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CHAPTER 3

Suri, as my mother was called, became pregnant fairly soon after her marriage, and her pregnancy was normal and uneventful. As her time for delivery grew near, my parents returned to Kiralyhaza to be with her family when she gave birth. They returned to her home about two months before I was born. My mother felt very well and energetic, and was able to help out with the housekeeping and cooking as of old. As usual, Mariam, her mother, was traveling back and forth to Budapest on business. My mother remembers that she felt so well that she was able to put up forty pounds of tomato sauce and other canned produce for the winter. She was not prepared for the difficulty awaiting her.

"Forty pounds tomato sauce for the winter I made, and I was cooking, keeping house in Kiralyhaza. My mother was always traveling at that time to Budapest and I was helping out at home."

Her delivery and my birth were not easy. It seems I was reluctant to be born. Perhaps I realized things were not going to be easy for me and I was in no hurry to be born. She was in labor for three days, and by the third day, which was a Friday, the midwife called in the local doctor. This was a sign of alarm, as usually the midwife took care of routine births by herself. The doctor couldn't do much either and there was discussion whether to send my mother to the hospital in another town. This was very serious indeed. My mother was very frightened by this time, because going to the hospital meant you were dying. In shul the men were reciting "Tehillim", Psalms, a whole day Friday. Psalms are recited by Orthodox Jews whenever someone's life is in danger.

Friday afternoon, in desperation, my grandfather sent a 'kvitel' to his Rebbe. A 'kvitel' is a note with a petition for aid, sent with a contribution, to the Rebbe, so that he will intercede on the petitioner's behalf and pray to God to grant his wish or solve his problem. He sent the 'kvitel' to his Rebbe, the Satmarer Rebbe, whose yeshiva was in the nearby town of Tarna. Rebbe's were called after the name of the town in which they resided. Satu Mare, Satmer in Yiddish, which strangely enough translates as St. Mary in English, was a town nearby in Rumania. The 'shammos' (beadle) of the shul was sent by bicycle to ask the Rebbe to pray for my mother's safe delivery. When the 'shammos' got to Tarna to see the Rebbe, the Rebbe told him that he could go home, as the baby was born already and my mother wouldn't have to go to the hospital. Somehow, without having been told, he knew that I had been born.

"How did he know?" asks my mother, "There was no telephone".

But he was right. I was born Friday afternoon, September 10, 1943, about half an hour before the lighting of the candles which usher in the Sabbath. The umbilical cord was wound around my neck three times, and that was probably what had caused the slow labor and difficult delivery. I was blue and didn't cry at first. The midwife was slapping me and dipping me in pails of hot and cold water. After a few minutes, I finally gave out a big cry.

As my mother was watching this, she remembers thinking, "Oh dear God, let her live, I don't think so- I'm [not] sure I'll have another baby." This is not an unusual feeling in women who have undergone such arduous labor without any anesthesia or pain killers. This was natural childbirth without any Lamaze training.

Despite this traumatic birth, my mother tells me I was a normal, healthy, baby. "Very normal. A very normal baby. You were nursing. There were no special problems. You weren't a sickly baby. You were a healthy baby." I was named Yenta Gitel, after my great grandmother, and Judith in Hungarian. The letter 'J' in Hungarian, and in many European languages, is pronounced as a 'Y', and I have always been called by my secular name, 'Yudit' or 'Yutka' in Hungarian, Yehudit, in Hebrew, or Judy, in English.

My parents stayed in Kiralyhaza for about six weeks, to give my mother a chance to recuperate. Then they returned to Kosice, around November 1943. When I was a couple of months old, my mother had some pictures taken of me at a photographer's studio. She sent one photo to Kiralyhaza, to her parents, and my Aunt Feigi told my mother that my grandfather, Shiya, used to prop my picture in front of him while he was studying Talmud.

The war situation continued as before for the next few months until a couple of weeks before Passover. Sunday morning, March 19, 1944, the Germans, afraid that Hungary would arrange a separate peace with the allies- as many other countries did at that time- staged a surprise occupation of Hungary, and Kosice was part of Hungary at that time. The Regent Nicholas Horthy was detained in Germany, the relatively liberal prime Minister of Hungary, Miklos Kallay was deposed, and the fascist General Sjotay was made prime minister.

One evening, soon after the takeover, the air raid sirens started to wail in Kosice, and everyone in the building went down to the basement to the air raid shelter. Suddenly, German soldiers in uniform came into the basement. That was the first time that my mother saw real, live, German soldiers.

The people in the shelter didn't know what the soldiers were going to do to them. From the stories they had heard, the Germans came in many places and started shooting and killing Jews at once. Sometimes they took Jews to work camps or ghettos right away. After the soldiers came into the air raid shelter, my mother left the shelter and went back to the apartment, even before the air raid was over and the sirens had stopped. She felt it was better to take her chances upstairs in the apartment than to be in the shelter with the German soldiers.

What to do now? That was the life and death dilemma. They had survived their first meeting with the Germans, but now the situation was very dangerous. The war had finally come to them. Ghettos were being formed, and the Jews were being deported to concentration camps. My mother wasn't very clear in her mind what that entailed, but she knew that a labor or concentration camp was difficult for adults to survive. She knew they were full of starvation and disease. She didn't know about the death camps, but she was certain it would be impossible for a seven month old infant to survive. This was the impetus for her to try and get away. She knew it was near the end of the war, if she could just get away and hold out for a while, there was a chance for survival.

Many Jews tried at that time tried to escape before they were put in ghettos and deported, but you needed Hungarian citizenship papers to get on a train to go anywhere. Most Jews in Kosice and Slovakia didn't have those papers, since that area had been part of Czechoslovakia previously. It was possible to get forged documents, and many Jews did use them to get away, but many were caught and deported, or shot on the spot. Some got away with it. My mother had the unusual luck, thanks to her mother's foresight which I described earlier, of having legal Hungarian citizenship documents.

"In the evening, the sirens started and we went down. That's when they- first time I seen SS soldiers in my life. And they were very frightening, very scary to us. That's when I decided that I'm going to try to get away from here, someplace, somehow, somewhere."

"You knew that they were going to start deporting."

"We didn't know anything. I knew that they're going to start killing. I thought that they're gonna start killing right away, shooting. From the stories we heard they came in many places and they go and they started killing, shooting, anytime, anyplace. Sometimes they kept people for working, sometimes they made ghettos. It depended whatever they had on their mind. You never knew what their plans are. You just knew one thing, that they want to eliminate us, the Jews. That's all we knew.

I knew there's a small chance to survive, even for grownups. Many people, once they got in ghettos, or deported, or whatever, or labor camps, that people were starving from hunger, and from sickness, and for many reasons, and from killing, that there's not big chance to survive, especially a baby. So I figured, a baby, was [a] very powerful motive and feeling to go and to survive this war. I figured it won't last long. If we just could survive, hold out somehow, then there's a chance to survive."

"And you thought that you had these papers, citizenship papers which would help. Without that you probably wouldn't have tried."

"No, I would have, because we went on false papers too."

"Why didn't your parents and family try to go away? "

"Carpathia was already at the time considered a war zone. It was very close to the front from all sides. Russia, the other side of Carpathia, the Russians were already, they were very close. So all Carpathia was like cordoned off. There was no big traffic between there."

"No trains going out, you couldn't get out?"

"The army trains."

"No civilian movements?"

"No. No. Troop movements."

"So your mother had the foresight to get papers, but she couldn't use them."

"No. It was very difficult to get away from there. And it was a small town. Everybody knew everybody. All the station people, everybody knew my parents, everybody who's Jewish. In Kosice I had a chance because it was a big city, not a town, a city, a very big city, considering Kiralyhaza, and very few people knew me in the station, or in general. I had a chance, I had a good chance. There I had a chance. From Kiralyhaza, you could hide someplace, or maybe if somebody hid you, but it was very difficult because it was a small place, there was no place where to hide."

"Everybody knew where everybody was, who everybody was."

"Everybody lived outdoors. Everybody had backyards and people lived summer outside. Everybody knew the next neighbor what he's doing, who's there, whatever [he] shops, what food he has, if he'll have too much food. I mean, it was too small a place to be able to hide. They couldn't do it. Very few people got away from there. Somehow, hidden in trunks, in trucks, or in station wagons they got out to Budapest. Very, very, very few. I don't even know anybody who got [out]. Most of whom survived were in Auschwitz, they came back. But to hide, to hide- I know Leibu ran away, but Munkacevo was a big city, much bigger, a city already. He got away. And a few people got away from Satmar, who ran away. But none from the little places like Kiralyhaza, because, Feigi, my mother could have sent away Feigi. We had papers, but they, none of them got away."

"They came suddenly so there wasn't time to get out."

"I remember I got the last post card from my mother and she says, 'I wish I could have sent Feigi out to you'. My brother, you know- she was very happy that I'm in Budapest."

"So she knew you were already in Budapest? "

"I sent home a postcard and they got it yet and they knew I'm in Budapest. And she's very happy I'm there, and she said she wishes she could have sent Mendel and Feigi out."

Lucy Davidowizc, "To carry out the deportations of the Jews, Eichmann divided Hungary into six zones: Zone I, Carpathians; C II, Transylvania; III, northern Hungary; IV, southern Hungary east of the Danube; V, Transdanubia, including the suburbs of Budapest; VI, Budapest proper.

With the participation of a "Sondereinsatzkommando" (special-duty commando) that Eichmann had brought from Mauthausen and with the help of the Hungarian police, the Germans began to round up the Jews, concentrating them within the designated zones, and deporting them in rapid order. By June 7, Zones I and II had been cleared of nearly 290,000 Jews. By June 30, over 92,000 Jews were deported from Zones III and IV. By July 7, over 437,000 Jews, including some 50,000 from Budapest, had been deported to Auschwitz.

Meanwhile, the Jewish relief committee in Budapest, following up earlier initiatives of Slovakian Jews, began negotiations with SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Dieter Wisliceny about ransoming the remaining Hungarian Jews from deportation. On behalf of the Jewish relief committee, Joel Brand was sent to Turkey to contact the allies about the possibilities of exchanging goods for Jewish lives. Negotiations were protracted and complex but Eichmann never halted the deportation trains. Finally, nothing substantial developed in the rescue of the Jews except for one trainload of Hungarian Jews who were saved." *(page 382)

My parents' first reaction, and that of the rest of my father's family, at the sudden appearance of the German soldiers were feelings of being "stunned, shocked and trapped". They had no place to run. My mother's first thoughts were to go back to her parents in Kiralyhaza, but that was closer to the battle front, and civilians weren't allowed to go there since the Russian armies were closing in on the Germans from that direction. Rumors were flying regarding what the Germans were going to do with the Jewish population. Everyone was very tense and panicky. The approximate time from the German arrival to the start of Jewish deportations was about three weeks. There wasn't much time to make plans.

At the next family gathering, the talk was of how to escape. It was decided that part of the family, the older children, would try to get to Budapest, because it was a big city and people wouldn't know they were Jewish. In Kosice, the house the family lived in was mostly occupied by Jews and was in a Jewish neighborhood. Kosice was a smaller city than Budapest and the family was well known. It was decided that my mother and I would go first since we had the most authentic documents.

It is hard here, in the United States, to imagine the importance of papers and documents at that time. You couldn't move without them and your very life depended on them. Everywhere we went for the next several years, until we reached the United States, our papers were forever being checked. My mother was forever worrying about them and struggling to have the right ones needed each step of our journey.

That night, my parents planned what to do next. It was dangerous for all three of us to go together. It was especially dangerous for my father to accompany us . A beard could be cut off, but Jewish men were easily detectable because circumcision was practiced almost entirely by Jewish men. That's how many Jewish men were caught. Therefore, it was decided that my mother would go first, taking me along with her. I was about eight months old at the time. My father would try to follow and meet us in Budapest at his sister's house. His younger sister Irene was already in Budapest visiting her married sister Shari. We would all meet at Shari's house.

Once the decision had been made my mother started to prepare. She packed clothing, food, and diapers to take along on the train to Budapest. Rumor had it that the Jews would be rounded up into ghettos any day now. She knew that it would be much harder, if not impossible, to escape from the ghetto. So the time had come to go immediately.

One morning in April, shortly after Pesach, she took her trousseau, picture albums (much to my sorrow), and all her valuables down to the superintendent of the building for safekeeping, while we were away. It was understood by all that we might never come back. For us, my mother packed some diapers, clothes, and some minimal food- especially dry bread for me- in the bottom of my baby carriage. The European baby carriages of that time were very deep and the body of the carriage nearly reached the ground right above the wheels. She felt that she didn't need much food for me because she was still nursing me and the trip to Budapest was normally not very long. Under normal circumstances the trip only took a few hours.

The train station wasn't very far from the apartment building where we lived, so she proceeded on foot to the station to get a ticket for the train. At the station, railroad officials and Hungarian Military Police were checking everyone's papers, asking questions, checking destinations. One of them checked my mother's papers and asked for her birth certificate as well as her citizenship papers. The latter, according to him, were not enough. She told him that her birth certificate was in her home town of Kiralyhaza. She hadn't brought it to Kosice and Kiralyhaza was in the war zone, so she wouldn't be able to get it. He told her that it was no use to let her get on the train because the officials on the train would want the birth certificate as well, so she might as well go home till she was able to get it.

This was very discouraging and she had to go back home. But the situation was getting bleaker by the minute. At times like these she had to keep going and use her ingenuity to figure out how to circumvent the obstacles in her way. She was ready to give up, but then she had an idea. The superintendent of the building had a young son about sixteen years old. As my mother described him, "He was very mature looking, blond, blue eyed, typical Aryan looking".

Since my mother had given them all her valuable possessions, which they both knew she might never reclaim, [and never did], she felt that she could propose that he come along with us to the train station to try to help us get on a train. With his looks, and as her companion, my mother might look less suspicious. This time she decided to go to a small outlying train station, not the main one she had gone to earlier in the day. Maybe it would be easier to get on a train there. Maybe there would be fewer officials and less checking of papers.

At this point I have to explain that my mother is fairly Jewish looking. There are many European Jews with blond hair or blue eyes, or both, but my mother is not one of them. She has dark brown wavy hair and gray eyes. Her features are fairly regular and I don't know if you would say she looks particularly Jewish but she thinks she does, and she certainly didn't look like Hitler's model Aryan. But her main handicap at that time was that Orthodox women shaved off their hair upon marriage, and wore a 'sheitel' (wig), or a kerchief on their head. This was a dead giveaway that she was Jewish. Today, many Orthodox women still cover their hair with wigs or kerchiefs but most of them do not shave their heads. At that point, however, she had no choice but to wear her wig, with a kerchief over it. Fortunately, it was fairly new, of good quality human hair, and natural looking. It had been part of her trousseau.

The super's son agreed to come along with us. My mother left the carriage she had packed, and just took a bag with some diapers and dried bread for me to munch on. She felt she would look less suspicious and conspicuous if she traveled light. Without any baggage or a carriage it would look like she wasn't going far. So they went to this small outlying station, and it was full of Jews like us who had the same idea and were trying to get away. Jews were not allowed to travel at this time and most of them had forged papers. When the official started to examine her papers, she turned away from him, and maneuvered herself in such a way, that the official was facing her companion.

She told the official, "This is my cousin, and this is my baby. I'm leaving for Budapest because my boyfriend is there".

This was to be my mother's story for the rest of the war. She was an unwed mother whose boyfriend was at the front. I always got a chuckle out of that story, because my mother had grown up in such a devout, strict, chassidic, orthodox home, where you couldn't even talk to a young man unchaperoned. And here she was, wearing her 'sheitel', and playing the part of an unwed mother with an illegitimate baby.

Finally, after two or three more official checks, she was let through to board a train. This was the first big hurdle she had to overcome. It has also to be remembered that until this time my mother had led a very sheltered life, going from her father's house to her husband's care. This was the first time she was really on her own. However, she was finally on the train to Budapest. She had no idea how long it would take to get there. Normally, as I said before, it took only a few hours to get there, but these were not normal times, and she had no idea how long it would take.

She describes the scene in the following manner, "I was planning a whole night with your father. The three of us couldn't leave, it was dangerous. First of all a man if he's caught, you could very fast find out he's a Jew.

"He had a beard you say? "

"That could be cut off. But besides, a man couldn't- a man was- they could verify in five minutes he's a Jew, because there was no circumcision [among] the 'goyim' (gentiles) those years."

"Not like here."

"Circumcised was a Jew. That was the biggest threat for a man. That's how very many men were caught and they couldn't survive. So we decided that I'll go with you first and he'll follow, he shouldn't endanger [us], we shouldn't go together. So I left, the morning, next day morning."

"Right after the first day the SS came in, the next day you left?"

"No. A few days after that I started to pack and I started to plan. And then a few days later, one morning, it was the rumor already that they're going to get the people together, that one of these days they're going to the ghetto. And I knew, from the ghetto it's gonna be a very small chance, much harder than to get out from here. Here I lived between 'goyim' and it's close to the station. So I decided I'm leaving in the morning and everybody helped me to pack. [My] mother-in-law, she helped me to pack, your father, and everybody helped me.

I took my dowry, I had a big dowry, and linens, a whole closet, my picture albums, and my winter coat, and fur collars, and suits, and all. When I got married I got beautiful things. Dowry. All new things, made in salons. They wanted me to impress Kosice. They were all very well dressed. I had to be- I had beautiful things, beautiful dowry.

Everything we took down to the super. [There] lived in the house, I don't know, thirty, forty families. It was a beautiful, beautiful house on the riverbank. Kosice, one of the nicest areas. It was a gorgeous area. It looked like Switzerland. And they had a beautiful apartment. So I packed up. I had a deep carriage, a baby carriage, not like they have here. The carriage was almost to the wheels at the bottom. Very deep. So I packed up diapers and some baby clothes in that carriage. And that's all I carried. I left everything downstairs at the super, in case I come back, you know, he's going to give me back."

"So you filled the carriage with necessities."

"Just basic necessities. Diapers and some food. Dried bread, something."

"You had money? You took along money?"

"Some money, not much. Your father brought money, a few hundred dollars, when he came out. I had a few, just 'pengos' (Hungarian money). Food I didn't take much because you were nursing just at the time yet. So all I took, some bread, stale bread, dry bread, that in case you should be able, as a baby, to give you in the hand something to nibble on, and some bottles, baby bottles and nipples, and stuff like that.

So I went out in the morning to the station, to the main station, and I bought a ticket, and I went out to board the train. Everybody was checked before you boarded the train. It was war time, so every person who went on a train was checked, papers, and the reason you're going."

"By who? By the Germans or by the Hungarians?"

"No, by the Hungarians."

"The Hungarian army? Soldiers? Police?"

"It was station officials, and also gendarmes. They were like a kind of police, not regular police like here. They were a different branch. Big rifles. Special hats they wore. They were like--"

"Military police? "

"Military police, kind of, gendarmes they called them there. They were also checking, and they were also on the trains."

"And at that point Jews were not allowed to travel out because of the ghetto."

"Not at all. No Jews were going traveling. So I was very nervous of course, and I was afraid that, you know, it's going to show on me."

"What did you do about your 'sheitel'?"

"Nothing. I had no hair, I had just a 'sheitel' so I wore my 'sheitel'."

"Did you put something over it, a kerchief or something?"

"A kerchief, something, a kerchief, because I wanted to go as casual as possible. Anyway, I went to the station and they checked me, and he said to me, the official, 'You need more than that, you need a birth certificate.'"

"What did you have, just the paper your mother gave you?"

"Yes, I didn't have a birth certificate. So he said 'You cannot go without a birth certificate because if I let you out, the next station or so they'll take you off the train. You're going with a baby so you better go home.'

I said, 'I have it home, do I have to go home?' No, I said, I don't have it here, I have it in Kiralyhaza where I was born. I didn't bring it here and I cannot go there. It's a military occupation area, zone, it's very hard to get.'

He said, 'Well it just doesn't make then sense. [Get it] by mail,' that we shouldn't leave out like this because we won't get there.

So I had no choice and I went back home. I got back home and the situation was very bleak. There was no way to get out. I was ready to give up. But then I had an idea. The super had a young son. He was about sixteen years old, very mature looking, blond, blue eyes, typical Aryan look. And since I felt I gave them all my worldly possessions, I can ask him to come. I can propose to him and ask him would he come and accompany me in the evening, at night. There was a small station out of the main, not the main, it was out of town like almost. A small station. And he accepted. He said yes, he'll come with me.

So I left everything. In the evening, I didn't take the carriage, I didn't take the diapers, I didn't take nothing, just what we had on our backs and a bag with a few diapers. That's all I took. And I had a spring coat on, and a dress, and that was it."

"And you carried me."

"Yes, I figured that's the only way to get away, if I can get away. The least suspicious- anything, if you take too much it got suspicious. So I figured this way you just go, you don't want to go too far, or whatever, it's the least conspicuous. So I went out with this young man to the station and when they came to check- there were a lot of Jewish people there who were trying to get away with false papers. Most of them had false papers. They were buying them for money, you were able to buy false papers. I had my own papers. There was no religion on the papers, and there was a seal from the interior minister, and the name wasn't Jewish.

When they were checking and examining my papers, I turned to the young man. He was facing the police official and I was talking to them, but he was facing them. And I said, 'This is my cousin, and this is my baby. I'm leaving for Budapest because my boyfriend is there.' I wasn't married [on the papers], I was a girl, so I have a boyfriend. I'm unmarried. At the time it wasn't as common as it is today. It wasn't acceptable, but it happened. So I was two, three times examined by the gendarmes, and by the official, and I got through.

I really felt that somebody was watching over me, that my father or somebody was behind it. Somebody's taking care of it, because I had a very Jewish face, I had a 'sheitel', and I was with a baby, and I didn't look too happy. I looked probably miserable, and depressed, and worried. You can't hide, your face can't hide that. But somebody was really, fate, or God, just made I should survive. I guess it was my 'goirel' (fate, lot), to survive, because, I mean, it was the most difficult thing to pass that. That was the first, biggest thing, to get out of Kosice.

So I got out. I got on a train. He went back, this young man, and he told the family that I got on the train. They notified Shari and Cheskel [in Budapest], they wrote them a letter, that I left. I didn't know where I go. The goal was Budapest but it was very difficult to get to Budapest."

My mother decided she would stop on the way in a town called Mezei Tur. An aunt and uncle, her father's older sister Gitel, and her family, lived there. The trip to Mezei Tur was very difficult and took about twenty four hours. The diapers she had prepared were soon used up. The train was packed and there was no place to wash or change. She was having difficulty nursing me because her milk production was erratic, probably due to her fears and nervousness. I cried a lot during the night, as all my mother had to feed me was the dried bread she had brought along for me to gnaw on. She was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, which was not easily accomplished with a crying baby. During the night, the gendarmes came over to check those damned papers again, probably because of the racket I was making.

"I decided I'm going to make a stop over in Mezei Tur. I had an uncle, my father's sister, older sister, lived in Mezei Tur, that I'll stop over there. Maybe I'll take a rest there. Gitel, Mima (aunt) Gitel. She had two daughters, one married."

"How long did it take you to get from Kosice to Mezei Tur?"

"A night and a day. The next evening I got to, twenty four hours I got to Mezei Tur. Very, very difficult trip. The baby was crying, the baby was hungry, the baby was dirty. The diapers got worn out. I had no diapers. There was no place where to wash and change, and I really can't recall how we managed. There were no paper diapers either.

"No, for sure not."

"So those twenty four hours I used up all the diapers. And, you know, the baby was crying. That brought attention more to me. You try to pull in, but I got attention because of the baby. So the gendarmes came over and they checked my papers.

They accepted my papers, so that was my first big hurdle and I got to Mezei Tur. I had no idea where they lived. I was never there before. I didn't know the town. It was in the morning so my decision was to go to a hotel near the station, check in, get a tea for the baby. Tea with milk I bought. In the room I got a basin with water. I washed the baby."

"Were you still nursing then? "

"Yes. At the moment I was still nursing. Not for long. I drank milk. I bought milk and I drank, and I washed the baby, and I brought the baby to sleep. I relaxed a little bit and then I started out to find my aunt and uncle. I was a little bit, I guess, absent minded. I didn't check the name of the hotel where I was. I knew this is the hotel near the station, I'll come back, I'll find it. It just didn't occur to me at the moment to--. So I'm going, and I started asking questions when I seen a Jewish face or I seen, they were wearing stars already there, Jewish stars on their arms, so I seen a Jewish face I start in to ask about [if] they know the name, if they know any [one] by that name.

They weren't deported yet. First they started to deport in Carpathia, Czechoslovakia; Hungary was the last. This was already Hungary. They weren't deported yet. So finally I find somebody who knew them and they directed me where to go. I found them. I got there. My aunt of course, they were all surprised to see me, shocked to see me there. And they were crying. I told them the story, I'm trying to get to Budapest. I have there a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law, and I'm trying to see if I could hide out there on Christian papers."

"You stopped, you got off in Mezei Tur because you had to clean up and replenish?"

" The train stopped there anyway. I had to change there, it wasn't going further. I had to wait there a few hours. It was a big station and I figured I'll see what's the situation. If it's passable maybe I'll stay there. It didn't matter to me. With them, maybe in Hungary they don't deport or something. We didn't know what's going on in the next town.

So when I got there, my aunt says to me, 'You can't stay here. In the next room the SS is there. They occupied all the rooms here. We have one room here and you're in danger here.'"

"It was their house?"

"Yes, and the SS occupied their house, 'And they know you weren't here when they got here. You have to move out of here.'

So I stayed there a few hours. We decided I'll go in the evening. It's safer to get on a train, to get back on a train, it's safer to go in the evening.

So the story, then it started. His brother, my uncle's brother, a bachelor, a young man, he was in his middle thirties. He was working like in a labor camp, an army camp, something like that. But he was working in the town there yet, they didn't take him away yet. So he knew the town and he had a Jewish star, so he was able to go around there yet. I didn't want to put on a Jewish star yet so he didn't want to walk next to me. He walked ahead of me and I followed him, and he took me to different hotels to stop and see if I could find [you]."

"You mean you couldn't remember which hotel you were in?"

"No. I didn't remember the name. Finally, after a few hours, you were there a few hours."

"Alone."

"There was a woman cleaning the window in the room and she was playing with you. You weren't sleeping yet, and then you fell asleep. When I got there, you slept already, and you were sitting in the room, and the woman was still cleaning windows in the next room, and she came in to check on you, and she played with you. The woman, she finished with the other windows, she came in and you were sitting and she was playing with you. You weren't crying, you were rested, you ate, you were changed, I mean, you recuperated a little. So I paid. But it was very- I was very horrified, for a while I was very- fear came over me."

"How long did it take? About an hour, two hours?"

"Oh at least two, three hours. The fear came, maybe someone'll kidnap you, maybe something happened, maybe- God knows- maybe I won't find you, maybe I don't know where it is. You know all kind of things come in your mind. I was very worried. But finally, we find you and we went back to my aunt's house."

"Was there a crib there? Or was I on a bed, or what was I on?"

"No, on a bed. You were eight months old. In Europe they kept babies in swaddling. I opened you up there in the house. I put you in the bedroom to move around a little bit and then, not too long, I put you back in swaddling, because you were supposed to be swaddled. That was the right thing, to keep you straight, the limbs shouldn't [be] crooked.

Then before the evening, before it got dark, I got set up with a little food again, and a few diapers. She made me from sheets, she cut up diapers for me special because they had no diapers there. And I went out to the station. They left me there. They didn't want to stay there. It wasn't safe for them and it wasn't safe for me. So the trains were coming and going. I couldn't get on a train. All were packed, I couldn't get on. With the suitcase, and with the baby, and I couldn't get on a train. It was impossible. And it was very dangerous to sit on the station also. It was risky. You had more chance to be caught in the station than in the train already. Finally, midnight, I got on a train.

It took me three days to get to Budapest. Without diapers again, and with a crying baby, and with a diaper rash, and the milk started, I started to lose the milk. You were crying already for two things, a diaper rash, and for no food. It was becoming really very- I became really desperate. And we stopped in Debrecen. Again I had to get off. I had nobody. I had to stay at the station. And again I was sitting in the station with constantly checking, all sides checking papers.

Then I came to one station where I had very, very horrible situation, because I didn't know when the train is going to come."

"What was the name of this place?"

"Czop."

"This was in Hungary."

"Yes. There was no trains coming, and we didn't know when a train was going to come, and I didn't know if I'm gonna get on the train. I couldn't go in a hotel or anyplace. I didn't know anybody. It was very dangerous to get out, and at the station, it was in the morning, I was trying to get on a train. But the train didn't come and all of a sudden the baby started to get pale and green, and just like fainting away, and I didn't know what to do. I was very upset, frightened. The baby was just passing out."

"Was it lack of food, or diarrhea, or what?"

"Everything, combination. Diaper rash, lack of food, abnormal, the whole situation. Not sleeping normally. The baby started to get, just passing out. I didn't know what's happening with the baby. I had no idea. The baby was passing out, green, you know. So I just picked myself up, and I left the suitcase, I left everything at the station, and I started to walk in the town, walk to town. It was a very, very long walk. The station was very far out from the village and I didn't know the way. I was just walking and I didn't know the baby's alive or not in my hands. I was carrying a passed out baby. And you know, my eyes were tears, and I was just walking.

Finally I came to a village and I got into a house, a Jewish house. I seen a store closed with shutters, so I figured this must be a Jewish store. Behind the store, houses were behind the store, so I went in that house. They were Jewish people, very nice people. They seen the situation, and they took the baby right away, and they opened up the little swaddling, and they made a bed, and they made a tea, and the baby revived. The baby came to. They gave a tea, and then they gave you some water, and then I remember they cooked some farina later. I stayed there a whole day in this place."

"Around how far was the station to the village?"

"About a half hour walking. So at night I said goodbye to the people- I always wonder what happened to those people. They were very, very nice people. I doubt it if they survived. They were deported after that, the whole [area].

Now to try to get on a train. Of course I didn't find my suitcase, the soldiers and people, you didn't find things. I left. I was left without the suitcase, but I got some diapers, new sheets they tore, new sheets again. So I had some food, I had a bag, a shopping bag, and I was packed up. Finally, again with difficulties, with worries, with checking papers, I got on the train. By then we started to get closer to Budapest already, but it still took another twenty four hours till I got to Budapest. But I finally got there.

I got to Budapest. I had to get another hurdle to get through. It was a tremendous strict checking to get off. At the station, coming off the train, everybody was five, six check points, till you got out to the street. And whoever they caught, or suspicious, or the papers they didn't like, or the face they didn't like, right away they had special paddy wagons and straight in the prison. There was a very famous prison, I don't remember the name. Very big, the biggest prison in Budapest. You got straight to the prison. And [if] you got to the prison you had a good chance to be deported right away.

My luck held out. I got through all the check points, with my Jewish face, with a baby, dirty, and they could see I'm not completely in a normal [way] traveling. But somehow 'es is bashert' (if it's fated) to make it, you make it. That I seen there. That's why I believe a lot in fate and 'basherte zachen' (ordained things). That made me see that there is- there were girls, single girls with blue eyes, and blond girls, and they [were] caught. They were caught at the Budapest station. They made it to the Budapest station. They came from Satmer, they came from Kosice, and they were caught. They checked them, the papers, or they got very nervous, or they gave away a little something. You never know what. A Jewish- they had different mannerisms a little bit. They recognized, Christians, the Polish or Hungarians, they could spot a Jew somehow. There was something about it. How I made it I'll never know because I don't consider myself an Aryan looking, and I had a 'sheitel' also, and I had a small baby, and I made it."