Sari Blumenberg

This is my sister Sari Blumenberg. The photo was taken in our home in Subotica in 1948. My sister, Sarika, nicknamed Csanyi, was born in 1913. She finished four years of gymnasium in Kutina. She worked as a clerk in a lawyer's office and never married. She was a very good athlete and gymnast. She helped me during my studies by sending me some pocket money. While living in Belgrade, she became an active member of the Communist Party . She got a good job and didn't want to leave Yugoslavia and go to Israel. Somehow, during the years she was in Belgrade, we lost contact and I don`t even know the year she died. Sari, my other sister, Magda, my mother, my stepfather, my wife Flora and my son Vlada were all in forced labor on the border between the Czech Republic and Austria; I don't know the exact location. They were there for a year to a year and a half. Vlada was young and no one touched him. They were among the rare cases that were taken to forced labor and not to the camps. They slept in a movie theater and worked in a sugar factory where they were assigned to the hardest physical labor. They lived decently during this time because the other workers frequently gave them bread. Compared to people in other camps they weren't hungry. They also had as much sugar as they wanted. Luckily, they weren't sent from forced labor to a camp and they all returned. When the end of the war was in sight they put my family and some other Hungarian families from Szeged in a bunker covered with straw. The Czechs took care of them, brought them food and as soon as the war was over they found a train to take them home.