Testimonies

It’s not only the building, but the whole of Dessewffy Street and environs that have a long history. In the 18th century, this quarter of Terézváros [the 6th district] contained houses perpendicular to the street, wide courtyards and gardens. It was only in the middle of the 19th century that these huge plots were divided up and sold to make room for houses. This is how today’s Dessewffy (earlier Három szív) Street was populated, and the house at no. 6 was designed by Emil Ágoston (1876-1921).

Between 1906 and 1911, the renowned architect designed many apartment buildings in the capital. They are characterized by their typically steep roofs, gables decorated with carved wood, and romantic detail. After World War I, he opened an office with his brother, Géza Ágoston, which played a significant role in the plans for building the Római baths. He was also involved in designing the Hungária swimming pool and steam bath on Dohány Street, the Unger House at Irányi Street 10, the Gyenes villa on Nyúl Street, and countless other private buildings, including Dessewffy Street 6.

The first owner of no. 6 was Mrs. Adolf Singer, whose name appears on the 1928 Directory of Names and Addresses. Earlier records show that in the 1880s, Singer’s bookbinding workshop was at Váci Boulevard 19, not far from here, on today’s Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Street. This little workshop existed for over half a century, and a photograph taken around 1910 shows that it was located in the basement of the building. The photo album published in Vienna, entitled “New Buildings of Budapest,” also shows that in the first half of the century, this is where the Barth jewelry and watch trader was located, in apartments on the first floor.

Singer’s noted bookbinding workshop produced primarily business books and publications. The characteristic red and grey-lined pages where accountants recorded business information were used in offices right up until the spread of computers; of course, the later products were no longer produced in the “Line-drawing Institute.”

Although the former workshop now houses a hairdressers, the sign advertising the earlier company still decorates the building’s façade. Although the house on Dessewffy Street still preserves the memory of Adolf Singer and his colleagues, when renovations next take place - sooner rather than later - the greying letters will need not only deep cleaning, but also replacement in some cases. When the opening for the gas heating system was built, two letters were removed from Singer’s name on the sign, and the relief work on the third floor also fell victim to negligence.

The reliefs ornamenting the façade of the house (which is 95 years old this year) are connected to the original purposes of the building, and the bookbinding workshop in the basement. One of them symbolizes industry: a man in loincloth is leaning on a hammer and an anvil. Its partner on the right-hand side of the façade is a female figure embodying the arts, with a Greek vase and lute at her feet. These relief works, which were originally claret-colored or dark red, are now covered in thick layers of dust, just like the letters, and the iron bars on the upper right-hand side are an eyesore, like the letters R and A. When the house is next renovated, it would be worth replacing these, so that the old, full text and reliefs preserve the memory of Adolf Singer and the workshop he ran here for decades.

We knew of no omens, and only afterwards made connections. My father had a patient who was a very big-name banker with connections to senior types. He paid what was called a “tariff,” a monthly transfer of a certain amount, separate from treatment bills. He sent the next month’s payment in advance, on March 18. We didn’t understand why. And on the 19th, he disappeared. It seemed he already knew.

At the beginning of April 1944, my father was ordered by the Interior Ministry (under state secretary Béla Johan) to work as a physician near Nagybánya [today Baia Mare in Transylvania], to replace the original doctor who had been conscripted. He was foolish enough to go. After liberation, we learned that the rest of his colleagues had all got out of it under various pretexts (illness, etc.). In this huge district he had lots to do, but that was good, and they were pleased to have finally received a doctor. So much so, that when the local Jews were taken to the Baia Mare ghetto (he wrote a long letter about the infernal scenes he’d seen there), the local authorities had enough common sense to leave my father in place (although he had to wear the star), and he was even allowed to enter the ghetto to treat people. Two weeks later, the above-mentioned Johan and friends issued a decree according to which all remaining Jewish doctors right across the country—regardless of whether large districts would once again remain without a physician—would also be transported to the ghetto. My father was deported from there to Auschwitz and then Mauthausen-Melke, where he had to work in the stone mine, and from where he didn’t come back. We heard that the wooden clogs broke his feet and he got blood poisoning, while according to others, he died of severe undernourishment while suffering incurable diarrhea, sometime in November.

We moved into the 5th district yellow-star house at Szalay Street 3. We ended up there as my father’s colleague, who was Jewish with a Christian wife, and therefore counted as an “Aryan’s partner” and thus didn’t have to wear the star, wanted to leave the yellow-star house and offered to swap apartments while we were living on Honvéd Street [which runs perpendicular to Szalay Street]. We received a full, four-bedroom apartment, where six of us lived. My mother was also a physician, and so she had a clinic separate from the living room, and thus could keep (until the Arrow Cross period) the telephone too. A friendly couple came with us too, we’d lived in the same house as them: Sándor Csekő who was a director at Generali [the insurance company], his wife and their 14-year-old daughter Éva, as well as a lonely man who was a refugee from Austria. I was 13 years old.

(Originally, we were to move in with my mother’s older brother, the doctor Dr. Sándor Adler (1898-1950), into his rather overcrowded apartment at Andrássy Road 32. In the end, we chose the swap I mentioned above. In any case, my Mother had already sent one of her prized possessions over to Andrássy Road, a recently-purchased Maria Theresa chandelier, which was hung in the maid’s room. During the siege, the house was hit many times and partly collapsed, the stairwell came away from the wall too. Looking at the house after the siege, it turned out that the maid’s room had remained in one piece, nothing happened to the chandelier, which cheerily hung there with all its glass jewels. It had to be lowered into the courtyard on a rope.)

We lived relatively well in the house, we had good, and there were countless children still living there whom we played with together. You could go down to the concierge, who was an Arrow Cross member, but everyone knew that he was secretly a member of the Communist Party as well, and listen to the BBC in his apartment. His brother-in-law lived there too, and he was an engine driver. He said he’d taken trains transporting Jews, but he didn’t know where to, because at the border, a German member of staff took over. He told us this right up until once, when we were there, he come home from work and his five-year-old daughter ran out to meet him, shouting “Daddy, did you take them for some cyanide again today?” After the war, the concierge was imprisoned.

October 15 was also a pleasant, sunny Sunday. The Csekő family, who had converted to Catholicism a long time ago, went to church for confession. A large cross hung above their bed, which they thought would help. Their 21-year-old son was on forced labor service. After his high school graduation, he wasn’t admitted to university of course, but went to work at the Glasner bakery, run by relatives of theirs, where he became a Communist Party member, for which he was imprisoned in Vác [a penitentiary north of Budapest] for one year. When we went in, he promised that if he could, he’d go over to join the Russians. After liberation we waited for him to arrive with the Russians, but there was no sign of him anywhere. We enquired, and it turned out they’ been near Miskolc somewhere, where he escaped with a few of his fellows-in-arms, and went into hiding somewhere. The news came that the gendarmes were looking for them. He agreed to waylay the gendarmes while the others escaped. They exchanged fire, and fell. They are buried in Miskolc. It transpired afterwards that it wasn’t them the gendarmes were looking for, they didn’t even know about them, but were looking for a later, post-war sheriff.

We greeted Horthy’s proclamation [that Hungary was leaving the war] with enthusiasm, and happily removed the star from the front gate. But it was more and more suspicious that after the broadcast of the speech, the radio played only marches. Late afternoon, we heard: “Now we shall read out Ferenc Szálasi’s military order.” In fright, we moved down into the cellar so they wouldn’t be able to find us. We sat there until midnight when we grew sleepy, and went back upstairs to the apartment. In the apartment next door to us lived the younger brother of Andor Gábor, the writer.

Late at night in November, we’d go up to the flat room and look at flashes of light coming from the east. Optimists claimed that these were flashes of Russian cannon-fire, and these patches of light grew bigger, as if they were approaching (at that point, the Russians must have been somewhere around Kesckemét [53 miles south-east of Budapest]).

One November dawn, the Arrow Cross came into he apartment and announced they were taking everyone away, so we should get dressed. Mrs. Csekő gave food and drink to the policeman who was with them, who then told the Arrow Cross that these ones were staying put...

Towards the end of November, a new group of Arrow Cross men came, and ordered everyone down into the courtyard. Together with Éva who lived with us, we escaped onto the street via the hairdresser’s shop which opened onto the courtyard, and with the knowledge of Mr. Besenyő, the shop’s owner. My mother and the others couldn’t do this, so they went into the concierge’s apartment. But they came and said that the Arrow Cross would enter every apartment to see whether anyone was left behind. And so they had to leave the concierge’s place too. There was no other solution, so my mother jumped out of the mezzanine window onto Vajkai Street. As she fell, her bag fell out of her hand, and the mirror fell to the ground with a huge clatter. People looked out at this from the Kúria [supreme court] building opposite, but nobody reacted. One minute later, a group of Jews was led past by the Arrow Cross, and if she’d jumped any later, they would have met. My mother set off in the direction of Szalay Street, and ran into one of her patients, who hadn’t seen anything. He politely lifted his cap: “I kiss your hand Doctor, how are you?,” to which she charmingly smiled and replied: “Oh thank you Mr. Kékesy, I’m very well…”

I ended up together with Éva at a Calvinist children’s mission thanks to the intercession of a Calvinist deaconess who was of Jewish origin (I wasn’t converted), at the former Scottish school on Vörösmarty Street (the school’s Scottish headmistress who stayed behind was deported by the Germans and died in Auschwitz). As we learned after the war, that’s also where Zoltán Tildy, later the State President, and Ferenc Nagy, later the Prime Minister, were hiding. Smart people in the mission decided to move Christian forced laborers into the house, saying that they would provide protection. However, instead, they reported to the Arrow Cross, saying that there were suspicious children here. And so the Arrow Cross came, and took all the children together with the adults to the ghetto. Éva and I hid in the bathroom behind the coal so they didn’t find us, and when they left, we came out.

In the meantime, my mother asked around for refuge, and found it with a social democrat patient of hers (Máté Berki), and together with the married couple living with us, they lay low at Váci Road 146, beyond Árpád bridge; the house was knocked down not long ago. After our escape from the mission, Éva went over there on the tram while I spent a night at our original apartment with the concierge (Farkas), and the next day, one of Berki’s relatives came to collect me and take me to the others.

We were pretty fine, and had enough to eat right up to the end. There was another of their relatives hiding there, a deserter (Sándor Berki), and a massive mill-hand too, who went out to Váci Road every night with his friends, and if they found a lonely Arrow Cross man, they hit him round the head and chucked him in the Danube.

My mother got false papers from another one of her patients (Irén Szirbik). Her husband (Dezső Both) was a colonel in the army, and after the Germans arrived, he retired himself. After liberation he was reactivated, but because he didn’t want to join the Communist Party, they kicked him out. Later they were forcibly removed from Budapest to the countryside, and my mother sent them 100 forints a month under an assumed name.

One more thing about them: in November, they packed a huge rucksack with our bedding and kitchen wear. After the siege, my mother and I went around various places collecting our things. Lots of times we were told sorry, the Russians took everything away. (For example, the concierge Farkas and his family, who had promised to bury our jewelry in their garden in the countryside. They later claimed that the Russians had gone though the garden with a metal detector, found the silver, and taken it away.) Either this was true, or it wasn’t. When we turned up at Irén’s, she started explaining, “guess what, a few days ago the Russians were her, they broke up the long cabinet in the front room and unpacked everything in it.” Well, we thought, that’s the end of that too. “And guess what,” she continued, “just as they reached the part where your things were stored, they got bored and left. So everything’s still here.”

I had acquired false papers from the deaconess I mentioned earlier. I answered to the name of János Nagy, I am from Budakeszi and came here at Christmas to see relatives, but couldn’t return because the Russians had arrived, and that’s why I’m here. The only awkward thing was that I had to call my mother Irénke. Of course, sometimes I got it wrong, but later, in the basement air-raid shelter, nobody noticed. Anyway, the false papers provided protection until I was asked to produce them. In my case for example, it would have been easy enough to ascertain what I am. The Csekő family received the Besenyős’ papers.

Going back to the Berki family: on December 24, the lady of the family held a Christmas dinner for all of us. During supper, the glasses suddenly started shaking and dancing on the table from nearby impacts, although no sound could yet be heard. We understood that the siege had started, and all we had to was wait until the Russians reached us. This wasn’t easy, because the Russians came in from Újpest along Váci Road, while the Arrow Cross raided Váci Road going north, and the only question was which side would reach our apartment first.

At the supper was another relative of the Berki family, an artillery sergeant who was stationed with his battery in Hűvösvölgy [in the Buda hills]. At the shootings, he jumped up and announced he would return to base. They asked him to stay, if there were so many already hiding here, one more didn’t make a difference. But he stated that he couldn’t leave his men to themselves, and stormed off. He was never heard from since. Meanwhile his wife, who also lived there, was pierced in the stomach by shrapnel, but survived.

My mother was almost hit by a mine, and had only gone to the WC at the end of the house minutes before it struck and killed a girl on the spot.

For the whole of the siege, one of our relatives (Sándor Szolnok) constantly talked about what would happen when the Russians arrive. He had been a solider in Ukraine, and when they entered a village, if they saw a local residents looking at what was going on from the gate, they immediately shot them in the stomach from the truck. They gathered up the babies, threw them up in the air and used them as target shooting practice. Clearly, the Russians would repay all of this upon arrival. After the Russians did arrive, he hid for three days in the wood cellar, then realized he couldn’t stay there forever, and came out. The Russians were very pleased to see him, because he’d learned a little Russian and interpreted for them.

We remained upstairs in the apartment until January 1, so that no outsider would spot us in the basement air-raid shelter. But after that point it was no longer possible to stay above ground, and so we moved downstairs too. A very mixed group was camped out there in the shelter: there were enthusiastic Arrow Cross members who were still fantasizing of German victory. There were others we got to know later, who were also in hiding. A strapping military officer later turned out to have deserter (or, as it was called then, he went on “télach”). As soon as it looked like the Russians were going to arrive, he quickly changed into civilian clothing, but if they were pushed back, he put his uniform on.

The Russians reached us on January 13. In the afternoon, a tank stopped in front of the house, and in the evening, they hammered on the gate and two of them strolled into the shelter. They asked whether there were any Germans here. On hearing the answer “no,” they left. That night, more of these patrols came. Optimists concluded form this that they were pushing onwards, and every unit was sending out its own security. This might have been the case, because by morning, they had reached Nyugati [railway station]. A patrol asked for vinegar. They took onions out of their packs, cut them up in vinegar, ate them and left.

They stationed a young, 24-year-old major with us, and he was a little fop. He went about in full dress uniform, and in the mornings, his batman would hand him the water for mouth-washing, and prepare his toothbrush with toothpaste. But then both of them took their machine-guns and magazines, and went to Margit Island to fight. The vast majority of the officers were as young as he was. There were two other captains living in the house, and they were 19 years old.

Our major regularly brought all of us good things to eat from the officers’ mess, for as long as they lived there. He gave my mother separately two loaves of bread when she complained somewhat pointedly that although we had such good things to eat, her mother didn’t even have bread. At this, the office rushed out, and came back with two loaves under his arms, and put them in my mother’s lap. He made her promise that she would tell her “stary mama” [old mother] that he had sent the bread, but also that Russian bread was normally soft and while, and was only black, heavy and square because of the war. His name was Mikhail Yosipovich Prihodko, and he explained that his father had been killed as a partisan, and that he hadn’t seen his daughter for three years. While he lived with us, the letter from his mother arrived. He sat the whole afternoon in the armchair crying, kissing the letter, crying “Mama, mama.”

At night, the Russians set off in small, light tanks across the ice on the Danube to Margit Island. The Germans were shooting blindly, but didn’t even need to hit a tank if the ice broke and the tank fell in, sinking into the deep from where it couldn’t be rescued. The other little break-out attempts continued. After occupying the island they came back to us, and brought a huge jar of marmalade for us, which had obviously come from the hotel.
Every night we went down into the shelter to sleep, because the major and his batman, Misha, slept in our room. Once, Misha caught hold of Éva there with a pretty clear intention; the major had lain down to sleep. Éva’s parents woke up the other major living in our house, whom we thought was terribly old, he was around 45, and dragged him downstairs. He thundered at Misha, don’t be stupid, and he let Éva go.

On another occasion when we were alone—because the majors had left for Berlin, they said—an officer came in with two soldiers and asked for plates and cutlery. They took cold boiled beef out of their packs. They looked up and saw that on the other side of the table, Éva was glaring at them. They laughed out loud and moved over to us. We explained that we should at least share the food, but they waved and said no, they’d be getting some more. They waited until we ate it, and left happily.

The Soviet army displayed an interesting duality. On the one hand, they moved with huge military equipment, processing along the roads with masses of tanks and cannons lasting from Szent István Park to Margit Island, the air-defense guns lined up densely side by side along the “Manci” pontoon bridge (during the war, the Hungarian Royal Armed Forces had one anti-aircraft cannon at the Pest side of each bridge). Packs of small aircraft in the air. There was a machine-gun pit on the turret of the house opposite ours, even when the Russians had already occupied the street. Two Rata fighters flew overhead (we watched them from the front gate), but the machine-gun pit, turret, and half of the house were nowhere to be seen.

On the other side, when we went along Váci Road outwards away from the city to our apartment, a multitude of peasant carts processed continually along the whole stretch, slowly ambling, and the line was so dense that you couldn’t get through them to the other side. They were obviously transporting reinforcements, who knows where from. They were typical Russian carts, with two rods held together in an inverted-U shape, and between them a horse, while on the box dozed old peasants with walrus moustaches. This is how Kutuzov’s troops must have marched towards Borodino. However, each cart-driver had a loaded pistol hanging from his neck.

On Vaci Road on the way into the city center galloped soldiers in Cossack dress and fur caps on horseback, probably messengers.

The front soldiers before us gathered up the prisoners of war. The Germans were driven onto the trucks by kicks in the backside. They took the Hungarians’ rifles away—staring in wonder at the ancient Mannlicher guns from the First World War that could hold six cartridges at once, which had to be individually cocked and fired, and there thus very slow and inefficient in comparison to the Russian machine guns that could fire 81 bullets in one go with a quick pull of the trigger—and broke the rifles over their knees, before waving at the soldiers to get lost. Those who collected civilians as PoWs were camp gendarmes in green caps.

After the liberation of the city, and after much difficulty, we got our original Honvéd Street apartment back. In December a decree had been issued, according to which the Aryan partners of Jews also had to go to the ghetto. The wife of our exchange partner had gone downstairs to get a newspaper for the details, and by the time she returned, her husband had committed suicide; but in the newspaper, it said that the decree had been repealed. After the siege, the wife didn’t want to leave our Honvéd Street apartment or go back to her original place on Szalay Street, which was much shoddier, and although the Honvéd Street house had taken a few hits, its owner, the Electricity Works, soon restored it. We only recovered it after a long struggle.

Professor Dr Illés Dési.