Vilmos Anesini and his wife

This is Vilmos Anesini and his second wife. The picture was taken in Budapest in 1947. The Molnar and co. shop was in contact mainly with small factories. This is how we were in contact with Vilmos Anesini, who had a candy factory on Thokoly Street. My father, Miklos Molnar, had many friends, but only three to four were his very close friends. One of them was Vilmos Anesini, who hid us, then Oszkar Koves and Jancsi Reich. These were all in the candy business, in retail or in wholesale. Besides Anesini all were Jewish. Then when in October of 1944 the tzores started, Vilmos Anesini offered us to go to their place, and that he would hide us. Moreover my mother was pregnant with Jancsi at that time. They were so nice that his wife Bozsi registered my mother in her name, so that when she would need to go to the hospital, she would give birth as Mrs. Vilmos Anesini. Not many people did something like this at that time. Vilmos Anesini was my father's best friend. He was a real gentleman. He was wealthy, he liked to live, he was a kind of a bon vivant, and he had racehorses. He and his wife were Catholics. From October 1944 until the liberation, which happened in Zuglo on 4th January 1945, they hid 13 persons, my father, my mother, me, my brother Peter, my Aunt Margit, Aunt Gyongyi among them, in the cellar of their house. In the cellar there was a separate toilet. We were hiding there, when they lodged German officers there. The advantage of this was that the Arrow-Cross men didn't come in here. Of course the Germans could have noticed something, but we were lucky. I'm going to give their names to Yad Vashem, so that they can put them on the list, too. I should have done it a long time ago. After the war the Anesinis divorced. Boske married one of the men they had been hiding; Vilmos married a woman called Mimi. From then on he had an awful life. After the liberation they took everything from him. When they took his factory, he got hold of some job. At the horse races there is a man who measures the horses. This was his job. The villa remained, it became Bozsi's, and because she was very religious, some nuns lived with her, and when she died she left the house and the plot to the nuns.

Photos from this interviewee