I magyarized my name in 1948. At the time I’d just moved from Szentes to Budapest, and I already had a job at VASERT, and no one understood my name on the telephone. I was thought to be Kuncz, and many similar names, but not a Gunst. That’s when I decided to change it, so that everyone could easily say my name. The rule was to submit three names, which the Interior Ministry could choose from. I only submitted ‘Galla.’ I mused on this one and that one a bit, then decided that the only good name for me was one that was easy to pronounce everywhere.
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Displaying 47851 - 47880 of 50382 results
Laszlo Galla
As much as I disliked retail, I liked national iron trading. I became a company leader, I had the task of obtaining stock. In the spring of 1948 I got a position as one of the directors of a nationalized iron trade company, until it was merged into the VASERT.
My mother – with whom I was living – told Ella in a letter about the difficulties we had in Szentes, and then I got to Pest through Ferenc Kende, who gave me an agency position to distribute various papers in certain places in Budapest and Fejer County, where I had to distribute the children’s magazine Huvelyk Matyi [‘Tom Thumb,’ children’s monthly magazine published from 1947 until 1949], and the official journals of the Material and Price Office. I didn’t get a salary, but worked on commission. I went around the countryside by train, on foot, by cart, it was hard work. I lived from this for months, looking for a way to break free from it as soon as possible.
She went to the railway cashier, where they knew her, in fact, she was a well-known journalist there, and she got a ticket on credit for the fast train to Pest. She had no money, but the ticket lady gave her one on credit. She traveled up to Pest with the next fast train – she had acquaintances here in Pest through whom she found a place. Bela Balazs was a close acquaintance of hers, he also helped. She went into hiding with fake papers, and in the end she got through everything. She had an old Christian friend, called Ferenc Kende, who had a book and newspaper distribution office, he also helped her.
Despite her 61 years, my mother was like a 40-year-old in many ways, she didn’t like being idle. On top of that, my father’s cousin, from whom we rented the two rooms was quite a difficult woman to bear, my mother also wanted to get away from her, so she got a job through an acquaintance as a cashier in a state enterprise called ‘Clothing Store.’ And my mother had very good times there, she worked for at least ten years until she retired. Somewhere there are certificates praising her work, what a good worker she was.
Our house was our own and when I knew that I was coming to Pest, I wanted to sell it. There were not many idiots who bought houses in 1947, when the winds of nationalization [23] were blowing through the country, yet I found two who divided it up and bought it. Naturally, for a ridiculously low price since I needed the money to get furniture in Pest. After selling the house we moved to Pest. My father had a cousin here, a widow who had a big apartment, which was also empty, so we rented two rooms from her and furnished it with our own furniture. I lived there with my mother until I got married, and my mother stayed on there.
At the end of the war, many people fled. It wasn’t only Jewish apartments left without owners, instead there was the Government Lost Property Commission, which packed its own warehouses with what they could find and had not been stolen by the local inhabitants. So my mother got a mattress and a cupboard from somewhere. When I came home we got another mattress and a table. The five-room apartment was completely empty, totally ransacked.
When I got home to Szentes in August 1945, our big shop was completely empty. There were 10-15 sacks on one of the shelves, my mother sat next to the sacks and ‘sold’ them. My mother got empty bags on consignment from some contacts who were Jewish corn traders. And I started as an iron merchant without any capital, which usually doesn’t work.
Then, a few days after 4th April 1945 [the liberation of Hungary from German occupation] it was liberated, and they immediately set off for home in adventurous circumstances. My mother came home on the roof of some truck filled with metal.
They took my mother to Austria, she worked in the Treff Koffer- und Lederwarenfabrik with a bunch of people from Szentes. This factory was in Tribuswinkel [about 20 kilometers south of Vienna, Austria]. I think they divided them up at Strasshof [22] and took them to various factories.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
When I saw that they were leading Jews off and went closer – we couldn’t go over there – I saw that my mother was in line and was put into the wagon and I told this Maschke that they were taking my mother and asked if I could somehow speak to her. And Maschke went to the constable captain [21], who was directing this whole thing, and spoke to him, asking if my mother was in the wagon and if the door was already closed, then could I go over there, accompanied by a constable, to speak to her for twenty minutes. And so it was. My poor mother wanted to give me something to eat from what she had, yet I could say that compared to her, I was in clover.
I was not able to meet my mother then, who was later taken to Szeged, because the Jewry from the region were rounded up in the ghetto there and were deported from there. And by chance our unit was in Szeged when my mother was put on the train, and by chance, I was working at Rokus station under German military command when my mother was put in the wagon.
In Szentes, there must have been 400-500 Jews who were not in forced labor, but the Jews from Szegvar, who were very few, less than 100, were also put in the Szentes ghetto. For sure there were six or eight to a room. Single-story family houses were appropriated from the residents. My mother went there in May 1944. Our forced laborer unit, which had been in various places over the years, was in Szentes when ghettoization took place, indeed the authorities took twenty men from our company to build the fence around the ghetto. I know that the company commander made sure when he picked the twenty, that Szentes men or men from around there should not be involved as they would surely help, or make contact with the Jews there.
My father was deported shortly after the Germans entered, on 19th March 1944 [19]. He was the chairman of the Jewish community at that time, and he and other notables were rounded up at the Szentes police station. He managed to submit an appeal against his internment, naturally he thought he was innocent, and he knew that they only rounded him up because it was easy to find him through the Jewish community. Well, you can imagine what happened to that appeal, and the following week they deported him to Auschwitz, to be more precise, he was taken from Szentes first to Pest [Budapest], from there to Sarvar and then to Auschwitz and there he was exterminated.
On 1st August we got under Soviet rule instead of American rule because of a territory exchange, and my chance came in the middle of August: I went straight home, a good way on foot. As it turned out, the place where my mother was deported and Harka, where I was, were only about 40 kilometers apart, but we had no idea about each other.
I was liberated in Gunskirchen [Austria] in May 1945. Then we wound up in Wels [Austria] in a reception camp, and the International Red Cross transmitted the names of who was there on various radio stations.
I was in forced labor until 1944 when we were handed over to the Germans at Hegyeshalom [on the current border with Austria], but not as laborers but as deportees. Then we were brought down to Harka with a little trip through Austria and then to Mauthausen [18] where we were for about two weeks. In Harka, we dug tank traps for the Russian tanks. We spent nearly five months there.
Then, from the beginning of 1942, I was continually a forced laborer. We had an exceptionally unpleasant company commander but his subordinates behaved more sympathetically towards us. Nobody in the company died, we covered all Transylvania, the Alfold, Transdanubia [eastern Hungary].
In 1940, I was a forced laborer once for three months and once for two. The 1940 work service [14] lasted for three months in Tecso [today Tyachev, Ukraine], in recently re-annexed Subcarpathia [15].
In 1936 I was 20, the best age for a boy. I had a quite busy social life, but somehow then I moved more in Jewish circles. Earlier when I was at high school, and we lived together with Christian boys, naturally I spent more time with them. My best friend at that time was a Christian boy, with whom I had been at school for eight years. Then he went to the Ludovika [12], the military academy, and became an officer, so from then on I only saw him when he got leave, but then always. We maintained the friendship, despite the fact that we never wrote a single letter, but when we were together, then we were just as good friends as ever.
Blanka Gallo
At Rosh Hashanah my mother always went to synagogue. She had clothes especially for this purpose and wore the same clothes at Yom Kippur too. Then there was Tabernacles, so after Yom Kippur they immediately started to build the sucha.
My father always wore a kipa, made of black velvet. In the past they were only made of that. He dressed in a suit and hat. He wore tzitzith – boys also wore them under their clothes. He went to synagogue every morning. My mother had a wig – and she wore it at home too.
Well, on Friday night supper was usually fish in aspic, followed by meat soup, pasta granules and some sort of pudding. They kept this warm – then there was no gas but a wood burning stove – by putting it on this because they were not even allowed to warm it up. Friday evening, like Saturday evening, began with (my father) saying a bracha over the wine and then giving everyone a drop to taste. He did the same with the chala, he prayed and then everyone got a bite. On high holidays – that is Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Tabernacles, right up until Simchat Torah – he put honey on the chala, otherwise it was salt.
I remember that these boys – I had two younger brothers –attended the cheder from the age of three. I don’t remember but Aranka, who lives in America, told me that papa woke the two young boys at five in the morning as they had to go (to cheder) at six, and he always said that my heart breaks for the children but I must send them. So that’s how they studied.
I wasn’t, it was just that the teachers told me to say it, that’s all. But the Orthodox opposed it. At least a third of the middle school was Jewish, I don’t know exactly. There was no (anti-Semitism) then, but later one heard more and more frequently about the beating up of Jews, and my sister Gitta was even beaten up badly by university students in Debrecen.
They bought matzah from the community, but Dad always went at Erev Pesach, or maybe earlier, and he baked them separately. This matzah had a special name: shmira matzah. It was not kneaded by machine but by hand, and rolled out by hand and it was rounded. And on Seder night it was on the table. And my father prayed, that is, made a bracha over the matzah.
They helped the refugees who came from Poland and Czechoslovakia financially. And one of the Poles wanted me to come with him to Pest. I could have had Christian papers too because one of the maid’s papers was at ours, and I could have gone with those. And there was a Christian merchant who was in business partnership with my father, they would have hidden me as a maid – that was one.
There was a real caste system. I’ll give an example. I had a classmate, a Jewish girl, her father was a waiter. We were in the same class and lived in the same street and went home together. And my father saw me with this little girl and made me swear never to be with this girl again. As then the merchant looked down on the artisan.
We spoke Hungarian at home, but mum and dad spoke Yiddish especially if they didn’t want the children to hear. Yiddish not Hebrew. But Hungarian was (their mother tongue), because I remember that the grandparents spoke Hungarian. Anyway in Munkacs all the Christians knew Yiddish.
We arrived in Auschwitz on 6 June (1944).