« Personal Stories

Imre Rábai: Fractions

Confessions of a Maths Teacher

Short Biography

I was born in Mezőkovácsháza on July 9, 1926.

My father was Nandor Roth (1897), joiner. My mother was StefaniaKohn  (1902), housewife, and my brother was Tibor Roth (1924).

We moved to Szeged in 1920.

1932-36: Jewish Elementary School in Szeged

1936-40: Gábor Klauzál High School

1940- 41: Vocational School of Chemistry, preparatory year (was not accepted because of the Numerus Clausus)

1941-44: Gabor Baross High School, Grades 5 to 7

June 6, 1944 to October 14, 1944: forced labor (Hódmezővásárhely and Nagykőrös), then to Wienerneustadt on foot in forced march, then concentration camp (Dachau, Mühldorf).

April 30, 1945: liberation

December 1945:  Graduation from high school

1948-51: Pedagogical Institute of Szeged, Department of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry

1951-56: Bolyai Institute of University of Szeged (assistant lecturer)

1956-57: Janus Pannonius High School, Pecs  (teacher)

1957-58: Ferenc Toldy High School, Budapest (teacher)

1958-66: Mihály Fazekas High School, Budapest (senior master). This is where I got to teach the first special mathematics class. Many of the members of the class later became world famous (László Lovász, Miklós Laczkovich, Peter Major, all academicians).

1965-92: Budapest Technical University, Assistant Professor at the Mathematics Department of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.

I retired in 1992.

I published many books and articles on mathematics methodology.

1999: Golden Cross of the Hungarian Republic

2003: Master Rátz  Lifetime Achievement Award

Sorrel

It happened on April 28, 1945, in the very last days of the war. We had

been forced to leave the camp on April 25, on a train camouflaged with

green leafage to look like a load of weapons, escorted by SS soldiers.

We were in bad shape, without food and water for days. There was an

American air raid. The SS soldiers ran away and we somehow got the

wagon doors open and climbed out. We found a sorrel field there, and

stuffed ourselves with the sorrel. Then the raid ended and the SS

soldiers came back. We could not escape, and were herded into the

train and transported for two more days. We would peep out of the

cattle car and at dawn on April 30 we suddenly saw that the guns of the

Germans were now pointing downwards, not upwards. We looked

round and saw the American troops there. The American soldiers

captured our guards. They then opened the doors of the cattle cars. We

were free. A firefight was going on nearby, so they unfortunately did not

care much about us. We were in Pocking, a small German village.

My brother went to Israel in 1946. He had heart surgery about ten

years ago. He asked a friend living in the same apartment block, who

was preparing to come to Hungary, to contact me and he sent me a

small souvenir. My brother (Tibor Róth) took the name J’hosua Argaman

in Israel. One day the phone rang in my apartment and when I

answered it, a voice with a foreign accent asked:

“The Argamans?” since my brother’s name was Argaman.

We met and talked. It turned out that he was originally from Munkacs

and we were in the same Lager, as well as on the same train, before

being liberated. He asked me:

“Tell me, what was that thing we were eating off the ground?”

“Sorrel.”

Sorrel. He had been looking for that word for thirty years. If I wrote

fiction, I would write this story with the title “Sorrel.” 

Files

People often say there were no deportations, no concentration camps. I

have a document about me filled out by the Germans, and another one

filled out by the Americans in 1945. The latter one testifies to the

liberation and is a certificate that I was in the lagers in Mühldorf and

Auschwitz.

When I had been liberated and able to walk again, I went from

Feldafing to the Mühldorfer Waldlager, the place where I had been held.

To my surprise I found the SS office there. I took the file prepared on me

in Dachau in 1944. I would take all the files today.

I gave both certificates (the German one and the American one) to the

Holocaust Documentation Centre in Pava Street, Budapest (together

with a photograph taken at the age of 18 in which I am wearing the

yellow star).

Family

I am from Szeged, but I was not born there.

I come from a Jewish family of craftsmen. Ours was a dynasty of joiners,

starting with my grandfather, who was a joiner in Mezokovacshaza. He

also became a soldier in World War I and got to Szeged later on. He

had a joiner’s workshop there, and my father worked there too when

he was young.

It is interesting how Jews related to being Hungarian at that time. My

father personally listed the distinctions he received in World War I on

the back of a photo. He was born in 1897, and could have enrolled in

1915, at the age of 18. He said he was at Doberdo, on the Italian front,

if I remember well.

My father’s younger brother died in forced labor. He, too, studied

carpentry. My father’s other brother studied metallurgy in school and

attended the Metallurgical Technical College of Szeged. My father

learned many trades. He did not finish high school but had very good

manual skills. There was a large Thonet factory that made bentwood

furniture somewhere in Bohemia in 1928. (Thonet was the name of the

owner.) My father and the family started to experiment, with good

results, so they set up a factory to produce bentwood furniture. I still

have four chairs in my home made by them at the end of the 1930s.

They are in perfect condition, and have never required repair. My father

and the factory prepared the chairs for the first open air festival in

Szeged in 1936: the first spectators sat on those chairs. I remember

being there as a child, watching how the chairs were set up in the

open-air theatre. My ancestors were an integral part of Szeged society.

Mothers used to stay at home in those days, and my mother was no

exception. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a tradesman who

went bankrupt and died. My grandmother died in a camp during the war

in February 1945.

Families in those days had a lot of children. My father had six siblings. I

have a number of cousins in Israel, in Budapest, and elsewhere.

I learned how to bend wood when I was a child, and I could still do it

today. It was semi-skilled work that required no expertise, simple mass

production bending and refining spans.

My father’s workshop operated at the Csillag Jail in Szeged until 1942,

when they were expelled from there. The manufacture carried on

operating in a laundry room, in a room attached to it and in a shed in

Szeged.  Production continued as long as 1944.

I was two years old when the family moved from Mezokovacshaza to

Szeged,  because of the factory. It was difficult to sell the products in

Mezokovacshaza; the bigger cities started to industrialize earlier. I have

vague memories of my childhood: I remember living in the house in Mora

Street first and that, except for the political situation, it was a happy

childhood.

Our family followed Conservative Judaism. Among distant relatives of my

mother there were some strongly Orthodox people too. Chief Rabbi

Emanuel Löw lived on our street in Szeged, a few blocks away. On his

birthday we were always taken to his house to celebrate him. We had

little contact with him, and he was very old by then.

We kept the religion, but were not strictly religious. After the war

everything fell apart. No trace remained of what had existed before.

To tell the truth I was a bit rebellious. There were two synagogues in

Szeged: an old synagogue and the new one. I thought it was unfair

that people always had to pay for places at the synagogue on holidays.

This at once meant social stratification: whoever had more money could

buy a better place or go to the big synagogue.

We lived opposite the synagogue, about 30 meters away. The area was

intentionally zoned to build houses around the synagogue. Even the

owner of the apartment block we lived in was a Jew. The apartment we

rented consisted of a room and a kitchen and was situated in the

basement. I never paid for the caretaker to open the gate. Instead, I

would always climb in through the window as it was so low. I never

slept in a bedroom before I was 18: my brother and I slept in the

kitchen before he went to study in Budapest. After the Germans seized

Belgrade in 1941, Jews from the Vajdasag region of Yugoslavia tried to

escape. That is how a younger cousin of my mother’s arrived at our

place (she was six or eight years older than me). From that time on I

shared the kitchen with him and when my brother came to visit from

Budapest, the three of us slept there. Everybody in our three-storey

apartment building, except for two families, was Jewish. Not many of

them survived.

Schools

All the Jewish kids in Szeged attended the Jewish elementary school

there, which was a very good one. Thirty to forty pupils studied there.

There were four male teachers, and each taught a different grade: Mr

Székely the fourth grade, Fuchs first grade, Löwinger third grade, and I

do not recall the name of the second grade teacher. Each one of them

was an expert of the year that he taught. But the teachers’ real

mastery only became clear in the high school years. They had not

recognized in elementary school that I was better at math than the

others. My high-school teacher noticed it in the very first class. He told

my mother at the first parent-teacher meeting that this child would

make a good teacher of mathematics, since my tests were so much

better than the others’. Maybe the other kids were just as good or

better in elementary school, and that is why I could not excel.

There were three public high schools and one private in Szeged. Many

kids went to the  Piarist High School. Apart from that there was the

Gábor Baross High School and the Gábor Klauzál High School, where my

parents enrolled me. Then it turned out that Klauzál was the right-wing

school. I was called a Jew for the first time in my life at the age of 12. It

was one of my classmates.They did not hurt me, but ‘curse you, Jew’

was frequent at that time. I attended that school for two more years,

but it was not so easy to bear, yet I could because I had some friends

and among the teachers there were some very thoughtful people,

mainly Elemér Simon, my math teacher. We even corresponded later on.

I had a non-Jewish friend in class, Andris Detre, and I still keep contact

with him. His stepfather, Vilmos Sz. Szigethy is the idol of the ‘citizen’ for

me. He was Chief Archivist, a highly intelligent man. He treated me, the

young pupil, as an equal peer.

My parents wanted me to become a chemical technician, to have a

profession. The entrance exams to the Chemical Technikum in Szeged

followed a year of preparation. That was when I first encountered the

numerus clausus. I had the high score on the exam. They even enlisted

my name among the ones accepted – I was listed sixth or seventh – but

then the principal declared the results invalid. The exam was in

mathematics, and it caused no problem for me; I was surely among the

best applicants. Still they refused to take me. They took one single

Jewish kid, and it was someone else.

After that I got to the Gábor Baross High School. I had a friend there,

who – when we were obliged to wear the yellow star – hooked onto me

and stuck with me. People were of all kinds. Except for two or three

teachers at the Baross High School, most teachers were nice. In the last

period, from February 1944 on, when the others had Levente class, the

Jews were supposed to put on a yellow ribbon and go cleaning. I

must have been a gritty boy, since I said I would not wear the yellow

ribbon, for I came to school to learn. My homeroom teacher was the

commander-in-chief of the Levente group.  He would shout at me and I

ran to the principal to tell him that I was in school to learn. If I were not

good enough, I would leave. The principal, Oszkár Fiskbás, was very

kind and told me to calm down and that he would settle everything. And

indeed, no harm was done and I did not even have to do the cleaning.

My homeroom teacher, however, never spoke to me any more.

György Ágoston

There used to be a Boy Scout group in Szeged. A university student

from Szeged, Gyuri Ágoston, joined our group when I was about

thirteen. He gave the group great energy. He had a lot of ideas and he,

together with the group leader a few years older than we, did much to

keep us functioning. They could get anything organized. There was

always someone to do the organizing work. They put together

interesting programs so we wouldn’t feel ostracized. It was a genuine

Boy Scout group: we even had our own badge.

These young leaders, around twenty-one years old at the time, were

serious people. Two of them later became well-known as actor and

producer. One of them was István Horvai, known as Pista Hoffman at

the time, the other was István Rozsos, then Pista Róth. We had a

study group that gave literary and dramatic performances.  Obviously

this required their enthusiasm. One went on to be a great director, the

other a famous actor.

They organized some very serious hiking excursions and cycle tours for

us. There was a cycle tour to someplace each year, and an account of it

would follow. In 1940 my brother and his two friends Károly Kellner and

Tibor Blum visited Munkács and Ungvár by bicycle. In 1941 the same

Károly Kellner and another friend and I cycled from Szeged to Kolozsvár.

One of our most unhappy experiences occured in 1942 when seven of

us went to Újvidék from Szeged. We did not know about the Újvidék

massacre during which Serbs and Jews were herded onto the icy

Danube by the Hungarian Army and shot into the river. One of us, Sanyi

Fleischner (buried in a mass grave at Szeged; he died in Austria during

the final days) had relatives in Újvidék, we were going to visit them.

They told us they too were out on the icy Danube.

We also did sports. I was a great ping-pong player. The school sports

club was called KISOK. We couldn’t take part because Jews were

excluded from all sports. I attended a very good high school in Szeged,

called the Baross Gimnazium. The Baross school sports club couldn’t do

without me, I was the top athlete. We had to play against an extremist

right-wing organization, so I couldn’t play as Imre Róth; I had to choose

another name.

During the war we waited for the Soviet forces to arrive, no question

there. We called the planes Ratas, and It was then I decided I will name

myself Rátai. The Szeged newspaper Délmagyar had even written about

how Rátai was the best player on the KISOK team. Of course this was

only a one-time pseudonym. But later during the war I had my name

Hungaricized, with a single letter alteration, to Rábai.

Another thing that comes to my mind regarding sports: On the night of

March 18, 1944 the Germans moved in. The Jewish youth was still very

organized at this point, because they held a ping-pong tournament for

all the Alföld region’s Jewish organizations, which I won. By evening we

couldn’t get home because the Germans had come in and stopped traffic

for 24 hours. On the way home I saw German tanks everywhere from

the train. There was still a week or two of school left. I was eighteen,

and I was supposed to graduate.

Following the war, we held a memorial competition in 1946, for ­György

Ágoston and Károly Kellner. (We had been in the camp with Károly

Kellner all the way, and he died after our liberation in the hospital.  He

was too weak.) We tried doing something to keep their memory alive. In

Szeged in 1946-47, there was a boy ten years our senior named Pál

Vadas who came up with the idea of forming a team called “Szegedi

Hapoel.” You can check the sports magazines: we played with this

name for years. At this time there was no Israeli state yet. Nobody

would sponsor the Szegedi Hapoel sports club – until Pali Vadas, who

had a factory, offered to. We played in the second-tier league, not

badly. It was unique at the time, and even more so today.

Then later I became a captain and played in the first league. I was a

great player. A football team was a part of organized Jewish life at that

time. We played games against the Jew kids of Szabadka several times.

We went to Szabadka, and they came to Szeged.

In 1941 or 1942 the Jewish Boy Scout groups were abolished. After our

group was disbanded, György Ágoston kept the team together

nonetheless. A single troop of the original Boy Scout group remained.

This consisted of the children of poor merchants, industrialists, and

laborers, myself among them. The more well-to-do and upper-middle

class parents were very frightened for their children. I still have friends

in Israel who – almost every year – when we meet, will mention how

parents, grandparents, and relations wouldn’t allow them into these

communities.

Gyuri Ágoston encouraged us not to disband, but to “do something.”

Study, have fun, not feel left out. And despite the prohibitions, with his

leadership we created an illegal Jewish Boy Scout group. But now we

gave our troops’ names in Hebrew.  Ours was called “Kadima.”

The illegal Boy Scout group received no aid from other Jewish

organizations, even though it could have. But they allowed us to stay in

the now-disbanded Boy Scout building, which was at Margit Utca 24,

and is there to this day. One can see it clearly in photos of the Szeged

Synagogue’s environs. The building was property of the Jewish religious

community, and in service of Jewish youth. It was second in size after

the Jewish community building. There was also the Jewish Elementary

School, which was taken over one day in 1943 by the Hungarian Army.

My tiddlywink set remained trapped inside, and I never got to retrieve it.

Our activities were confined to a closed space: we locked the gate on

our way in so as not to be disturbed. Boy Scout training went on as

before with the exception that Gyuri Ágoston reorganized Boy Scout

tests into particularly Jewish history competitions (they had previously

been the same as in Boy Scout groups in the rest of the nation).

Gyuri also told us there was a bigger test awaiting us, so we must be

very strong. Starting in 1942 we spent hours every Sunday marching

around the yard carrying bricks in our knapsacks. Only later, as we were

marched from Nagykőrös to to Wienerneustadt in Austria, did we

understand the relevance of Gyuri’s “training,” as this was how we

survived our trials. We Boy Scouts had spent years in preparation to

carry whatever burden was placed on our backs. For the most part, we

bore it. That boy of 24 years had had that kind of foresight. In 1942 he

was taken for forced labor to the Soviet front lines. He wrote me a

postcard telling me goodbye from Nagykőrös that same year.

I never heard from him again. Gyuri Ágoston was a real hero. I keep his

memory with awe and devotion to this day.

After Gyuri Ágoston was taken to labor, some of the senior Boy Scouts

(Károly Kellner, Tibi Blum and my brother) led our illegal Boy Scouts.

In the illegal Boy Scouts, competitions were about Jewish history. We

acquainted ourselves with Jewish literature: reading novelettes from

the periodical called Múlt és jövő. I remember reading works from Franz

Werfel, Sholom Aleichem, Stefan Zweig and other Jewish authors.

This wasn’t all we did. When the Germans occupied Poland, a great

many Polish Jewish refugees fled to Hungary, most of them living here in

total illegality. The senior boys in our group organized for these people

to be fed. I too had an address to supply, and every day I had to carry

food there in a dinner bucket. There was a special arrangement for how

I should knock. They took the dinner bucket with their dinner in it, and

gave me the empty one, and I never knew who they were. I only knew

it was Polish refugees hiding out, and we took them food. Tibi Blum,

who organized all this, was taken first. His activities were revealed, and

he was arrested and taken by the Gestapo. I met him later on the train,

when we ate that sorrel. He didn’t come home after the war, and he

changed his name to French: Tibor Manise. After the war he ended up

with a French Jewish couple who had a little textile factory. The couple

emigrated to America, and left him the factory.

The hard years

We considered leaving Hungary frequently even during the 1930s. For

this we needed money and there was never enough. And we thought

that what happened to others couldn’t happen to us. We were led to

believe we were safe, and lived accordingly. We felt that we Hungarian

Jews would be protected. We thought there might be a little suffering

but we would pull through. We didn’t know about the camps. Even

when the train stopped at Dachau, I was unaware of where we had

arrived. A sign said Dachau in Gothic script. Moments like that are

preserved. We didn’t know what awaited us. We knew it would involve

suffering, and that forced labor workers had been taken away and

never returned. My father’s brother was drafted in 1942 and we had

had no word from him in years. We never knew of his fate. There was

no trace. He had a little daughter who never even knew who her father

was. She was adopted by her mother’s elder sister. They survived

because from Szeged they were taken to the Czech part of Austria, to

Terezin rather than Auschwitz.

We had no clear idea of the situation. We only knew that trials were

approaching. When the order was issued in mid-April 1944 that we had

to wear the yellow star, we knew the danger was very serious. It was

typical of the mathematician in me that I measured out a beautiful

hexagon, and made it from celluloid rather than textile. I had some

yellow celluloid, so I cut it out from that and pinned it on.

They issued an order at the end of 1943 or in 1944 to turn in all radios.

Some neglected to comply. Gold objects were also to be handed in. We

had no real valuables except for  wedding rings, and I had a gold watch

I had once found on the street somewhere. I buried these in our yard.

After the war I couldn’t retrieve these because others had moved in

there and the ground I had dug up had been covered with stones. I

stood in line when we turned our radio in. We used to listen to British

broadcasts every night. The dit-dit-dit-daa was Morse for the letter „V”

for victory. That was the British station’s signal. While we had a radio

set we listened every night, very soft, so as not to be overheard. My

father always said he had already survived a war when he was young,

but that of course was quite different with him being young and enlisted

as a soldier.

As we had some relatives living in Belgrade and the Délvidék region, we

already knew of what was taking place there, and also that the Jews

had been taken from the Felvidék – what we didn’t know was they were

taken to the Ukraine and executed. We knew that those living in the

Sub-Carpathia had been taken first. The radio gave us important news.

First my father, then one of his younger brothers, then my brother were

summoned for labor service.

I have a piece of writing from my father, from 1944. He is writing to a

friend of his, asking for money so he could buy me a coat, because I had

no winter one.

In the main synagogue of Szeged, thick curtains hung before the torah

cabinet. This was used to sew winter coats for a friend of mine and

myself. This winter coat came with me to Dachau. I don’t recall when I

got rid of it, but that would be when they took it off me. I know they

wanted to take it away quick, because it was a thick coat and it was

very important not to freeze in the cold. 

My father was summoned to labor service more than once. They called

him in, then sent him home, called him in and sent him home again. We

only discussed this with my Jewish peers, never with other classmates.

Of course we knew everything about our Jewish classmates. It was

mostly the same situation with everyone.

In the end, the factory was left to me, I was in control for another day

or two, then came those decisive moments of June 6, 1944: D-Day.

That was the day I entered labor service. Mine was the last generation

to do this, the generation of 18-year-olds. We knew about the landing

as we set off that day, because some among us had listened to British

radio broadcasts. We thought the war surely couldn’t last much longer.

Regrettably, we were mistaken. I was the youngest in labor service at

Nagykőrös.

We had to pack our gear for labor service to last us all winter. Only as

much as fit in a backpack. Food was not allowed. Nevertheless, for a

pair of shoes I purchased some bacon somewhere, so I had at least

some food with me. It was June, but we had to take full winter gear. We

knew we weren’t going home before the winter.

The next important date was the day of the Horthy-proclamation on

the 15th of October, 1944. We were on our way, headed towards

Germany. We heard of the proclamation at Lajosmizse. One single boy

had the sense to walk right off. I never saw him after that. His name

was András Horváth, a Kiskunhalas boy. He was the only one to

perceive that it was time to leave.

Several people made their escape on that road. I was escaping too, but

my friend Károly Kellner (a year older than I) had hurt his foot and

couldn’t carry it out, so in the end I stayed on.

So we arrived at Wienerneustadt with those from Bor. Bor is in

Yugoslavia: there was a copper mine there, a big labor camp. It is

where the poet Radnóti came from. We went by there near Győr, at

Abda.

Around Győr the Hungarian gendarmes surrounded us and checked our

papers and searched us, and physically abused us as well. They took

everything. We saw them throwing  photographs away, so we buried

ours quickly under a blanket. Those photographs kept the soul in us. Of

course, they were never retrieved. I wouldn’t even have been able to

find my way back there.

In Wienerneustadt, where they put us on trains, we found ourselves

with the people from Bor. We were taken away from there, but we still

didn’t know where to. It turned out to be Dachau, the first camp in

Germany, founded in 1933 by Hitler. The first concentration camp was

about 30 kilometers from Munich.

Upon arriving in Dachau, each of us was questioned as to our

occupation. A friend of mine, Gyuri Kaufmann said he was a student. I

told them I was a carpenter.

That was my father’s final piece of advice. They needed workers, not

students. A shame, as those who said “student” disappeared the next

day.

I managed to hang on to my toothbrush and dental powder, hiding

them in the inner pocket of my overcoat. They stripped us naked and

took away everything before giving us prisoners’ clothes. But they let

me keep my overcoat, tailored from the torah-cabinet curtains, because

they couldn’t give me a prisoner’s cloak. They painted its back to

indicate it was prisoner’s clothing. It was very important to me that, for

three months there at least, I could brush my teeth.

A few days on we were taken from Dachau to Mühldorf, some 30

kilometers away. There we were forced to do very heavy labor, carrying

cement 12 hours at a time. It was the site of a great construction

project, said to be a bunker for the Messerschmidt factory. About 20-25

years ago I was watching television when to my utmost shock I saw the

building we had worked on. I found out that my camp – the Mühldorfer

Waldlager – was in a forest. I knew it was between the villages of

Mühldorf and Ampfing. We toured the area by car with my sons and my

wife, and we couldn’t find it. Of course whenever we asked the

Germans, they knew nothing whatsoever. They just wanted to forget

about everything all of a sudden. I never found it.

I visited Dachau several times after the war. I always had to pay to

enter. (The first time I didn’t.) There is a memorial book in Dachau. I

never entered my name, only the number, the lager number:

Hundertvierundzwanzig, sechs vierundachtzig.

Few of us survived the camp. Some asked to be taken to get stronger.

So they were taken and executed. We didn’t know that then. For a long

time I remained strong, as I wanted so much to stay alive, but one or

two days I was weak. On the second day in the Mühldorf camp we were

starved. What we received – we called it Bunkersuppe – was not food.

There was a tiny bit of carrot in it.  The throng dived in for it, and I stood

aside. I simply said I would not do this. Food was distributed by a Czech

Jew called Fuchs. He was a good psychologist. He declared he would

give nothing to unruly people like that. Then he beckoned to me, as I

stood on the side: “Komm her, Junge!” he said. He gave me food. We

became friendly, and he started supporting me. He was around forty-

five, I eighteen; he could have been my father. He once told me how the

Germans had his wife and child buried alive and he had to watch. He

vowed revenge. I once went inside the Revier, the barracks that

functioned as an infirmary. So Fuchs comes around, catches sight of me

and says “Get out of there at once, you mustn’t stay in here!” So those

were my two days of weakness.

I entered labor service with my two friends Károly Kellner and Tamás

Holczer, and we were together in the camp as well. They did not

survive. As I mentioned already, Károly Kellner died in hospital after our

liberation. Tamás Holczer was most brilliant among us. I don’t know

what he could have accomplished if only he had made it alive. He was

lucky at least to be with his father in the lager. There was one other boy

with his father there as well. But Tamás Holczer and his dad fell for

being stregthened trick, hoping they were to return. We never heard

from them again.

Two wounds from those times are still with me, never to heal. One is on

the palm of my hand, which was full of scabs from some infection, the

other on my ankle. Wounds were not attended to there, they got

infected and after the liberation they took extremely long to heal. The

wound on my ankle was from the wire I used to keep my prisoner’s

shoe from falling off my foot. Our shoes were of canvas with thick

wooden soles. These were inexpensive to produce and lasted for those

two-three months that the average forced laborer would manage to

stay alive.

The End of the War

We were liberated on April 30, 1945. Looking out the window of the

freight car, we saw the Americans leading the Germans away. The

Americans opened the wagon doors and there we were, free and

hungry. It was a war zone, the cannons still rumbling around us

ceaselessly. And we could go where we pleased. We wandered in the

town all day long, going in all the houses to find someplace we might

eat. We were weak and our stomachs were unaccustomed to normal

eating, so we ought not have eaten much. Many died for doing so,

within a day. Then we arrived at a school gymnasium where there were

nurses. We slept there on bags of hay. I got sick too, though I ate only

dairy products and nothing else, yet my stomach couldn’t handle even

that. The next day the nurses told us we were to be taken away. An

ambulance arrived and I stood there and next to me was a boy from

Pécs with whom I had been in the camp together. I asked him where he

was going. He told me they were being taken to some smaller place and

invited me to come along. So I got on that ambulance, I didn’t wait for

the nurse – she’s been looking for me ever since. They took us to a

smaller place called Ansdorf where we were put up in a school operating

as an American military hospital. That was my luck: I made it to a doctor.

We were in such a state that we couldn’t get up for a month. They gave

us oat flakes and disinfected us. Our clothes were burned immediately

because they were infected. At the hospital we received American

military treatment, the same as the American soldiers. We even got

canned cocoa. They popped it open and, lighting a heater wick, they

warmed themselves up. There was everything – unfortunately

cigarettes as well. From the first day on, each of us got a pack of

cigarettes daily, but we couldn’t walk, let alone smoke. After 30 days I

was in possession of a fortune: I had 30 packs of cigarettes. I’m sorry

to say I smoked. I never had before then. I lit up, and it took me over a

decade to quit. I didn’t  actually feel like doing it, but there were no

Hungarian books or newspapers. There you were in a hospital with 30

packs of cigarettes.

When we were well enough to walk, we were taken to a larger camp in

Feldafing. Here we were given clothes. The Americans had no civilian

clothes. They dressed us from  German military stores, so I arrived home

in Hungary wearing a German military uniform. I spent two or three

months in Feldafing. On one occasion there I saw beside the British,

American and French flags a white flag with and a blue Star of David on

it. What later became the Israeli flag might then have stood for the

Jewish regiment of the British military. We had a pass we could use to

travel freely throughout Germany, but we were not permitted to leave

the country. Before our return home, when the Americans saw us as

fully healed, they gave us an identification certificate that could be used

to cross international borders.

Still without identification, I hopped a passing train to escape for home.

I got as far as Ljubljana, but having no documents, they wouldn’t let me

pass, so I had to go back. The most beautiful journey of my life was

through the Southern Alps: we had the whole train to ourselves, three

or four of us going back to Munich. Just us! I went back, and had to stay

another month. I sent home a photograph taken of me there on which I

wrote My beloved, I am alive! I am dressed in German clothes in the

picture. My mother kept it.

They had a talk with us before giving us papers, and asked me where I

wanted to go: Canada or England? Many friends of mine went to

England. If I had said “England” like my friends, I would have studied at

a British university, and I wouldn’t be here. But I came home. It may

have been the greatest mistake of my life.

I came home and went to Szeged, where my brother and mother were

waiting. I learned my father was no longer alive. The factory had been

made state property. It was a small plant, with two assistants beside

the three brothers: one trained worker and a factory hand. They

disassembled that factory in 24 hours. We got nothing whatsoever.

My mother had been taken from Szeged to a camp in Austria and forced

to work in a factory.

After the war, my brother contacted the members of a committee that

cared for deportees. He found our mother and brought her home. He

was smart. Two years older than I,  and bigger and much more fit than I

was. He was comparatively lucky too, being put to forced labor in

Szeged. When they tried to take him away from Szeged, he wouldn’t

go. He hid out with his friends in the cellar of City Hall – the most

frequented of places. When the Russians arrived they came out. He

entered the Zionist movement of 1945, and in 1946 he left for Israel.

He was on one of the first boats to Palestine, but like many others, he

was not allowed in, and was instead deported to Cyprus.

Later on, after the founding of the state of Israel, he became a soldier

and remained enlisted. He led the forces fighting in Lebanon. I’m sorry

to say he has died.

After I came home, the issue of “where next” never even came up. Time

passed: two or three years, and nothing. One was just happy to be

breathing. I graduated, but hadn’t the patience for studies. A year or

two had to pass before one felt more or less alright again.

 After the war, many Jewish organizations started children’s homes –

so-called “plugas” – for children whose parents had died. After my

graduation, I helped out as educator in such a Jewish home. Practically

all these children later went on to Israel.

Becoming a Teacher of Mathematics

Mathematics came up sometime at the end of 1947. My friend Lali Sebők

persuaded me to study. He was working at the university by that time. I

helped him get home – he got so sick at Feldafing he couldn’t come

home by himself – and he supported me by persuading me to study. I

started in September 1948. I became a teacher of mathematics rather

than a researcher. One should do as his talents dictate. 

I finished college and university, and became an Assistant Lecturer at

the university in Szeged, working under Professor Kalmár.

Then I got married. We had to move away from Szeged because we had

no apartment. My wife got an apartment in Pécs through the university.

But then we moved from Pécs because of 1956. I remember the first

1956 uprisings. My wife was working at the university, and phoned me

to go over there. I told her I was busy correcting math tests. Though I

lived there, I wasn’t involved in the Pécs community (I had arrived in

Pécs that September) and had no idea what was going on. My wife had

some sort of role in the events. (She is from there originally, from a little

village in Baranya county where she went to school.) She lost her job.

She had to leave, so I left as well. It used to be that you could

disappear in Budapest.

I was active in teaching. My particular interest was mathematics

pedagogy. I taught the first mathematics class at Fazekas High School,

and a real genius class it was: Laci Lovász now has something like a

Nobel prize in Math, Miki Laczkovich is a member of the Academy and

another, Lajos Pósa, is a professor. The Eötvös Loránd Science

University is full of professors I taught at Fazekas.

Closure

After the war we didn’t talk about what happened, not even with my

own children. I know it was a mistake, but these things simply couldn’t

be told. Many just wrote and thought about them. If someone had

asked me 40 years ago, I could not have spoken about it. My children

know hardly anything, nor were they conscious of a Jewish identity.

They know they are Jewish, especially my elder son, who is more

involved in it; the younger boy not so much. Neither are religious, and

had no religious upbringing. They decided, or are to decide, their

relation to religion.

It was a trauma that is impossible to process during a lifetime. I have

not spoken of it since. What I do discuss is the life before, and

especially the life I had afterwards. The life before, however much we

were excluded, was still a life. Ingrown perhaps, but a complete life, a

cultural life, a sporting life.

Yet now I am quite willing to tell what happened, because our

generation is dying out. I myself am 80 years old. There are very few

left who remember anything.

At Jewish cemeteries I always visit the mass graves. My father is in such

a mass grave in Pest, with the people of Balf. I visit the mass graves of

forced laborers born when I was, from the same neighborhood. One

could be lucky or less lucky. Some made it to someplace they were

executed. They executed an entire company on the walk to Austria,

people my age; their names are there on the memorial. When I go to

the cemetery I always visit them first, because I could have been there

among them too.

I took a small piece of marble out to the Holocaust Memorial Museum,

and inscribed on it the names of all my family members who were killed,

and placed it there among the stones. I put the name of my mother’s

sister’s one-year-old daughter too.  She was burned in Auschwitz.

I wrote articles for the high school Mathematical Pages for 25 years.

Usually I dedicated my articles to somebody’s memory. In my last one I

commemorated my friends who were killed during the Holocaust,

especially György Ágoston, Károly Kellner, Tamás Holczer and the

others.