THE SIEGE
The siege and bombardment of Budapest was at last something which we all shared in. The Jews were not singled out for special treatment, although we certainly had the handicap of being eligible to die by both Nazi and communist bullets. The search of the Arrow Cross thugs for Jews to plunder, torture and kill, was going on unabated even when the Russians were within hours of entering the City.
The Arrow Cross Party was so extreme that it has been kept underground by Horthy and was ignored by the German Nazis also, until Horthy asked for an armistice on 15th October 1944. The Germans then called in Szálasi and his madmen and they were armed for the express purpose of arranging the final solution of those Jews who could not be transported to Auschwitz and the other death factories.
There was a "legitimate" Arrow Cross Government with Szálasi, a former major, ex-convict, the new Fuehrer of Hungary.
His Government consisted of all types of psychopaths some of who personally tortured and killed people and childre, beat children for no reason other than that they were Jews and who spent their days in Government in ensuring that they can get hold of as much material goods as could be stolen from Jews, who were tortured in Party Houses to disclose where their fortunes are hidden.
The Minister of Interior was Kovarcz, the father of the girl I courted at Lake Balaton and he gave official consent and encouragement to murder. The Foreign Minister was 23 year old Baron Kemény, whose first action was to declare war on the USA, thereby prolonging the war by at least one hour, while the Americans found out where the hell Hungary was.
The Arrow Cross Houses were buildings occupied by the Party within a day of their take over and they were used to house Party members and their families. The cellars were used to hold Jews until they could be beaten to confess and give up their hidden belongings and then taken to be killed. Each of the Arrow Cross Houses had favourite places for the extermination of Jews. The location was dependent on where the killings could be carried out with the least inconvenience.
The Arrow Cross House closest to the brothel used the banks of the Danube to shoot the Jews. If properly positioned, the Jew would fall into the river and the body float away, together with the ice floes that were gathering. Eventually the Danube froze over completely and when spring weather caused the river it gave up hundreds of bodies. The amazing thing was that there were a number of people who, having been shot into the frozen river, swam away, climbed out and survived. The man, who was executed at Valkó in November, was shot again in January, swam downstream and even survived the freezing weather. There were many more, including women and children, who injured and half frozen, survived. There were others, who having survived, were seen alive in the water by their murderers and were given no chance the second time.
It might be difficult, but one ought to be able to understand that people can be anti-Semitic. Not everybody is perfect and while it is undemocratic, there can be people who do not like the Chinese or prefer their daughter not to marry a Negro. One should be able to understand prejudices in respect of colour, race or religion and while such prejudices cannot be excused they are an accepted part of life and cannot be abolished. But how does one rationalise the anti-Semite who wishes to kill a human being just because he is Jewish? Even the Ku-Klux-Klan used alleged crimes by a Negro as an excuse for lynching that particular one.
Behaviour like that of the Germans, who were systematically and with factory like efficiency slaughtered the Jews in exterminations camps, had their origins in anti Semitism, but the organisers of the gas chambers, the doctors who conducted the experiments and made the selections must have been maddened by the brain washing they received or were devoid of any humanity. One cannot say that they were "animals" because no animal kills its own species unless for food.
We were discriminated against and we were looking forward to meeting the "Russki". We were not communists, but that did not enter into our thinking at all. Even if we would have had a feeling about the politics of the Russians or if we would have known about Stalin's Gulags, we would have still regarded the Russians as our saviours. There is nothing we would not have done to put our arms around our friends and liberators, knowing that they bring us life and liberation from being subjugated and treated worse than any other nation or race ever was.
At the same time, we had to be liberated soon, we could not last much longer. There was no food, and we were wondering if paper will give any nourishment. In a few days time, we shall be reduced to cooking paper, or shoe leather or socks. It is surprising that when you are hungry, there is no other thought than food and your hunger is just a large piece of pain in a body that consists of a large empty stomach.
It was on a food scrounging expedition that Father went towards the eastern areas of Budapest on the 14th January and returned with some little food he was able to find. However, he also told me about seeing some strange people from a distance with strange fur caps. They were obviously Russians, but neither he, nor I recognised them as such. We probably just ignored it, because subconsciously it was too good to be true.