Tag #115771 - Interview #78642 (Ferenc Leicht)

In this year my mother’s sisters and their husbands got together. I was the only child who was there, partly because it was at our place, and partly because I was the oldest one, who could understand the events more or less. They discussed whether they should stay or go. At that time the only country which would have accepted the Jews from Hungary was Uganda. [Editor’s note: In 1903 British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain came up with the idea of establishing a Jewish state on the territory of Uganda. By this time the efforts of Herzl regarding Palestine had failed, and he accepted the proposal, but he soon abandoned the Uganda plan because of the strong opposition that it raised. After Herzl’s death in 1904 the Zionist leadership dropped the Uganda plan.] My father said that he could bake bread in any language. Istvan Lusztig, Aunt Irma’s husband, who was as big as a wardrobe and an incredibly strong man, said that there wasn’t any work which he couldn’t do, because he was incredibly strong. The third one, Ferenc Schnitzer Sarlos, Etel’s husband, who was a goldsmith, said that there wasn’t any place in the world where he couldn’t make a living as a goldsmith, The others, Vilma’s husband, Gyula Sternberger, who was a paint merchant, Gizella’s husband, Jeno Berger, who was a bartender, Ilona’s husband, Feri Vermes Wortmann, who was a clerk, and Erzsebet’s husband, Jeno Eisinger, who was a bookseller, said, that they wouldn’t leave, that something will happen, something always happens to solve things. Because the majority decided that we should stay, we stayed. And the saddest thing is, that those 3 survived who wanted to live. Out of those who wanted to stay nobody survived the Shoah.