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CHAPTER 6

By the end of 1945, after my Aunt Feigi and the surviving cousins came home, it became clear that no one else was left alive. My mother's feelings were ambivalent, as were those of so many of the survivors. She was young, happy to be alive, and yet, she was trying to come to grips with the enormity of her loss. Families regrouped and tried to build new lives as best they could. My mother, her sister and cousins did the same.

"Shauli went, he fixed up his sister's home [in Satmar, where he and his family had lived before the war], and since he had nobody either, of course he asked us to come down to Satmar and stay there. He fixed us up a home and we'll just stay with him in his apartment. And the Ackermans also came to live to Satmar. They lived next door. We were like a family after the war, the Ackermans and Brodys. I cooked, we had an open house, I cooked for everybody, whoever came.

Again, life, it wasn't a normal life somehow, because it was remnants of families, and we clung together because that was the closest we had. People were- it was a very strange time, in that they were happy they survived. They were all happy somehow, they were euphoria they are alive. On the other hand, how could you be happy? Many times it came to you, how can I be so happy when there's- nobody's left from the immediate family- everybody's sisters, brothers, parents [were gone]. And still, we weren't like normal completely. We couldn't really think straight, because if I look back, we were happy. We were somehow, we started to be happy."

"You were young and you were alive."

"We were alive and we were happy. In Satmar we started to live like normal, to cook, and make Shabbos, and bake cakes. We started to make 'shidduchim', the young people, to weddings, and I went. I was almost like the older member there [at the age of 23] to be the "motzi maven" (advisor). If there was a girl to meet or something, they all asked me to go and to meet the girl. And they started to get married, some of the young people. They were making weddings and parties.

We were going to theater. From Poland came down a Jewish group, and there was a theater, and we were going to the theater. We bought tickets. We started to live like normal but it wasn't normal. It was a very strange time. It was all for now, today. We didn't know what tomorrow brings, where we're going to be. We're going to live here, we're going to move away, we're going to stay here. It was so uncertain, it was just from day to day living. But somehow we were happy, in a way. I attribute that just to, just that we are alive, because we were all very young people. We wanted to live. Everyone, everybody wanted to live, very much somehow. But of course the scars were there. It just was never the same again. Never again.

So we lived in Satmar, in Shauli's house. It was at the time 'kanne hora' a full house, with the cousins, and cooking, and shopping, and baking, and going to market every day. Money wise, Shauli found some money. They had hidden some money. Also the Jewish 'gemeinde' was helping out the survivors. Everybody got some help at the beginning. And Shauli brought a woman, a helper, who used to work by a Rabbi's a family. She was very Jewish oriented. She knew about kashruth and about children."

"She was a Rumanian woman, right?"

"No, Hungarian, but from Rumania. I think she was from this man where we were for Pesach, from his home town, and he recommended her. So she came to live with us, and she was helping out with cooking, shopping, cleaning, and especially taking care of the baby [me]. She was very good. She loved the baby very much. She brought up a few children in her life and she missed the children very much. She was never married and she loved, [was] very attached to the baby. She loved the baby and the baby loved her. It made the life much easier. [She was called Yulcha, nickname for Julia]

At the time, my physical needs, mental, I had no special problems. I had where to live, I had to eat, and I had some family. And I made a lot of friends also at the time, women who came home. Some came home that they lost their husband and children. They were alone, we were clinging. We were somehow clinging to each other. We became very close friends. It was almost like family. There were a few young women, young, in their early twenties, that they were married. They were all very attached to me because I had a child and they were also married already. The younger girls were more, they were more boys oriented. It was a different group. I had a nice group of girls there, young women."

"Do you know where they are now?"

"None of them are around here now, those women. They are around, married here and there. I met one or two through the years, but we separated. They all went around, Canada, Australia and Israel. Not many around in New York, from those who I became very close friends at the time. But it was very reassuring, very good, to have those friends. It meant a lot at the time. They were really like my sisters. They all liked very much the baby. They were all very attached to the baby. It was like an extended family.

While I was living in Satmar, people started to 'handel' (trade), [to] earn money. They bought textile from Budapest, they brought to Satmar, they sold it. In Satmar they brought other merchandise that was better paid in Budapest. And Nachum Bear [one of her cousins] and others started 'handlen', and I was thinking, I could use some money, I'm going to 'handel' too. My mother was always 'handling', traveling, and I was able to leave the baby with Feigi. And that was yet before Feigi was married, she was still with Shauli. Actually Nachum Bear and Yutzi, they all moved in with us. So they lived there, Nachum Bear, Mendel Wolf and Suri, we lived together in Shauli's house, in that apartment, for almost a half a year. When they came back we lived together.

And I left you there and I went. I bought merchandise. I didn't really buy merchandise, it's coming back to me, I went as a 'shliach' (messenger). Nachum Bear had already money at that time, and he sent me with some 'valuten' (currency), Russian rubles, to take to Budapest and bring back textile to Rumania. But it was quite risky. The rubles were very risky. If they catch you with rubles, Russian 'valuten'- they were very strict about it, the Russians, the Hungarians- if they caught you with Russian 'valuten' you were in danger of being arrested, very serious danger.

But I was young and eager to make money, and everybody else did it, and I wanted to do it too. So I had rubles with me. I had it on me, [in a] girdle top or something, a lot of- a few thousand Russian rubles. And I was arrested with these rubles, and I was in big danger. If they catch it, I'll be arrested and I don't know for how long. And here I have a baby there, left with the girls there, so it wasn't just myself. And they took us to prison. That was the first time in my life that I got into a prison. I got over the whole war, that many times chances to get to the prison, somehow I got through without the prison, but this time I was in a real prison."

"How did they catch you?"

"At the border. We were illegal and border guards- a whole group. Wait a minute, Mendel Wolf [Ackerman, a second cousin] was in that group. He wasn't married at the time yet. He also was going 'handlen'. He went, and some others, and I remember an older lady went, much older than I, she was in the group. A party of eight or nine people we were. We were all arrested. We got to Budapest. They took us to Budapest, up in a very big prison, a very famous prison. Tremendous, two blocks long, one of the most famous through the Hitler times. It was a very dangerous place to get into, that prison, because that's where they concentrated people [during the war]. And I was always dreading that name because if they would have caught me then [during the war] they would've gotten me. I got there finally.

I just wanted to bring it out, that feeling of being in a prison is indescribable. You'd never know it. In one way- not I'm glad I was there- just that I experienced that feeling to be in a prison, behind bars. It wasn't, you know, the situation wasn't as normal as in an American prison, that you have TV, radio, and exercises they take you. That was very abnormal times. In prison they didn't treat you with kid gloves. With food, or you didn't know how long you're going to stay, or they could beat up a person for nothing. I was horrified, just the thought of it, being there.

The women, we were separated from the men. We were with the women prisoners. We got into a group with prostitutes, a whole group. So the whole experience was unbelievable. Just to look out the windows and see people walking, and I can't get out and I'm here behind bars. It was unbelievable. I just couldn't comprehend that. And that yearning to get out! How to get out? There was no such thing that I'll call up a lawyer to get me out for money, or I'll get in touch with my parents and they'll do everything to get me out. There was just nothing what to do, just sit in a prison and wait.

They were checking us a few times. Logically, I was supposed to take the money and throw it away. And they're carrying us to Budapest to the prison, so till I got to Budapest, logically I should have thrown away the money. That would have been with 'saychel' (common sense or brains). But I just- first of all it wasn't my money, it was somebody else's money- to throw away is harder than your own. And it was a lot of money, and he worked for many months for that money. I was just working feverishly in my mind how to save that money, how to do it, where to put it, how to keep that money. And I 'schlepped' it till Budapest, to the prison. I had the money in the prison. I got it up to the prison. I went with the older lady. Mendel Wolf I didn't see already because he was with the men. I think once we got out in the yard, I seen him passing, but we couldn't talk.

I was working, planning what to do. So I got a bright idea. We were getting loaf breads. I got a half a loaf for every day, a half a loaf of bread, in the prison. One day I got an idea. I'll take the rubles, they were rolled very tight so they were a small package, and I took those rubles, and I made holes in the bread, and I got the rubles in the bread. I got in all the rubles nicely in the bread. And the bread was keeping there 'foon oiven oon' (in plain sight), not hiding at all, just with my food. I had like a box there, and there was my food I had. Whatever I got, I kept there. I got a carrot, we got an apple or whatever we got, the food was always there."

"These were the Hungarian authorities, right?"

"Yes."

"But now the fact that you were Jewish was not a problem."

"No, I was just an illegal alien. I was known as a Jew. I was just an illegal alien."

"You didn't use your Hungarian papers."

"No. No. I had my paper home. I put away the papers because I was leaving the country and I didn't plan to stay in Hungary. We were going the border illegally. There were no passports. Nobody had a passport, nobody had papers at the time. 'Me hut gehandelt' (we were trading), and people went, and some got caught sometimes, and they got out eventually. 'Me hut geshmeared' (we bribed), you gave a watch or something. Eventually you got out, but you didn't know how long. But since I had those rubles I was in more danger because I kept those rubles. And the bread was just a small corner, it wasn't a whole bread, you know, I could keep that bread yet.

Then I got out. I was able to get out a message to Mindya Steinmetz that I'm here. Would she come visit me, and would she bring a little bread for me, a half a loaf of bread she should bring. She brought me a half a loaf, quite a piece of loaf bread, and I took the bread and I exchanged the loaf of bread with her, and she got out the rubles. I saved the rubles. Then Mindya knew already I'm there, so she was trying to get in contact with the Jewish 'gemeinde'. She got to work that they should get us out. Meanwhile I heard that Mendel Wolf and another party, they wanted to run away, flee away from the prison, and they caught them, and beat them up, and took them back. So I didn't run away. But Mindya got me out eventually."

"And what did she do with the rubles?"

"She gave it back to me."

"So you succeeded. You're okay, you're a good smuggler."

"I outsmarted them. I got the textile, and I got back. It was before Pesach [1946]. I had to rush. And I got some clothes, and I got some textiles what I wound around on me, and I got a coat. I bought for the money, I bought things. But it was all kosher because I wore it, everything that I brought back already. I wasn't in danger anymore. Just to get back illegally."

"But getting back across the border again, was that dangerous?"

"I had some money from the rubles. I took, and I bought, we bought guards, very safe passage. In Budapest we arranged safe passage to get back."

"So everybody got out finally?"

"Yes. We all got out. We all got back."

"How long were you in?"

"About 12 days I was in prison."

"So Mindya got you out."

"Yes. But till I got to Mindya, I didn't know how- if I'm going to get to Mindya, and if I'll be able to get to Mindya. We didn't know. It was all very uncertain. But it worked out and I got home. You were neglected, your were dirty, I was very upset, but I was very happy I got back. [It was before Yulcha came to live with us.] It was before Pesach and we made Pesach. I didn't go 'handling' anymore. That was enough."

"Did you make anything on this trip?"

"Not much. But one thing bothered me, because Nachum Bear should have given me more. I brought him back the whole money. He gave me very little. I wasn't pleased with the profit what I made. I should have made much more. He was very stingy. Anyway, that was that."

After my mother got back to Satmar, the situation gradually began to change again. The young people who had survived began to pair off and get married. This meant it was time for us to move on again, as we had done many times in the last couple of years, and as we were to do again for the next couple of years.

"Then the girls started to, another year, the plan was at the time, the young girls to get married, they should have homes. They had no homes. There were no parents. So we were planning, we were seeing, [that they should get married]. My sister, Feigi--"

"When did she get married?"

"First Shauli. First Shauli met Gitu. I think it was 1946, summer. I met Gitu. Shauli asked me to go meet her. I met her. She was a beautiful girl, a beauty, an unusually beautiful girl, and a very nice family. She comes from a 'Rebbish' (Rabbinic family).

"Where did she survive? How did she survive?"

"Concentration camp. They got married. After that, Feigi my sister, Mendel Wolf proposed. The same year, the end of December, he proposed to Feigi and they got married. Actually, this 'shidduch' was already talked at home. My parents, they were talking. They were talking Mendel Wolf and Feigi as a 'shidduch'. [He was a second cousin and lived in a nearby town before the war.] They were already discussing that Mendel Wolf is going to be a good 'shidduch' for Feigi, from both sides of the family. My grandfather and his grandmother were brothers and sisters. We were second cousins. So it seemed logical, 'a heimishe shidduch' (a home-grown match), and they knew each other, and he proposed, and it came about too. So they got married.

So Shauli got married and Feigi got married. Shauli was left in his, the original apartment. Feigi moved with Mendel Wolf, they got an apartment. And I was left out with no place. By Shauli it was a three room apartment, and the young couple, what it wasn't the right place for me to be anymore. And Feigi and Mendel Wolf was the same thing. They had a small apartment and here I was out in the cold again. [We did live with them for a few months till after Pesach, April 1947.]

And for me a 'shidduch' to do wasn't easy. First of all I didn't have yet my 'Heter' (permission given by a Rabbi to remarry when it is proven definitely that a woman's previous husband is dead. If there are no witnesses, and it cannot be proven, then the woman becomes an 'Agunah' and may never remarry.) I had to get a 'Heter'. Second of all, there weren't men my age. There were young men in the twenties. The men who were my age, they were marrying girls. It was easier, simpler for them to marry a girl than to marry a widow with a child. Especially in the Orthodox group.

"But you did live with Feigi for a few weeks."

"Yes. But I wasn't comfortable there any more. Economically, you know, he had to support then his family already, and it was a second family to support. And he wasn't too, I seen he's not too happy about it. And I wanted to get out. It was a situation that I had to go again."

The question was where to go next, and more important, where to go to settle for good. We couldn't wander around Europe ad infinitum. We had to find a place where we could settle and build a new life.

Two of the second cousins who came back were Mendel and Leo Brody. They were from the city of Munkacs, near Kiralyhaza, and their grandfather and my mother's grandfather had been brothers. Their father, Eliezer Brody, was a wealthy man and owned a hat factory in Munkacs. Leo, or Leibu as we called him, had been born in Cassel, Germany, in 1923, while his parents had been there on a business trip to buy machinery for the factory. He had not been expected yet and that was why his mother had gone on that trip, but he was born prematurely, and made his debut in Germany.

He and his brothers and sisters grew up in Munkacs, in a large orthodox family. As usual for boys, he was sent to a Yeshiva, however, he also had an English tutor at home and read English books. That was rather unusual in that place and time.

When the deportations started in Munkacs, he managed to escape to Budapest also. He posed as a Nazi officer and he survived the war. He was there at the same time as we were, and knew about us, but it was dangerous to contact us. My mother didn't know that he was there.

Oddly enough, he told me shortly before he died, that he had met my father before my mother knew him, or married him. In about 1941, Leibu's uncle was being drafted to the army, and Leibu's father sent him to my grandfather, Elimelech Dovid Friedman in Kosice, with money to try to get his uncle off the hook. It seems my grandfather had some pull somewhere, and with the proper bribe was successful in saving Leibu's uncle from the draft. He met my father on that trip.

After the war, he and his surviving brother also came to Satmar. He remembered taking me to a café in Satmar for ice cream, where put me in the showcase as if for sale. He had a terrific sense of humor and was always full of jokes.

Soon after, they left for Germany. Knowledge of English helped him get a job first at the Joint, and after a short while, at the 'Vaad Hatzalah' (rescue committee). He was quite a flamboyant person at that time. He wore an American army uniform, hired himself a limousine with a chauffeur, and had passports to go to France, Germany, Liechtenstein etc.

When my mother didn't know what to do, or where to go from Satmar, he advised her, by letter, to get out of Rumania and to come to Germany. She took his advice. For the record, he was one of the people who helped us most after the war. He also settled in the United States, and subsequently married a lovely lady named Ruth, and had a son, Larry. We have been close to him and his family ever since that time. Unfortunately, he died of cancer in January of 1987, at the age of 64. He is very much missed.

"To settle in Satmar it wasn't 'tachlis' (worthwhile), because people started to talk about to emigrate, or to Israel, there was no Israel really, but to Palestine, or to America. Or people had family in America or Canada, or to get out of Europe somehow. People didn't feel like to stay in Europe. Besides the political situation started to [become unstable]. The Russians, they divided East and West. Rumania was yet neutral, their fate wasn't set yet, what's going to become of them. It was a kingdom before. If the Russians going to influence it, or the West, or they gonna be a kingdom, it was unsettled yet. It was very the beginning yet. The war over already but the situation wasn't settled in that part of the world.

Meanwhile, Mendel Brody left for Germany. In Germany they made displaced persons camps. A lot of these people, who had no family and no home where to go, they settled in Germany. Some of them were left there. They didn't even come back to Hungary or Rumania. They stayed there in displaced persons camp. The American Joint established homes there, like temporary homes. Camps they called them, refugee camps, displaced person camps, and a lot of families lived there. The young people they were getting married there, they lived there, they had babies. And there were thousands and thousands, a few hundred thousand [Jewish] people in Germany. And the Americans were there. So Mendel went down to Frankfurt and he got a job by the Joint Distribution Committee. So he wrote to Leibu, [still in Satmar, Rumania] he should come there, and he should settle there, and from there there's going to be a better possibility to leave the country to go to America.

So that was end of 1946, beginning of 1947. And I was talking to Mendel Wolf the 'Orshover' [to distinguish him from all the other Mendel Wolfs in the family] again, what to do. He was the older member again, from my mother's generation. I had to go. I would like to go someplace, and the only thing is where to go, and how [to go] about it. Money I didn't have anymore. It was again a big problem.

Meanwhile, I got a letter from Leibu. He wrote me once, and I answered him once. And then he wrote again that he heard Rumania is becoming Communist, not that the Russians are going to occupy it, but that the government is going to become Communist. And if it's going to be a communist regime we won't be able to get out from that country. It's going to be very difficult. And since Shauli and all, they got married, and I most likely don't have a place where to go again there. In Germany there are displaced persons camps. That here you can come, all the displaced persons, they call them DPs, and everybody is accepted, any refugee is accepted. You can come here, get into something, you can establish yourself, and from here you'll see where next. But first you'll have where to go.

So I discussed it with Mendel Wolf, and he said it's the best idea, the best thing you can do now. So I packed up again. From Feigi's house I packed up. Feigi was very heartbroken. So was I that we separated again, but I felt she's left with a husband, you know. She's not alone now. And I started another journey through."

So, based on Leibu's letter, we started to travel to Germany. This revived our persistent problems on our travels of not enough money and no 'papers'. What 'papers' would we need? Who knew? Citizenship papers, visas, passports etc. She decided to travel first to Czechoslovakia, via Hungary, to see if she could get some documents from Kosice, where she had lived with my father after they married. Then, if possible, she would continue on to Germany. All those borders would have to be crossed illegally, and would require money for bribing guards. Money would also be needed for food and lodging.

My earliest memories are from about this time in Satmar. We lived in Satmar from the end of 1945 till the spring of 1947. I was about two and a half to three and a half years old. My memories are vague. I think I remember visiting my Aunt Feigi after she was married. I remember sitting in Shauli's kitchen eating toasted bread rubbed with garlic and oil, which I liked very much. Shauli's wife Gitu, remembers asking me to come across the street to visit her, and I refused saying that I couldn't come over because I wasn't properly dressed, as I was only wearing a robe. She found it very funny that I would be so formal at that age. I went to many of the weddings there, and I was often the flower girl because there were hardly any other children around. I spoke Hungarian at the time, my first language. I remember Yulcha helping me get dressed, putting on my shoes.

When we left Rumania, Yulcha wanted desperately to come with us, to stay with us forever. She begged my mother to take her along, without pay. She would cook for us, and take care of me, as we were very attached to each other. But my mother couldn't take her along. She didn't know where she was going, and when and where she would be able to settle down. And how would she support Yulcha, and feed her, when she was barely able to take care of the two of us? It was a very wrenching separation. And so we left.