Tag #135339 - Interview #101499 (Gotterer Borbala Piroska )

Ignac had an acquaintance, a good friend of a counselor who was an important person there, at the Ministry of Justice, and that person could solve what was almost impossible, he arranged that we wouldn’t be sent to Auschwitz after three weeks. The rest of the people there, the other Jews who were found without approval to stay in Budapest were sent immediately, in 1942, to Auschwitz. But rumor had it, that Hungarians didn’t actually want to send Jews to Auschwitz, they wanted them to stay. They enforced all sorts of punishments in return: they confiscated firms, houses, radios, but they didn’t want to let the people be deported. [Note: Piroska refers here to the anti-Jewish laws in Hungary.] [11] And we stayed there for three weeks, Horthy still ruled and he didn’t allow us to be deported and then my uncle arranged with this counselor that we would be sent back to Covasna.