LULL BEFORE THE STORM
These were war years and the Hungarian Army had started to get involved in the war. To their surprise they found that there was more to war than harassing the population in occupied territories. Having marched through Poland and into Russia behind the all-conquering German Army, the poorly equipped Hungarians could only act as occupational forces and to guard POW's. They were also great in terrorising the population and torturing the Hungarian Jews, who were called up into the Army, given a yellow armband and a soldier's cap (with the Hungarian emblem taken off it) and sent to Russia, with even less clothing and supplies than the regular Army.
The lives of these Jewish men in the labour battalions was sheer hell. They were starved, overworked, tortured, mistreated, and they froze and died in their thousands. The Army officers and privates who were in charge of them were either cruel to them, or were punished by being sent into the line as being unsuitable for the task they were given. In some cases, members of these labour battalions were sprayed with water in minus 25 temperatures, freezing instantly. In at least one case, some German soldiers fought and shot some Hungarian army people trying to save the Jews from being mistreated. These Hungarian soldiers were there to get the most out of the Jewish labourers and were nothing short of being sadistic guards. No soldier was ever court martialled for causing the maiming or death of a fellow Hungarian, if he happened to be a Jew.
No wonder that whenever a Jew could get away and join a Partisan group he did so. Not many could. The Russian underground did not recruit its partisans amongst starving Hungarian Jews and they were kept in areas where contact with the population was almost impossible.
When the Russian winter offensives started to take their toll on the Germans, they realised that they needed all the gun fodder they could muster. Therefore they decided to allow the Hungarians, Rumanians and the other hangers-on to fight in the front line. Being badly clothed, and equipped even worse, they were an ineffective fighting force, and within days of joining in the defence of occupied Russia, the Hungarian force was almost completely wiped out. The Hungarian Army was destroyed on the banks of the Don river, while the Rumanians found their nemesis near Stalingrad.
It was thought that as long as our Admiral headed our Hungary, we Jews would be safe. Sure, there were some who were in labour battalions in Russia, but after all weren't the Hungarian soldiers in Russia also? At least no one shoots at the Jew. How would we have known what was happening to those forced labourers in Russia? There was no communication between the inhabitants of the labour camps of Russia and their relations in Hungary, except rare messages brought illegally by the soldier-guards, who were bribed to call on the wives and parents, and who were not about to explain the terrible times their victims were having in faraway frozen Russia.
All this time Budapest was almost untouched by war. People ate well and often; the restaurants with their gipsy music continued to attract the inhabitants of Budapest who had plenty of money. Even the Jews of Budapest enjoyed the quiet before the storm and if there were some stifling regulations against them, these were regarded as the Hungarian Government's way of satisfying the Germans.
I continued to holiday with my Aunt and Uncle in the village of Szölösgyörök and with Eva, we spent a lot of time yachting and sunbaking on the beaches of Lake Balaton.
As far as the situation in Hungary was concerned, it was realised that in comparison with some other areas in Europe we in Hungary didn't have it too bad. Sure, there were regulations about the percentage of Jewish employees any company could employ, but you could always employ a Jew and pay him in cash. No Hungarian Jew needed to be hungry, and all the news about Jews being shot in Poland and Russia were just rumours, - or were they?
Whatever our problems, they were an acceptable portion of living in a war. It is the extras, which only some people experienced that made us feel insecure. For instance in the summer of 1942 some acquaintances in their early twenties organised a summer holiday camp for some 18 or 20 young people. Our ages were between 12 and 17, and we went by train to a small village not far from Budapest where a peasant's house was rented for us. We were happily enjoying the fresh air and long walks when on the 2nd day of our stay 4 gendarmes arrived and asked what we were doing there and what our religion was.
After hearing the answers, they gave us one hour to pack, made us pick up our luggage and with bayonets fixed and the four of them surrounding us, marched us through the village to the station, waited till the train arrived and sent us back to Budapest. There was no regulation or law which did not allow a bunch of teenagers to have a holiday in the country, but seeing that the gendarmes told us to leave our prepaid holiday meant that we had to go. There was just no argument, nor would we have dared to make one.
My mother's cousin, Andrew Pór, came back from Russia, where he was in the Army, not as a labourer but as a sergeant. Due to an administrative error, he was not recognised as being racially inferior, and he wasn't about to argue about being a sergeant instead of being mistreated as a forced labourer. He showed us photographs of Polish Jews floating in the Vistula; he told us about seeing thousands of Jews being driven into the forests, hearing the shooting and no one returning, even told us about the mass graves. We did not believe it, Cousin Andrew Pór was always a bit of a lad for making an impression.
It could have been uncomfortable to realise what was going on around us. It was so much easier to believe, that it couldn't happen to us. In any case even the pessimists had to agree that things in Budapest could not have been better. It was rumoured that Polish born Jews and those who escaped from Poland were rounded up and sent back to Poland to stay in camps, but however much this may be regretted, it was understandable, and in any case, what was the difference between being in a camp or in the ghetto or in hiding. It would not last long, the Germans were going to lose soon.
It was in the summer of 1943 that having worked during my school vacations in a ball bearing factory, (where I was actually paid a wage,) that I had my first holiday on my very own. I was 17, going on 25 and looked older than my age and was not only trying to act older, but succeeding at it. I joined Leslie Pór, a second cousin of mine at a holiday resort on Lake Balaton and when I was not mucking about with girls or playing poker I was getting high on red wine.
Balatonlelle, where we stayed, was full of young fellows like me and the not so young wives of the men who were being mistreated in labour battalions in Russia. Not that we knew what was going on 3000 kilometres to the east. The fact was that we were there, and we were available, and all of us were in a hurry to live our lives. It might end sooner than we thought.
Soon after I returned to Budapest, where I had to serve in the Fire brigade, Father was asked to supply a silage chopper to the Royal Farm.
Forever the PR man, he suggested that maybe Admiral Horthy. the Regent of Hungary might like to see a demonstration of this machine. To every one's astonishment the outrageously cheeky suggestion was accepted, and the demonstration became an official happening. The Kálmán lot consisted of Father, myself and Agocs, who started with us as a chauffeur, became a spare parts packer, then a demonstrator, storeman, chief of the warehouse, and in 1944 I arranged for him to be appointed Managing Director of my Father's Company.
Arriving at the Gödöllö Royal Farm, with the assistance of a large number of farm labourers and with the help of a number of farm overseers, the three of us set up the chopper, driven by a large tractor and as soon as that was ready we were briefed by the various officers on how we should line up on the arrival of His High Excellence Admiral Horthy and his wife.
About an hour before the appointed time, some more dignitaries arrived and finally, preceded by motorcycle escorts, riding in a majestic Horch car arrived the Regent, with his wife, two Aide-de-Camps, both Generals, and followed by a car load of police. In fact the police outnumbered all the others on this visit he was making not in enemy territory, but on his farm. The Regent and the Generals and other officers were in their best uniforms, only Peter Agocs and I were in working overalls, but we had no speaking parts.
It was at this demonstration of the Robur, later to be manufactured in England and renamed Robust, that Admiral Horthy explained his pride in Hungarian Jews. He seemed very interested in the machine and in the silage making process and was only concerned that the cattle which were consolidating the silage by walking over it should not contaminate it.
When it was time for him to go, he came over to us and shook our dirty hands and thanked us very politely for the demonstration. He also spoke to the farm labourers, who happened to be Croatians, addressing them in their own language.
While saying good bye to Father he instructed his farm manager to get another machine for his private farm at Kenderes, and invited Father to come and be present when it was installed. In fact three weeks later, another meeting took place between Horthy and Father, at which not only his wife, but also the young widow of his late son, were also present.
Horthy's son died on the Russian front piloting a fighter aircraft. He was the Deputy Regent of Hungary and groomed to take over from his father. It was immediately rumoured that his aircraft was "doctored" to crash, since the Germans were not enthusiastic about Horthy's attempts to establish a dynasty. After the war Father had dinner with his widow in England, where she lived, married to an English officer.
A few days after the excitement of rubbing shoulders with the Regent of Hungary, I developed a nasty cold; it became pneumonia, pleurisy and finally a lung ailment. As I had a heart problem as a child, it was thought that I was lucky that no further heart troubles developed, but I was sick enough to have had to retire for a three months period into a Sanatorium on a mountain just outside Budapest. It was one of the happiest periods of my formative years.
There was peace and quiet and a purpose in my life. All I had to do was to put on weight, and in this I was assisted by daily injections and very good food. I was also enjoying the attention of all the many friends I made on my holiday at Lake Balaton, and I became good friends with my Mother's stepbrother, who by that time was a communist and had spent some time in prison, due to some literary effort which was less than popular with the authorities.
Luckily, he was prosecuted instead of put into an internment camp and forgotten and after being convicted, he was sent to prison. Due to influence by my father and also due to his lung problems he served his time in the prison hospital. When not in prison he was a clerk and a contributor to literary magazines but he also spent long periods in hospital. He thus understood my worries about my own illness, which we feared might develop into tuberculosis. He was a very gentle fellow with a high intellect, who had always been interested in me and who was always interesting to talk to. He treated me an equal and I appreciated it.
My step-uncle Zoltán was probably the only member of our family with a real interest in politics and with a political conscience. He was also very knowledgeable as regards history and thus it was no surprise that in August 1939 on hearing that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia signed a non-aggression pact he forecast that the next step will be a war between Germany and Russia. We had to wait almost 3 years, but his forecast became a fact.
His visits to me in the sanatorium were always most informative because he could explain matters to me in terms which I could understand and learn from. That he was guiding me towards socialistic ideas was obvious and as all of 17 years old, I was quite ready for such ideas, even if I was not ready to go to prison for my beliefs.
Also in the same sanatorium was a well known poet, Gábor Devecseri. Although he was an "old" man of 28, we became quite friendly and I enjoyed his company, his poems and his stories. I was busy writing poetry, which he criticised cruelly. After the war he became really famous and he died in his early forties suffering from lung cancer.
By February 1944 I put on sufficient weight and was well enough to return to the fray by rejoining my parents in Town and returning to school. Since 1941 we lived in a flat on the Pest side of the City, having let our home on the hill to Kálmán de Pataky, a famous opera singer, who paid his rent seldom, but when he did we had to pick it up in person from the ticket office of the Royal Opera House, where the rent was awaiting us together with 2-3 first row tickets.
Pataky lived in our house with his wife, various maids and butlers and his father-in-law, Oszkár Beregi, a well known classical actor, who happened to be Jewish. In the stair case of our old home hung some of the wreath' the famous tenor collected throughout his travels and amongst them was one from a certain Herr Adolf Hitler, with a large swastika on its ribbon. Little did Hitler know that the main aim and object of hanging his wreath was for the purpose of allowing an elderly Jewish Shakespearian actor sleep more peacefully, believing that Hitler's name on the ribbon will save him.
Pataky managed to leave Hungary even before the war ended and the family travelled to Argentina where he was as famous as in Hungary and Germany. Eventually he and his family settled in Hollywood and it was from there that his wife brought her husband's and father's ashes back to Hungary in 1983 to be buried in graves donated by the Hungarian Government.