These precious memories of his loving family gave my father the will to survive the horrors of the Holocaust just a few years later. Nobody could have predicted how much everything would change when Hitler came to power in the early 1930s. The persecution of the Jewish people began in Germany but soon spread to both eastern and western Europe. Hitler, as we know, was determined to wipe out all the Jews, and eventually everyone else he didn’t consider a member of the “superior” Aryan race.
Hungary was basically powerless to resist Germany’s influence during World War II. Her close proximity and dependence on
German trade all but ensured Hungary would become aligned with the Axis powers. And at first there were benefits, such as newly negotiated territorial borders and financial assistance that helped the country recover from the Great Depression. Under economic and political pressure, Hungary officially joined in alliance with Germany in 1940, and we participated in the invasions of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.
While fighting the Soviets and suffering increasing losses, Hungary began secret peace negotiations with America and the Allied powers. When Germany became aware of this, they occupied Hungary and began deporting Hungarian Jews by the thousands to concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In spite of this, and the horror stories people soon heard, many of the Jews in Hungary really didn’t believe that they would be taken to these camps. But life for Jews in Hungary became increasingly difficult. Everyone had to wear the Star of David on their arm and all businesses with Jewish proprietors were closely monitored. Still, many people remained in denial and continued to conduct their lives as if things were normal.
Auschwitz has become an international symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust; for me and my father it was the place where our relatives were murdered by ruthless anti-Semites. In 1935, after the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, German Jews were stripped of their citizenship because they didn’t share “Germanic or related” blood, and this discrimination escalated into a systematic attempt to eradicate the Jewish race, a policy that was formalized at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. After the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, Hungarian Jews were deported en masse to the Auschwitz camp, where most perished in the gas chambers.
According to the selection process at the camp, anyone deemed not “fit for work” was immediately put to death, while those that could perform physical labor were sent to nearby labor camps, where they were worked until, in most cases, they literally dropped dead from starvation and fatigue. More Hungarian Jews died at Auschwitz than any other group, with an approximate loss of 438,000. The next-largest group was Polish Jews, of whom 300,000 lost their lives in the camp. It is estimated that one in six Jews murdered in the Holocaust died at Auschwitz.
My grandfather, Izso, died in June 1944, right before my father and his family were taken to this hellish death camp. The men and women were separated, and the children were taken away from their parents. My father was put to work in a labor camp, in Galicia near the Hungarian-Polish border. But the rest of his family was taken straight to the gas chambers. He never saw or heard from them ever again, and didn’t find out how they died until after the war was over.
Life in the labor camp was brutal. Prisoners were forced to build railroads in the Hungarian countryside not far from the gas chambers. The only positive thing was that some of my father’s former colleagues from the string quartet ended up in the same camp with him. Occasionally they were required to perform at night for the German officers and guards, who craved entertainment. Germans were known for their love of classical music, and, as luck would have it, Dad’s gift of playing the cello helped him (and his fellow musicians) receive slightly better treatment than the rest of the men in the camp. Eventually it played a role in their escape from the camp a few months later.
When the Germans began losing the war—after the United States joined the Allies—things got increasingly disorganized and chaotic in the camp. The German soldiers routinely got drunk every night. There were constant changes in leadership as people were either moved to different posts or ran off, afraid of what might happen to them after the war. They knew that once everyone found out about the atrocities commited upon hundreds of thousands of innocent people, they would be held accountable.
One night, after Dad and his buddies had finished playing their obligatory concert for the intoxicated Germans, many of the guards fell asleep and others just left the camp. This was my father’s big chance to escape, and he and the other musicians sneaked out of the camp in the middle of the night.
By this time, in the early days of 1945, the Russians were advancing into eastern Europe as the American troops swept in from the west. My dad and his three friends just kept on walking trying to get as far away from the camp as possible. The second day of their long walk there were shots fired around them, and they ran into an abandoned farmhouse to hide—after all, they were escaped Jewish prisoners and had no idea who was firing the shots.
Then there was a big explosion as an artillery shell hit the house. Dad was injured badly and his right arm was nearly severed by the shrapnel. When he regained consciousness, he was being carried on a wagon covered in blood and suffering excruciating pain in his right arm. The Soviet soldiers eventually brought him to a vacant church that had been turned into a makeshift emergency center. Their doctor explained to my father that he was losing too much blood, and for him to survive they needed to amputate his right arm to stop the bleeding. The last thing he remembered was the unbearable pain as his arm was cut off just below the shoulder. He remained unconscious for days after. He was thirty-one years old.
The next few months were a nightmare as Dad went through a slow and painful recovery in a local hospital. After he was well enough to be discharged, he made his way back to Miskolc, where he learned that none of his immediate family had survived the concentration camp in Auschwitz. He was now completely alone, with one arm, his beloved family gone, and his life-long dream of being a concert cellist shattered with the loss of his arm.
After the war was officially over, the Soviet Army occupied Hungary along with most of Eastern Europe For several years after the war, the Soviets used political pressure to ensure that communists would be the governing majority in the Soviet Union’s neighboring Eastern European countries. In February 1946 the Hungarian monarchy was officially abolished and replaced with the Soviet-controlled Republic of Hungary. After the mutual assistance treaty between Russia and Hungary in 1949, Soviet troops in Hungary became a mainstay until the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991.
When Dad returned to Miskolc, he found the family home destroyed, the vinegar factory bombed out and badly damaged, and most of the photo shops in ruins. The family fortune had been buried in Miskolc. This was a common practice among the Jewish people when the persecution began. They were trying to protect their assets for family members so they could rebuild their lives in the event they were lucky enough to survive the Holocaust. My father used this money (and sold the family’s jewelry) to pay the costs of rebuilding the vinegar factory.
My father had a distant aunt who was, like him, the only survivor of her immediate family from the Holocaust. She owned a very small grocery store in Miskolc, and Dad stayed with her while he rebuilt the vinegar factory, the family home, and his personal life.
One day Dad went to his aunt’s store to pick up some groceries. When he was paying for the food he saw a beautiful young girl in her teens at the cash register. The rest, as they say, was history. Gabriella Molnar was a stunning young beauty and Dad was a very handsome man in his prime. It was love at first sight for both of them. The pretty young lady would soon become Dad’s wife and my mother.
Love’s Orphan
Chapter 1
Love’s Orphan
Chapter