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CHAPTER 5

Now that the war was over for us my mother had to decide what to do next. As usual, our immediate needs were food and shelter. Budapest was in ruins and our apartment house had been bombed. We couldn't go back there. Also it was time to take stock and to see who was still alive. My mother didn't know what had happened to my father, her parents, her in-laws or the rest of her family. There was fear, but there was also tremendous hope that some of them would still be alive.

"After a while, when it finally quieted down, it got quiet. [Feb.-Mar. 1945]. They took the city, the whole city. Then I packed up and I wanted to go back to Budapest, to Mindya. That was my goal, to see if they survived, if they're there. To get in the Jewish section, to see, try to contact some people, maybe to get out of Budapest. The goal was to get out of Budapest. There was no food in Budapest. You know, a city after an army, they burn, they ruin, I mean everything was in ruins. Budapest was in a terrible ruin, bombed out, terrible. Food wasn't coming in the city. There was no food, bombed out.

So the goal was to get to Budapest, to the main station, and then out; or to Satmar, or Kiralyhaza, or Kosice. This was my goal, these three places. Somewhere where maybe I'll find some family. I had nobody. I was completely out of contact with anybody. These 'goyim', these people who I was with, they went back to the country. They came from some small town in Hungary. They went back to their small town. They asked me if I want to go with them. I said no, I want to go somewhere of my choice. Then I told them I'm Jewish. So that was my goal."

"Budapest was liberated but the war wasn't over."

"The war wasn't over. They were still fighting some places, close to Germany. The war was moving to Germany."

"But for you, more or less, it was over."

"For me it was over, but the hurt was just starting, because till then I was just happy to be alive. I didn't have much time to think of what happened. It was all like a nightmare, a real nightmare, and I'm just fighting for my life and for my baby's life. That was all what I could think of. I had to fight constantly, constantly. First of all, not to say something that I should give myself away, because you can say something that they'll get suspicious, uh, a gesture. When we were in bunker we never knew yet what's going to be, if the Germans are gonna come, or the Hungarians. So it was a constant- you had to play a role constantly. Twenty four hours. Then to see to have food. Then to see, if you have a sick baby, to see everything what to keep the baby alive.

So the goal was for me to get to Mindya. The first thing was Mindya. A lot of people, she knew a lot of people. A lot of people stayed with her. A lot of people came there. She was in contact with a lot of people."

"If you would have stayed with her in the ghetto there, you might also have survived. But you didn't know that."

"Possibility, yes. But it was a chance that they would have caught me too, because if I would be there as a Jew, not everybody survived. Her sister, or somebody, her mother, passed away then. She had a sister. I know she lost some members of the family. Her father survived, and she survived, and her daughter, a child. Her husband, she had a husband, he was taken away already, in labor camp, forced labor camp, so he wasn't around."

"So they took people from the ghetto."

"Yes. Oh, a lot of people. It wasn't safe at all. I was safer, till the fighting started, but the fighting was there too. First Buda was the fighting, then it came to the rest. Then they surrounded us, so you couldn't tell. And that was my place then and I was fairly safe on the Christian papers."

"Safer than in the ghetto."

"Safer. They all, they would have given thousands of dollars to be able to get my papers, and to get out. The goal was to live like I did.

You were sick. You weren't well the whole time. You just got a little bit better but you were still malnourished. Diarrhea constantly. You know in Satmar you still had diarrhea. It took me years to stop the diarrhea. But that night you were crying nonstop. I couldn't get a doctor and Mindya and her father, I remember, were so worried. They came in and were sitting with me. They felt so sorry for me and they were trying so much to help me.

She came with me to the station, every day. It was a tremendous walk. No transportation, no railroads. We had to walk for miles to the station. So she came every day out with me to the station, and sitting with me for hours trying to get me on a train. And then walk back, couldn't get on a train. For three days we did that, and then I finally got on a train.

So finally I got out. Somebody picked me up on the shoulder and I jumped in through the window. I got up with my hand and they pulled me up and I jumped. I got in through a window. First I got you up and then I got up through a window. Couldn't get in through the doors.

Then started a journey, another odyssey. With open windows, January, end of January, February, freezing cold, no doors no windows on the train. With a baby. No food. It's unbelievable the human spirit, and how strong a person is, and how weak a person is. But how strong it can be, how much a person can survive."

"Not everybody. You were an exception."

"I come from very good stock. We had a strong family and I was very healthy. I was never sick a day in my life. I can't recall being really sick... So thank God for that."

My mother was quite strong and well adjusted. She had the right temperament, even tempered and sensible. She was stable and healthy, mentally and physically. People leaned on her even when she was a child.

After two days on the train, we got to Debrecen, which was northeast of Budapest. Ordinarily, the trip would have taken just a few hours. Debrecen was a small city and quieter at this time than Budapest. There had been no actual fighting there. Also, being smaller, it was closer to the countryside and to sources of food. We stayed at a rooming house and were able to get food, such as bread and milk. To pay for our food and lodging my mother exchanged some of the things she had brought along in the suitcases she had received from the Russian soldiers, as well as using some of the money she still had.

"So we got to, after we left Budapest we got to, after about two days, to Debrecen. It's a Hungarian city which was more normal than Budapest. Life was more settled already there. They didn't fight there over the city and it's a smaller town. It had a lot of countryside so they had more food. So we were able to get food, bread and milk, and some food that we weren't able to get [in Budapest]."

"Now you say you went to a rooming house. Did you have to pay money for that?"

"Yes. But I think I did some exchange. I had some things that I was able to give them. I didn't have to pay much. And after we slept over the night, next morning we packed up again and went to the station. Again tried to get on a train, to get out someplace."

"Actually, you were trying to get back to family?"

" Yes, I mean, to try to go home. Home. That still was somehow the feeling left, that's your home. I had a big part of the family from Satmar and Kiralyhaza, and Carpathia. So I figured if there is, if anybody's home, or anybody comes home, they should congregate around there someplace. And I knew people from that area. Then I was hoping there is more food also. The countryside. The goal was at the time, the immediate goal, was to get someplace where there is food.

So after about a day and a half in Debrecen, we got on a train in the direction of Kolosvar. Kolosvar was previously Rumania. The name was, in Rumania it was Cluj, and we got there. I was very lucky at the time because I find some family from the Friedmans, a second cousin from the Friedman family. The name was Schreiber, very prominent family in Cluj, Jewish, well known, well to do. A very well known family, and a very 'balebatish' family. I got there, I find out they survived, a couple with a few daughters, two daughters, and an uncle, a few people, a group of people. That means there's some family, a home, that there is a home to go to someplace. So of course I made my way to find them, and I got there."

"How did you hear that they were there?"

"Well, in every city, it was started organizing like a girls home, or for people from concentration camps coming back. They started to come back. So there was like 'Judengemeinde' (Jewish community groups), something like that. Some people, the older, the oldest, they started to get together. And people who came home tried to help, to be one with the other, and help one the other.

This family Schreiber, when I found them, they lived in an apartment. They fixed up a home for themselves already. They had food. They took me in very nicely. They were very nice. It was Friday that day, so it was coming to Shabbos. So it was my first Shabbos in a long time with really Jewish Orthodox people. They cooked for Shabbos, and I don't remember many details. The only thing I remember is it was a wonderful happening at the time."

"So you had your first Shabbos since you left home?"

"Chulent, meat, all the trimmings what we had at home. Chopped liver with eggs. It was just unbelievable at the time. It meant a lot. And nice people, and very helpful, whatever they could help. And after Shabbos, after the weekend, I packed up again. And with all the information I got from them; that there are some people left in Satmar; that they organized a home for girls who are coming back from Auschwitz and from concentration camps; and men from the labor camps, they're gathering in Satmar. Whoever's coming is in Satmar. And there are already some people [there] who were hiding as Christians, so there is a little nucleus of Jews already in Satmar. So that was already very reassuring.

I got started. I still had two suitcases at the time from Budapest, that I got together before I left. I had two suitcases with some stuff and that was my bargaining, that was mostly my money. For that I got food, because the only way was really, to get food, exchange. So I kept my suitcases. But in the train we were traveling from Kolosvar, Cluj, to the direction of Satmar. It took another week to get to Satmar, stops here, stops there, I don't remember.

"Did you stay on the train the whole time?"

"No. In trains, and got off, in stations and wait for another train. And someplace in between that trip, Russians came up on the train and they took my two suitcases, these two suitcases I got in Budapest. Russian soldiers brought them to me and they gave [them to me] because you couldn't get suitcases there. They went to a store, they brought the suitcases. They were open [looted], you know, so I got it from them and someplace along the way another group took it. They came, they found two suitcases with things, some clothes I had there. By the time I got to Satmar I had no suitcases."

Once we reached Satmar, my mother's first wish was to go back to her home town, Kiralyhaza to see who of her family had survived.

"Meanwhile, you hadn't gone back to Kosice or Kiralyhaza?"

"I was in Kiralyhaza. When I was going from Budapest to Debrecen and Kolosvar and Satmar. From Satmar, when I settled in Satmar already, I went back to Kiralyhaza."

"It was close."

"Yes. A half an hour or so by train. So I went by train and I passed my home, the house where I lived, and Gypsies lived there. I went into the store. The store was closed down, but I went inside from the back, and I find some books there, credit books in my father's and mother's handwriting, and a lot of little mementos what I gathered."

"Yeah? I never saw them. You still have them? [I have always been so hungry for tangible mementos of my grandparents and father. I have none. I finally got a picture of my father's parents from my aunt Irene in 1987. That was the first time I saw how they looked. I still don't know how my father looked aside from verbal descriptions, nor do I have anything that belonged to him.]"

"They disappeared again. While traveling, they disappeared. So I had a few mementos I gathered, and I left, because I couldn't stay there, seeing gypsies there. The back yard, the garden. We had a big, big, garden and a big back yard.

There were a few Jewish people there already. Girls and boys came back who stayed in a home. Also they made themselves a home. All the girls and boys [who] came home, they were there, from the Joint [Distribution Committee, an American Jewish charitable organization still in existence] set up, for a future, whatever, they're going to stay there."

"The money for these 'Joints' all came from America?"

"From America. They had representatives in Germany and Eastern Europe. They were trying to help the remnants to exist. Otherwise they couldn't have exist. They had no money, they had no homes, they had no place where to go. I went to the place to see who came home. None of my close friends came home at the time. But there were some people who I knew, and I stayed there for a while. I stayed a few days. And I stayed, there was, my mother's a customer, a friend. Her name was Yacob Nany (aunt, in Hungarian). I went to her house. She was very close friends with my mother and I was very friendly too with her children.

"Non-Jewish?"

"Non-Jewish. But she was very happy to see me and she was crying. She asked me to stay there. So I stayed a few days in her house, and I visited some other, a few customers, a few of them. This was right after the war, in the beginning, before I settled in Satmer."

"You didn't know yet who was coming back?"

"No. No. That was very at the beginning, when I was there. That was the only time I was in Kiralyhaza after the war. And I stayed a few days in this house with Yacob Nany. And she had a son who said, he came home, he said that the Russians are coming to Kiralyhaza. That Carpathia is going to be not just government Russian, like Rumania, but its going to be attached to Russia, becoming Russia, and if I want to not live in Russia, I should better go right away."

"They stayed there?"

"Oh yes, they were Hungarians. In Kiralyhaza there were a lot of Hungarians. Before the [first] world war it was Hungary, so there was a mixed type of population, Russian, Hungarians, Jewish, some Czechs who came in after the first world war. But they left, the Czechs, so it was just Russian and Hungarian population at the time. But of course I didn't [stay]. First of all I couldn't walk the streets there, where my family lived. I went one- once I passed that house and I never went back to that street. I couldn't go there back again. It was too painful. So that's why I lived with the 'goyim' there.

And They arranged for me, that family, a wagon and hay, and they were going to Tarna. I had to leave to Tarna, to go to, just back to Satmar. And I left Kiralyhaza, in a 'wugen' (wagon). And I was very happy I did because if I would have stayed another few days, I would had big difficulty to get out. It would have been very difficult to get out. And I went back to Satmar and I settled in Satmar. That was in the beginning. [My mother's uncle, her father's half brother, Yidel Vogel survived. He ran away from a slave labor camp in Carpathia to Russia, where he was taken to Siberia. He didn't get freed from there till Dec. 1946. When he came back to his home town, Rachov, also in Slovakia, the borders were closed and it was Russia. He wasn't able to get out of there and to emigrate to Israel for twenty five years, till 1971.]"

"That reminds me, what happened to the pictures you had? You once told me- where did you leave them? [Family pictures, including pictures of my grandparents and father.]"

"I left them in- the pictures, my album, my family album, and all my dowry, the trousseau, and I had a lot, a whole closet of stuff, with clothes and linen and family album- at the superintendent from the building where we lived in Kosice. The super. Their house I left the album and all my things. But of course when I got back to Kosice, nothing, nothing, nothing was left."

"And the pictures, what did they do with the pictures? [I could understand that they would want to keep the rest of the items, but why the pictures?]

"Throw them out. What did they need them for? [They probably thought we were dead anyway.]

"I got finally to Satmar. In Satmar I took a- to go to town they had carriages, horse and buggy. From the station I got a long ride. I got into a horse and buggy to the center of the town, and I inquired about the Jewish Community, if there's something, and where they are. And I got to, I found out there is a family, Shimon Weiss was the name, whose father was a business partner of my uncle Shmuel Drummer. They're home, they have an apartment already, so I went to them, straight to them.

They told me that there is a girl's home in the Jewish hospital. There was a Jewish hospital, or just a regular hospital, but in the hospital they made a home for girls, especially for the young girls who came home. Being myself yet in the category of the girls- I was twenty two years old- there were many girls of that age who were coming home. From seventeen to twenty five and twenty six was the average age group in that home. So I was qualified to get in that home. The only thing is, I was told that it's a girls home, and I wasn't sure if a married woman with a child, if they're going to take her. But it was silly, because they would have taken me in. But that was the advice what this Malky Weiss gave me. 'Why should you (be) questioned? You are a girl too. You came back.'

Besides, oh, the advice was for another reason also. No children were coming from Auschwitz back, or from concentration camp. And if I'm not from concentration camp, maybe they won't take me in there, and there was no place else where to go at the time. So to be on the safe side, just say that you're coming from- and there was one place that families survived- from Debrecen they took, when they deported, to Teresienstadt. And just say that you're coming from Teresienstadt with a child who survived there in family camp. Because there was a family camp that survived some people, from Debrecen and Mokau, a few places in Hungary there. [The Germans kept] one group, to keep as a sample, model, if the Red Cross came from foreign countries, or from England, or America, they were showing that they have family camps with children. So that I'm coming from there because from Auschwitz I couldn't come.

I stayed there. It was the beginning of March [1945] already. In that home I was fairly well off at the time because I had food, lodging, and medical care, whatever they had."

"So you said I was your sister, right?"

"Yes. Medical care, whatever there was. It wasn't much, but there were some nurses. It was already the best place for me to be at the time. And you started to recuperate, and I stayed there for a few weeks. The only unpleasantness was that I was like living a lie. It wasn't pleasant. I was on Christian papers a whole year, living a lie and be careful, and here I was again in the same situation. I was sorry that I started. I shouldn't have done it. I realized I could have gone without it, but this was, I was advised to do it, and it was unpleasant. So I was trying to figure out to get somehow, someplace, from this home. Just to be myself, I shouldn't have to live lies again."

Meanwhile, my mother's first cousin came back from slave labor camp, Mendel Wolf Drummer [from Orshov. This was the same one who had suggested the 'shidduch' between my parents.] He was the first one who came back from the family. "And it was already very close to Pesach so I was inquiring about the family, if he knows about anybody. He heard that my father's brother-in-law- is alive, Suri Vogel's husband, I can't recall his name, that he's alive, but he wasn't yet in Satmar. So the only really living member from the family was Mendel Wolf Drummer, who I was very happy to see. He was very family oriented. He was nice. In general, he was kind and he was very family oriented. He felt to try to help the family member, whoever, because later, when others came home, he was very helpful to everybody. The only problem was for me to, where to go now, again. I wasn't comfortable there anymore in that home."

"How long did you stay there?"

"I was already a few weeks, about four weeks. And people kept on coming to see, from groups, from the Joint, and from organizations. They came to visit the home and see- we were the first survivors from Auschwitz- to hear horror stories, to make notes, and write. A lot of people kept on coming. Of course I was there with the baby, the center, the focus. Everyone came to interview me and one lie brings the other, so the situation became very complicated and very unpleasant. Here I still didn't have where to go, but I figure I have to go someplace out from here. And then the turning point came when one of the doctors, nurses, came in, 'Oh! You going to be around? Don't go away this afternoon. From Bucharest is coming down a group to interview you.' So that was really something that's going to be in the papers. I seen I have to get out. This is it. This I can't take anymore because this is- to lie, it's a different thing to tell stories locally, but when it gets out in the big world, I mean, the people who knew me, knew where I was and everything. My god! What on earth am I doing that for? What did I do?

Mendel Wolf was already there, my cousin, in Satmar, and he came to visit me. I said, 'Listen Mendel Wolf, you have to get me out of here. I must get out today! I cannot see this Bucharest journalist. This is one thing I cannot go through anymore.'

So he said to me, 'Okay, Pesach is already around the corner, and another family group came home.' The name is, I can't recall names, but it's Ibi, my younger sister Feigi's a friend. Mendel Wolf, he was in concentration camp with the father [of Ibi], with the older man, together. He came home and two of his sons came home, and they lived not far from Satmar, so they wanted to settle in Satmar. So there were a lot of empty Jewish apartments, so they selected an apartment. They- it was like squatters at the time- whoever came and there was an empty apartment, he got himself a four or five room house there. He put in a stove, and firewood, he got dishes together, he got food together. All they needed somebody to cook for them. So Mendel Wolf said 'It's the perfect solution, because he is going to spend Pesach with them too, and they need somebody to cook.' The young boy was at the time thirteen or fourteen. He survived and an older one, eighteen or nineteen, and the father. They fixed up a room for me there, and I'll be doing the cooking.

And I'll stay with them till- after Pesach he's going to- he has a sister in Torda [Rumania], Mima Esther and Zalman Gross. He's going there after Pesach himself. He's in contact with them but he didn't meet them yet. And he'll see what's the situation, if it's possible, since it's a family, they survived, they weren't deported. They survived like in ghetto, but locally. They have a house. The best chance would be for me to get there, temporarily, till whatever. If somebody from my family is going to come home, or somebody in Satmar from the Drummer [family]. Meanwhile I'll go there and Pesach I'll be over here.

So that saved my situation at the time. I got out from the home. I guess they were looking for me that time, but I was safe, started to get ready for Pesach. On my own. I was relieved, I didn't have that pressure. All I remember about that house, that it was, considering the situation- the only thing I really remember from that apartment was the stove was smoking terribly. A lot of smoke. Somehow it didn't work perfectly, but I was managing to cook. We had potatoes, we had some chickens, we had- I don't remember what kind of matzahs we had. I guess from the Joint we got some kind of matzahs. I got through Pesach there. Considering the situation it was passable. Better than I expected. One member of the family. Then I heard that there is Gross's is alive, also a cousin of my mother. I didn't know them. I never met them before. They lived in Rumania far from us but still we knew well about the family. The older generation was close and visiting each other."

So we spent our first Pesach after the war in Satmar, Rumania with these early remnants of family. But this was not a permanent solution for our problem of where to stay and how to live. There was no one left in Kiralyhaza, so where should we go next while we waited to see who came back from Auschwitz? Our cousin Mendel Wolf helped us again.

"So after Pesach I packed up whatever belongings I had. I got some clothes. In the home, in the hospital, for the girls, I got some clothes, clothes for the baby and clothes for myself. I got physically and mentally a little rested, more relaxed. I came to myself. Same with the baby. You started to recuperate a little bit, and after Pesach we left. My cousin took us already. Considering the traveling before, this was a luxurious ride, because I had somebody who accompanied me."

"How did you go, by train?"

"By train. But it was more- Budapest was a war zone, and the whole surrounding areas."

"The war wasn't officially over yet, but it was over in that area."

"And that area wasn't affected. There was no fighting there. There was fighting around the borders, but there was no fighting there. There was food, and they didn't have to flee, the population. So it was a more normal life there.

I got to Torda where Zalman Gross and my Mima Esther lived, and they were very nice. They welcomed us. They felt very grateful that they survived with their family intact, all their children, a big family, 'kanne hora' (without the evil eye). They had eight or nine children. That was the biggest thing that could have happened at that time for a family. And besides they were very charitable people. My Mima Esther was a 'tsadekesta' (a woman of great righteousness). 'Tsedaka' (charity) was number one by her. And especially, I was alone, with a child. After all, that time she felt very happy that she was able to help, to take us in and help us. The age group of her children was similar to- her oldest children were about my age. Maybe her son was older a year or so. She had a daughter my age, and younger. Matter of fact, one little boy, the youngest one, was a half year older than my baby, so they became very good friends. They were playmates. He was a very cute little boy and you were a very cute little baby. [The Gross family eventually reached the United States also.]

We stayed there. This Mima Esther had another family, a brother-in-law, sister-in-law, with children, and we visited them too. It was a more normal situation, that we didn't see in Satmar, or in Kiralyhaza, or no place. That was really a beautiful place for us to be at the time, because it was the most normal you could imagine. And we had food. We had lodging. Her husband, Zalman Gross, was a nice man. Also from a very famous family, a very 'balebatishe' family. His brother, Duvid Gross from Satmar was one of the leading 'balebatim'. He was 'rosh hakohol' for a time being. It was a very, very nice family, the Gross family. He had a business in Torda. So I lived, stayed there, and had a fairly normal life. We stayed there about, almost three quarters of a year."

Now came another difficult time for my mother. We had survived, but she had to make a transition from a crisis mentality to the twin anxieties of readjustment to normal life and the agony of waiting and hoping to see who would come from the camps. The Jews of Slovakia, Budapest, and Kosice had been deported to slave labor camps and death camps. The Nazis came to us late in the war, but they were intent on doing a quick and thorough job. My mother found out just how thorough a job they did. So while she and I recuperated at the Mima Esther's house in Torda, she waited for news.

Lucy Davidowicz writes, "Over 450,000 Jews, 70 percent of the Jews of Greater Hungary, were deported, were murdered, or died under German occupation. Within the boundaries of lesser (pre-1938) Hungary, about half the Jews were annihilated. Some 144,000 survived in Budapest, including 50,000 "racial" Jews, and about 50,000 to 60,000 survived in the provinces."* (page 382-383)

Gerald Reitlinger, in The Final Solution, says, "Thus some 380,000 Jews were deported by June 30th [1944]. In Ruthenia, today part of the Soviet Union, in the Kosice province, now returned to Czechoslovakia, and the Transylvanian provinces, which have been returned to Rumania, only a quarter or a fifth of the Jewish population remained in 1946. In the part of 'Trianon Hungary', the much reduced Hungary of 1919-39, which lay East of the River Theiss, the destruction was almost as great. The rounding-up was done by the Hungarian 'gendarmerie' or by the Jewish community councils, acting under their orders and threats. The 'gendarmerie' guarded the trains as far as the Slovak border, having previously carried out the obscene searching of women for valuables, the subject of a complaint to Horthy from the Lutheran Bishop of Szeged.... Nothing, however, can mitigate the bald truth that Hungarians did this thing, and that most of the Jews who were spared owed their lives to bribery." *(page 459-60)

"Meanwhile, around May, June [1945], I heard- we were constantly inquiring- there were always coming new people back from Auschwitz. Gradually they were coming, in different stages, from Auschwitz, from Dachau, from Bergen Belsen, from all over Poland and Germany, the liberated camps, they were coming back people. I had tremendous hope. That time, life was also so much [more] bearable because we had very, very, great hope that somebody is going to come home, because a lot of people were coming home at the time.

It was a very strange era, because, the beginning all what counted, what I could think of, food and lodging and safety. To have a place where to sleep, what to eat, and the baby to recuperate. Nothing else somehow didn't matter at the time and that was the main interest in life at that time. But once I got to Torda and things started to normalize, reality started to come back, somehow, because it wasn't real, the life wasn't like real. It didn't seem somehow that all these things- [had happened].

We started to settle, and things became more normal. People started to come from Budapest. And Mendel Wolf went back to Satmar and he kept on coming back, and brought news, this one is alive, that one is alive, and I was living in tremendous hope that somebody is going to come home from my family. I had a brother, he was older than I. My sister with the baby I didn't expect, but I had a single brother, who I had big hope. My father was young [in his late forties.] My mother, I knew she went with the children. I knew. But I knew my father went to work. I heard. And I heard my brother went- some people who came back- that they went [to work]. Besides, I knew that they took the men, younger men to work force, so I had hope there. Then I had another sister. I had two sisters at the age that they could have been taken to work. Feigi and Esther. The others were too young. So I had an older brother and I had two sisters. I was hoping they'll show up. And I kept on listening, anything, anybody who was coming back, because some people were coming to Torda who had family there. But 'leider'(alas) I never heard anything about my family.

Till finally, one day I heard somebody came back, and Mendel Wolf told me that one of my sisters is in Budapest, [and] that she find out the same thing. She was coming home and she was trying to find out if somebody is alive. She was looking for the same thing what I was looking. She's in Budapest, and she find out that I'm alive with the baby, and that I'm in Torda. From somebody she heard in Budapest- oh, from Mindya Steinmetz- that I'm alive. So her goal was to come to- she found out where I am and that she's coming, she's coming home.

I didn't know who, if it's Feigi or Esther. Feigi was very sick before she left. She had pneumonia and she was supposed to go to a sanitarium before Auschwitz, before the Germans came in. So I didn't expect Feigi. I thought it's Esther. Esther was the stronger one. She was a stronger girl, so I thought it's Esther. But there was no way I should be able to contact her or she contact me. It was just that we heard if somebody came or somebody left. So I was just waiting, day by day, that I'll see who it is, who is coming home.

One day I went to, it was like a coffee house, and I used to go down in the village. It was like a village, a big village, and with the baby. You were about two years? No, a year and a half I think. Right? A year and a half."

"No, I should have been two already."

"Or two. Yes, in the summer. Yes, in September, almost two years. Sure. That was already in the middle of summer [1945].

So we used to walk, with the little Mayer, that little boy's name was Mayer. I used to take you for walks. So we went in a coffee house like, they were selling cake there, and ice cream. So I went in and I bought ice cream for the baby, for you, and for the little boy. And I was sitting in the café and looking outside the window. And I see one of Mima Esther's children is running with somebody, and looking in the window, and showing, oh, there! There! And I look out and I see, I see Feigi. I couldn't recognize her of course. She looked very bad. She was skin and bone. It was already a few months after Auschwitz, but she was terribly run down. Every vertebra, every piece of bone showed through her body. Of course it was a very difficult reunion, but it was one of my happier days from after the war, because she's- that was the only close relative really who came home."

"You want to stop?"

[Later] "It was a big family but I still had hope. I still didn't feel it's final. I was still hoping that this is just- they're still coming. At the time people were still coming. But it was just very emotional, but very happy, very happy, to see her.

So we went back to the Mima Esther, and she stayed also there. So I had already my sister there and we were trying to fatten her up. You know, I had to be careful because it was very easy to get sick when you start to feed somebody who's malnourished for a very long time. You have to be very careful. But she was young and she started to gain back weight. She was extremely happy that she found me, as an older sister, and I was already married at the time. I was already like a mother substitute to her in a way. I was much [more] mature already at that time. I went through a lot in a different way. So she kept on repeating, just that, the only thing that she was, when she was coming from Budapest to there, the only thing was holding her that I'm alive, that she had somebody to come to. Because to come home, for a young girl, she was I think about 17 years, sixteen or seventeen, sixteen and a half, to come home and to have nobody, she says she doesn't want to live.

We were living in big hope at the time. And after a while, I heard Shauli Drummer is coming home, my first cousin [his father was a brother to my mother's mother], so it was also already a close family. It made us very happy, another member of the family came home."

"Where was he? He was in Auschwitz also?"

"He was in, yes in Auschwitz. He was in the labor camp. So he came home, 'leider' (alas), the only one from his family too, from a family of ten children. Two or three married brothers and sisters, with children already. He was the only one who came home. And that was it. Nobody after that. People were coming still for about a half a year, people were still coming, but nobody [more] from our family survived."

"Where was Leibu [Leo Brody, a second cousin who survived]? Was he in camp?"

"No. He was in Budapest."

"He also hid out in Budapest?"

"He was hiding in Budapest."

"And Mendel Brody [his brother]?"

"He was in Auschwitz. But that was all who came home, from my immediate- from the closest. Then came home Mendel Wolf [a second cousin]. They were 'kanne hora' lucky because four children survived. Nachum Bear, Mendel Wolf, Yutzi, and Suri."

"Also Auschwitz?"

"Yes. They were all deported."

"Where did they live before the war?"

"Jilnitze."

"Where was that, near Satmar?"

"Near Kiralyhaza, Seilish, in the Carpathians, not Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Carpathia. It wasn't close family all, but they were cousins. They were all second cousins came home. A few, Leibu Brody, Mendel Brody and the Ackermans, and Shauli Drummer, from my family, and this was it. There was no more from our big, very big family. A family of a few hundred people. It was mazel and luck, because some people came home- three, four brothers, and uncles, and aunts. It was much easier to start up life again, but we had very little. No older brothers, I had no older member in the family [except the cousin mentioned earlier, Mendel Wolf Drummer from Orshov]."

Mendel Wolf Drummer was about forty years old after the war. He had been married, and his wife and three children didn't survive. He remarried after the war and had several children. They also settled in the United States. He died of cancer in his mid-sixties.

As for my mother's brother Mendel Wolf, she kept hoping that he would come back. "I always had a feeling he'll come back. I used to walk on the streets and look at men. Once I even ran after a man, I thought he was my brother, he looked so much like my brother. He had his walk, his appearance, his figure." She finally learned what happened in Satmar, from two brothers who had been in the same labor camp with him. They told my mother that he didn't survive because he was together with his father, Shiya, in the camp. Her father wouldn't eat, and always said he ate already, and gave the food to her brother. When he died, her brother gave up and lost his will to live. He couldn't survive his father's death. You had to fight to survive, and he just gave up. But for a whole year she kept hoping for him to turn up.

To be exact, of my mother's immediate family of nine people, her parents, Shiya and Mariam Vogel; her brother Mendel Wolf; her sisters Rivka (and her husband and two children), Esther, Chana, and Yitele died in the Auschwitz or labor camps. Only my mother, and her sister Feigi survived. Of my father's immediate family of twelve people, his parents Miryl and Elimelech Dovid Friedman; his brothers Moshe Leib [and his wife and children], Hershel, Avrohom; his sisters Lily and Suri, and he himself, died in the concentration camps. One brother, Mendel, and three sisters, Shari, Irene, and Edith survived. So out of a large immediate family, my mother was left without a husband, without parents, with just a baby and one surviving sister.