My maternal grandfather was a coppersmith. He was born in Satoraljaujhely in 1879. He, as my mother told me, got a slap in the face from his father or mother at the age of fourteen, which he considered unfair, and because of this he left home. He worked all over Europe as a coppersmith, he traveled near and far, he was a wanderer. And though he was a coppersmith originally, he later became the first plumber handicraftsman in Miskolc. He plumbed the Miskolctapolca bathing establishment, he had the water laid on and installed heating in the surrounding castles. It is also relevant to mention in this story that there was economic depression several times. My grandparents lived in their own house one time, and there was a time when they didn’t have anything, because they had lost everything. My grandfather was a very cultured man; they were social democrats. [see MSZDP (Hungarian Social Democrat Party)]3 My grandmother told me, that in 1917, when there was the revolution they demonstrated in Miskolc and sang the International. [Editor’s note: The march of the international labor movement].
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Gyorgyike Hasko
My maternal grandmother was born in Sajoszentpeter sometime around 1884. He was only a little bit older than my father. My grandmother had several siblings. Their father was an innkeeper in Sajoszentpeter. My mother told me that her grandmother was a tiny little woman, but every day at dawn, by the time the inn opened, she had kneaded and baked fresh bread to serve to the guests. She worked very hard.
o avoid competing with each other, my other uncle moved to Nyiregyhaza with his wife and became a handicraftsman there. Their child was ten months old when the Germans deported them to Auschwitz [today Poland] and burned them. My uncle had been a forced laborer for a long time then, and a prisoner of war.
My grandmother lived in a single story, three-bedroom-apartment. There was another apartment, too, in the house with an inner courtyard. Perhaps Grandma’s children supported her, as she was a housewife for her entire life. I don’t know if she was religious or not, but she managed a kosher household. I remember when my uncle mixed up the knife for the meat and for the milk, my grandmother stuck it in the ground to make it kosher again – and she used to go to the mikveh [ritual bath], too. I went to the shochet [kosher butcher] with her, too. He would cut the chicken; there was a round stone in a dark room, and the chicken hung on a hanger so that it would bleed out –as far as I remember, at least.
My parents got married in 1928 in Miskolc, in the courtyard, under a chupah, despite the fact that my paternal grandfather couldn’t give a big dowry. Because at that time, if someone married an officer, or an engineer, or a doctor, it was told how much the dowry should be. So that a doctor, for example, could open a doctor’s office. So the girl had to bring nice big money into the marriage. My grandfather couldn’t afford this, but my father was a gentleman, and anyway, he didn’t care.
We lived on Kertesz Street 39. I don’t know when my parents moved there, they didn’t tell me. Anyhow, when I was born, they already lived on Kertesz Street in a middle class apartment, where there was a maid, too, of course. It was as absolutely normal thing for a middle class family to have a maid. These were girls from the country, they lived in a maid’s room, they had a night out once a week, then they went to the funfair, and in the meantime they learned to cook, to clean the house. As a young woman I also had a maid for a long time.
In 1935 my father bought laboratory equipment and we moved to Paulay Street 12, but Grandma didn’t come with us there. I lived there until the house was knocked down. Our apartment was a four-bedroom-apartment with a hall; it must have been about 160-170 square meters. There was a big room in it with a loggia and the big room, which they called the elegant room. The instruments and the chemical balances, which were delicate and couldn’t be in acid steam, sat on a long marble table because that didn’t wobble. There was also my father’s desk, a big reference library, his instruments in a cabinet, but the piano, a table with armchairs and chairs were also there, so it was a very big room. We used the hall as a dining room. We held the Seder was there, as well as every other holiday. Two small hallways opened from there, the bathroom, the toilet and the pantry opened from one of them, the kitchen and the maid’s room from the other one, and in the front there was the children's room and the bedroom. The children’s room was beautiful: up on the wall, where usually there are stripes, many dancing girls and boys in national costumes were painted in a wide stripe all around the room. I didn’t know how it got there, my mother told me later that her uncle, the poor thing who was also killed, was an artist, but he made a living as a painter and painted these kinds of figures on the walls of many castles in the environs of Miskolc, so the uncle must have been a known artist. When my mother repainted the children’s room, she always left this pattern around the wall. The outermost room was the chemical laboratory and my parents worked there. And there was a big pantry, where there was a tier stand for my mom’s jams and another shelf for my father’s stuff. In the children’s room and in the big room there was a tile stove, wood stove, in the laboratory and in the bedroom there wasn’t any heating.
We were raised in a Neolog, and not expressly religious family. We always had a Christmas tree with candles; it once lit on fire. There was a big scandal: my father threw a carpet or something else on it I think. I don’t remember whether we exchanged gifts, perhaps we gave some, since our maids were always Christian girls.
On Friday evenings Mom lit candles. We celebrated Chanukkah, which is also a very nice holiday, and we sang „Maoz tzur” and such songs. Purim is also very nice. We also observed Pesach. We observed it strictly, properly, as it is prescribed. My father made beautiful Seder nights! When we celebrated the holiday together, the first night was at our place, the second night at my father’s sister. The table was set beautifully, and there were matzah balls and the Seder plate. My brother read from the Hagadah, they lit candles, Dad put on his hat, and the children also got a sip of wine.
Several Jewish families lived in the house, all of which were religious to a different extent. But everyone observed Yom Kippur. In my opinion, there wasn’t anybody who could live without traditions and not fast on Yom Kippur and go to synagogue. I remember that we were very proud when they allowed us to fast for half a day, because it wasn’t obligatory for children. And when we were older and fasted a whole day, that was a big thing!
There was a family in the house who put up a Sukkah on Sukkot in the end of the outside corridor, they decorated it and we sang Hebrew songs. I remember that we played with the spinning top, too, I don’t know on which holiday [Editor’s note: at Chanukkah], but I remember that we played for peanuts.
My mother also used to go to balls. There were many goldsmiths and they had a serious social life, and there was a goblet ball every year. The goldsmiths’ club and a big ballroom were in the big corner house across from the Dohany Street synagogue. They held the goblet dinner there every year. In fact, the first ball of my life was a goblet ball right after the war. I don’t know who sewed my dress, perhaps my mother did, it was a checked gored skirt, with checked waistcoat, and with a short sleeved red silk blouse. I remember that it had heavy glass buttons. That kind could be found. But my mom had beautiful evening dresses, and my father had a tuxedo. And when they got dressed for an occasion like this, we children liked it very much, because the tuxedo shirt is firm in the front, we called it ‘drumbelly’, and my father wore a cat-tie [bow-tie] with it. My parents had a busy social life, as my father had many friends.
The theatre was in the Goldmark Room, these were sceneryless performances, like a concert, and we went to these, we had a subscription. My mom took us regularly, that’s how I saw Fidelio [Beethoven], or heard it, to be more exact, so that’s how my mother got us used to classical music.
Besides that we went to hike to the Buda Mountains, to Pilis or to Borzsony every Sunday. We didn’t care if it rained or if it was windy, we went to hike in boots and warm stockings. We went with the family, and we went in groups, too. At that time there was an active tourist life, the goldsmiths also had a sports club, and we went every Sunday, 50-60 of us, or even more. I think everyone was Jewish, and I’m sure there were others, too. I don’t know, but there were many of us. There were many children, too, and we got along vert well. The restaurant in Budakeszi, where we ate bean soup or stock many times, and which was called Mocsnek at that time, I don’t know what it is called today, still exists. There were hostels, the Kevelynyereg hostel, for example, which I liked very much, unfortunately that doesn’t exist anymore. The hostels were made by tourists carrying the bricks up with their own hands and building them. The administrator of the Nagykevely lived there, so when Northern Hungary [First Vienna Dictate]5 was reannexed, my mom went with that group, the administrator was the guide, and they toured the part of the Carpathian Mountains, which is Subcarpathia now. It is difficult to imagine that generation, the many things they had the time for and the many things they did. My father used to go to hike in the Tatras, he also skied, and he taught us to ski when we were still very young. We skated and skied. There was a rink at Sziget Street, where there was a tennis court in the summer, and in the winter we skated there.
We, the children, used to go on holiday in the summer. Dad didn’t, because he worked, and my mother worked, too, because when Dad equipped the lab, he taught my mother and she worked with the chemical balance. But, when we were young, Mom took us to my grandmother’s in Miskolc. She didn’t take us to the Balaton. We weren't allowed to go there because she said it was the hotbed of polio. I learned to swim at the bath of the Electric Works in Miskolc. My brother also learned to swim in Miskolc, but he learned on Varoshaz Square in a swimming bath. He learned to swim so that there was a pole, there was a rope on it, and on the rope there was a strap, they put the child in it and shouted at him to swim. I didn’t learn this way because I learned somewhat later and in a somewhat more modern time. They taught us so that the coach threw a lot of teaspoons into the water, and we had to get them out. That way, he made us get used to swimming with open eyes, and then somehow we learned to swim. Later we went swimming many times. One time, I think when I was eight years old, when the Tungsram swimming-pool was brand new, I got terrible sunstroke there. I had a fever and they even had to take me to the hospital.
When we were older we spent the summer in Romhany. Our maid was from Romhany, and my mother sent us there with her. Her father didn’t live, but her mother did, and they had a house on the main street of Romhany. It was a farmhouse with big trashing-floor and stacks. They were farmers; she had several siblings, so it was a nice big family. We didn’t go barefoot, our sole didn’t endure it, but we wore sandals, though everyone else in the village went barefoot, except when they went to church on Sundays. But after a while we could also go barefoot on the stubble. It was strictly forbidden to play in the stacks, because it was dangerous, but we still ran up and down between the stacks. Our maid wore many skirts, everyone in the village wore skirts, they had a very nice national dress. On Sundays the girls, who had braids with a long ribbon at the end, walked along the street arm-in-arm, singing, and the boys walked behind them in boots and black trousers. When my mother was also there she wore national costume from there, and we did, too. I had a national costume Romhany, I also had an aigrette, and when I was a little girl at the end of the school year, on the 15th March we wore national costumes. We spent three or four summers in Romhany, but then the maid got married and we didn’t go anymore. The maids always got married after working for us.
When we were older we spent the summer in Romhany. Our maid was from Romhany, and my mother sent us there with her. Her father didn’t live, but her mother did, and they had a house on the main street of Romhany. It was a farmhouse with big trashing-floor and stacks. They were farmers; she had several siblings, so it was a nice big family. We didn’t go barefoot, our sole didn’t endure it, but we wore sandals, though everyone else in the village went barefoot, except when they went to church on Sundays. But after a while we could also go barefoot on the stubble. It was strictly forbidden to play in the stacks, because it was dangerous, but we still ran up and down between the stacks. Our maid wore many skirts, everyone in the village wore skirts, they had a very nice national dress. On Sundays the girls, who had braids with a long ribbon at the end, walked along the street arm-in-arm, singing, and the boys walked behind them in boots and black trousers. When my mother was also there she wore national costume from there, and we did, too. I had a national costume Romhany, I also had an aigrette, and when I was a little girl at the end of the school year, on the 15th March we wore national costumes. We spent three or four summers in Romhany, but then the maid got married and we didn’t go anymore. The maids always got married after working for us.
When we were older we spent a couple summers with my mother in Nagymaros, because Dad sent Mom on vacation from the lab, and we rented a room there. My mom cooked there, and we hiked in Borzsony and Pilis, we always went on trips with my mom, sometimes there was even a guest child with us. We used to go to the Danube, to the beach, and sometimes my father came there for the weekend. Later I spent the summer at my grandmother’s in Miskolc, but my brother didn’t come anymore, because he was a big boy already, and he went to Fodor. Fodor had a sports school on the Svab Hills, where the boys also lived in and fenced there, and did all kinds of sports you can imagine. And my brother often spent the summer there, until he became a member of the Vorosmarty Scout Troop, which took up all his free time.
My brother and I completed the four classes of elementary school on Szent Istvan Square. I hated the teacher very much, she even beat us. She got angry with one of the girls, and she hit her so hard that her nose started bleeding. We also went to Jewish religion classes, everyone had religion class. After elementary school both of us went to high school. My brother went to Kolcsei High School, which was a boys’ high school, girls couldn’t go there. They made a Jewish class of 30-40 people, and there was a separate Christian class.
When I started high school, I could only enroll in the Jewish high school on Abonyi Street.
When I started high school, I could only enroll in the Jewish high school on Abonyi Street.
I have just heard it after so many years, that this rescue was organized by the police superintendent of the 8th district. I didn’t even know that it wasn’t an accident. A policeman took us to Pest across Margit Bridge, and he told us to tell him where to escort us. At the beginning of Pozsonyi Avenue, at the bridge head, an Arrow Cross kid in a cloak and with a machine-gun stopped us and started to get annoyed. He was annoyed because there was an Arrow Cross house on Szent Istvan Boulevard and they tormented and killed many people there. But this policeman told him to go to hell, because he had to escort this company and he should leave him alone. He let us go, and the policeman started to see us home. And there were fewer and fewer of us as people went into the houses.
My mother had not come home when the Arrow Cross man appeared and told us that the house was going to be a Swiss protected house, and those who didn’t have a Swiss Schutzpass had to leave. My father showed them our Swiss Schutzpass, but they said that it was fake and tore it. I have to add that when my father had seen the Arrow Cross take us a couple of days earlier, he had hurried off to the Swedish embassy, or wherever they issued the Swedish Schutzpasses, so that there would be a Schutzpass on our name, too, not only theirs.
But then we had to leave. We stood there with my brother on Katona Jozsef Street in front of some shop window blinds which were down. We had packs and there was a duvet or a comforter in them, and waited for my father to come and tell us where to go. It was quite unpleasant to stand there. Then he came for us and we went to Katona Jozsef Street 10/a, which became a Swedish protected house. We got a bedroom on the 4th floor, in the apartment of a lawyer. People lived in the other rooms. In this house there were beautiful luxurious apartments, real middle-class apartments, and this apartment was also very nice. The kitchen door and the outdoor balcony overlooked the Vig Theater, and their big dining room and the living rooms partly overlooked Katona Jozsef Street. The lawyer and his family were on telakh. They were hiding with fake papers and we never met them. Their personal belongings were jammed into the dining room. And to our luck, the pantry was full with jam, with orange jam for example, because they were wealthy people. It was also a novelty for me that one could go into the bedroom through the bathroom, too, and the entrance of the bathroom wasn’t divided with a curtain, but with a sliding door.
We had been there for quite a while, when one day my mother turned up. They were being driven outwards on Becsi Avenue. My mother was a very cool, athletic woman. She was 38 years old, and as they drove them outwards [see Death marches to Hegyeshalom]15, mom wanted to flee already at Almasfuzito. She exchanged her boots for a pair of high heel shoes, or I don’t know what, and she wanted to run away, but she was caught. They didn’t shoot her, because they usually shot those who fell out of line or couldn’t walk, but they drove her back, and she walked for another couple kilometers. They arrived at a watchman’s house. Unfortunately I don’t know the name of the woman, so I can’t recommend her to Yad Vashem [to be named a Righteous Among the Nations]. I think she was called Mariska. She was a young woman, her husband was a railwayman, and she saw when my mom and two others fell out of line. And this Mariska hid them from sight as quick as lightning. She took them down to a cellar. Her husband didn’t even know that she was hiding three people. When her husband went to work she brought them food and I don’t know what else. They were there for two or three weeks, I don’t know for how long, when Mariska collected some clothes and papers from her relatives in the surrounding Swabian villages. And Mariska stopped a German truck, and my mother and the other two came home to Pest on the back of that truck. They didn’t get caught. They arrived to Pest, my mother went to Hollan Street. She was told we weren't there, and that were on where she was told Katona Jozsef Street. Mom came there, and I never saw my father cry before or after that, but he cried when mom turned up. I must add, that this Mariska used to come to our place to Pest for years, and my mom gave her everything she could. They were simple, honest people. I only know about them that they lived in a watchman’s house at [Almas] Fuzito. I don’t know anything else.
Sometime in the middle of January the Soviet troops liberated the international ghetto. I have just read that there was a Swedish [protected] house, from where they took the people to the banks of the Danube. At that time, I thought that all the Swedish houses survivied. We knew that there was a Swiss house [Editor’s note: The activity of the Swiss diplomats to save Jews was organized around the embassy. The Swiss consul in Budapest was Carl Lutz in 1944-1945. The Schutzbrief, the safe conduct for the Jewish refugees from Budapest was his idea. He saved 10000 Jewish children, whom they sent to Palestine, with these safe-conducts. He issued more than 50000 safe-conducts without a permission. Besides this he played a role in establishing the 76 so called protected houses in Budapest. Jewish refugee agencies estimate the number of Jews saved by him at 50000. Consul Lutz’s temporary agent in Budapest, dr. Peter Zurcher prevented the SS from exterminating the 70000 inhabitants of the ghetto before the Soviet occupation.], and Spanish house from where they took the people to the banks of the Danube and shot them into the Danube, but they didn’t take us. [Editor’s note: Angel Sans Briz, who was a Spanish ambassador in Budapest in 1944 issued 500-700 safe-conducts and approved the establishing of several dozens of Spanish houses in Budapest. By the end of the war more than 3000 Jews escaped with the papers of the Spanish embassy.] We escaped. We were liberated.
Budapest starved, literally. These were very difficult times.
Then, when Gyula Hevesi came home from the Soviet Union, he employed Dad at the Patent Office in 1948, and dad got away from the penalty that he couldn’t be an employee as the member of the Chamber of Engineers.
My brother and I went to school. My brother went back to the Kolcsey and he graduated high school there in 1947. Piroska Lazar’s school didn’t exist anymore, and one of the high schools from Buda moved to Veres Palne Street, where there was also a school. My parents enrolled me there at first, but then the Maria Terezia Girls’ High School was opened on Andrassy Avenue, and my mom transferred me there, because that was much closer.
At that time they called the Bat Mitzvah for Jewish girls a Confirmation. Ours was so that on the first floor of the Dohany Street synagogue there were a lot of girls of my age, we had our Bat Mitzvah together, and the synagogue was decorated. For this festive occasion I got a golden bracelet from my father. My brother naturally had a Bar Mitzvah during the war, also at the Dohany Street synagogue.
I became a scout after the war. I was thirteen years old already, my brother had started scouting at the age of ten already. Most of the children started even earlier, because there were ‘cubs’ from the 1st grade of elementary school. [Editor’s note: The scouts between 8-12 years old were called cubs.] We went on a trip every week, we tested different skills - making fire, pitching, and other things, and when we took the test we got different badges on our shirt. I was a leader for a long time, too. Discipline was important in the scouting movement and scout life was a very good thing. Our troop was a Jewish troop, called ‘Vorosmarty 311.' It was a member of the Scouting Association. I was a scout until the movement ended, until the winter of 1948.
I went to the Maria Terezia Girls’ High School until the 5th grade, I completed the 5th grade there, but I didn’t want to graduate at a high school. I applied to a commercial school and to the chemistry technical school. 500 of us applied to the technical school, they enrolled 90, and 29 of us graduated in 1951. But it wasn’t easy to find a job at that time either. At that time they still directed us, they knew it from somewhere that this and this company needed such and such a worker, and they directed us. They filled out our service certificate at school, and they wrote in mine Plastic Industry Research Institute. I went there, and they asked me why I went. I told them that that’s what they wrote in my service certificate. They said ‘no, thanks’. Then my father, who was known in the trade, talked with someone at the Ministry of Heavy Industry, where the chemical industry belonged, and that’s how I got to the Conserve, Meat, Refrigerating Industry Research Institute after graduation as a young technician, to the experimental station.
In the meantime I got married in July. I met my husband in the scout troop. I wasn’t sixteen yet, and he was nineteen. We got married in July 1951. The wedding was in the 6th district town hall. My mother got hold of two kinds of material from somewhere, one was pink with white squares or something like that in it, the other one was navy blue with some floral pattern. There was an excellent seamstress in the house, and elderly woman, who worked very slowly but beautifully, and she sewed both dresses, and I got married in the pink one. I didn’t have white sandals so we went to Csepel, because the Weiss Manfred [Editor’s note: At that time it was called Rakosi Matyas Works after the first secretary of the party.] was there, the working class was there, and because of this they stocked the shops there better, and there I could buy a pair of white sandals. After all, it was summer and hot and I couldn’t go barefoot to the wedding.
After the war most of the Jews joined the communist party. We did, too. My father was a communist originally, my mother was a social democrat, because her father was also a social democrat. We knew the International already in our childhood, even though it was forbidden. So my mother was specifically a leftist, and my father was a 1919 communist, that’s why he had had to emigrate at the time. I was a member of the communist party already at the age of sixteen. I am not ashamed of it. My husband was also a communist.