"Dear childhood, please, come back for a word!"

This is a village in Hungary’s Hegyalja region, between the towns of Miskolc and Sátoraljaújhely. Mountains border it on three sides, the fourth border is the river Bodrog. In my time the village had about 2500 inhabitants, with a strong Catholic influence. About 250-260 Jews lived in my village, part of them were Chasidim: caftan-clad Jews with their own shul, ritual bath and rabbi. Apart from two or three of these with caftans, the rest were bearded, unshaved Jews. The chazzan was also our shochet, he wore a caftan too. Most of the village Jews were poor and living from hand to mouth. There were no artisans among us, one woman was a glass blower. Three or four wealthy people only, merchants, a hotel owner, an innkeeper. My paternal grandfather, Sámuel Lefkovitz Sr., had eight acres of grapevine, plowland, an inn and houses, and nine living children (eight of them never survived the times of trouble). My father was the only survivor, coming back from Buchenwald at age 65, in good health. The Jews of the village „ghettoised” themselves (though at the time we weren’t familiar with the term). There was no incident of any middle-class Christian boys approaching Jewish girls, not even to raise their hats. We were a closed circle. My mother wore no wig, but didn’t go out bareheaded until after my three siblings and I all were married to Neolog (Reform Judaist) boys. My elder sister’s husband was dr. Fisch H. My husband was the son of a Jewish village notary, the only Jew in that village (Adolf Schőn, Pátka). My sister Klári’s husband was the son of a mill owner in Debrecen (István Révi), whose two-year-old daughter survived the holocaust and now lives in Israel. The village had three schools, a separate one for each faith. We had no relationships with boys or girls. The Chasidic boys attended cheder from age 3, and spoke Yiddish among themselves. So did the grownups. We did not, but had a strong Orthodox upbringing all the same. In the elementary school we played seperately, lessons were in the mornings and afternoons. There were three Jewish cabs, they refused to drive on Saturdays and religious holidays. Boys and girls all completed the compulsory six school years, in all eight boys went on to business school in Újhely (Sátoraljaújhely – the ed.), they left Liszka after graduation. Two girls graduated, only I finished my studies at the Training College in Miskolc. I came to Budapest, and quickly found a husband. The Chasidic boys went to famous Yeshivas, if their parents had the money. These boys would not return to the village.

There was a Women’s League to help those most in need, and the "casualties" would dine with us for days. There was a Yeshiva too, and my future brother-in-law Henrik F. studied and ate "days" there, along with his brother who would end up in Paris. There was an abbatoir and a ritual bath opened on Fridays. In the summer my father would swim in the river Bodrog. Saturday was strictly a day of rest. Nobody carried anything, men tied their handkerchieves on their necks, prayer books and talesbeytl were borne after them by a shaygetz. Saturday was the time of sholet rounds, that is where the youth would socialize. The shikse carried the sholet home, and handled the heating in the winter.

I had reached adolescence, but wasn’t considered a big girl yet, boys would ignore me and I was just a playpal for boys’ games: climbing trees, sliding on the ice, and at Sukkoth a special walnut-game called shor-kopka. My sisters all had suitors, attended dance school, and the rabbi, when he came up to the shul once every year, would expound the shared bathings, short-sleeved clothing, boys carousing bareheaded. The rabbi was surrounded by his five sons, front, right, left and back, so they were known as the Lenin-boys.

Many girls couldn’t marry for lack of a dowry. When there was a chance for some boy to "marry in" they’d open up a grocery store. Chasid fathers would occasionally set out to make a little money. In some houses there were four or five daughters just waiting and waiting. My dear mother dared not show her face in shul with the three of us, without a dowry, gone away from home within four years. People were envious, so no wonder. A boy from Liszka never married from that village. I don’t know why. Some Jewish families had two or three generations under the same roof, with one or two rooms and a kitchen. One family I knew had four daughters and two growing boys living in a single room, a kitchen and a larder. They were a Chasid family, but how they slept remains a mystery. The school closed down, because few children were born. It must have been hard to get used it, at that time I was living away from home. We knew how evil and rough the local teachers were, like the overseers at the work camps later on. One of the teachers still alive today – I know him well – was the leader of the Arrow-Cross of Liszka in 1927.

Two of the rabbi’s sons were involved in the forgery of a million pengő. I remember, having seen it regretfully enough, how the rabbi and his two sons were taken to the station in chains by the gendarmes, then on to Újhely. A terrible memory. The rabbi spent a few weeks in prison too, though he’d done nothing himself, poor thing. The Jews leagued together and the rabbi got home, his sons were sentenced to two or three years imprisonment. They were together in the Markó penitentiary with prince Windischgratcz and the then police chief, both incarcerated for forging Francs. The gendarmes searched every house and upset the Great Rabbi’s grave, believing the machine might be hidden there. The walls were scrawled with Olaszliszka – Tiszaeszlár. It was a very difficult time indeed.

For weddings, a rare occasion, the whole village would gather. The previous Saturday would be the day of forspiel at the bride’s house, I suppose a sort of hen’s night, the women would sprinkle the groom with almonds and candy from a curtained balcony. The chupe was always erected in the courtyard, children held the rod for the veil conceiling the bride, the groom in a kitl, wearing a suit, and at the end of the service the gypsy would sound his violin and sing: „The Jew he has one-one-one, the Jew has one wife the name of Chaye.”
A tragic era begins: labour camps. All men are summoned up to age 60, beards and sideburns shorn, terrible times. My father’s lot were taken to Patak, he bacame a cabbie, sometimes he would visit home. Our husbands were off to labour camps, sometimes home for a month without a job, wearing the yellow star. The first train started in 1944 from Újhely, where they gathered Jews from 26 villages. My grandmother was 92 (she died on the way and got thrown from the train), my mother was 56, father 63, sister 27 years old. Jewish dwellings were plundered and so was the synagogue, torah and prayer books used for toilet paper. I gave birth in the Budapest ghetto, lost my husband, sisters, they never made it home from deportation. From my family only my brother-in-law H. F., my father and my sister’s two-year-old child made it through. On the spring of 1945 I went "home" to our apartment where the floors were dug up: they were searching for the Jews’ gold. I found five or six young boys penniless and orphaned. I did not know that generation: they were between 18 and 20. We stuck together, I did the cooking, I found a few pounds of goose fat in the cellar. From a few pieces of furniture I built a "home". People started drifting back from the lagers, and I heard my father was on his way home. There were about thirty-five of us, and we had four weddings. Edit Bruck was there with three siblings, she now lives in Italy. One morning three or four young ones disappeared: they made it to Israel. We kept in contact, kept our Sabbath at home, with the synagogue’s four walls still intact. When the 1956 revolution came, the village showed its teeth once more. We woke up one morning to find only my father and Mister Roth left, and I only went home for the harvest, for 6 weeks I couldn’t get to Egom, where I lived at the time. I asked a railwayman I knew out on the street, when the train to Budapest departs, he looked at me and said "I refuse to relate information to a Jew".

There was a film about Liszka made when only my father and Roth were left: the head rabbi of Újpest then was Tamás Lőwy, standing at the East facing wall of the synagogue, with some seminarists. They wanted this to be a Western Wall in Hungary, but some people would sell anything. My father died in 1968, I gave him an Orthodox Jewish funeral.

Mr Lipót Klein and Mr Roth brought along 10 men to complete the minyen. My clothes were torn, I sat the shiva, and my son-in-law, who is a rabbi, recited the kaddish. Time is running along, my children are Jews, my grandchildren go to shul, one of my daughters lives in Israel. Mr Roth died at 100 years of age, in Israel.
I put my memories in writing because I am the sole survivor from Liszka, and I and my children and grandchildren have remained Jewish. Regrettably, the survivor's grandchildren living here are all in mixed marriages and hate to remember their wig wearing, bearded, gartered grandparents. They hold high positions, and we keep no contact, whatever for?
With the death of my father, Liszka became a village without Jews.

Mrs Bernát Müller, nee Ilona Lefkovits, born in Olaszliszka