Suddenly The Shadow Fell
First-Hand Accounts from the March 19, 1944 Invasion of Hungary And The Nadir of the Final Solution
On March 19th, 1944 Nazi Germany invaded Hungary, and the massacre of 565,000 Hungarian Jews that followed is unrivalled in the speed and ferocity with which it was carried out.
Below are the first-hand accounts of this event from those who survived it, all from the archives of the Azrieli Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program
Tommy Dick
Now, years later, I can still recall the horror, the fear and my feeling of total helplessness during those first days of occupation. I remember how surprised we were to learn that the German occupiers considered the elimination of Jews — they called it the “Final Solution” — their number one priority. The German army had been in retreat since the battle of Stalingrad, which took place between August 21, 1942, and February 2, 1943. By the spring of 1944, the Germans were fighting for their survival, and yet they began to arrest prominent and not-so-prominent Jews. One wondered if they did not have strategically more important tasks. They must have had lists of Jewish people and addresses, obviously prepared with the help of Hungarian collaborators. With ruthless efficiency, they sought out Jews. No one knew the criteria that placed someone on the list. For Jews there was no escape from that terror. My father had a bag of necessities packed in case there was a knock on our front door.
Days after the occupation, billboards appeared on the streets declaring that Jews (defined as anyone with two Jewish-born grand- parents) must wear a yellow Star of David sewn onto outer clothing while out in public. A curfew was ordered along with many other restrictions, all under the threat of arrest. New orders were posted daily. One listed the locations of empty stores where Jews had to deliver their radios at designated times. The dilemma we faced is vivid in my memory. On the one hand, there was the humiliation of seeing an endless queue of compliant Jews lining up around the block to hand in their radios; on the other, the question had to be asked: Was it worth risking arrest or having my father taken away for hanging on to a radio? To understand the fear one must also consider the hostility of the vast majority of Hungarians toward Jews. No one could be trusted as most Hungarians were collaborating with the Germans. A large segment of the population actively supported the repressive measures against Jews, while others remained passive.
I shall not forget the sad sight of my parents’ friends who came to our apartment every day wearing the humiliating yellow star on their coats to bring us news of the arrests of friends and relatives. Soldiers would stop one on the street and demand documents. They were looking for escapees from auxiliary military units or for “parasites” — people who were not working.
Those of us who were not arrested and whose parents were still at home were able to adjust to life’s uncertainties in Budapest. But early in May, distressing news started to trickle in from around the country. The deportations had started. We knew about concentration camps, although we did not know about the gas chambers and ovens. The news from the outside made it evident that sooner or later it would be our turn.
My life caved in on May 20, 1944, when notices appeared on the street ordering Jewish males of my age group to report to designated labour camps on June 5. I was scared.
But I must say that my parents behaved admirably. They were optimistic that the war would soon end, or at least before the Nazis could complete their “Final Solution” in Hungary. They felt that since the German army had been beaten in North Africa, the Allies had landed in Sicily and Italy had capitulated, sooner or later the Germans would sue for peace, lest popular dissatisfaction cause the system to implode. But, as it happened, the war lasted for another year and millions of people, including my father, died needlessly.
The day arrived when I had to report to the labour camp. It was time to say goodbye to my parents and to Jancsi, who had had to report elsewhere a day earlier. I did not know whether I would ever see them again.
But, after all the camp guards were suddenly replaced and an unscheduled departure was issued I managed to slip away undetected on November 27, 1944. I immediately fled to my friend Erika’s aunt’s house and stayed their for four days with old friends also in hiding.
On the evening of December 2 there was a there was a knock on the door and someone shouted, “Razzia!” (Police raid!). It was the Nyilas. We were pistol whipped, robbed, and interrogated and when they satisfied themselves that there were no other people in the building to arrest, they marched us out. We were marching through a park a short distance from the apartment when our guards were distracted by something and a few left to investigate. I told the group that when I signalled, we should all run in different directions in the hope that some of us would be able to get away. I gave the signal and took off as fast as I could, but all the others stayed. No one moved. Two Nyilas ran after me. I crawled under a park bench, but it was no use. They found me right away. One of the Nyilas aimed his pistol to shoot me but the other one told him that we were heading for the Danube anyway, so why leave a body in the park? The logic must have appealed to the one with the gun as he did not shoot.
They escorted me back to the group and tied my hands behind my back. Then one of the Nyilas told the rest of the group that we would now be taken to the Danube to be executed as punishment for my running away. They were told to blame their fate on me. No one had the opportunity to say anything, but I could feel their hatred.
Soon the Nyilas returned from whatever they were investigating and ordered us to march toward the Margit-híd (Margaret Bridge). At one point, one of the guards told us not to expect the Soviets to liberate us because by the time Stalin would make it to Budapest, our dead bodies would be a long way down the river.
We turned right at the Buda side of the bridge and marched toward Óbuda. We had marched quite a long way when we turned right again and were led down the embankment of the Danube. The Nyilas walking beside me must have sensed that we suddenly realized we had arrived to where we would be executed. Perhaps to lessen our panic, he muttered the ultimate insult, “It won’t hurt,” as if that were our biggest problem. Bastard.
I saw several Nyilas waiting for us at the quay. They appeared to be cleaning up after an earlier execution. This was obviously their designated execution site, away from the busy street and out of sight of the traffic. The site ran parallel to the Danube. Rather than feeling afraid, I remember feeling very angry at having to die at the young age of nineteen. Mixed with my anger was also a feeling of resignation and finality. There was no way out. This is it. I must die. My hands were tied behind my back. We were surrounded by nine armed thugs, each with a revolver ready for use. There was no way out.
Then things happened very fast. We were lined up at gun point at the water’s edge, facing the river. Behind each of us was a Nyilas with a pistol. The ninth member of the execution squad, the commander, stood at the far left. I was second to the right. A mother in her fifties with two daughters in the line begged for her own life; so much for the proverbial motherly love and the notion that mothers are programmed to sacrifice their lives for the lives of their children.
I remember the commander shouting, “Shoot!” For just a second, a very long second, nothing happened. One couldn’t just stand there waiting to die. So I turned my head to watch the person on my right getting killed. In that moment, the Nyilas behind me pulled the trigger, clearly aiming at the base of my skull. He stood no more than a metre behind me. Somehow, as I turned my head, the bullet shattered my jaw instead of my skull. I have no recollection of the next moment. I was standing right at the water’s edge. I must have either fallen forward from the force of the bullet, or perhaps the Nyilas behind me gave me a kick which landed me in the river. I don’t remember falling. I must have passed out for a second or two but the ice cold water of the Danube in December revived me instantly. I remember coming to my senses and clearly realizing what had happened. I knew I had died, and yet I could breathe and feel and think. I thought this must be life after death.
This fantasy did not last long. I knew instinctively what to do to avoid being shot again. I knew that I had to float without splashing, so that they wouldn’t shoot me in the water. The Nyilas were dangerously near. I could hear them talking but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Luckily, the Danube is a fast moving river and the water carried me downstream rapidly. I was so excited that I felt neither cold nor pain. I concentrated on prolonging my life.
I must have been in the water for fifteen or twenty minutes, just floating and steering with my hands, which were no longer tied. I don’t know how the rope came off, but when I came to my hands were free. I can only speculate that the Nyilas who might have kicked me into the river may have also ripped the rope off my hands to save it for his next victim. But I really don’t know.
Suddenly, as I was floating in the water, I could see the dock of the rowing club come into view. (I was very familiar with the rowing club. My father had been president of the club for years and I had spent many happy weekends there as a teenager, steering the boats for my father and his friends and working as a ball-boy on the tennis courts.)
As I floated by the dock, I knew this was where I had to get out of the water. As I approached the dock, I saw the bodies of some of the people from the line-up stuck on guy-wires that connected the dock to the shore. The sight gave me a jolt, but there was no time to think of these people. I had to figure out how to get up on the dock.
The dock was about forty-five centimeters above the water and I had to push myself up on it while wearing a very heavy winter coat saturated with water and with a broken jaw. One becomes very strong when it is a question of survival. I pulled myself up onto the dock and I sat there for a minute. Then I got up and walked to the shore side of the dock and across a small bridge which connected the dock to the shore. On reaching the shore, I was promptly arrested, this time by a soldier who obviously saw me landing on the dock and was waiting for me on the shore side of the small bridge.
He pointed his gun and bayonet at me and ordered me to stop. My jaw was bleeding, hanging down. I could not speak and I was shivering. I was obviously no threat to him. He escorted me to the clubhouse that quartered his unit. He reported to an officer that he had arrested me on military property. I believe I was at an army unit, as opposed to a Nyilas unit. At least I didn’t see them wearing the dreaded Nyilas arm band with the Arrow Cross insignia (which was the Hungarian equivalent of the swastika). The officer tried questioning me but clearly I could not speak. I was also shivering out of control. The officer ordered the soldier to escort me to the hospital which was two or three blocks away, and to bring me back for questioning when my wounds had been attended to. So off we went, me shivering in my soaking wet clothes followed by the soldier with his rifle and bayonet.
Leslie Meisels
The German army occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. Within weeks, they decreed that Jewish people put a cloth yellow Star of David on their garments, which had to be visible so that everybody could see that we were Jews.
Near the end of April 1944, my father was instructed to report for forced labour on May 1; this time, he had no way of escaping. At this same time, all the Jews of Nádudvar were ordered to abandon our homes, take whatever we could and move into a ghetto. All young gentile men born before December 31, 1926, were called up for military service and all Jews born before that date were ordered to report for forced labour. Since I was born in February 1927, those two months saved me and made it possible for me to stay with the rest of my family in the ghetto.
After about a month in the ghetto, on one of the first days of June 1944, everyone was assembled in the synagogue square, where the gendarmes put down a blanket and ordered us all to throw our valuables such as jewellery and watches onto it. Our only gold jewellery was my mother’s wedding band. We were a little farther back in the line and my mother whispered to me, “They won’t get this one.” She told me to pretend that I had to go to the outhouse and to drop it in there, which I did. Even today, I feel smug about that one piece of jewellery that they did not put into their own pockets.
After giving up our valuables we were told to put whatever we could carry into suitcases or pillowcases — we would be moving on and that was all that we were allowed to take.
At the end of the day, when we were marched from the ghetto to the railway station, I was unprepared for what I experienced out on the main street. It was lined with people, several dozen of whom were members of the Arrow Cross and were laughing and clapping loudly, showing their happiness that the Jews were being taken away and yelling insulting, derogatory remarks. Perhaps they were already thinking how wonderful it would be the next morning to loot our abandoned houses. Behind them, hundreds of people stood silently, which was painfully disturbing. Up until then, I had thought better of most people in my hometown.
George Stern
March 19, 1944, was a regular, chilly spring morning. As always, I woke up early to travel the ten kilometres to my Jewish high school in Budapest, but it soon turned out that this morning was not so regular at all.
When I was close to the streetcar station, which was about a ten- minute walk from my home, I saw a huge column of tanks travelling along Váci Street. I wasn’t able to identify what type of tanks they were so I approached one of the men working in the station and asked him about them. He answered, “You don’t know? The German army invaded Budapest during the night without any resistance from the Hungarian army!” I had never seen a German tank before, but it turned out that I had been looking at the famous German Panzer tanks.
Suddenly, during the next few weeks, the Nazis established many ominous edicts, including the order that every Jewish person had to put a yellow Magen David on every coat, dress or garment that was worn outside. I wasn’t ashamed of my Jewishness, but I never wore the yellow star. I was a rebel and I couldn’t bear the discrimination.
Soon, Jews were not allowed to travel to any place outside Újpest city limits and the synagogues were closed. My bar mitzvah, which had been booked for Shabbat, April 22, at our small but intimate shtiebl on Árpád Street, never happened. I had gone there every evening with my grandfather to pray until the Nazis closed it. On my birthday, we celebrated what should have been just before my bar mitzvah day in our living room and we barely had a minyan. I didn’t get any gifts, but I believed that God was watching out for us and that one day things would be better.
The hardships got worse every day. American planes frequently bombed Újpest, Budapest and Csepel, where there were armament and heavy vehicle factories that the Allies wanted to destroy. Groups of eighteen to twenty B-17s — four-engine planes also called Flying Fortresses — flying in a V-formation, carpet bombed large areas. The planes flew at altitudes that the Hungarian anti-aircraft guns couldn’t reach. When they got close to Budapest, a loud siren sounded and everybody ran to the closest bunker or basement. Our house had a deep underground basement and everyone except me would sit there, sometimes for hours. I did go into the basement, but I only stayed ten or twenty minutes. As soon as I heard the airplane engines I ran upstairs to the garden to watch the bombers approaching. The planes looked like silver birds. It was dangerous and against regulations to go upstairs, but I wasn’t scared. I prayed to God that those American planes would destroy the Nazis and the factories so we all could be free again. There were a lot of casualties; one bombing run was so close that the house shook and the earth trembled for about ten minutes. We thought we were going to die. My mother was angry with me for running upstairs and standing out in the open during the bombardment, afraid that I would be killed or injured.
In the beginning of May, the Nazis designated a small area of Újpest as a Jewish ghetto and all 11,000 Jews had to move to houses in the ghetto within days. It took a week or so to fill the ghetto and then the Nazis closed it, putting soldiers outside to guard it and barricades up on all the streets that led out of it. We were trapped.
In the overcrowded ghetto, we secretly listened to BBC radio, which was illegal, hoping for some good news but the BBC only talked about the bombardment of German cities and targets. We never heard any news on the radio about Hungarian Jews or the transportation of Jews from the Hungarian countryside, cities and villages, but we did hear some people say that outside the ghetto, Jews were being taken away — nobody knew where or why. We didn’t want to believe those stories. No one knew what would happen the next day.
Suzanne Reich
Then came March 19, 1944. German troops, the S.S. and the Gestapo with Adolph Eichmann in command, arrived in Hungary. I was 13 years old.
Within a week or two it was announced in school that all Jewish students must stop attending classes. Confusion, and immediate dismissal of classes followed. On my way home that day, I heard that Mr. Fried the pharmacist committed suicide. Later I heard that my grandmother’s tenant, Mr. Moskovics the Hebrew teacher, had his beard yanked and pulled by Arrow-Crossed hooligans. I also heard how these brigands in a nearby village took an elderly Jewish man off the train and squeezed him between two wagons. What’s happening? Could these events really be true?
Next, we were ordered to sew ourselves yellow stars, and wear them on all our outer clothing at all times. The exact shade of yellow and exact dimensions were specified, and to deviate from the order would mean “strict punishment”.
Then a few evenings later, several Arrow Cross armed hooligans came to our door and announced that since the local magistrate would like to move into our house now, we better pack some belongings right away and leave in one hour to another part of the town — to Deák Ferenc Street — which will be now part of “The Ghetto”.
The Arrow Cross seated themselves at our dining-room table, pointing us to one end with their rifles and demanded a list of all we own, starting with money and jewelry. My ailing grandmother alone was seated; my mother and my father stood on either side of her, my sister and I behind them; and with rifles pointing at all of us, “the inventory taking” began. Once all of belongings were collected, it was time to leave.
The Kisváda ghetto was a place where if someone died of any kind of horrible illness, people said “he is the lucky one”. A place where my mother’s sister Aunt Ilonka and her husband Uncle Ernö were brought from a nearby village a few days after us, and we made room for them in our corner amongst the 9 people already there. A place where I heard Aunt Ilonka talk of suicide, and a place where a very familiar voice was speaking to her of hope and the end of the war soon. A place where I got very sick, and where my father got our family physician, Dr. Szöke, (himself now in the Ghetto) to examine me, as he has done many times in the past. A place where I heard my father say: “Dr. Szöke, heal my child and I’ll pay tenfold for your services when we’ll be out of here”.
And finally, the Kisvárda ghetto was a place which on the last day of May, 1944, had to be evacuated of all the Jewish people there, so they may be sent to “work” at some unknown destination in Germany.
We were told to bring 50 Pengös and one bag of belongings with us; our best things carried on our backs. My mother made my sister and me wear our 3 very best dresses, one on top of the other. She and Aunt Ilonka cooked black coffee and sugar together, until it had a soft and grainy fudge-like consistency; cut into squares, we all had to fill our bags with those. The two women also baked dozens of cookies, and there seemed to have been some sort of secret about those cookies. It seemed to me that all our family except my grandmother and I knew that secret.
Accompanied by dozens and dozens of heavily armed gendarmes with fixed bayonets, our procession made its way through the streets of Kisváda. We walked past the familiar streets, houses, people, schools, trees, gardens. “Deported” from our homes, “deported” from the places I knew and loved and wrote so lovingly about. My cheeks kept burning as if they were set on fire.
We were to board cattle-cars, 80 or 85 of us in each wagon. Old people, women and children were in the majority, as most men between the ages of 18 and 45 were already in “forced-labor-army”. We were given 2 pails per wagon; one filled with drinking-water, and the other empty, to serve as toilet. The wagon-doors were slammed shut and chained; the tiny windows high up wired and boarded thickly. After a lot of shoutings outside, the train started to roll.
At that moment an agonizing thought entered my mind. A thought which torments me and haunts me to this day, and refuses to fade with the passing of time: Are those gentle, saintly old people, tall, white-bearded Katz Emmanuel, and his tiny, frail wife Katz (Angyal) Ida of Újfehértő, my very old and very sick grandmamma and grandpapa, are they sharing our fate in another Ghetto, in another train?
From that moment on, I spent most of my time near that window, or near some tiny crack at the side of the wagon, shutting out the realities of life behind me, believing only what I saw on the outside: the beauty of the countryside on a day in late May.
I don’t remember exactly how long this journey lasted, but after some days and nights in that wagon, the train came to a stop, and we arrived at our destination: Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Lili Prince
We woke up that fateful morning to the mighty German armies driving and marching into town. At that point, they were already losing the war, and yet they mustered great evil power and gave up military priorities to round up Hungarian Jews. They were in a hurry to carry out the final solution to the Jewish problem.
Within 6 weeks they rounded up all Jewish families and forced us into the town’s ghetto, carrying a medium sized luggage each, leaving behind homes, money, valuables, factories, stores, jobs, medical practices, and law firms.
Local Hungarian police and SS troops oversaw the brutal round-up, with the help of the big lie: Jews are being resettled into work areas. No one will come to harm.
So, my mother, age 43, my father, age 54, my sister, age 18, and myself, 15, were torn from our little world and by early May (less than 2 months after German occupation) readied for deportation.
And the day came, when we were herded to the town’s railway station, where we found ourselves facing a long row of cattle cars, into which Hungarian police and SS military pushed 50-60 people per car. Families fought to stay together. There was standing room only, with attempts at sitting/crouching. We were allowed to bring some food and they provided a bucket of water and another for sanitary needs. At the appointed time, the train started rolling and rolled with barred doors and a small barred window high up, for 4 days and 4 nights. Then the destination was reached late at night.
Doors opened, flood lights blinded, there was noise and confusion, a glimpse at a low building with the inscription in Gothic script: Auschwitz-Birkenau. I don’t know how many of us in that last transport from our town knew what that name meant. Men in striped clothes and caps, shouted and urged us to get out and line up on the platform, leaving all luggage behind. Bewilderment, confusion, shouting everywhere, but the Nazi killing machine was in full gear, organized and efficient. The technological murders were perfected by then.
We were promptly processed into groups; men separated from women. Then, quickly, mother was pushed aside. We did not know then, that she and 100s of others, were gassed and cremated the same day.
