I was a child when we got to the forties of the 20 th century. The constant sighs from adults, however, were obvious even for a child.

What will future bring? The adults around me kept asking first worried, then in despair.

Being a carefree child at the time, I thought they were only talking about the day to come. Those days were difficult indeed: bread was scarce and meat was rare. I was made to wear the clothes my cousins had grown out of. I never minded that though: they seemed new to me.

I was four years old in 1941 when I got to understand that the reason why grown-up members of my family would sit sternly around the large dining table is neither bread nor meat. I felt rather than consciously knew that something else was covered behind the absorbed faces, the gloomy eyes, the wrinkled foreheads or the tearful silence often lasting for long minutes.

I kept asking them in vain. They always ticked me off saying:

“You are too small, my son!”

This sentences kind of confused me. I had two younger cousins, one was about one year, the other one only a few months old, and whenever they were favoured, I was told to be understanding as I was a big boy already. So I was both small and big at the same time. I also learned it depends on whether I have to look up or down. It seemed quite logical for a boy in his fifth year.

The warm family I was born and grew up in was the Fülöp family, that of my mother's. The Fülöp family was like other hundreds or thousands of Jewish families with the old parents observing even the strictest religious rules while their children were adopting the more liberal lifestyle of the modernizing 20 th century.

Papa, the head of the family was a meshgiach in a small community. Every morning and every evening he would go to the small shul on the ground floor of 11 Erdélyi Street . There were enough men, the minyan gathered every day. Teleki Square – having quite a bad reputation – with many elderly people like himself living there, was nearby. Even Papa was not so ‘tough' on religion: he did not wear a caftan, did not have ear-locks, but he was wearing the tzitzith all day every day.

Mama was wearing a wig. She gave birth to nine children in 22 years: six girls and three boys. They all grew up.

I do not remember, but the ones who stayed alive kept saying say that on a Seder night at Pesach (in 1938 for the last time as Papa died in the spring of 1939) there were the following people sitting around the dinner table: Papa, Mama, the nine children and their spouses, the five grandchildren and five beggars. Thirty souls altogether. And Papa would be telling stories.

When I grew up and led Seder dinners myself I often felt sorry we had had no tape recorder in Papa's days. It would have been so wonderful to hear Papa's voice after 40-50 years reciting the stories of the wise.

 

 

I was the fifth of the Fülöp grandchildren, Mama's favourite: I was a birthday present for her, born on the day of her 60 th birthday. We celebrated together for 26 years.

 

For our family Holocaust began in 1940. My father was the first to lose his job because he was a Jew, one brother of my mother's was dismissed next. Both of them started to work in the store of the youngest Fülöp son so that they can support their families.

Then, in 1942 my father was called up to forced labour.

 

I was five at the time and was being cured in a sanatorium, for I had got very weak as a result of consecutive children's diseases. By the time I got home my father had left. He never ever came back.

 

More male members of the family were called up in 1943 (two of the Fülöp-sons and the husbands of the daughters). The third son would not go. He was hiding, going from one acquaintance to the other as long as December 1944, when he was caught at a raid and shot into the Danube by the Arrow Cross men.

 

The adults waited eagerly for the postman day after day. Mama feared for her sons, the girls did for their husbands. They knew that all the men were at the frontline in Russia . Horrible news arrived from there day after day. Then 1944 arrived: yellow-star-buildings, yellow stars on clothes, the time of fear and horror.

My childhood ended that year, by the time I got seven years old. Many films and literary pieces have been made of the years of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, but it is different to watch it on a film from experiencing it.

I remember March 19, 1944, the day of the German occupation. Nobody dared to go out in the streets. We did not have bread at home for days, because stores where Jews could shop did not open. By then, bread, flour, fat, milk, butter had been sold for food coupons only, if sold at all. Food coupons could not be used in the period mentioned.

 

After the German occupation in March 1944, the number of our family members started to decrease dramatically. Ibolyka, my mother's youngest sister and Lili Grün, the wife and Évi, the daughter of my mother's eldest brother got to one of the death camps when the Jews of Újpest were deported. Rózsi, my mother's eldest sister simply did not return home one day. A woman visited us after the war, she had been taken to Auschwitz together with Rózsi.

 

The woman survived, my mother's died in the gas chamber. We never learned what exactly happened to Évi, my cousin and Lili Grün, her mother. It could only be suspected.

 

About two weeks later, on April 5, after all the previous orders, another anti-Jewish law was published. It said that all the Jews, children included were obliged to wear the yellow star. Never in the course of history have people been humiliated so vilely. No month passed without newer and newer restrictions being implemented. Mass propaganda kept instigating all day long. Jews could be robbed by anyone, it was not considered a crime. Jews could be beaten anywhere, no-one was punished for that and later on they could even be killed and it was considered a patriotic action. Many Hungarians that considered themselves ‘fair and honest' put the notice in their shop-window saying, “We don't serve Jews”. If a Jew was brave enough to get on a tram, he was most probably kicked off, but only after the tram had started.

In the middle of May they started to gather Jews all over Hungary . In the country they were taken to hastily appointed gathering camps near a railway line. Transports from there headed directly to the death camps in packed cattle cars with no water and food. The death trains stopped at certain stations only where the dead were thrown out of the cars. In a number of wagons not even half of the passengers survived the journey. It, however, did not count. Nobody cared about Jews.

 

A number of good-willed people found the inhuman treatment revolting. The bravest ones even articulated their opinion. International and strengthened national reaction forced a temporary halt on the government. As a result deportation from Budapest slowed down considerably. This recess saved many people's lives. Besides other “fortunes' it perhaps saved my life too. You could only stay alive at that time if you were exceptionally lucky.

So called yellow-star-buildings were allocated in the middle of June: the remaining Jewry of the city was crowded in these houses. One family could occupy only one room, but if the district was large and the allocated houses few, more families were crowded in a single room.

I remember we wandered from apartment to apartment. We stayed in Hollán Street , in Pozsonyi Street then finally ended up in the apartment of my aunt Margit, in Népszínház Street . It was 59 Népszínház Street , the last building of the street. Almost everyone not having been deported from the family was there.

October 15, 1944 came, and the date was important for me that time because I turned 7 that day.

I did not understand the fear of the family then, but I did understand it two days later.

On October 17, 1944 the building at 59 Népszínház Street was the scene of a terrible massacre. The commandant of the building, a certain Molnár, was a non-Jew. A day earlier he had shot an Arrow Cross man with his gun from his window and then reported that the murder had been committed by the Jews. Early in the morning Arrow Cross men invaded the building, and chased all the people out of the apartments. Everyone took a parcel thinking they would be deported. It was not so.

People were forced to throw down the packages in the doorway. Women and children were lined up in front of the neighbouring building while men were lined up in the courtyard of the house.

Márton Steinkohl, my uncle, the husband of my mother's sister was among the men. He was on a three-day-leave from city forced labour. That was his third day at home. 19-year-old László Ádler, student of the Rabbi seminary, my oldest cousin was among them too.

 

Twenty-two people were gathered in the courtyard of the house. They were led out then and shot in the head one after the other.

That was for me to understand how vile human beings can turn. I will never forget that.

 

Women and children were taken to the Tattersahl. We were there without food and drink for two days when Hungarian soldiers opened the gates and we could go home.

What expected us at home can never be wiped out of my memory.

The gateway and the ground floor was dirty with blood. People were crying, whining loudly.

Mama did not say a word for eight days. She was sitting on a small stool in torn clothes and was crying soundlessly.

Everyone was crying except my aunt. She witnessed the death of her husband. She could not cry. Something had been cut inside.

 

 

Decades passed in her life before her heart could warm up, it was only in the 1960s, when Csilla, my little daughter started to talk. The frozen heart could not resist the magic of the little girl. Csilla made sense for the last years of her life.

 

The area of the Budapest ghetto was appointed in November. The Jews of the capital were to be crowded there. Yellow-star-buildings were emptied: the people were partly deported, partly taken to the ghetto.

There were still, however, some buildings under diplomatic – Swedish or Swiss – protection, where those having foreign passes could stay.

The so called Üvegház ( Glass Building ) at 29 Vadász Street was one of these places. The street façade of the building was covered with glass, that's where the name comes from. The building had belonged to a Jewish glass merchant wholesaler and it was later purchased by the Swiss embassy and thus declared protected. That was the building where the Halutzim left from day after day to places to be raved by the Arrow Cross men. Quite often they managed to save complete transports. Two of my cousins stayed alive with their help.

 

The protected houses could be shelters for some time, but the people staying there were completely insecure too. They could never know when the Arrow Cross herds would raid on them – the Arrow Cross had no respect towards diplomatic protection or Swiss and Swedish passes in the final phase of the war.

Those who were outside the protected houses or the ghetto had to hide: should they got caught, they were immediately killed. People were marched to the lower waterfront of the Danube every day. Two or three undressed men were tied together. One man of each group was shot in the head and while falling into the icy river he pulled the others tied together with himself too.

On December 5 the ghetto was closed and the final stage began. We were staying at 5 Síp Street sharing a room with my mom and her younger sister (Aunt Lili) , Magda, the wife of my uncle (Jenő) shot into the Danube – and with my two cousins (Gyuri Fülöp, 11 and Tibi Fischer, 3 then).

 

It was not only the six of us, other families were also crowded in there. The ghetto was so full that there was just enough space for everyone to sleep on the floor. There were no furniture in there. The toilet could not be used, as there was no water. A latrine was dug in one side-track of the cellar and we all went there. As a result it stank terribly all the time.

Despite the horrible conditions the ghetto was still a shelter. According to the original plan, those crowded into the ghetto would have been deported too, but the authorities did not have the time to carry that out. The blockade around Budapest started on December 26. No more transports could be started.

 

The ghetto became a shelter because the Hungarian soldiers serving as guards at the ghetto gates did not let the major killers – the Arrow Cross men - inside. Soldiers despised the armed Arrow Cross herds who only went for killing and robbing.

 

Outside the walls the shag for hiding Jews and deserters went on even more wildly than before (many soldiers had deserted the army by then).

 

Uncontrolled robbery was going on and as the Russians were approaching, more and more people escaped to the West with belongings they had robbed. Finally teenage boys were drafted to ‘protect the nation'.

It was not only guns that killed inside the ghetto, but hunger and diseases too. Germans too, continuously shot the ghetto area from the Buda Castle with canons and mortars. Many people died because of the shots, but dysentery and typhus devastated too. There was no medicine. Falling ill meant inevitable death. Diseases spread quickly in the crowd. The dead bodies were collected and placed on the road in front of the houses every day. The carriage taking away the dead came every day. It was pushed and pulled by people who collected the bodies from the road. The frozen dead bodies of the ghetto were mounted up in Klauzál Square .

However, there were righteous people, heroes too, who tried to help their friends and relatives, the people crowded in the ghetto. They often risked their own lives. Some of the Hungarian soldiers helped too: they took and brought letters and smuggled food inside the ghetto. Food meant life. A handful of boiled potato-peel was considered a royal feast. Salted, stale bread was the joy of heaven.

 

How did we get those bread-like things? I never knew. I only remember that I always had to eat over a sheet of paper: no crumb should be lost!

Sometimes we had real ‘delicacies', thanks to the husband of one of my father's sisters. There were some mix-marriages in my father's family. One of his sisters married a very nice person, a Christian joiner. I will never in my life forget György Zohna, “uncle Gyurka”.

A curfew was imposed after dusk. Posters were still on the walls even when the war ended saying “… should a civilian be found in the streets after dusk, they would be slaughtered…”

Uncle Gyurka – everybody called him like that – smuggled a letter to the ghetto addressed to my Mother saying that he would come to the ghetto wall at nights and bring us food. The Síp street wall of the ghetto was by the side of the block where our apartment was. The adults were watching him from the side window of the apartment every night. And uncle Gyurka did come and not only once. He was incredibly brave to come.

He lived in Romanelli Street ( Illés Street today) beyond Kálvária Square , by the Botanic Garden. In order to get to Síp Street , he had to cross the most frequently bombed and shot area of Pest and he had to dodge patrols in the biting cold and pitch-black night. There was no street-lighting by that time. A rope was descended from the side window and he tied there a basket full of food. We never got to know how he managed to obtain all that food when people were starving in the besieged city.

To me, my uncle Gyurka was a hero from a fairy tale. When I once asked him about it - much later, well after the end of the war - he strictly ticked me off in his somewhat croaky voice:

“That was a duty, don't even mention it again,” he said.

Those who read these lines should remember him too, as my uncle Gyurka, György Zohna, did the most man could do those days.

 

“ Let the memory of heroes be blessed”, the Script says.

 

At the end of December Russian troops surrounded the city. Cellars were the only shelters from constant bombings and bracketing from Buda, so everyone moved down there.

You could hear gunshots all over the city. We did not dare to move out of the air-raid shelter. Adults ventured out now and then to get the news flying from house to house. I do not know where the news originated from – the Jewish Community Centre perhaps – but I clearly remember people coming back to the shelter whispering the latest news to the others. And the news were about where the Russians were, when can they be expected to arrive.

These days were spent in fear mixed with expectation. Everybody remembered the posters the Germans and the Arrow Cross men placed all over the city. Thinking back from a distance of so many years their propaganda seems ridiculous and primitive, still it arouse fear from the Russians. There was a poster, for example, in which a man was holding a fly-sheet while his arm was falling off. ‘Don't touch it!', the caption said. Another poster showed a Russian soldier masked as a man-eating wolf snarling with bloody jaw. The caption said something like ‘if there is no food, they eat men'.

Certainly, there was counter-propaganda too. Fly-sheets were spread to encourage people to resist the Germans and get involved in sabotage actions. And in the meantime you could hear gunshots and see bombs falling. The walls of the houses were shaking and people were afraid.

 

 

It was the morning of January 18, 1945 when my mother, together with another woman went up to the apartment from the air-raid shelter to fetch something. The son of the other woman was a couple of years older than me. When they went up, the boy – I remember him having always been naughty – persuaded me to follow them. When we got in the apartment my mother noticed us and sent both of us right back. I ran back but the boy stayed, hiding behind the door. I was in the corridor already when the whole building was shaken by an enormous explosion. I was in full flight to the shelter, and saw the people running out. They had realized that the building had been hit.

The next thing I remember is my mother's sister coming down to the shelter crying, she hugs me and calls out to my other aunt.

‘We do not have Ilonka any more'.

At that moment I had no idea of what ‘any more' means. I learnt it in a couple of minutes: all the three of them had died. A German mine shot from the Buda Castle fell on the upper floor, flying through the window and exploding right in the room tearing out the window, demolishing the wall. And killing my mother.

Later I escaped from the shelter. I knew that the dead were laid on the pavement in front of the building. I was hoping to see my mother once again, but she had been taken by then. The street was empty. It was only the snow painted red by blood that stared at me as the silent witness of horror. I don't know how long I was standing there. Then all of a sudden some horrible crackling and rustling could be heard, interrupting the gunshot we had already got used to. I looked back and saw that the ghetto wall was open and a huge steel monster, a Soviet tank was entering Síp street and further on towards Wesselényi Street .

It was January 18, 1945. We were liberated.

My mother rests there, in the garden of the Dohány Street synagogue among the dead of the ghetto, among thousands and thousands of her sisters and brothers. Unmarked.

My father rests in Austria , somewhere around the town Wels . Also unmarked.

May they rest in peace.

 

I got to Israel first 47 years later, in 1992. We visited Yad Vashem and were standing above the thin light of the candles. Upon hearing the soft music my old wound got torn off. I could hardly breathe, my heart was thumping and I could not fight my tears. Infinite depth opened up behind my closed eyes and I felt I was filled up with remembering. I could hear the dreadful explosion of the striking mine as I had heard so many times in the past nearly fifty years.

How can a wound be so painful even after such a long time? – Or is it only me? People say time gives a cure for all our wounds. It is not true! There is no remedy to the wounds of the soul.

 

I have received much love in my life from my beloved wife and my adorable children – but they could not that wound. It is not that their love was not enough – it is the wound that is too deep.

Where were you, God? – I cried in pain and it echoed in my ears and all over my body for days. Whatever fights inside me, erupts at a point and as soon as it does, it calms down. It has been so ever since my childhood. It was so then and there too. My soul reconciled. The harmony of words reconciled the turmoil of the soul.

 

Where were you, God, when the Earth wailed,

Where were you, God, when your People bled,

Where were you, when our hundreds of thousands of

our bodies burnt while praying to You,

where were you, when the hearts broke,

when the skies turned ashly black,

when the souls were paralyzed by fear,

when clouds wept blood…

Where were You, then? – Where?

 

My soul reconciled. I wonder, how long,?  

.

The Fülöp family consisted of twenty-seven members at the beginning of January 1944. We were eleven by the end of January 1945: three of the Fülöp daughters, the husband of one of them and six grandchildren. Mama had to mourn for her six children and two grandchildren.

 

Then the family got scattered in 1956. Mama passed away in March 1964, exactly 25 years after the day of the death of Papa.

 

I was there with her on the very last day in the hospital.

‘Papa is calling', she said. ‘I must go now.' And she did not wake up the next morning.

The last Fülöp-girl passed away in 2001 at the age of 81.

 

However scattered they are, the family lives on. The one time Fülöp grandchildren – being grandparents themselves by now – have completed the family. We are fifty-nine altogether with our spouses, our children and grandchildren. Seventeen of us live here in Hungary , sixteen family members live in the USA and twenty-six are in Israel . We are all different but connected by an unforgettable past at the same time.

The cousins – that is our generation – meet quite regularly, nearly every year. Our children do not speak the same language and our grandchildren hardly – if at all – know each other. Perhaps it is just natural like that. But the genes of Papa and Mama are working inside all of us, in all our children and grandchildren and on like that until the end of times.

And those of them inclined will carry on the mentality we inherited from the previous generations.

There will be many of them that carry on the faith saying: ‘S'ma Yisroel!”

And the time when clouds wept blood will go down in histor

 

….. you are asking me why

 

Why do we need such writings when there is a Holocaust Memorial Day?

Why do we need them when the democratic states of the world regularly remember the horrors of the middle of the 20 th century?

Why do we need them when books like the monumental work of Randolph L. Braham about the tragedy of the Hungarian Jewry on more than 1300 pages: The Politics of Genocide - The Holocaust in Hungary are published?

We need these writing because authentic historical works focus on the extermination of the people and they never mention that eighty-year-old uncle Keller was taken by the beard and pulled all along between the benches of the Nagyfuvaros Street Synagogue.

We need them, because even the most comprehensive work fails to mention that László Ádler, nineteen-year-old boy, student of the Rabbinical Seminary, was shot on the head in Népszínház Street on October 17, 1944.

We need them, because someone has to tell people that a ‘Yiddishe Mame' not even seventy years of age at the time lost six of her children and could only bury two out of them. Four of her children disappeared through the chimneys of the crematorium. Those she could only mourn.

We need them, because only personal tragedies can really touch young generations and it is their duty to remember.

We need them because time works for forgetting. And that is the reason why the voices of personal remembrance will never be redundant.