Tag #116841 - Interview #102297 (Janos Dorogi)

That’s why I didn’t wear a star, and in ’44 I got into the university, where I wrote that my religion was Israelite, but I was not to be considered a Jew.  Right after the war my father got into the Association of War Invalids, and worked there for two years.  At the start of the ’20s the Rico Bandage Factory was established.  My father became the Assistant Director there. Then in ’28 he got into the Hungaria Rubber Factory, which had ten workers at the time.  By the time of the Second World War it had 1,200 workers, and was a very modern factory. And my father was there until December 2, 1944.  When the Germans came in, I also joined the factory right away.  It was a first-class military-factory, and that’s why I came back out of forced labor, because I got a special relief, because the factory director said that Dorogi had done more for the Hungarian homeland than anybody else. 

My father went to temple regularly.  We went to the boys’ orphan home, where there was a nice, modern synagogue, with an organ.  And the service always started with a schnoder of 50 thousand golden Pengos.  My father always gave them 200 pairs of gym shoes because he said ’you’ll steal it otherwise’.  And my father was proud to admit he was a Jew.  Along with the fact that he was a K. und K. soldier, with medals.