years, here I was again! I looked around the streets of Trutnov, this small industrial town, walked on the sidewalk, not the carriageway. I asked a hotel concierge where the former AEG factory used to stand. When I told him why I was looking for it, he replied with much affection: he said it was close, within walking distance, and if I waited for a while, he would find the hotel manager to accompany me.

I found it by myself. It was Saturday, so the factory was not working. I explained to the porter, half in Czech, half in German, why I was bothering him. His tears began to flow. He remembered everything. He told me he was a schoolboy then and that they felt sorry for the prisoners but couldn’t help because they feared the Germans. He regretted that no one was in the factory because they would surely have let me in. He said I was the first Hungarian to come here since the liberation to see where we had suffered for months with our fellow prisoners. “I’m sure many of them are no longer alive,” he said.

We said goodbye and took a taxi to the former camp. The taxi driver drove us through the small town, and in five minutes, we were in Parschnitz or Porsici in Czech. We stopped. The taxi driver got out of the car with me in front of a memorial. We stood in silence for a minute.

A black marble plaque was inscribed that the Red Army liberated the political prisoners and deportees held here on May 7, 1945. “Their memory is being kept with devotion”, the inscription reads.

The camp building is still there but is empty and surrounded by a fence. A housing estate was erected on the site of the barracks. The driver told me he had fought some 50 kilometers from there as a partisan. He could not understand either why we had to march four hours daily, as it took only 20 minutes from the factory to the camp. Only the SS command could have answered that. 

I saw the woods where we were cold and wet. I saw the house where the German commander-in-chief lived and the fortified building where we had to dig a defensive wall.

The inhabitants of Trutnov-Porsici did not forget us. The memory of the dead is remembered, along with that of the liberators. Every year a wreath is laid at the monument.

The taxi driver hugged me. He didn’t accept a tip. He probably told his family about us that evening.

Gabriella Vágó

Translated by György and Viktor Polgár

From Csorna to world fame – Remembering Dávid Gestetner

A few months ago, I went to Csorna, 30 km from Győr, where I met the history professor of the Csorna high school that had entered two teams in the Jewish local history student contest launched by our Foundation. The professor kindly invited me for a short walk in Csorna discover the local Jewish historical sites. During the walk, he asked me if I knew the Gestetner Jewish family of Csorna. I said, not really, but that I had seen a copying machine with that brand name in an office where I worked. Well, that’s just it – my friendly casual guide confirmed – the inventor of the copier was born in Csorna!

This little recollection of Csorna inspires me to publish some details about the life and work of Dávid Gestetner. The source of the details not specifically cited is Wikipedia.

P. Krausz

From Csorna …

David was born in Csorna (1854-1939), the son of Zsigmond Gestetner and Regina Gestetner.  After his primary education he worked as a butcher in his uncle’s shop. At the age of 17 he left Hungary and started working in the Vienna stock exchange. His duties included copying statements and contracts at the end of the trading day. It was a very time-consuming job. That’s when he started thinking about a faster, more efficient method of duplication.

… to London

Gestetner arrived in London in 1880, where he received a patent for his first invention, the wheeled pen. A wheel pen is a device with a wheel with tiny teeth on the tip that leaves a broken line through a thin sheet of paper coated with wax that is to be forced through by an ink roller so that the same writing pattern appears on the blank sheet of paper underneath.

This invention became the forerunner of the stencil machine. Once perfected, up to ten thousand prints could be made from a single mould without any classical printing techniques.

With the advent of electricity and electric motors, the manual machine could now be ordered with electric drive. No special printing skills were needed to operate it.

Almost at the same time as Gestetner’s patent, Thomas Alva Edison in America also registered a patent for so-called autographic printing. This invention was then further developed and trademarked by Albert Blake Dick in 1887. An agreement was reached between the inventors’ companies. Under this agreement, Dick’s machines were marketed exclusively in the United States, while Gestetner marketed his duplicators in Europe and the rest of the world.

Continuing to perfect his invention, in 1906 he set up a factory in Tottenham specialising in the manufacture of stencil machines, inks, rollers and wheeled pens. The stencil machine became increasingly successful and the factory grew rapidly. It soon established an international network of branches to distribute its machines.

By the 1930s, the mass-produced stencil machine had dominated the market for reproduction machinery for 40 years.

Modern times

However, in the 1970s, photocopiers appeared on the market. From 1973 onwards, a company founded by Gestetner also marketed such machines. This was the beginning of the decline of stencil machines. At this time, Gestetner had 52 subsidiaries worldwide, selling and servicing machines in 153 countries. Management of the company was taken over by the founder’s son Sigmund Gestetner and his sons David and Jonathan. In 1996, Gestetner’s interests were acquired by the Japanese Ricoh Group. Today it is part of the NRG Group, but some of its products still bear the Gestetner brand name. Its main activity is currently the distribution of digital office reproduction machines and systems.

Social effects

The stencil duplicator provided individuals with a means to produce their own uncensored and uncontrolled ideas and distribute them in public places (near factories, churches, government offices, parks etc.). Previously, producing mass numbers of copies required the co-operation of owners of printing presses, which required a large amount of capital. Owners of presses would not agree to publish opinions contrary to their own interest. In many countries, the stencil and later the modern copier became an indispensable tool for major social movements and changes. It literally was the paper-based internet in the development of which Dávid Gestetner has made an invaluable contribution.

Sources:

Wikipédia és Wikipedia

Wikimédia

Magyar Nyomdász

The misadventures of a Medical Doctor from Győr in the final days of World War 2

In the first part you learnt why and how the diary is born, in the second one you discovered that German and Hungarian military units couldn’t resist the Russian advance, bombs were dropped even during the Christmas holidays, a good pair of boots was worth its weight in gold and a doctor could help those in trouble anywhere and anytime. In part three you read about occasional forced work hours, the tampering with their medical supplies and medicines, the adventures of the wandering troop in Székesfehérvár and their approach to the capital city.

Let’s continue. It is already January 1945.

Friday, 12 January 1945

We set off on Friday morning, the terrible amount of snow that fell two days before has almost completely melted away and we arrive in Kőbánya via Soroksár, Szentimre, Szentlőrinc. On the way, we met a boy from Kőbánya who was on his way home and his family offered us lodging in one of their shelters.

Saturday, 13 January

We are on the road early in the morning, because we want to get out of the Pest area as soon as possible, where heavy fighting is still going on and the shells are still whizzing over our heads.

Right at the start we are caught by two drunk Russians, I am released as a doctor, but Laci Harmat is thoroughly stripped, his pyjamas, handkerchief and small items are taken away. …

Soon another checkpoint, but the ID we got in Székesfehérvár proved to be good this time and we were released. Around 11 o’clock in Rákosszentmihály, another checkpoint, here things don’t go smoothly, they search me completely, take my maps (Hungary and Fejér county map), my stamps, my flashlight and even my ID card and throw me into a room where about 30 people are waiting to be judged.

Of course, we immediately get acquainted, besides us there are two other people with similar ID cards, they come from Bori, Serbia, where they worked in a labour camp, and they are going to Pestújhely, because they live there. They are terribly desperate. We don’t like it either, but what can be done, given the forced rest, we eat.

After about two hours, a Russian soldier with no insignia, who later turned out to be a G.P.U. captain, escorted four of us to a neighbouring courtyard, while the others, whose number had grown to at least 50, were lined up by armed guards and sent on their way to who knows where. I am the first to be called in and duly debriefed, then interrogated in detail. Where I have been, what I have done, from where to where, how I have been treated, etc.

While the others are being interrogated, I take the opportunity to wash myself thoroughly at the fountain in the yard. The sun is not shining, it is very cold, the temperature is around freezing.

During the interrogation I make the acquaintance of a Russian subaltern, with whom I have a long conversation, hand and foot, using a dictionary, which resulted in giving him a bottle of … that I had obtained from the pharmacist next door. As a token of his gratitude, the Russian brought me 4 pieces of cut meat, which I of course shared with the others, so we ate again.

After we had all been interrogated, we were escorted back to the building next door where we were being searched and now, we were placed in the inner room where there two tailors were already staying with moustaches. They have been working there for 3 days. There was a stove in the room, so we were immediately thoroughly warmed up. Since the house had a wooden fence, there was no lack of firewood, and I, as the eldest, fed the fire.

The only inconvenience was that there were Russian batteries set up about 200 m away from us, and the firing of these batteries was accompanied by a constant shaking. It was getting dark and we were hungry again. When the G.P.U. Lieutenant came in, we asked to be fed. He then arranged for us to be given bread, which we badly needed, as our stock was completely exhausted. We lay down on the parquet floor and slept very well …

Sunday, 14 January

In the morning we were given bread again, washed at the well and went back to the inner room, where an interrogation of those present took place in front of us. When about fifty or so people were collected, as they had been yesterday, armed guards took them away again. Towards noon, the G.P.U. Lieutenant came, brought our papers back and let us go. We asked him to write a few lines on our documents so we wouldn’t be caught again, but he refused. I have usually found that they are very difficult to provide anything in writing.

We set off at a fast pace and, following the instructions received from our friends from Pestújhely, we headed for Fót, as it was a shortcut to Vác. We managed to get on a Russian car heading for Vác and we were already making far-reaching plans for what we were going to do in Vác in the early afternoon when in Fót a Russian female traffic policewoman forced us off the car and even trashed our luggage.

There was a beautiful, mild and sunny afternoon and we continued our journey towards Dunaharaszti – Alag, where we soon arrived and now, we were on the Budapest-Vác Road. Given the sad experience, we try to avoid the traffic police … Soon we were reached by a gypsy family, who came in a cart and allowed us to put our belongings on it. Now relieved of our luggage, we continued our journey at a brisk pace and arrived in Sződliget in the dark of the evening, where we immediately went to the police station. With the help of the police, we were given a room and rested our weary body on a wide hammock. …

Monday, 15 January

In Sződliget, the situation is quite dangerous, because people are being caught on the road and taken to robot (Russian word meaning “work”, in this case “forced labour” – editor). … Accompanied by a policeman, we reach the highway, where we continue our journey towards Vác. Soon we arrive at the Vác-Hatvan crossroads, where we can see the Russian policeman and some soldiers from a distance, but there is no other way, we are forced to go in their direction. Identification, the pass is good, but we have to go to robot, this time to help reconstructing a railway line.

I desperately insist that I’m a doctor and my legs hurt…, but the soldier puts us in line and we leave for the workplace. The workplace is about 3 km from the crossroads and when we get there, after unloading our luggage at a railway station, we are told that we have to remove the railway tracks because the Germans have destroyed them and we have to put them back in place again. Nice prospects! For the time being we wait and wait, I don’t like this situation one bit.

A lieutenant comes along, I show him my paper, he nods, and says harasho, harasho (Russian word meaning “alright” – editor) but he can’t relieve us, only the captain can. I look for the captain, he’s nowhere to be found, meanwhile the train arrives bringing the rails but the train did not stop where it should have done, so that the rear wheels of one of the wagons jumped off the rails… How lucky we were.

And the two of us started going back and decided that whoever asked, we would say that the officer had told us ydy damoi (Russian expression meaning “go home” – editor). We luckily avoid three working teams, quickly take our belongings from the guardhouse and just as we were leaving the guardhouse, we ran into a Russian patrol. Of course, we are immediately checked, we show our documents, but they don’t want to let us go and as soon as they see my medical bag, they start searching for Sulfidin. They don’t find it, but they take away a significant part of my bandages. In the meantime, I wink at a young Russian who understands and shows us out. We ask him to escort us a long way, and then I give him 20 pieces of Sulfapyridine tablets with a sore heart. Unfortunately, everything has a price and only later did I realise what a high price I had paid!

We quickly head back and now have an unobstructed crossing at the road junction. Soon we are at the Vác police station where we are given a Hungarian-Russian language pass to travel to Párkánynána, the Vác police cannot issue a pass further than that. We make the pass signed and stamped at the Russian headquarters, now we have the Russian stamp and we are on our way.

We are in the outskirts of Vác, when a Russian car stops and the captain asks where Nagymaros is and if there is wine there. I say I know the way, but whether there is wine I cannot answer. I tell him, it’s 13-14 km away and I can show him the way if he wants. The Russian agrees and we climb on board the car and set off towards Nagymaros. It’s cold on top of the vehicle, but we resist the temperature heroically, and make the 3-hour journey in about 20 minutes, … before we had caught a cold we had arrived. The Russians’ information was correct, because they had indeed found about 30 barrels of wine in a restaurant along the Danube. As we guided them and helped them to tip the barrels, they filled our bottles. The Russian was pleased and so were we, for having come so far! The wine turned out to have fermented and we couldn’t drink it, but the Russians must have drunk it.

In the street we are wondering where to find a place to stay, when an elderly lady comes by and, when asked, she says that we can sleep at her place if we are not afraid of the Russians. We take the risk, and soon we are sitting by a burning stove, eating, having milk, then cooking potatoes and having a delicious dinner. … Laci goes on a reconnaissance expedition, some pickles are found, and under the bed we find beautiful apples, a full basket and of course we pick a few, but leave the rest there.

Tuesday, 16 January

Starting from Nagymaros, we take a scenic route to Zebegény, where we deliver a message to Brulik bakers. We were given a good lunch and a two-kilograms loaf of bread on departure.

We hear bad news from people on the road, there are Germans in Esztergom and they are constantly shooting at the Helemba-Garamkövesd road. The front is right in front of Párkány and the rumours that Komárom has been captured by the Russians are lies. But we go on blindly, driven by the desire to go home and hope that the (Russian) troops released at Pest will push the front further. We want to be at their heels and follow them immediately. 

We arrive in Szob, then cross the bridge over the Ipoly and reach Helemba at around 15:30. We find some quarters for the night when we hear that the road to Garamkövesd has been mined by the Germans to the point that it is not passable during the day. This would be the only way to get to Parkany. We get our things together and pack our bags to take advantage of the evening twilight to get to Garamkövesd yet by the end of the day. It’s supposed to be at an 8-km distance, but it seems we are very tired, because we can hardly walk at the end. Right at far edge of the village we find a house where we can stay for the night.

Apparently, it was all the same now, I slept on a sack full of corn stalks, I could sleep, I even slept well, but when we woke in the morning we immediately packed and moved on. Going through the village, we reach the Garam military bridge, but here the guards won’t let anyone through, supposedly in a day or two crossing will be allowed, but not now. Nothing can be done about it, we have to go back and take shelter in a nearby house, just in case if crossing the bridge becomes possible.

In the meantime, one of the policemen asks me to see the local doctor because he is sick and needs some medicine. I go to see him, he is in a terrible state of neglect, his flat and consulting room have been ransacked, he himself is dirty, neglected, full of wailing and lamentations. What should we say then about our own affairs?

With the assistance of the entire population of the country, the Hungarian authorities took everything from us and made people, who had worked all their lives, into outcasts, condemning them to definite perdition, showing no mercy to anyone, from the infant suckers to the elderly. Yeah, that was different, we didn’t mean it, that’s what they say now, but … with very few exceptions, everyone stole and looted the Jewish stuff they could get their hands on!  The Russians were much better than the Hungarian gendarmes and at least they didn’t make exceptions. They take the watch from the Jews just as they do from the Christians.

I myself have been through a lot, the result of 16 years of my medical work has come to nothing, but as long as I can work, I will not despair. They cry and cry for mere material goods, but they are at home and their relatives and brothers are at home, but what about our relatives, where are they? I could go on and on about this, but that is not my intention, I intend to write the story of my wanderings.

Soon, I leave the ‘kind’ colleague and manage to get my shoes repaired in a Russian schusterei (German expression meaning “shoe repair shop” – editor) and return to my lodgings. After lunch, we noticed that civilians were being allowed across the bridge, and we immediately rushed over and managed to get across. We couldn’t take the highway because the Germans were shelling it so we took the Nána road to Parkany.

On the Nána-Párkány road, as we passed, I met Lajos Perlblum, with whom I had been together in Óbarok for quite some time. Both of us are thoroughly surprised, we greet each other stormily and slowly tell each other our stories. It turns out that he had simply been forgotten in Parkany to help the civilian population. We go to his place and enjoy his hospitality for two days. He lives in Dr Hermann’s doctor’s office in Parkany, or rather in the basement, because there are constant shots fired. We also move into the basement.

Wednesday afternoon we meet a nice, friendly, kind-hearted Jew from Parkany, who was hiding from the Arrow Cross in the area and has already returned home together with Ödön Schatz, who welcomed us with great joy. He has already taken under his protection two women and a boy who escaped from the Komárom ghetto and hid somewhere. They are currently living in the Tóths’ shelter. … they have decided to move to Uncle Schatz’s house, but here they are afraid of the Russians. Uncle Schatz thought that I, as a doctor, could protect them, and indeed I succeeded to do so during my stay in Parkany. The next morning, two more former forced labourers, also from Komárom, arrived at our place. They escaped from their troop in Győr, joined the Slovak partisans and fled from there to Pest, where they managed to survive with false documents until the Russians reached them.

(Photos are for illustration only.)

The end of Part Four.

And don’t miss the fifth, in which you’ll find out how a doctor managed to get food in hard times, what the war situation was like on the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border, and how much Uncle Ödön Schatz’s hospitality meant. They arrive in Pest, where they meet many of their fellow citizens from Győr.

Reflections by Les Sichermann on intertwined life stories

We are honoured to present Les’ writing here-below. His path is written in regular fonts and that of Albert in italics.

P. Krausz

I am fortunate to live in an era of relative peace and prosperity and cannot fathom the ravages of war that impacted my previous generation who still live with the memories of death and destruction. I have never enlisted with the military, whether it be the Korean War, Vietnam War or any Canadian mission requiring active military service.

When I left Hungary in 1956 as a six-year-old, I remember Russian tanks rolling by our apartment while picking up empty shell casings left behind as a result of skirmishes between Russian troops and Hungarian resistance fighters. That was my only perception of war on any appreciable level. My parents unfortunately were the benefactors of the horrors of the Auschwitz’s death camps and later refugees of the Hungarian Revolution. They had eleven years to recover following WW2, only to be thrust into the fallout of another invasion that would likely impact their livelihood and usher in an uncertainty under the Communist regime.

I am eternally grateful for the difficult decision my parents chose in leaving behind a country that had been their home and those of their ancestors for hundreds of years, allowing us the opportunity to begin a legacy in our new country, Canada, that I have the privilege to cherish.

A reluctance to relate their war experiences is understandable. No one can fully appreciate the years of suffering and indignities they must have endured unless one was present as a witness. My references to their experience are but anecdotes gleaned from books, movies, documentaries, and holocaust survivors. Unfortunately, I know very little about my parents who passed away when I was quite young.

November 20, 1940

Hungary has joined the ‘axis of evil’ (Hungary became the fourth member to join the Axis powers – edit.). They are now an ally of Germany but playing a dangerous game of deception; trying to appease both Germany and the Allies. My Father is 38 years old and has been teaching in rural Hungary. He is married to his first wife and they have a daughter. I know very little of his life before he married my mother, his second wife, after the war.

Actually, any knowledge of my father’s situation during the war, I can only surmise from events that were part of the history Jews experienced in general while living under a government complicit with their German allies. Doctrines, dating back to 1938 and even to earlier times, restricting Jews from participating in the economy were reinforced in addition to the introduction of a forced labour regime in the frontlines for Jewish men as soon as Hungary entered WW2.   

May 18, 1941

About 1700 kilometres to the west, a parallel universe was unfolding that would intersect with mine many years later. Albert Cox, a resident of Leicester, England, had just attained his teaching certificate and was about to go to war. On July 14, 1941, he enlisted with the RAF at Regent Park, London on Bastille Day. From 1940 on, Albert kept a daily journal of military events including adventures that took him to places such as Georgia, Alabama Halifax, Winnipeg, Estevan Saskatchewan, Trenton Ontario, and Italy; places visited that were part of his training regiment as a pilot and navigator.

“I was introduced to military discipline. My rank was AC1 (Aircraftsman First Class). I was fitted out in the traditional blue uniform that showed the world that I was a flyer in training by wearing a white flash in my RAF cap. We learned how to march and drill in unison, how to keep our buttons and shoes shiny, how to prepare for kit inspection, how to salute an officer, in fact, how to become a model soldier. My hair was trimmed short. There was a nightly curfew – and I received a pay packet about every two weeks. I forget the actual amount, but I remember that AC’s receive a mere pittance.”

September 23, 1941

Albert Cox sets sail from Liverpool in a beat-up oil tanker to continue his training overseas. He was given no information of his posting but told to report in Manchester then whisked overnight to Liverpool.

“…  It carried about ten aircraftmen as passengers. We slept in hammocks deep in the hold of this wretched smelly ship. …The crew eased our fear of the rats that scurried along the hammock ropes and sometimes over our reclining bodies, informing us that they were too well fed to bother with humans. Cats were in a cat’s heaven. Their natural enemies were fat and sluggish. We were a convoy of about a hundred ships, guarded by a battle ship, a cruiser and quite a number of destroyers and corvettes…We were drilled over and over again as to what we should do when the alarm sounded … and we had lots of alarms. It was a nerve wracking two weeks…It was about this time that I learned from one of the crew that our destination was Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.”

“In mid-Atlantic, we came under attack from U-boats and one of the crew estimated that we lost four ships from torpedoes. The destroyers darted in and around the convoy and on at least two occasions we were surrounded by a black smoke screen.”

“One fine afternoon when the sky was clear and the sea was calm, we were called to the deck by an alarm. We were being stalked by a German Condor aeroplane. The convoy’s anti-aircraft guns opened up. The Condor aimed a salvo of bombs at the battleship but narrowly missed. The worry was that we were pretty certain that the Condor crew had pin-pointed our position to every U-boat in the area.”

December 12, 1941

Hungary, after joining the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, declares war on the United States. Jewish men drafted into labour service were sent to the Russian front. I now recall my father’s inability to write properly as a result of an injury received from an exploding device during the war.

Many Jews converted to Catholicism in order to circumvent limitations and oppression.

September 23-October 7, 1941

“It took us two days or so to reach Toronto where we were met at the railway station by a convoy of RCAF vehicles that carried us to Maple Leaf Gardens. An ice-hockey game was in progress as we arrived… I was fascinated with Toronto and had a three-night affair with an attractive 30-year-old woman who I met at a Toronto dance hall.”

October 1941-July 1942

“We travelled through the states of Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, and Tennessee. Our final destination was the large American military base of Maxwell Field, Montgomery Alabama… It was all a completely new world to me. The meals were sumptuous.”

“The purpose of our three-week stay was to acclimatize us to the military expectations of the Americans. We were not impressed with the American version of discipline training… The menial tasks were carried out entirely by blacks… We were shown many films in all aspects of Venereal Disease which was rampant in Alabama. We were discouraged from having any contacts with blacks. We learned of the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. I found the inhabitants of Montgomery to be incredibly bigoted and racist.”

“Our Elysian life changed radically after December 7^th, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and brought USA into the war. Off came our suits and on went our blue uniforms. The training that had been illegal under ‘international rules,’ now became legal. We were no longer ‘civilians’ training to be pilots. The Americans were now our comrades in arms.”

After completing his training in the US, Al was transferred to Trenton Ontario and Estevan Saskatchewan where it was determined that a problem with depth perception ended his pilot’s designation and forced him to become an Observer (navigator).

“When I arrived in Winnipeg on July 1942, I was welcomed with a heat wave. … I put up in a rough, cheap hotel quite close to Winnipeg City Centre, Public Library, and there I met my future wife, Miss Frances (Tanty) Cronin. Tanty was an incredibly beautiful girl and I was completely enchanted.”

“I graduated as an Observer on April 2^nd, 1943, and was presented with my Observer Wings by the Commanding Officer with the famous Billy Bishop in attendance, who treated us to a pep talk. After the ceremony, Billy Bishop gave an exhibition of stunt flying over the base.”  

19 March 1944

Germany occupies Hungary and the Hungarian government orders the deportation of all Jews. My mother and her sisters are gathered from the surrounding regions of Győr into a ghetto of 5 000 people and transported to Auschwitz in cattle cars.

Once more, I am not aware of my father’s circumstances; of his physical separation from his first wife and daughter or the reasons for his survival. By the time mass deportation ceased in June 1944, just about all Jews in the countryside had gone. The final roundup of Jews in Budapest continued well into 1945, in spite of the inevitable liberation of Europe. Germany surrenders May 7, 1945.               

My father returned to his hometown, Csorna, Hungary, having somehow survived, only to learn that his wife and daughter had perished in Auschwitz.

In the meantime, my future mother and her two sisters survived Auschwitz and the “Death March.” They eventually made their way back to their home town and tried to pick up a semblance of their previous lives.

My father marries my mother who is from the neighbouring city of Győr.

I was born in 1948. We then move to Budapest and can visualize my first recollection of events as an only child in a happy household. Family members who survived the death camps joined us in Budapest. I can recall visiting my aunt, uncle, and cousin in Győr during summer holidays. I was immune to the impact my parents must have endured during the war years of 1939-1945. Post-war realities of bombed out buildings and bread lines were still evident under the Communist regime, who exacted a punishing legacy for Hungary’s participation in the war with Germany.

September 11-30, 1943

“My son Dennis was born in St Boniface Hospital on August 31^st, 1943. Now I held him in my arms for the first time.”

“When I said goodbye to Tanty at the end of September, the future was very much in doubt.  At that time there was no sign of any quick end of the war and the odds were that it would be years before Tanty and I would meet again. I’m pretty ‘hard’ but I cried when we parted.”

“We eventually arrived in New York City — but we had no time for sightseeing. We found ourselves on that great luxury liner—Queen Mary. We were but a small part of a large army of servicemen, mainly Americans… The trip this time took us fivedays. The Queen Mary travelled across the Atlantic at great speed without a single escort… the destroyer’s engines were not powerful enough to give the destroyers sufficient speed capabilities. We were relieved when we sighted the coastline of Ireland, and later Scotland…I was back in my homeland after a two-year absence.”

March 14, 1944 

Other postings and stops included Algiers, Catalina Sicily, Oran, Foggia and Zara Yugoslavia.

“We became a part of the D-Day Dodgers. We arrived in Naples March 15^th, 1944, and Mount Vesuvius welcomed us with one of the rare eruptions… We joined our comrades in 608 RAF Squadron and our role was to protect convoys, report weather conditions near the Mediterranean, carry out armed reconnaissance and take photographs for the army.”

“The greatest danger to our lives, especially at night, was the American fighter plane whose ‘aircraft recognition’ was appalling and the American pilots on a number of occasions shot down Hudsons when they believed they were attacking Junker 88’s.

“In the period after I had finished my pilot training, I survived over 200 takeoffs and landings in a 34-month period. I was fortunate.”

From 1946 to the summer of 1955

“We lived in Leicester.  During the period we added three more offspring to our family; Kathleen, Dale (Tony) and Shannon…In June 1955 Tanty and I went by train to London where we were interviewed for a teaching position in Saskatchewan Canada. I accepted the offer of a one-roomed school near Craik and so began another challenging chapter in our lives.”

1956 Revolution

We had become somewhat settled in our home in Budapest in spite of post war austerities, as a result of Russia’s political and economic stranglehold on the country. I began grade two in September when all hell broke loose in Hungary’s attempted withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Russia responded by sending in the Red Army to quell the uprising, resulting in several thousand dead.

My parents decided that they have had enough of the uncertainties that lay ahead and determined to leave the country before the borders became permanently sealed. My mother and I joined my cousin’s family in Győr. Under the cover of darkness, we assembled at the border with other refugees and began our walk across farmers’ fields, each family carrying a single suitcase with all their worldly possessions. My father and other aunt would later join us with legal documents at our destination. We headed toward lights on the horizon and were met by Russian soldiers waiting at the Austrian border. They had to be bribed with alcoholic beverages to let us through.

We came under the auspices of the Austrian Red Cross. Our first stop was in Strasburg’s refugee camp then made our way to Paris where we stayed with a cousin for six months, while waiting for a country to accept us. My cousin and I were enrolled at a private school just outside of Paris until Canada came through, giving us landed immigrant status.

On May 15, 1957, we landed in Edmonton then made our way to Saskatoon where we were assisted with accommodations and employment. My father and aunt joined us by way of Israel. Unfortunately, my mother passed away from breast cancer soon, leaving my 58-year-old father to look after me. Our family had a six-year stint in Montreal only to return to Saskatoon when opportunities turned up and our grasp of the English language had improved. It took my family about ten years of adjustment to be gainfully employed.

What happened to my father? When my father married my mother after the war, he was 20 years older. Upon me returning to Saskatoon to live with my aunt and uncle in 1963, my father remained in Montreal and died in 1968. By then, I was 19 years old. He had a very difficult time adjusting to Canadian life due to his age, but was an active member of the Montreal Jewish Community. He had gone to the hospital for a minor operation and never recovered due to some unknown complication. I only visited him during summer holidays. Unfortunately, I never really got to know him well. Most of what I know about the holocaust I learned from one of my surviving aunts that lived in Saskatoon. While my relatives were alive, I really had no interest in my past until much later.

Much later, I had a chance to visit Hungary (Budapest in 1971) on my way home, from a year spent in Israel on a kibbutz. (My second visit took place about 5 years ago also to Budapest, where I assisted the Red Cross in escorting an elderly gentleman from Saskatoon to see his long-lost daughter.)

Canada, 1955

“My first school in Saskatchewan was the one room school of Holmesdale, situated about 7 miles from Craik. We lived in the tiniest of teacherages with no electricity and no indoor toilets. Tanty and I and the four children slept in the single small bedroom… I bought my first car ever and drove to Saskatoon a number of times… My salary for that school year was $2 800 and that was supplemented by $9.00 per month for my janitorial services. I cleaned the school and looked after the furnaces. I was teaching children to read in the same room as I was teaching the grade 10 subjects to 16- and 17-year-olds. It was an excellent educational experience for it gave me a look at the whole wide panorama of education in Saskatchewan.”          

Canada, 1956-1964

Other teaching positions included a stop in Woodrow from 1956-1964 and Saskatoon from 1966-1986, followed by retirement. Albert served as an administrator on various boards such as President of Saskatoon Teachers Association, Commissionaire of Saskatoon Minor Soccer Association and President of the Nutana Legion. He was involved in provincial politics with The New Democratic Party and a guest lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan. He and his wife Tanty, also helped to raise four wonderful children.

My life from 1974

The year 1974 turned out to be momentous. Upon completion of my education, I received employment at the University of Saskatchewan in the Department of Agriculture. I was also active in the sport of soccer, playing for a team sponsored by the Saskatoon Nutana Legion. I can clearly recall the first time my team visited the Nutana Legion; listening to a booming voice with a Middle English accent, emanating from the lounge, I recognized Alf Bibby, our manager, sitting with the owner of that voice. Alf’s wife and a young lady were also at the same table. Alf introduced Albert Cox, the president of the Nutana Legion and his daughter, Kathy. Albert immediately brought us a round of drinks and the rest is history.

When I married Kathy in 1975, I was warmly welcomed into her family, having few surviving members left from my family side. It was truly a gratifying experience being part of a group of people that accepted me without prejudice. We have been married now for 48 years.

After my employment with the university, I was hired by the Saskatoon Police Service and retired after 24 years. Presently, I drive a school bus to keep busy.

I have 2 children and 4 grandchildren. I am an active member of my Jewish community and serve on its board.

Time and time again, I come to realize that my good fortune was a result of decisions made by my parents in leaving their homeland and taking a chance that life in another country such as Canada would provide greater freedoms and opportunities. As refugees, without knowledge of their destination or expectations of the life that would await them, one can only imagine the fears and uncertainty they must have felt in making this monumental undertaking.

I also owe a great deal of gratitude to Albert Cox who risked his life as an airman with the Allies, hastening the defeat of Germany and the liberation of the Nazi death camps. I also am grateful for the decision he and his wife made in choosing Canada their home as well having a daughter who has become my lifetime partner.

Finally, I thank Canada for accepting us unconditionally as refugees in our hour of desperation, but fear for the people of Europe, owing to dictators such as Stalin, Hitler, Putin and the like, that have supplanted democratic rule, creating historical refugee disasters. I am fearful of seeing Hungarian PM Orbán copying Putin’s style of ruling the country and shocked by his close ties with the dictator.

I think that I have led a full and fortunate life.

By Les Sichermann, Canada

The life of a physician-lawyer, Sándor Ullmann – Part Two

This is the continuation of Sándor’s life story, this time written by his daughter, Margie Ullmann-Weil, from the moment when Sándor arrived in Canada. Let us recall the first part of Sándor’s story while he lived still in Hungary in the darkest times of the 20th century published on our website under the title “A classmate had the foresight to provide him with a Nazi hat and Arrow Cross shirt”.

Read this exiting second part on how Sándor built up his personal and professional life overseas from zero.

P. Krausz

Margie’s recollections

My daughter, Savannah Weil, wrote a biography about my father based on her online research and from listening to taped interviews of him. Her biography covers his life in Hungary. I will attempt to provide information about his career and accomplishments, but more importantly, share information about the personal side of this most remarkable man.

He always wanted to be a physician. Instead, he started at the University of Pécs, Faculty of Law because it was the only university that would admit him during a time that Jews were banned from advanced study in Hungary. While there, he sat in on medical school classes. After the war he was finally able to go to medical school and moved from the University of Budapest to the University of Graz in Austria and finally to the University of Munich in Germany, where he completed his medical residency. He received his Diploma in Medicine at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in September 1950.

My parents met over cigarette rations. After the war Sándor and my mother, Irene (Irén in Hungarian) Steinberger, were both working at the Jewish Hospital in Budapest, he as a doctor and she as a nurse. My mother smoked cigarettes, he did not. Her roommate mentioned that Sándor Ullmann was not using his cigarette rations and so she knocked on his door.

They quickly fell in love and got married on October 5, 1948. As a side note, Sándor later became a cigarette smoker.

As you may recall from Savannah’s story, my father came from Győr. Irene was born in Fábiánháza (a village in NE Hungary close to the Hungaria-Romanian border), Hungary on February 19, 1927.

She was sent to Auschwitz on June 14,1944 when she was 17. In August 1944, she was moved to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp / Parschnitz work camp.

Parschnitz, located NE of Prague, was part of a complex of forced-labor camps established in the Sudetenland to supply workers for textile plants in Trautenau (Trutnov) near the Czech-Polish border. The women prisoners worked at the Hasse and Welzel textile plants manufacturing uniforms and gas mask parts for the Wehrmacht.

She was liberated from Gross-Rosen on May 8, 1945. In July 1945, she moved to Budapest and trained as a nurse. The only member of her immediate family to survive was her brother, Pinchas.

After the war Pinchas moved to Israel. There he changed his family name from Steinberger (which in German means someone from the stone mountain) to Avni (which means stone in Hebrew). Because of the change in name, it took my parents several years to find and reconnect with Irene’s brother.

In 1949 my parents were smuggled out of Hungary to escape the Communist Regime. They arrived in Austria and lived in Vienna for a month, and then relocated to Graz. In May 1950, they moved to Munich where my father completed his medical residency. My parents traveled from Ludwigsburg to Bremen Germany on March 15, 1951 then left Bremen by boat for Canada on March 27, 1951.

They crossed the Atlantic on the SS Stewart Bruce.  When my father filled out the immigration paperwork for Canada, he entered Sandor for his middle name (as he had no middle name), and listed Alexander as his first name. The English-speaking customs officials did not realize that Sandor and Alexander were, in fact, the same name.  From that point forward his legal name was Alexander Sandor Ullmann.

He arrived in Canada without speaking a word of English. He needed to pass the Canadian Medical Board exams, so he immediately began to memorize the English dictionary. It was quite helpful that he had a photographic memory. He set up his medical practice in Windsor Ontario.

My parents were living in my father’s medical office space when my brother was born in November 1951. They named him Stewart Bruce, after the ship that brought them to Canada. I was born in 1953. I was named after my paternal grandmother, Margit Gescheit Ullmann.  (The Gescheits were a large family from Salgótarján in the northern part of Hungary). Shortly after my birth, my parents bought their first home.

Judaism and supporting the State of Israel were of first and foremost importance in my parents’ lives. My mother was very active in selling Israeli Bonds. They traveled several times to Israel to spend time with Irene’ brother, Pinchas, who had settled in Karkur. They also spent time with Gescheit family members who had settled in Givat Ada. Throughout his life Sándor stayed committed to supporting Israel and ensuring survival of a Jewish homeland.

Life seemed quite promising. My parents developed close friendships. My father’s medical practice was successful. They did not have much money but they had fun and they traveled some. I have vivid memories of my parents sitting with friends and playing cards, often with Magyar Kártya (Hungarian cards). Sadly, my mother was diagnosed with granulocytic leukemia and died a few years later in 1959 at the age of 34 years.

After Irene’s death Sándor began to commute over the US-Canadian border to Detroit Michigan to pursue his dream of specializing in Pathology. During this time, he also maintained his medical practice in Windsor, Canada.

He met a woman through mutual friends in Montreal. Hanica Cohen was a Holocaust survivor from Romania. In 1962, they were married in the home of Sándor’s paternal aunt, Sari Ullmann Unger (Frigyes’ sister). Sándor adopted Hanica’s daughter, Sabrina, and raised her as his own. 

We spent many holidays together with Sari and her family. It is where I learned to speak a little bit of Hungarian and enjoy the smells and tastes of delicious Hungarian food. One of Sándor’s favorite foods was chicken paprikás with nokedli (paprika chicken with noodles). He shared with us that his mother always made him chicken paprikás on his birthday. He also loved Hungarian poppyseed rolls (mákos beigli) and we enjoyed them on a regular basis.

When Sándor finished his medical residency in Pathology, he accepted a job at a hospital in New York City. After only a year in New York, he made the decision to return to Michigan because he felt that it was a better place to raise children and because he had a large extended community of friends (both Hungarian and Jewish friends) there.

Hanica died in 1978. In January 1980 he married Faye Schrage Kleiff and helped to raise her two children, Marcy and Steven.

He had a long and satisfying career working as the Chief of Pathology at Crittenton Hospital in Rochester Michigan. He continued to work there until his death from chronic lymphocytic leukemia in October 1994 at age of 69 years. 

Sándor was extraordinarily generous in so many ways. When he opened his medical practice in Windsor, he made special arrangements with the owner of a restaurant across the street from his office to provide food to anyone who said I am Dr Ullmann’s patient and he told me to come here to eat. Long after he stopped seeing patients in the office, he continued to make house calls to neighbors and friends when they were sick. He was ever present and supportive for his two paternal aunts – Ella who lived in Israel and Sari who lived in Toronto Canada. The same was true for him maternal aunt, “Pici” (Olga Gescheit) Sunshine, who lived in New York. He co-signed loans for his employees and helped some of them pay off their tuition. When people wanted to thank him, he would say “please pay it forward and help out someone else when you can”.

Throughout his life Sándor loved to study, to learn and to teach. While in medical school he supported himself by tutoring students in Latin. At Crittenton Hospital he taught a weekly class for the doctors to help them know how to better diagnose different types of cancers. The hospital named the medical library after my father. He developed a program for new immigrant physicians to teach them English and help prepare them to take the Medical Board Exams in English. At Wayne State University he taught pathology to medical students. At his synagogue he taught beginning reading classes for adults learning Hebrew. He enjoyed preparing to be the Torah reader on Shabbat when asked.

He spoke many languages and loved exploring the origin of words. He always kept a dictionary nearby and was delighted when he would learn a new word. He loved getting to know people and he had a talent for learning much about a person’s life story, even in brief meetings.

He was a master Bridge player and he loved symphonic music. He loved helping people. He believed strongly in God and talked about his special relationship with God. He saw the goodness in people, and he was a great optimist.

In the addition to all these extraordinary accomplishments and traits, and ways that my father impacted the world, perhaps his greatest accomplishment was as a father. He lived the Jewish Value of “Tikkum Olam”, repairing the world, through his actions and examples. He was devoted, generous, understanding, and compassionate with his kids. His legacy endures in the lives and work of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

It doesn’t surprise me that Sándor set up a student scholarship at the Révai High School in Győr which once he had also attended. He talked about what it was like to be a student in the school where his father taught, and how it made him strive to be the best in hope of earning his father’s praise. Advice he shared with his children from when we were quite young is that a person could lose all possessions, but that no one could ever take away someone’s education.

The misadventures of a Medical Doctor from Győr in the final days of World War 2

In the first part, you learned why and how the diary is born, and in the second, you read about how German and Hungarian military units cannot resist the Russian advance, how bombs are falling during the Christmas holidays, how a good pair of boots is worth its weight in gold and how a doctor can help those in trouble anywhere and anytime.

Let’s continue. We are still in 1944, but the last two entries in this chapter were written in January 1945.

Tuesday, 26 December

In the morning, we have a serious discussion about how to proceed, because the luggage is very heavy on foot. It’s true that we are relieved, because apparently while we were rolling barrels of petrol in Felcsút, our luggage was searched and the more valuable things were gone. Jancsi Freiberger was most seriously concerned because he had jewellery, that was gone now. In my medical bag the alcohol was missing, all the bandages, injections and 100 gr Wetol disappeared. As a result, the bag was almost completely empty, but miraculously syringes, pincers etc. were not missing.

We discovered these losses only this morning. In view of the large number of Russian reinforcements, all of which were heading towards Bicske, we were already thinking of going back, when we saw a large caravan with 2 wagons, also heading towards Székesfehérvár. As it turned out, they were in a similar situation like we were and so we quickly joined them. We were able to put our backpacks on the wagon and were able to continue our journey. At around 4 pm we arrived in Baracska, where we managed to find accommodation and stayed overnight.

Wednesday, 27 December

The next morning, we continued our journey and soon reached the Budapest-Székesfehérvár road full of marching people, where some members of our party broke off because they were on their way to Ercsi. We continued on the Balaton route and we were stopped only once by the Russian for a “robot” (Russian word for physical work). After half an hour we were released from the robot. Around 2 pm we arrived at the road junction to Adony and here we unfortunately had to be separated because the waggons arrived home, meaning that they did not continue the route with us to Székesfehérvár.

So, we continued our way along Lake Velence, passing abandoned cottages, until we found one with a stove and a bed. Here we spent the night. Tomatoes were found in the pantry, so we even had a delicious hot tomato soup and soon fell asleep.

Thursday, 28 December

Unfortunately, we had to pick up our backpacks again in the morning and sadly trudged on. The weather was not good either, the mildness had been replaced by severe cold and we almost had to hurry. We had hardly walked for half an hour before we spotted ox-carts ahead of us.

We immediately charged on and soon caught up with them and of course loaded our packs on the carts. It turned out that some of the ox-carts had come from the village Tab, where they carried ammunition for the Russians and were now on their way home. Three of the unknown forced labourers on the carts were from Tab, they would certainly get home soon through Székesfehérvár, where we were also heading.

The people of Tab are urging us to go with them, but we are sticking to our original plan. My feet are really suffering from the constant pressure of the short shoes, but I can’t sit still because of the cold, and I’m just trudging along. As we get closer to Székesfehérvár, the sound of shelling gets closer and closer and the three of us put our heads together worried about the hours ahead of us. We have just come from one front-line and are now running into another.

We ask the Russian soldiers how far the front-line is, but either they don’t know or they don’t want to tell us, and they just say “daleko”, far away. Finally, one says 15-20 km, that’s something solid but not very reassuring.

Finally, we arrive in Székesfehérvár at 2 p.m., and after saying good-bye to the people of Tab and the ox-carts which have done such a good service, we decide to look immediately for the town-hall to find the Headquarters, both to get a certificate, or some sort of a document, and to offer our services to the citizens of Székesfehérvár.

Still about 100 m away from the Headquarters, a Russian patrol intercepted us and took us to the G.P.U. (Soviet political police agency) to identify ourselves. After half an hour of waiting we are brought in front of a Russian captain, we confirm who we are with the help of an interpreter and we are released but no document of any kind is given.

We continued our way to the town-hall where we hope to obtain some sort of a document …, but the situation is not so simple. After a long wait, I speak to the mayor, as a senior citizen, who tells me that the Russian authorities do not want to issue any documents and that we need a certificate in Hungarian and Cyrillic. As doctors, we are not really needed, but he advises us to talk to Dr Berzsenyi, the director of the hospital, he may be able to employ us.

The situation is not at all promising, meanwhile it is completely dark and we decide to spend the night in the basement of the town-hall, in the police station room. We make a pretty good bed out of mattresses and lay our tired, tormented bodies to rest.

The next day morning we went to the city general hospital to speak to Dr Berzsenyi, but he was not to be found. Instead, we met a forced labour doctor there, whose explanations led us to give up waiting. We got back to the city, where we thought the Communist Party would give us a certificate. The Communist Party was in a frenzy and they couldn’t give us any certificate since the Cyrillic text and stamp were not ready and we would have to wait a few days. 

In the Party Office I meet Dr Pál (Pali) Alpár, who graduated under me in Pécs, and he offers, if nothing else, to take us to the military hospital installed in farm stables, where he will provide us with accommodation and some food. Considering that we have no other choice at the moment, we accept the offered solution and move into the basement of the said military hospital, where we will find a place to stay in rather miserable conditions.

The conditions in Székesfehérvár are not very rosy, the front line is about 9-10 km away from the city, the shelling is almost regular, day after day in the evening hours, so we spend all our time in the basement.

… We received the desired identity card at the beginning of January, although it does not have the Russian stamp on it, but it looks good and as time has proved, it was worth waiting for.

Charap and Freiberger are of the opinion that they will take advantage of the invitation from the village Tab and go there. It is beyond Siófok, so they are further from the front line. I, for my part, in the naive belief that Győr will soon be under Russian occupation, do not want to move, and Laci Harmat, who has now turned up also from Győr is with me in this view. Laci Harmat works in a Russian bakery and supplies us with bread, which we desperately need because it is hard to get.

The incoming news is all the more positive. The Russians possibly make reconnaissances directly in the vicinity of the town and Pali Alpár and the forced labourers there leaved on Saturday for Pest on 6 January, which they expect to fall soon. In any case, they do not want to stay in Székesfehérvár because the situation is very uncertain.

The three of us, and I separately with Laci Harmat, have a lot of discussions and decide to leave on Monday, 8 January. Freiberger and Charap aim for Tab. The two of us will take the Balaton Road to Pest. Laci Harmat has friends in Martonvásár, we will find out the situation there and then decide where to go. In the meantime, we learn from the British radio that the Germans have launched an offensive along the Pest-Vienna Road. A German attack has reached all the way to the Bicske area…

The front is getting closer and closer, the shelling is constant and we are really worried. On Sunday morning, 7 January, while cleaning up, Laci Harmat drops in and brings the alarming news that the Russians are evacuating the civilian population in the upper part of Székesfehérvár and they are very much in a retreat. We don’t think much about it, but vote to leave immediately, and so we part ways.

Freiberger and Charap are leaving for Tab, the two of us are heading for Pest after a tender farewell. We set off, thoroughly packed, and sure enough, we see … loaded Russian vehicles, ready to go, transporting wounded Russians, partly in Red Cross cars, partly in buses.

At the crossroads, a woman joins us, heading for Dömsöd, and we set off on the slippery road to the highway. We change our luggage at a 4-km interval and soon arrive in Pákozd, where we rest, eat, and are even requested to see a sick person. Then we continue our journey in heavy snow. After a few kilometres of walking, we manage to hop on a Russian truck carrying vine that takes us all the way to Velence. …

Meanwhile, a Russian car comes along and the driver asks us where Dunapentele is via Adony. I explain the route with the help of a map I have on me, the Russian is impatient and tells us to go with him as guides. The car tempts us, … so we get in. In pouring snow we arrived in Adony, where, having given instructions to the Russian, we disembarked and looked for overnight accommodation.

Master carpenter Béla Stanczel and his family made us very welcome. They immediately put us up in the front room, where there were 2 beds and 1 bedclothes, … we cleaned up and settled in. By the time all this was done … a Russian pilot captain and an interpreter came to say that he was sleeping here too. We agreed that he would sleep in one of the beds, Laci and I would sleep in the other one, and we would put the sofa in the other room. We had dinner with the housekeepers and soon went to bed. The bed is quite hard, two of us sleep in it, uncomfortable, but we woke up rested.

Our hosts offered us breakfast and were very kind, their postal address is Béla Stanczel, Adony, Magyar u. 306. All what they had, they shared with us, they didn’t ask who we were, what we were.

Monday, 8 January (1945 !)

In the morning we set off to the Danube to cross to the other side. The boaters crossing the Danube were taking good advantage of the boom and took people across for Pengo 50-100 each. There is no other choice, you have to pay.

We arrive in Dömsöd at around 3 pm, where we get very disappointed. The lady who came with us was the wife of a mill owner, … but there was nobody at home, the miller’s house had totally been stripped, only the bare walls remained, even the doors and windows were missing. The two of us looked for a place to sleep and managed to find a farmhouse, but in much more miserable conditions than the day before.

Tuesday, 9 January

We set off towards Pest in the bitter cold, but luckily, barely leaving the village, we manage to climb on a carriage and that takes us a distance of about 12 km. This gives us a great advantage and we stop at a farmhouse 8 km before Taksony, have breakfast and for the first time we drink tea without sugar. Later on, I will get very much used to this way of drinking tea, because unfortunately we don’t have access to sugar anywhere.

The cold has eased a little, but it started snowing again and we set off in a heavy snowfall. A 2-hours journey is covered in 3 and a half hours, because the snowfall has turned into a blizzard. We arrive in Taksony in a strong headwind and heavy snowfall.

Already on the way, we decided to stay in a decent place, because we really needed a complete rest and we wanted to do some serious cleaning. The shoes I’m wearing are soaked through and my feet are soaking wet. We get very good accommodation at Gáspár Kresz, good hot foot baths, a thorough wash and a rest in a well-heated kitchen.

I find out that there is no doctor in Taksony and I am immediately called upon. People in Taksony beg me to stay there, but I am tempted to get closer to Győr and my wife, so I don’t give in to their demands. After a good dinner, we wake the next day thoroughly rested, but the police are here for me to go to headquarters immediately.

At the headquarters, I am checked, at first, they think I am of German origin after my mother’s name, but after I have managed to explain this, the captain declares that he will take me on as a conscript doctor. Taksony is a Swabian village and the male population of the village is recruited from 18 to 45 years while the female population from 18 to 30. So, I am forced to do 2 days of conscription, during this time Laci gets a good rest. I also have a few patients, thus money and food. The conscripts are taken by car through Hatvan. I ask the captain to allow me to get on the car to get to Hatvan, but the captain does not agree, a sad experience.

(Photos are for illustration only.)

End of Part III.

And don’t miss the fourth, in which you’ll meet drunken Russian soldiers, again skinning our heroes, who are then summoned by the Russian police, subsequently they help the Russians in their search for wine, while they move closer to Pest.

Remembering Gyula Perl

Early years

Uncle Gyula, by his full name Gyula Perl was born in Győr in 1881. In 1909, he changed his name to Gyula Pál. And when he lived in Denmark to Julius Pal.

Actually, one of his brothers married the sister of my grandmother and what is more, his other brother married my grandmother’s cousin. This is why it crossed my mind to remember him and share the life story of this remarkable person with you.

His parents were called David Perl (1839-1909) and Berta Perl (1857-1907) came from Vágújhely (Slovakia). His father, David Perl, was a merchant and later a carrier. His company was called “Perl Dávid és Társa”. They are buried in the Jewish cemetery in Győr. Gyula had four siblings: Arnold (1878-1945), Otto (1879-1944), Elza (1893-?), Ignatz (?-?) and Alajos (1888-1889).

Gyula Perl attended the Benedictine Grammar School in Győr. Among his schoolmates we see Frigyes Riesz, later the internationally renowned mathematician. Gyula Perl remained in contact with him later on. He was a talented student getting the best marks in nearly all subjects. After finishing the Grammar School in 1900, he continued his studies at the Budapest University where he got his degree in 1908. He went on studying at universities of Göttingen, Munich and possibly Paris.

From 1908–1918 he was a teacher at the high school of Székelyudvarhely (now Romania). The famous Hungarian writer, Dezső Szabó, teacher in Székelyudvarhely at the time, described him in his autobiographical novel as an intelligent, educated, and erudite person, but maybe too ambitious. (Dezső Szabó: Az elsodort falu (The village swept away); novel, 1919) Besides teaching he conducted an intensive research work under the guidance of Frigyes Riesz, who was then professor at the University of Kolozsvár (now Romania). Between 1912 and 1915 Gyula Pál published nine papers in leading periodicals. In 1916, he got his doctorate from Kolozsvár University under Riesz.

Perl tried to get a job in a university town offering good conditions for research. His applications for jobs at high schools in Budapest and Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia today) were turned down, but at the end of WW1, in 1918 or 1919, he managed to get a job in Pozsony. During the WW1 he served in the Hungarian army as a volunteer officer on the Italian front. He was wounded and perhaps a bullet remained in his back for ever which made sitting difficult for him and badly affected his temper. He received a Hungarian army medal in 1922.

Copenhagen

He participated in the revolutionary movement in Hungary in 1918-1919. But it was possibly not the main reason of his emigration to Denmark. He simply lost his job as a consequence of Pozsony becoming part of the newly created Czechoslovakia.

Fortunately, Harald Bohr, mathematician (brother of the Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr, Danish physicist), whom Perl met probably in Göttingen earlier, invited Perl to go to Copenhagen.

He started teaching as a temporary staff member at the Skt. Jørgens Gymnasium (Grammar School), where Børge Jessen, who later became a leading figure in the field of mathematics in Denmark, had been one of his students.

In the meantime, Julius Pal seemingly became a mediator in relations between Hungarian and Danish scientists through the Bohr brothers and Jessen.

In 1925, Pal joined the Polyteknisk Læreanstalt (Institute of Polytechnics) where he worked until his death. Beside his main job there, he undertook temporary part time jobs, too.

He started at Polyteknisk as a teaching assistant in 1925, and he continued as a lecturer as from 1926. His professional path culminated by the King of Denmark nominating him to associate professor in 1929. As a precondition, he was granted Danish citizenship in 1928. He taught mainly analysis and wrote a bulky and excellent textbook on the subject published in 1931 and rewritten in 1941.

From 1932 on, Pal was the teaching assistant of H. Bohr at the university. In addition, he was the first librarian of the institute. Unfortunately, in 1938 he had to leave the university because of his bad personal contacts with H. Bohr, B. Jessen and other professors.

I, my dear nephew, long for home every day and it is a special day for me if only a letter comes from home. I believe that [in this respect] your fate is easier than mine; because I was already 40 years old when I left my home country and at this age transplantation is difficult.

I do not long even for my siblings as much as I long after your father. My dear friend Zoltán [Dr. Zoltán Bánki (1873-1934), Ödön’s father] has virtually forgotten me, but I think of him every day and I would like to talk to him about all kinds of things and be reassured that there are people whose character and noblesse cannot subdued and destroyed. (Letter from Gyula Pal to Ödön Bánki, after July 1932)

By this time in Denmark, he changed his name Pal Gyula to Julius Pal loosing also an accent mark in his family name. It should be noted, however, that he kept Pal Gyula as signature in all his letters and felt home sick for a long time. He could visit Hungary only twice. First in 1931, with his family spending several months in Győr at his brother’s wherefrom he probably visited his sister Elsa Fisher, later Pollak, who lived in Vienna. He went for a second visit to Hungary alone in 1935.  

In 1921, Pal married Alma Christine Bissen (1889-1962), the daughter of the Danish painter Rudolf Bissen. (Alma Christine Bissen was first married with the Swedish/Danish sculptor Gerhard Henning (1880-1967) between 1914 and 1918.) Their only child, Ilona Birgit Pal, was born in 1922. 

I myself am almost always ill and my life is not worth much, except for the fact that I can still look after my wife and child better than if they had to make a living on the widow’s pension (which is rather low). (Letter from Gyula Pal to Ödön Bánki, 1932)

Indeed, Pal had to work hard to care for his wife and daughter by teaching in a foreign country in a foreign language. He complained about it in a letter to Frigyes Riesz.

But he kept contact with is hometown Győr. The ceramist Margit Kovács (1902-1977) studied at a porcelain factory in Copenhagen in 1932 and lived for some weeks at Pal’s house. Her father, Sándor Kovács (1871-1912) was actually his friend. In addition, Ödön Bánki and Margit Kovács knew each other from childhood in Győr, their mothers having been friends. (Interesting to note that Alma Bissen Pal worked for 15 years in the porcelain industry and had probably contacts that helped Margit Kovács in her studies.)

Pal was frequently ill. In spite of this he participated in the resistance during Nazi occupation. His bad state of health became even worse when he got the news after the war about the death of his relatives in Hungary. This surely contributed to his early death in a Copenhagen hospital on September 6, 1946.

Of his close relatives only his sister-in-law Ilona Perl and her son Jancsi survived in Budapest as well as his nephew Peter Thomas Fischer (changed to Fisher in the US) by immigrating to the US in 1938. What happened to his sister Elsa, Peter Thomas Fischer’s mother, is unclear. Nothing is known about the life of Ignatz Perl either.

Written by Esther Bánki, The Netherlands, Gyula Perl’s second niece

May the editor (P. Krausz) quote here a short email he received from Esther Bánki while exchanging on Esther’s writing on his Uncle Gyula:

“Dear Peter Krausz,

My Hungarian is not so good, that’s why I’m writing to you in English. The idea of the meeting in 2024 is really great! Thank you so much! I will definitely send this information to more of my family members. …

My great-grandmother was Lidia Perl. She married Mór Reichenfeld, who was a grain merchant. They had 7 children, but 5 of them died young.

Only my grandfather Zoltán (1873-1934) and his sister Lenke (1875-1944) became adults. Zoltán Reichenfeld, born in Győr, changed his name to Bánki. He was a gynaecologist by profession in Győr. My grandmother’s name was Olga Árpási (former Goldschmied).

They had two children, Ödön and Zsuzsanna (1912-1944). Ödön Bánki (1903-1978), my father, was born in Győr too. He studied in Würzburg and München due to the Numerus Clausus Law in Hungary. He was also a medical doctor. In 1928, he emigrated to The Netherlands and survived there. Here he had 8 children. My aunt was an architect. (I wrote an article about her, translated into Hungarian). She married Dr. István Pál (Sterk). My grandmother and aunt were deported from Győr to Auschwitz and killed there. István Sterk survived in a labour camp. But died of cancer in 1953. His daughter Eszter Sterk (born 1953) lives in Austria now. 

In Hungary, I have only a few relatives, all descendants of Adolf König from Györ and I have contact with the descendants of the brothers and sisters of my great-grandmother Lidia Perl. They live in Hungary, Israël, the U.S., Serbia and Australia (Eva Quittner’s family).

Kind regards,

Esther Bánki (born in 1964)

August 2021”

Sources of Gyula Perl’s biography written by Esther Bánki:

An article, Pál Gyula – Julius Pal (1881-1946) the Hungarian – Danish mathematician by László Filep and Sigurd Elkjaer, 2001, was an important source for this biography

Gyula Pál – Wikipedia
Pál Gyula – Julius Pal (1881-1946), the Hungarian – EuDML
Julius Pal (1881-1946), the Hungarian – Danish mathematician
Julius Pal (1881-1946), the Hungarian – Danish mathematician

Julius Pal (1881-1946), the Hungarian – Danish mathematician

With the exception of the photos from Esther Bánki and the image of Gyula Perl, all images are simple illustrations.

The life of a lawyer-physician, Sándor Alexander Ullmann – Part One

Here-below is a document written by Sándor “Alexander” Ullmann’s grand-daughter, Savannah Weil, when she was 21 years of age about her grandfather’s life in Hungary. 

According to information received from her mother, i.e. Sándor’s daughter, Savannah has always had a great passion for continuing the research on the Ullmann-Gescheit family tree that her grandfather began to work on in the early 1990s. Much of the information in this biography came from taped interviews of her grandfather. 

Savannah’s story on her grandfather starts from the age he took up his studies at the University of Pécs. Let us add an important detail which is that Sándor attended the Győr High School Miklós Révai and passed his maturity exams at this institution.

We received the continuation of Sándor’s life story from his daughter, Margie Ullmann-Weil, from the moment when Sándor had arrived in Canada. We shall publish this document as the 2^nd part of Sándor Ullmann’ life story.

But now, let us see the biography of Sándor Alexander Ullmann as noted by her grand-daughter. I have received Sándor’s photos from his family. The rest of the pictures stem from other sources and they are included only for illustrative purposes.

Peter Krausz

The Nazi regime of Germany occupied Hungary on March 19^th, 1944. Sándor was 19 years old, in his first year at the University of Pécs, studying law and medicine. When he heard the announcement on the radio, he knew immediately that as a young Jewish man, he must return home to Győr, although he had no idea for how long. The next day, Sándor went to his university to bid farewell to his classmates and teachers, and then boarded a train for Győr. Sándor notes that one classmate had the foresight to provide him with a Nazi hat and Arrow Cross shirt so as to be able to travel freely. As a young Hungarian Jewish boy, Sándor had always experienced anti-Semitism, but never to the extent that occurred during World War II.

Sándor “Alexander” Ullmann was born to Frigyes Ullmann and Margit Gescheit on January 28, 1925 in Salgotarján, Hungary. Frigyes was a teacher although he had been unable to find work since he returned from Siberia as a prisoner of war in 1923. Under Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary, it was becoming progressively more difficult for Jews to find work in the government and civil service. At age 6, Sándor moved to Győr with his parents and younger brother, Dezső. Sándor excelled in school and soon became a tutor by age 15, assisting classmates in Latin, German, and French.

Horthy established the first anti-Jewish laws in 1938, marking a significant turning point in Sándor’s life. While Sándor did not observe any overt discrimination against Jews following the introduction of these laws, he did experience first-hand the reluctance of universities to accept Jewish students. In 1942, Sándor won a statewide contest for Hungarian students for his mastery of the Latin language, earning him full tuition at any university of his choice. Unfortunately, the only university to accept him was the Faculty of Law at the University of Pécs. Sándor was adamant that he would attend the University because the government owed him a free education.

Upon arriving, Sándor experienced great anti-Semitism from his classmates and was often physically attacked by them. To make the best of the situation and prove the anti-Semites wrong, Sándor surprised classmates and teachers alike by maintaining a course load in medical and law courses in parallel.

When Sándor returned home to Győr on March 20, 1944, he had no idea how long he would stay there but understood that his life in Hungary would be changing. At 19 years old, Sándor was drafted into the munkaszolgálat, the Hungarian Labor Service, around April of 1944. This was a system of forced labor for Hungarian Jews between the ages of twenty and forty-eight. Units were assigned to mining, construction, clearing minefields, building military fortifications, and digging trenches. Sándor recalls the day that he boarded the train for Pécs to take up the forced service, looking back to see his father and mother for the last time.

Once he arrived in Pécs, Sándor was sent to do hard physical labor in a nearby camp. Later on, Sándor was relocated to various camps and expected to carry out numerous jobs during his period in the Labor Service, one task being to clean up a local ghetto after it had been liquidated. Sándor had never seen a ghetto before and his only knowledge of Nazi persecution came from the short period of time when his father was sent to a labor camp. This was a surreal experience for Sándor as he walked through an empty ghetto and sifted through the objects that characterize one’s life. It was his responsibility to sort various belongings of the faceless Jews that once lived there so that the Nazis could pillage the valuable items. As a boy who was largely sheltered from the poor conditions that many Jews experienced during the Holocaust, Sándor was disoriented by his experiences.

Another of Sándor’s duties in the labor service was to mine manganese in the town of Úrkút (north of Lake Balaton). This task lasted longer than many other jobs but also left a significant impression on him. A typical day at the mine involved working for eight hours, five to six days a week. While the wakeup call was at 5:00am, Sándor habitually arose fifteen minutes early in order to pray, wash at the faucets outside the barracks and get dressed. Breakfast consisted of ersatz (a coffee alternative) and bread. While there were no fences around this particular camp, there was nowhere to escape to as the barracks were at the top of a mountain.

Sándor recalls celebrating his 20^th birthday in the mines, reflecting on his life and his future. Because he wanted to have a celebration by himself, Sándor stayed in the mine at the end of the day and celebrated alone for sixteen hours, until the next shift started. Because the guards were unreliable in the camp, no one noticed that he was missing at the end of the workday. Sándor spent the time reciting poetry in different languages and singing Hungarian songs. He spent time planning out the rest of his life and came to the conclusion that he wanted to complete his free education in Hungary specializing in medicine, then would start a new life somewhere else. Sándor had no doubt that he would survive the war and knew that because of the war, he would never live in Hungary again. Sándor recalls his 20^th birthday celebration as a joyous time when he was able to introspect and engage in meaningful activities.

Sándor’s time at the mine ended when the guards attempted to drown all of the Jews by shutting off the electricity for the elevators and flooding the mines. The mine was 2,000-3,000 feet underground but the guards did not realize that there were ladders available in case of emergency. Every single Jew escaped from the mine because the guards did not wait behind to ensure that everyone had died. Due to the isolated location, the Jews were soon recaptured and moved to a new camp.

Sándor was one of the privileged Hungarian Jews to receive a false Swedish passport but unfortunately was unable to make use of it. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish citizen who had studied in America, was recruited by the U.S. War Refugee Board to travel to Hungary in July 1944 as a Swedish diplomat with the goal of assisting Jews in any way possible. A friend who worked with Raoul Wallenberg mailed the passport to Sándor’s home without knowing whether he was alive and the package was successfully delivered to Sándor at the labor camp. A friendly commanding officer at the labor camp offered to bring Sándor to the border when he learned of the Swedish passport but an opportunity never arose for this plan to be carried out.

Sándor transited the labor camp in Mosonmagyarovár when the Jews received orders of a forced march to the Austrian border at the end of March in 1945. The Jews had been marching for four days when the Russians found them. It was important for Sándor to wear his tallit when he was liberated, a sign of perseverance and commitment to Judaism. Although the Jews were pleased that the Russians had arrived, they were also frustrated that the Russians treated the Jews almost as badly as the Germans or Hungarians. Sándor recalls that a Russian soldier stole his watch and threatened to shoot the Jews if they did not have any more possessions.

After Sándor was liberated from the labor service, he returned to Pécs since Győr had not yet been liberated. Once there, he immediately registered for his second semester at the medical school. Four or five weeks later, Sándor woke up in the hospital due to typhus, without having any memory of how he arrived there. He learned that someone found him lying in the street and took all of his belongings, including his clothes. Once Sándor regained his health, he travelled back to Győr to look for his family but only stayed for twenty-four hours because it was too difficult for him to be there. By 1945, Sándor was finishing his second year of medical school at the age of twenty. After graduation, Sándor moved to Budapest, where he slept on a park bench and worked at a Jewish hospital opened by medical students. Sometime later, doctors took over the duty but Sándor continued to work there along with seven other medical students.

Around September of 1945, Sandor discovered the fate of his family. His mother, father, uncle, and brother were all deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. His mother, Margit Ullmann, was sent to the gas chamber immediately upon arrival. His brother, Dezső Ullmann, worked in “Canada” (the prisoner term referring to sending inmates to the gas chamber and organizing their belongings) and committed suicide by walking into the electric fence because he could not handle the stress.

Sándor’s father, Frigyes Ullmann, and uncle, József Ullmann, were transported to Dachau in July of 1944. József had died three weeks before Dachau was liberated whereas Frigyes died one day after the camp’s liberation.

Sándor escaped to Austria in 1949, later he moved to Munich, West-Germany, where he completed his medical residency in 1950. He immigrated to Canada on March 27, 1951.

Epilogue of Savannah

I was surprised to learn that when asked why it is important for Sándor to share his story, he could not see the benefit in documenting his experiences. From a personal point of view, this has been an emotional and meaningful opportunity for me as many of my relatives have passed away and my family is quickly losing any ability to learn about our heritage. It is very important for me to learn about my ancestors and this project has reinvigorated my efforts to build a family tree. As a senior project in high school, I was able to build a family tree that goes back ten generations, but as the internet becomes more comprehensive and more records are digitized, I have been able to fill in many holes and elaborate on many details. I wish I could speak with him now to tell him that this opportunity has been powerful and moving and that I will remember what I have learned about his life and his perseverance and optimistic attitude during the war.

This has been a meaningful undertaking for me as Sándor, my grandfather, died in 1994 when I was 6 years old. I never had an opportunity to ask my grandfather about his experiences during the war and later his experiences traveling to Michigan via Canada. While it has been difficult to hear a tape recording of his experiences and know that I am unable to ask him questions or initiate a dialogue, I have nonetheless enjoyed the opportunity. Sándor’s story is unlike anything I have come across in my twenty-one years of existence and yet it is amazing to me that we still have many common characteristics as emerging adults.

Sándor mentions on numerous occasions that he often reflected on his life and considered plans for his future. While this is a large part of my life, as I prepare for graduation in a mere few days, it is astonishing to me that while he was in the middle of a war, working in a labor camp under inadequate conditions, he would still take time to plan his future. I think this speaks to the maturity level and state-of-mind of most eighteen-to-twenty-two-year-olds as they reach a point in their life when they are ready to become more independent and create long-term goals. As I struggle to transform my passions into career choices, I admire my grandfather for his determination to get an education regardless of the many obstacles and to use his intellect to help other people.

Savannah Weil

Savannah wrote this when she was 21 years old. She is now 34. She has her graduate degree in Social Work and lives in Philadelphia.

As mentioned in the introduction, we had received the continuation of Sándor’s life story from his daughter, Margie Ullmann-Weil, from the moment when Sándor had arrived in Canada. We shall publish this document as the 2^nd part of Sándor Ullmann’ life story.

The True Story of a Hungarian Jewish Man’s Fight for Freedom

A book by Robert J Wolf MD

Featured image: The cover page of the book to be launched on 12 October 2022, Amazon, (549 pages)

Introduction

Robert J Wolf is the author of a biography about his father’s amazing story of living as a Jewish man in Hungary when the Nazis, and later the communists, seized power. Growing up in affluence, Győr, Hungary, young Ervin Wolf was forced into a labor camp, unaware that his parents were deported to Auschwitz where they were soon killed. In “Not a Real Enemy: The True Story of a Hungarian Jewish Man’s Fight for Freedom,” Ervin relies on his wits and good fortune to escape the Nazis not once, but twice. Once freed, however, he finds life under communism so unbearable he must make the most daring of all escapes in the dead of a winter’s night. “Not a Real Enemy” is the true story of one of the most unknown chapters in the Holocaust, following the transformation of a young man as he confronts antisemitism, cruelty, kindness, despair, and hope in his journey toward freedom.

Three excerpts from the book are reproduced here.

Excerpt One

Their recruiting station was in Komárom, a town in Hungary bordering Slovakia and approximately 64 kilometers from Győr, the place of their departure. Ervin’s home. What would be expected of them when they reached Komárom was anybody’s guess. No one really knew the fate of the young Jewish men drafted into the Auxiliary Labor Service, one only knew that Jews were not permitted to join the German-allied Hungarian military. Instead, they were conscripted into forced labor and sent, unarmed and poorly equipped, to Ukraine and the most remote regions of Hungary, their parents left with no knowledge of what their children were enduring, other than the occasional letters that arrived, no doubt opened and reviewed by government agents.

These parents would do their best to read between the lines to guess at what their sons were really made to do, how they were really doing. They knew only that the work was hard, the conditions brutal, the boys hungry. They knew some labored in the harsh cold, cutting trees and carrying the heavy logs back and forth all day, all night. Some dug graves and buried bodies. So many bodies. Some were forced to cross the mine fields, human mine detectors. So far, none had returned home to tell what really happened.

Ervin, the only child of Dr. Joseph and Kamilla Wolf, had never known labor of any kind, much less hard labor. He had, if anything, been coddled by his parents, spoiled with every toy and sweet and privilege a child of wealth might enjoy. True, his father could be a stern disciplinarian and Ervin knew too well the whack of a stick or the sting of a belt for misbehaving or worse, for being late. But his father was neither cruel nor cold, and Ervin never doubted for a moment the love both his parents felt for him. If anything, he understood his father’s discipline was less a correction of Ervin than it was a correction of himself, for Joseph’s own childhood had been a punishing one, one he had devoted his life to undoing…

Excerpt Two

Joseph listened to the click of the door as his wife and son walked into the cold, desolate street for what he feared might be their last walk together. He shaved and dressed, carefully buttoning his collar and adjusting his silk tie, as he did every morning, before slipping on one of his tailored, monogrammed suits, now beginning to fray. Though he continued to see his patients, many could no longer pay and, as a Jew, his access to supplies was limited. But his mind was not on his dwindling resources this morning. All he could think about was the danger his son was heading toward, and the danger that was coming closer to their home with each new day.

Joseph had known few years without danger, and never took for granted the prosperous life he had established. Born in the city of Alba Julia, then the capital of the Eastern Hungarian Province in Transylvania, he had grown up the middle of six children from a well-to-do family in one of the region’s oldest Jewish settlements. Being Jewish at that time, and in that place, was a marker of belonging. Virtually every family he knew was Jewish, and to be Jewish was as respected in the Kingdom as to be Christian. He was as much a Jew as he was Hungarian, as he was a boy, which is to say, the normal state of things, unchanging, unremarkable….

Excerpt Three

“Identification!”

Ervin turned from the train’s window to see a tall young man in uniform, no older than himself, glaring at him, his hand outstretched for his identification papers. Ervin obediently presented them and, once satisfied that they had the right Jew on board, the man turned to the next young man seated on the train and repeated his demand.

It was a packed train and Ervin was thankful he’d even gotten a seat. It seemed as if everyone was shouting and shoving, and while the train itself moved slowly, it lurched and stopped so often and so abruptly on its journey that every few minutes the passengers were thrown back and forth like dominoes knocking the others down. Ervin felt nauseous from the jerky movement, but he was in no hurry to reach their destination. Once there, his life would change in ways he couldn’t imagine. Until then, he tried to lighten the mood by joking with his friends. They all felt that strange sensation of dread and delight. Dread at what was up ahead, delight at being together for the adventure.

Nearly two hours later, the morning light now bright, the train pulled into the station in Komárom.

Just as they’d been pushed and shoved into the train, they were pushed and shoved out of it, where Hungarian gendarmes were swarming. These were the csendőrség— easily identified by the large rooster feathers affixed to their bowler hats. Though reputed to be well trained enforcers of the law, they were as known for their cruelty as their skill.

Ervin’s heart raced, but the csendőrs merely handed them off to a few soldiers waiting to escort the young men to their destiny. It was in that instant that Ervin realized he had lost his humanity in the eyes of these uniformed soldiers. No longer was he even looked down upon as a Jew. He was, in that moment and into the unforeseeable future, an animal to be herded and put into service.

A jolt of terror shot through him as the realization hit him and he was flooded with fear. But he knew better than to let them see his fear, for if they did, he was certain they would maximize the terrifying effect they had on him. Instead, he stood taller, shoulders back (not an easy task, given the weight of his backpack that once again pulled on his spine), and chin high. He compelled his face to reveal nothing of his inner thoughts and emotions. If they were determined to view him as nothing, then his survival would depend upon maintaining that illusion. He would do nothing to attract their attention, while expressing only respect for those he least respected.

How much he’d aged in that short train ride, when just two hours before, he had been a boy walking with his mother…

Why this title of the book?

“Not a Real Enemy” is how the communist bureaucrats described Ervin in his dossier, in the office at his medical center, where he had the guts to have a look at his secret file the night before his final escape after the revolution.

Protagonists of the book

Ervin’s parents, Dr. Joseph and Kamilla Wolf, a couple from Győr, perished in Auschwitz at 50 years old, 1944, the grandparents that the author never met.

After working as a doctor on a military ship during WWI, he became a practicing and respected dentist until forbidden to practice, and ultimately taken away.

There is quite a bit about them and their hometown in the biography.

The author’s parents, Dr. Ervin and Judit Wolf were married January 15, 1953 in Budapest, Hungary. Her Uncle Laci Benedek, a surgeon and chief of the local hospital, was arrested following the nuptials, imprisoned, and tortured for 13 months by the Soviets for sponsoring an illegal Jewish marital ceremony. Laci emigrated to Sweden, where he was a successful surgeon!

Ervin and Judit (the author’s dad and mom) were frontliners during the Hungarian Revolution, 1956, as he assisted with the trauma surgery in addition to his responsibilities as an OB/GYN, and she ran the blood bank. They soon after escaped the country, ended up in the Detroit area in the USA, and he went on to deliver over 10,000 babies! 

About the author

Robert Wolf, M.D., was born in Detroit and grew up in a nearby suburb as the only child of Ervin and Judit Wolf, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. He obtained a B.S. in Biology and Psychology from Tufts University in 1984, attended the University of Michigan Medical School until 1988, completed his residency at Brown University/Rhode Island Hospital, following up with a fellowship at Yale University in neuroradiology in 1994. He has authored and co-authored several published scientific papers. With 31 years of experience in Diagnostic Radiology, he is now semiretired. His parents’ adventurous life inspired Robert to document and share their stories.

Link to book presale: https://mybook.to/I3hEA5

Legendary vehicle designer at the Rába factory

Who was Dezső Winkler?

He was born in Tét near Győr on 11 July 1901 and died in Budapest on 7 October 1985. He was a mechanical engineer.

His butcher father died early, leaving his mother alone with their three children. At the age of ten, he was already working in the machine factory in Győr to supplement the family budget. It was then that he decided to become an engineer. However, because of the numerus clausus, he went to the technical university in Brno, where he studied in German. After his studies, he returned to Győr and made a name for himself in the 1930s as a designer of several excellent commercial vehicles. He was involved in the design of the Rába tractor under licence from Krupp and the Austro Super bus, which was of Fiat origin, and later helped to launch MAN diesel engine production.

His most famous creation was the four-wheel drive off-road vehicle Botond, which proved to be more reliable than other German vehicles of similar function. It was powered by two rear axles, and thousands were produced in both right- and left-hand drive series.

He was lucky to be able to create something like that, because it made him indispensable. Imre Pattantyús-Ábrahám, director of the Rába wagon and machine factory in Győr, tried to save the factory’s technical intellectuals of Jewish origin, including many of his closest colleagues, after the German occupation.

Winkler and his wife as well as their infant son were already being herded into the wagons when the partial escape came. Dezső Winkler continued to work at the factory until February 1945, during which time he was deported by the Arrow Cross in 1944 to Sopronkőhida, where he escaped and was later arrested again. He managed to escape again in the vicinity of Munich.

The Botond all-terrain vehicle

Winkler designed the most successful Hungarian all-terrain vehicle ever built, the Botond, designed for the Royal Hungarian Army, which also took an active part in war action.

The three-axle off-roader had independent double wishbone suspension on all wheels, a pair of wheel-rollers mounted on the front bumper and a winch, and spare wheels with bearings on both sides to aid off-road driving.

Dezső Winkler recalled the development: ‘I myself took part in the test drive of the prototypes. The car worked flawlessly in all respects… After the Berlin Motor Show, looking over my notes and sketches I had made so far, it seemed that the pending issues could be clarified. Thus, in order to increase traction power, a high ratio rear axle drive should be designed and the vehicle should be configured for a low unladen weight. And to increase off-road capabilities, it is necessary to maximise the deflection of the driven wheels with independent suspension and, if necessary, to provide a short-term rolling support for the front of the carriage or on the chassis between the axles. …”

His life after the war

After the war he played a major role in the re-launch of the Hungarian Wagon and Machine Works. He headed its automotive department until 1948, and then was in charge of the Central Vehicle Design Office of the Heavy Industry Centre (NIK) until 1950.

In 1951 he received the Kossuth Prize for the development of buses, trucks, tractors and engines. He became head of department at the Vehicle Development Institute (JÁFI), which he founded, and finally, before his retirement in 1968, director and CEO of the successor, the Automotive Research Institute (AUTÓKUT).

He represented the Hungarian automotive industry as a member of the respective UN Group of Experts.

So, who was Botond?

According to a Hungarian legend, Botond fell with Lehel in 955 at the battle of Augsburg against the German king Otto I. Another Hungarian legend, reminiscent of the biblical story of David, tells of Botond breaking down the gates of Byzantium with his mace and defeating the Greek giant with his bare hands in 958. The name of the military vehicle built in Győr certainly refers not to the loser, but to the victorious Botond.

Epilogue

On the initiative of Dezső Winkler’s son, István, a memorial plaque in honour of his father was placed on 14 September 2022 on the wall of the house at 26c Városmajor Street in Buda, where the family spent many happy years.

Sources:

1. https://regigyor.hu/vegyes/raba-autobuszok-budapestre/
2. https://pera-graner.blogspot.com/2013/03/zsido-botond.html; 21st March 2013, szerző: pera
3. https://www.autoszektor.hu/hu/content/terepjaro-legenda-raba-botond-magyar-hadiipar-2
4. https://www.autoszektor.hu/hu/content/kulonleges-bevetesek-katonas-nyuzoprobak-hadiipar-9
5. https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botond-monda
6. https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botond-monda#/media/F%C3%A1jl:Chronicon_Pictum_P036_Botond_monda.JPG

Soccer player Öcsi Puskás’ adventure with Professor Frigyes Riesz

Frigyes Riesz

Frigyes (Győr, 22 January 1880 – Budapest, 28 February 1956) Hungarian mathematician, university professor, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, brother of mathematician Marcell Riesz. The two sons were born to the Jewish doctor Ignác Riesz and Szidónia Nagel of Győr.

His key insight is that, by defining the operations of addition, multiplication by a number and scalar multiplication between functions in a suitable way, a wide class of functions behave in the same way as vectors. Recognising the importance of this idea, Riesz became, together with Maurice René Fréchet and Stefan Banach, the founder of functional analysis. Functional analysis is a comprehensive theory combining the methods of algebra, analysis and geometry. His best-known result is the Riesz-Fischer theorem, which is well known in real-valued functional theory.

He studied at the University of Zurich (1897-99), the University of Budapest (1899-1901) and the University of Göttingen (1901-02). He taught for a short time at a secondary school, then moved to the Franz Joseph University of Kolozsvár, which moved to Szeged in 1921 following the Treaty of Trianon. Riesz was head professor of the Mathematical Institute at the University of Szeged, and from 1929 to 1946 of the Bolyai Institute.

János Neumann thought it would be good if the world-famous mathematical centre established in Szeged – Riesz, Alfréd Haar, Béla Kerékjártó – stayed together. There is no doubt that around 1930, Szeged was the place in the world where classical functional theory and functional analysis could be studied to the highest standards. It is no coincidence that Marshall Stone, professor at Harvard University and author of the first monograph on functional analysis, sent his colleague to Szeged to study.

Riesz also gave lectures on Functional Operations, followed by The Theory of Hilbert Spaces and Integral Equations. All these were combined into a book by the end of the 1940s, and a comprehensive textbook on functional analysis was born, with unprecedented success. Of particular importance is the journal Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum, which he launched with Alfred Haar and which is still a world-class journal in mathematics.

When the Franz Joseph University moved back to Kolozsvár on 19 October 1940, Riesz did not go there because of his old age, but asked to be transferred to the newly founded Miklós Horthy University in Budapest and continued to head the Bolyai Institute. From 1946 until his death, he was head of department at the Budapest University of Sciences (then Pázmány Péter University, later Eötvös Loránd University as from 1950).

Even in the most difficult times, Frigyes Riesz received exceptional treatment for his outstanding scientific achievements and his high international profile. In November 1943, for example, he was granted a service passport, permission to leave the country and travel supplies for lectures in Geneva. Frigyes Riesz sewed on the humiliating yellow star, but always wore a top coat … He was forced to retire in July 1944, but in August 1944 (!) he regained his job together with several other professors of Jewish origin.

Marcell’s descendants living in Sweden were present at the unveiling of the brothers’ memorial plaque in Győr. They also visited the office of the Jewish community in Győr, where they looked up the brothers’ birth records in the register of births (according to the office).

Riesz’s life was filled with mathematics. Early spring 1954, Prague, the airport of the Czechoslovak capital. An elderly gentleman settles into one of the armchairs, two young men sit down near him. The older man is reading. In the meantime, because he hears Hungarian words, he turns to the young people with interest, wondering where they are going. We’re going to Amsterdam for a friendly match,” says one of them.

It soon becomes clear: all three are from Pest, there are no direct flights from there, so they fly on from Prague, the old man to Paris for a conference, the boys via Brussels to Amsterdam. The match will be there. “But what match?” asks the old gentleman. “Well, what else, soccer!” replies one of them, self-consciously, in a slightly raised voice, and adds, in case the uninformed questioner does not understand: football, that’ s all! Then he points to his partner: “This is Gyula Lóránt, the many times national team midfielder, you may have heard of him. And I am Puskás”.

The elderly gentleman nods with a smile, introduces himself, ponders a bit, takes a puff on his pipe, and then comes another question for Puskás: “And you are a football player?”

(The story is told by János Varga, a mathematics teacher from Székesfehérvár.)

Riesz Marcell

Marcell (Győr, 16 November 1886 – Lund (Sweden), 4 September 1969), university professor, younger brother of Frigyes, also a mathematician.

He received his doctorate from Lipót Fejér at the University of Budapest. He moved to Sweden in 1911 and taught at Stockholm University from 1911 to 1925. From 1926 to 1952 he was professor at the University of Lund. After his retirement he spent 10 years at American universities. He returned to Lund in 1962 and died there in 1969.

He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1936.

Marcell Riesz worked on trigonometric series. He introduced the Riesz Function and, together with his brother, proved the theorem known since then as the Riesz Brothers’ Theorem. In the 1940s and 1950s Riesz worked on Clifford Algebras.

Sources

https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riesz_Frigyes ; https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riesz_Marcell ; https://hmn.wiki/hu/Frigyes_Riesz ; https://szegedma.hu/2021/02/az-ember-aki-nem-tudta-kicsoda-puskas-ocs

Gábor I. Kovács: The fate of Hungarian Jewish university professors and those of Jewish-origin before and during the Holocaust from 1930 to 1945 (article), 2015. Based on the Database of Hungarian university professors I. Jewish university professors and those of Jewish-origin – Historical Elite Research, Budapest, Publishing House Eötvös: 2012. p. 172

Recollection of Gábor Farkas

I was born in the wrong year, 1942, and in the wrong place, Budapest. But by a miracle of luck, we survived the war years, I was released from the Great Ghetto in Pest with my mother and grandfather, and my father survived in Mauthausen.

In the fifties, all I knew about Győr was that an aunt of mine lived there, at 18 Arany János Street, whom we called “Mariska of Győr”. We visited the Éliás family at least once a year: Mariska, her tailor husband and their little boys. I knew nothing more about the Győr relatives. In 1955, they had their daughter was born, and in November 1956 they left the country, stopping in Melbourne, Australia, only, where they could make a good living as tailors. Our relationship was severed.

There was also a rumour in the family that an uncle of mine, surnamed Feit, was involved in the founding of the Győr synagogue, and his name is on a plaque there.

I must have been 65 when, by chance, I found a cousin of mine in Melbourne, who was born there, on the internet. There was a renewed connection with the branch of the family there.

In the meantime, I learned more and more about my family through Jewish search portals on the Internet, even finding a few documents. By that time, I really regretted that as a small child I had not asked my grandparents to tell me at least a little about their parents and grandparents.

To my surprise, I learned that one branch of my family came from the Győr-Nyitra-Komárom triangle, i.e. from the Jewish population there. Many of them settled and lived in the Sziget district of Győr. Sziget was just an intermediary station towards Budapest and, unfortunately, later also towards the concentration camps.

My great-grandfather Jakab Feit was a master shoemaker. According to the documents found, he lived at 4, later 11 Híd Street in Győr, later on at Országút and at Vásártér Street. His wife, Száli (Fáni) Kuttner, gave birth to five children (including my maternal grandmother at 4 Híd utca), one of whom died at the age of three months.

At the age of 31, on 2 July 1886, at 7 o’clock in the morning, Fáni drowned in the Rába river. A strange death – I don’t know if she didn’t knowingly try to escape his difficult fate. She left behind her husband and four children, including a one-year-old girl. The master shoemaker immediately remarried, marrying a young girl from the König family, whom he also called Fáni for simplicity’s sake. The second Fáni gave her husband four more children, while one of the girls died of measles at the age of two. 

Cousin marriages were common in the extended family. Therefore, my maternal grandfather and grandmother were related to each other, and other relatives married also within the family. They all lived in the same block, preferably in Győr and later in Budapest.

Part of the family moved to Budapest, but some of the girls stayed in Győr because they got married there. One husband was Lajos Láng. A similar thing happened to him as to my great-grandfather. His first wife, Rózsa Reich, had three children, Maria, Sándor and Irén, and then she died young. Lajos quickly remarried, marrying an aunt of mine, Maria Feit. She and her son József were deported to Auschwitz, where they died in 1944.

The three children of the previous wife, Rózsa, survived the war, although one of them, Mária Láng, was sent to the Buchenwald camp. She survived. After liberation she married Miklós Éliás, a master tailor, and they lived in Győr until 1956. She was the “Mariska of Győr” whom I visited as a child. She died in 2010 surrounded by her loving family in Australia. The other two children were in hiding. One of them, Sándor Láng, eventually died in Canada, the other, Irén Láng, still lives in Melbourne, aged over 90.

The third child, Erzsébet married Sándor Keitner; they moved to Újpest, and from there they were sent to Auschwitz, with their children, on their final journey. The fourth, my aunt Sarolta, married Nándor Friedenstein in Győr, but the young husband was killed in the First World War, and then the widow and her daughter moved to Pest. This little girl, Stefi, born in Győr, was taken from the same ghetto apartment in Dob Street, Budapest, to Dachau, where our family was also housed. She came back safely.

Finally, here is our family tree.

Published by Gábor Farkas

Featured image © Farkas Gábor