Testimonies

Lili, who changed her name to Lilla Sz. in 1934, wrote and recorded these memories for her grandchildren in 1996. The following quotes come from here.

“All three of us went to the elementary school on Sziget Street. One year, I could see into my classroom from our balcony, the school was directly opposite the house. I can still remember one of the teachers, Jolán Purjesz, and she had a sister Margit Purjesz. Maybe they were twins.

The third floor of the house was in fact the fourth floor. The first floor was called a half floor, and so the second floor was called the first. I can remember these neighbors and residents: Mrs Dudosits, the Hauser family, the Elek family, the Somló family, the Lorschy family, the Simon family, the Stella family, the Stark family, the Eiser family and later, during the war, the Práger family and the Sólyom family.

For us, the most important was the Schreiber family, the house supervisor. Their son Jenő was a good friend of ours. He later took the name Sasvári, and I’ll write about him later.

Our next door neighbours were the Elek family, and we were only on greetings terms with them. Our friend Éva Somló lived above us, and our parents got on well with the Stella couple, Gyula the husband and his wife Aranka Aradi, both of whom were actors. Our parents also got on pretty well with Jolán and Margit Eiser.”

Magda got married and moved to Pozsonyi Road with her husband. In 1940, their daughter Kati was born, and in 1943, their son Dénes. In 1944, Magda’s husband helped her and her children to go into hiding, and thus luckily they were not taken away.

In 1942, Lili married Ferenc (Franci) Lengyel, the great love of her life. From that point on, until her second marriage, she was called either Mrs. Ferenc Lengyel or Lili Lengyel, and this is the name that was recorded in Dachau as well.

The wedding lunch was held at Sziget Street, and Mama Janka—or Mimi, as her children called her—roasted a goose. The young couple rented an apartment in Buda, on Vérhalom Street, and lived together there happily for a very short period of time. Franci was called up for forced labor service, and never returned. For a long while, Lili never knew what had happened to him, and even today there is no precise information about his fate, but at the time, all that happened was the letters and postcards no longer arrived, and there was no other news of him either.

“I lived through the first air strikes in Vérhalom Street”—Lili’s recollections continue—“in September 1943. The next day, huge numbers of people went on a pilgrimage to Rózsadomb Hill, because Lajos Zilahy’s villa had been bombed into ruins, which was still something of a ‘novelty.’ I soon had to leave my Rózsadomb Hill apartment, and moved down onto Sziget Street. After the war, I couldn’t go back to Vérhalom Street, I couldn't bear to ever see that house again! In any case, it was bombed it during the war.

Life went on. The political atmosphere swung heavily to the right, and one decree followed the next. Franci’s parents had to leave their apartment on Lágymányos Road, because it wasn’t in a ‘yellow-star house,’ and they too moved into Sziget Street. My mother-in-law was already terminally ill with cervical cancer. We kept the truth about Franci from her for a long time, I made up stories, and until their deaths, they never knew what had happened, just like in Tibor Déry and Károly Makk’s film Szerelem (Love).

My poor mother-in-law survived the terrible bombings in the third-floor apartment, and which were targeted at Nyugati railway station. My little, old father-in-law sat next to her, holding her hand, and never came down into the basement air raid shelter. My mother-in-law and my Father died one after the other, Father had been taken onto forced labor service doing some ditch-digging, which was too much for his frail body. He died in his sleep at the age of 61. I couldn’t attend either funeral. Later, after the war, Dad’s sister Auntie Berta erected a gravestone for him. I couldn’t find the grave of either my mother-in-law or my father-in-law who, poor man, one day left home while I was already in a concentration camp, and never returned. What happened to him remains a mystery.

I will never forget October 15, 1944. In the morning, Horthy made his proclamation which, in practice, meant breaking with the Germans. Every resident of the house celebrated in happiness, that finally it was over, over… and now I’ll return to Jenő Schreiber (later Sasvári), the son of the house supervisor, our good friend. At the time he had the rank of lieutenant, and in his morning euphoria in the corridor, he kissed my mother right and left. At the time, this was a very brave thing to do. Then in the afternoon came the cold shower: Szálasi and the Arrow Cross had taken over power.

Then came the nightmarish Arrow Cross times, with permanent fear and vile decrees. One day, three men rang at the door, and asked me to let them in. They had escaped from the [internment] camp in Kistarcsa, and had already tried at a number of apartments, but with no luck. I let them in, but in the afternoon there was an air raid and everyone hurried down to the basement. The three men also came down, and somehow managed to escape into the basement of another house. I never saw them again. One was called Márványi, but I don’t remember the others.

Another ‘eternal mystery’ story: armed Arrow Cross juveniles went round the house ringing on all the bells, looking for Jews. My mother also opened the door to them. They looked her up and down and asked her whether there were any Jews in the apartment, and then left. Meanwhile, the older Jewish female residents of the house were being rounded up, and were later shot into the Danube. By some miracle, my Mother was not taken way, and the only logical explanation we could find for this was that perhaps our younger brother Laci had been the classmate of one of the Arrow Cross boys, who recognized her, who knows?”

Magda explained the story differently: during the siege, a Wehrmacht combat unit moved into Sziget Street 11, and their leader, a captain, who was a literature teacher in civilian life, had held long conversations about Goethe, Heine and Rilke with Janka, who spoke excellent German and was very knowledge about about European culture. This gave her a certain level of protection, and the deputy concierge, Bese, didn’t draw the Arrow Cross’s attention to this apartment.

In December 1939, Laci escaped to Palestine and became a British soldier, and fell into German captivity. He survived the war as a PoW, and then returned to Palestine in 1945. He wanted to reunited the family there. Janka received the travel permits in 1946, at the age of 48, and spent one year in Jerusalem, but she missed Sziget Street, her two children and grandchildren, and the ladies next door. Security had seriously deteriorated in Palestine, and Laci didn’t want to put his family in danger, and so in 1947 he sent his mother back home, and in 1948, he too returned to Budapest, not long after the formation of the state of Israel.

“There were countless people in the basement”—writes Lili—“and in between two air raids the younger ones, including myself, had to help putting out fires and carrying stuff to nearby houses. The deathly quiet on the street was terrifying, not a soul anywhere, and the smell of death. Our area was heavily bombed because it was close to Nyugati railway station… where, while we still hoped, Franci would return, and I would often go there and wait for the trains, I put up his photograph and name, the name of the company in which he served, in case anyone knew anything and could tell me (the station was full of such photographs)… Ever since then I still can’t look at scenes in films of people returning from war and embracing!”

Magda’s apartment on Pozsonyi Road was not a yellow-star house, and so they too moved into Sziget Street in 1944. During the bombings, there were frequent Arrow Cross raids, which is why the four-year-old Kati and Dénes, who wasn’t even one, were kept far apart in the basement. They found a good hiding place for Baby Dénes: during the raids, they put him under an upturned trough which they then sat on, and it didn’t even occur to the Arrow Cross to see whether there was anything there in the trough. Because of the Arrow Cross raids, all this was truly very risky, which is why Magda’s family soon took his family away from there and hid then on Jászberény Road, in the basement of the Orion factory. Janka never went down into the basement during the bombings.

“During those times, Magda Sólyom moved into the house with her mother and two sons, János and Péter”—continues Lili. “Her husband had fallen on forced labor service. We became very close friends and I spent lots of time at theirs, the two boys were still small guys. After the war and deportations, I learned that they survived the Arrow Cross times in a protected house, and then emigrated to Sweden. We met again in Stockholm in 1982, thirty-eight years later, and cried on each other’s shoulders. János Sólyom had become a famous pianist, while Peter was an environmental engineer.
On April 5, 1944, we had to wear the yellow star. Not long after, I was kicked out of my job, which was also prescribed in the decree. Of course, life wasn’t easy with a yellow star on, you couldn’t get on the first car of the tram, and loads of shops had signs in the window: ‘Jews not served here,’ and every day there were more and more humiliating decrees. I didn’t get any sort of protection letter. I first heard Wallenberg’s name after I was deported.
In early November, we heard a huge explosion: Margit bridge had been blown up.
And not long after that came deportation. At dawn on November 9, the assistant supervisor Bese strolled up and down the corridors, saying we should line up in the courtyard. Silly naïve goose that I was, I took with me my PhD certificate in chemistry, as if Germany chemical factories were waiting just for me. Four-five young people from the house gathered together in the courtyard.

Our first journey took us to the underpass which still remained at Margit Bridge. Here, an Arrow Cross chief asked us who had a Swedish or Swiss protection letter. Whoever had one, naively took it out, and he tore them into tiny pieces. We were marched over the Chain Bridge, which was still standing, and to the Óbuda brick factory. We spent the first night there, on the ground between the scaffolding for drying bricks. Many people had already committed suicide there with some sort of poison. In fact I also had a small bottle of cyanide.”

Lili was in a number of camps in the Dachau area. She was liberated on May 1 by American soldiers. It took weeks for her to put weight back on, and with the rest of her fellow inmates, they set off back for home. She knew nothing about her Mother and siblings.

“We got on train after train, and arrived in Pest. The train arrived at Kelenföld, and from there we went on foot across the Manci bridge. My mother already knew I was alive because one of her friends had returned home a few days earlier on another train. My mother went out every day to the Manci bridge, and that’s where she fell…

It was August 20 when we arrived, and I approached Sziget Street in fear. I didn’t know whether the house was still standing, or who was left. In a fantastic turn of fate, before I even arrived there, I ran into my cousin Györgyi on one of the corners, who told me that my Mother and Magda were still alive.”

After liberation, Magda had another child, Janka returned home from Jerusalem, and Lili never made it to Israel, but remarried and had a daughter, Ágnes. Laci also came home, married, and they had a daughter, Zsuzsanna. Neither Lili nor Laci ever lived again on Sziget Street. Magda’s apartment on Pozsonyi Road had been occupied by Russian soldiers, and so they returned to Sziget Street, and lived there until 1956. Janka died in 1955. Magda died in 1995, Laci in 1997, and Lili in 1998. All three reached a fine old age, and could spent plenty of time with their grandchildren.

A very kind family took us to the apartment, and we became great friends and lived crammed together without any problems.

My father was constantly called up for forced labor. We had no income whatsoever. My father’s earlier employer—who was naturally working illegally and helped us—took me on as a messenger on my father’s pay. When the curfew was introduced, he kept me on for a few hours a day. His name was Gábor Deák, and he was a shoe manufacturer and trader. His businesses were on Paulay Ede Street and Nyugati Station, where the Westend is today.

So there were Christian people who helped the persecuted.

Later I repaid him for his help and humanity, when he needed help.

In the yellow-star house, as children, we did not sense the terrors. We played in small groups.

Many afternoons, after the curfew came in, the adults who enjoyed and worked in the arts organized theatrical performances for us, which were certainly of a high quality. I sang operas and other songs too.

It’s interesting that many years later, in the early 1980s, I met a woman in Chicago who remembered these and other important experiences.

In early November, we had to move into a house under Vatican protection on Dohány Street and the corner of Rózsák Square. This was entirely unexpected and, as usual, I was not at home because I was working without wearing the yellow star. When I came home I saw that everyone in the house was lined up.

My parents signaled to me not to approach. I followed them from afar, and that’s how I learned they were taken to Wesselényi Street 8.

Life in the ghetto was a different story. But I should mention what happened after the liberation.

On the morning of January 18, Soviet troops entered the house. A few hours later, we could return to our apartment, where a family from Pestszentlőrinc were living. We asked them to go home, because we wanted to move back in. A few days later, this happened. Our apartment was empty, but all our property and furniture was stored in the dentist technician’s lab upstairs. I have to say that we were lucky, because not even a pin was missing. These people were honest too.

Sadly I can’t remember anything about anyone else who lived in the yellow-star house.

After the Szálasi putsch, as far as I recall on October 17, some Arrow Cross men entered the house. They ordered everyone down into the courtyard to look for weapons. All the apartments had to be vacated and we couldn’t take anything with us. They lined us up in the courtyard, and then we were escorted to Kertész Street 33-35. Women were led into one courtyard, men into the other. Later, soldiers took over guarding us. The rumor was that we’d be handed over to the Germans. We spent two nights in the courtyard, on the stone floor. On the third day they let us go, and so we hurried back to the Király Street apartment.

The Király Street concierge proved his humanity, in fact his braveness, when once, an Arrow Cross man was going from apartment to apartment with a policeman, collecting people together, allegedly for work. They also wanted to take my Mother away, and it is thanks to Uncle Legendy that this did not happen. He was able to convince the people hunters-that my Mother’s child had just developed a serious illness and could not remain alone.

In November, my Mother succeeded in obtaining a protection letter from the papal nuncio, and so we could move into a protected house. We were housed in a small ground-floor apartment at Dohány Street 47. My Mother placed me in a Red Cross children’s home on the corner of Andrássy Road and Munkácsy Street. On December 2, the Arrow Cross gathered the Jewish residents together in the courtyard. My Mother and older sister were at home. They tore up all the protection letters, lined everyone up and then made them set off to an unknown destination. While the Arrow Cross were checking the line of people on the street, my Mother and sister managed to step away from the line and, tearing the yellow stars from their clothes, mingle in with the passers-by. That evening, acquaintances of my sister’s took them in, a working-class family who lived at the end of Visegrádi Street. The next day, my Mother took me out of the children’s home because she had heard that the children had been taken away one night from a similar home. My sister’s benefactors couldn’t take any more people in, as they were already in danger for hiding more people. So we went back to Király Street 42. At night, Uncle Legendy let us back into our apartment. By day, my Mother and sister tried to find work as housekeepers, or any sort of job that would also provide accommodation. We went to the half bombed-out building of the Vigadó Theater, where an employment agency had been set up for refugees. They told the story that they had fled from the Russian occupation like many others, but had no strength to go on. My sister managed to find work in a household, but nobody wanted my mother and me. So during the day we rambled about, constantly in fear that someone would recognize us and hand us over to the Arrow Cross. In the evening, we asked to be let back in to the Király Street apartment. Uncle Legendy let us back in, and then for about a week, out of his kindness, we were relatively safe, at least for the nights.

A few days later (I think it was from December 10), Jews were not allowed outside the ghetto at all. As a final refuge, we went out to Újpest, where we looked for the Christian widow of one of my mother’s uncles. Aunt Teréz had a little tobacconists on Árpád Road near the water tower. We hoped she’d be able to help us hide until the Russians arrived. When she saw us, she took fright. Not only because we had lost so much weight and presented an appalling sight, but because, as we learned, there was an Arrow Cross house nearby, from where they used to come in and buy cigarettes. Because our relatives were spread all across they city, lots of people knew us in Újpest, and so someone might recognize us. So we were quickly bundled into the small apartment at the back of the shop. They gave us lunch and were wracking their brains over how to help us, when a cousin from Dunakeszi knocked at the door. We did not know this branch of the family. Aunt Teréz introduced us to Mariska as her friends from Szolnok who, after many hardships, could not take it any more and were looking for accommodation until they could return home. Mariska and her family took us in. Soon after, fighting came to Dunakeszi and on December 28, we were liberated there.

Here 16 of us lived in one room. Somehow my Aunt Regina joined us (she had fled from Germany), as did Aunt Ilona's elderly mother-in-law, and another cousin who was about the same age as me.

We got on relatively well together, although of course the crammed conditions made our life difficult. Problems were mostly around use of the kitchen, since there were more than ten people living in the other room of the apartment, and at meal preparation times the women thronged around the small stove, which worked, luckily.

One day my aunt’s elderly mother-in-law had a hernia protrusion, and naturally a warm cover could not ease her strong pains. We couldn’t call a doctor—who wouldn’t have been able to help anyway—and so my aunt asked me to go out in my leather jacket “without a star,” and try to find a way to get her into hospital. By a stroke of luck, I managed to fulfill her request, and accompanied her, moaning with pain, to the emergency hospital on the corner of Wesselényi Street and the Boulevard, entrusting her to two hospital employees hurrying in front of me with a stretcher. She was operated on immediately, and as far as I know, she managed to survive the rest of the siege of Budapest in the ghetto hospital.

Around noon one day, a state of agitation took over. News spread that people in military uniforms and boots had entered the house, whose intention we could only suspect. Upon hearing this news, my Aunt Rózsi immediately left the house, and Aunt Ilona didn’t hesitate much either. Even today I can still remember the image of her climbing down from the street-facing window of our high first-floor apartment and, with open arms, asked us to pass her three-year-old daughter down to her, who then followed her down the street. And that’s how the family left, escaping into nothing, and we learned later that they had found refuge in the nearby yellow-star house at Főnix Street 5.

In the ever-roomier apartment I was left with my Aunt Regina from Germany, but I don’t remember how long for. Maybe 8-10 days. Armed youth with Arrow Cross armbands appeared in the house again, and ordered all the residents to line up immediately in front of the house. I picked up my briefcase that contained my belongings and joined the line. We turned left onto Szent István Boulevard (and luckily, not in the other direction towards the Danube, but at that point we didn’t realize how lucky we were), and among lines of staring crowds, we went to the 6th-7th district central ghetto, where they dumped us behind the ghetto gates sealed with wooden boards.

I won’t continue with the story from here, since this is where the yellow-star house chapter comes to an end. In the ghetto however, every house had to have a star, how could it not be marked with a yellow star (but I don’t remember this detail precisely, who paid attention to what was on the front gate?).
But to finish I must describe the emotions I felt, and which I still feel today when I recall the scene.

In the ghetto house, towards the end of January (?), because of the bombings, I spent a couple of days in the basement air-raid shelter, we had to spend our time in the dark in the hiding place, with only a few oil lamps here and there. One could sleep well in the dark, and hunger is a good sedative.

One morning, I woke up to find that the hiding place was empty. Climbing up the stairs into the blinding daylight, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the pile of wooden boards piled up on top of one another. Of course I didn’t understand what had happened or how, or why…?

And then I saw the man dressed in a completely unknown kind of military uniform, with a fur cap on his head and probing in front of him with his gun …

And then I understood, I understood why the hiding place had emptied out, where the pile of wooden boards had come from, the unknown soldier, whom I DID NOT HAVE TO FEAR, and most important of all that my fate had been transformed, in that I had been a persecuted (why?) child who had now become a free citizen.

“Imprinting,” says Lorenz Konrad, but who cares what it’s called!
I can only think of the Soviets, the state of mind described above!
Olga Mária Magyar