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In 1944 deportations began. All the members of our family were deported. We were so lucky that they exempted [14] us from enforcing anti-Jewish law, as my father was a lieutenant in World War I, and he was a war invalid.
Since we had been in a quite difficult financial situation in Hungary when we had returned there, my father had submitted a request to increase from 50 to 75 percent [the degree of his invalidity]. This was our great luck, because he wouldn’t have been exempted as a 50 percent war invalid, but with this 75 percent we could stay there.
In Szatmar only three families were left in 1944: us, there was a tailor called Salamon, who had also acquired merits during World War I, he had I don’t know how many children, so he got exempted, and there was the widow of a man who had died in World War I, Mrs. Dancziger, she and her two daughters weren’t deported either. But the authorities knew my father, and in 1944 the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie did its best to also send us to Auschwitz.
It was a close shave that they didn’t take us, and also that they didn’t kill us [in Szatmarnemeti].
Since we had been in a quite difficult financial situation in Hungary when we had returned there, my father had submitted a request to increase from 50 to 75 percent [the degree of his invalidity]. This was our great luck, because he wouldn’t have been exempted as a 50 percent war invalid, but with this 75 percent we could stay there.
In Szatmar only three families were left in 1944: us, there was a tailor called Salamon, who had also acquired merits during World War I, he had I don’t know how many children, so he got exempted, and there was the widow of a man who had died in World War I, Mrs. Dancziger, she and her two daughters weren’t deported either. But the authorities knew my father, and in 1944 the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie did its best to also send us to Auschwitz.
It was a close shave that they didn’t take us, and also that they didn’t kill us [in Szatmarnemeti].
Period
Location
Satu Mare
Romania
Interview
Dr. Gabor Lazar
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