SLEEPING AROUND
The Timber Yard
At the timber yard Kövári and Kelemen greeted me in Army uniforms. It seemed that during my short trip they established a brand new army unit, which was a figment of their imagination. They assumed ranks of Lieutenants. It was a great arrangement because in a day or two we were brave and cheeky enough to re-claim our horses and cart from wherever they were being looked after and drive to an Army HQ and ask food for a Company of 250 soldiers.
There was nothing we could do in the timber yard except to await liberation by the Russians. We had a cobbler living there also and we all gave him a hand in exchange for lessons in making slippers. Other than that we were completely bored.
After a while some of us decided to strike a blow for liberty and petrol bombs were made for the purpose of flinging them into German trucks. I am afraid I did no bomb throwing and thus I cannot claim to have been the cause of the defeat of the German Army.
It must be realised that acting to be a Hungarian soldier made it almost impossible for me to get close to houses which were designated to be Jewish and therefore it was not easy for me to visit either Mother or my other relations. The risk was much too great for no practical purpose.
Just the same, we all went out of the timber yard and in to the City to check on our families. I used to go to visit Mother until we decided that she is to move into a house designated to be a "Swiss House" i.e. one in which people who were supposed to have been protected by the Swiss were concentrated. She found a bed in one of these houses and I promised to help her move in.
When I went to collect her to take her she was already on the street, in the company of all the people who remained in the house. There were hundreds of old, women and children lined up in columns of 6, holding their few belongings in briefcases and bundles, guarded by armed and jackbooted Arrow Cross youth. There was nothing I could do but walk past her hoping that she will ignore me. She did, and I followed them from a distance to see where they are being taken.
It turned out that they were not going far, the Arrow Cross having established their second Ghetto not far from the house we used to live in. The streets were boarded up and small gates were available for people to move in and out, provided they have the correct papers. It was impossible to get through any other way. Within this area, referred to as the Protected or International Ghetto, there were houses set aside for the Swiss protected, the Swede protected, those protected by the Vatican, etc. There were even some neutral South American banana republics whose honorary consuls issued "passports".
It all started with Raoul Wallenberg, a Councellor at the Svedish Consulate, who came to Budapest for the express purpose of saving as many persecuted Jews as he could. His idea was then copied by others. In some cases the governments of the countries issuing the protection papers did not even know that their consuls have done so. In fact some "consuls" set themselves up as consuls and had no real connection with the country they were representing. Not surprisingly the value of being "protected" was diminishing in direct proportion to the proliferation of the various papers. The only really worth while protection was afforded by Raoul Wallenberg personally, who rushed to the rescue of his Swedish protected "citizens" and who has daily saved the lives of those whom he provided with papers.
He risked his own life arguing and fighting the German SS and especially the Arrow Cross gangs, the latter being especially trigger happy and completely irresponsible. It must be added that Wallenberg would issue passports to all and sundry, in the embassy or on the run to anyone who required protection. He was a real hero, - he fought without weapons, without even a belief in God or religion, simply because he was human. He paid for it all, loosing his freedom and his life. He must never be forgotten.
Father was quite far away from the City on the Buda side of Budapest. In the house where he lived, Baskay found a small space under a staircase, without window or a door and it was there that Father lived for some weeks. Baskay looked after him totally, even emptying the chamber pot for him and helping him out for his nightly walk in the garden.
The public telephones in the City still worked and I used to ring Baskay enquiring about Father and sending him messages about Mother and myself until one day when speaking to him, Baskay told me that I must come and collect Uncle Joseph soon, because he has to leave now that some German officers were billeted in the same house.
I had to move Mother from her Swiss House also. There were rumours that the Germans will not respect the protection arrangement and we heard that the Arrow Cross have constantly taken people from protected houses to the banks of the Danube and shot them into the river. If they did not die by having been shot they froze to death in the river which was full of ice floes, soon to freeze over completely.
My biggest problem was therefore to find safe places for both Mother and Father and quick. In my search I went to visit some acquaintances or relations of my Mother's stepbrother's wife's mother and sister, who have taken half a flat under a false identity and lived as if they were Aryans. However, just when I was visiting them two policemen arrived and wanted to take the women, saying that they were denounced as being Jews. I started arguing and after a while they believed me when I explained to them that if they would be Jewish they certainly would not have me visiting them. That I could convince these policemen demonstrates the intelligence of these servants of the State.
The two ladies were frightened out of their wits and they begged me not to leave and thus I stayed overnight. Their fright was twofold, first they got a shock when I arrived, due to my attire, which by then consisted not only of the riding boots, black trousers with red stripe, army jacket and leather coat, but also a special army cap showing that I was a member of the field gendarmes, with a metal head and cross bone insignia as worn by the SS. I also became a corporal, since my latest false papers were better suited to a corporal than to a private. On my belt I wore an automatic pistol, which I purchased on the black market from a soldier.
I left them in the morning and went back to the timber yard. The cobbler was the only one left, all the others were gone. In the middle of the night the timber yard was surrounded and everybody was arrested, or so I was told. In actual fact, Kövári and Kelemen got away with two or three of the others, who were sleeping in the office of the timber yard and not in the shed. They jumped out through a side window and ran.
I felt rather lonely. My parents required my help I could not give them and I had nowhere to go, nobody to turn to. I dropped my bundle, - I was convinced that for us it was the end of the road.