QUO VADIS ?
By 1938 every forward thinking Jew who could afford the train and boat fare and the bribe that had to be paid to receive a passport and the permission to emigrate, had either emigrated, or was preparing to do so. My family obtained visas for Uruguay or Colombia or Honduras, or was it Venezuela? In any event, we didn't go.
Instead, on the 14th January 1939 John and Father went to England, and a fortnight later I was sent to Switzerland. A lady, who made a living as a minder of travelling children, accompanied and delivered me and a number of other children to the various schools in Switzerland. The idea was, that my Father would arrange our immigration to England, return for Mother, come and collect me in Switzerland and we would all finish up in England. This is not what actually happened.
I was 12 and my brother John 18 when we left Hungary. He went to live with an Anglican Rector, in Maulden Rectory, who later served in both the RAF and in prison, the latter for interfering with little boys. (Never with John, he assured me.)
I went to the French-speaking part of Switzerland, to Champery, where I lived in the Ecole Alpine, in great luxury, and learned French and skiing, and how to use knife and fork the Swiss way. I hated it considerably less than my other educational excursions in German speaking territories, but than no one minded my being Hungarian or Jewish, especially because I was a Roman Catholic. As such, on Sundays I attended Mass in the picturesque church of Champery and in May 1939, I was confirmed in the catacombs of St. Maurice by a charming Bishop, who could talk a few words of Hungarian.
While I was in Switzerland my Mother came to see me and also to bring with her some of her jewels and omit to take them back to Hungary. This was one of the ways my parents arranged for their valuables and money to be smuggled out of Hungary. Thus she and I parceled up a diamond brooch of hers and posted it at the post office of the small Swiss village, well insured, to John in England, who instead of the parcel received a note from H.M.Customs and Excise, assessing the diamonds in the brooch for duty at something like 400 pounds sterling (of the 1939 kind). John had heard of some extremely rich people, but never of anyone who had that much money.
John wrote to our parents with great care, so that the censor who might read the letter would not understand his problem. My Father rang me in Switzerland and, shouting loud enough that I could hear him without the phone, explained the situation as best as he could without giving away too much and advised me that the parcel I had helped Mother to wrap would be coming back and that I should hold on to it, until he gives me other instructions. Our conversation or shouting match, had to be rather circumspect, because Hungarian censors were listening in on all foreign telephone conversations, and one was often interrogated afterwards, and had to explain what certain statements meant. We must have done well, because I got the message and the censor did not.
The diamonds returned from London and I asked Herr Honegger, the Head Master to keep it for me. Eventually I had a letter from Father saying that I should not forget to send a birthday card to Mr. Walders, the Managing Director of the Swiss subsidiary of Ohrenstein & Koppel, the German Company who were manufacturing Father's Medicago hammer mill in Berlin. I re-addressed the parcel and sent it off to Zurich.
The rest of the story races ahead of time:
All during the war, every now and than every member of the family had to recite the name and address of Herr Walders, so that whoever survives can claim the diamonds. In 1947 my Parents left Hungary for London via Zurich, hoping to do just that.
They wrote to Walders several letters, hoping that one will arrive safely. On arrival to Zurich, they found a car awaiting them from the hotel, but no news of Walders. After a sleepless night, worrying that Walders might do the type of: "What diamonds?" deal which became quite common place in Hungary amongst some people who accepted valuables for safekeeping and were so disappointed that the Jewish owner survived that they suffered a lapse of memory as regards the goodies.
Next morning Father rushed to Herr Walders' office, where he was greeted politely by Walders, whom he never met and who spent the next hour offering Father his sympathy on his terrible war experiences and cups of coffee. Finally, after about an hour, during which Father became more and more nervous and irritated, Walders asked the reason for the visit. Father said: "I came for the diamonds" to which Walders replied: "What diamonds?" and thus confirmed Father's worst fears.
Father, mustering all the calmness he never knew he possessed, and using his atrocious German knowledge, explained that he is after the diamond brooch that was sent before the war for safekeeping from Champery by his son, but Walders simply could not recall ever having received any diamond jewels from a young boy he never knew on behalf of a Hungarian he never knew either. Finally, more for the purpose of proving the truth of his statements, he called in his long serving secretary, who could not recall things either, but suggested, that maybe it might be worth having a look at a small parcel that has been in the company safe for a number of years and which she sees sometimes, but never knew what it was.
Walders, the secretary and Father went to the other office, where the safe was standing, wide open and for everyone to use and there was the unopened small parcel, with my childish handwriting and the original postage stamps still on it. When it arrived seven years ago, Walders, who only knew from my letter that he should keep the parcel for my Father, put it into the safe and promptly forgot it. Had the secretary not been there, the diamond brooch would still be in an unlocked safe in Zurich to-day.
After Mother's 1939 visit to me was over she returned from Switzerland to Budapest and in July of that year Father traveled to London to see John and finalise our visa to England. He was not successful in arranging permission for us to go there, so he decided to return to Budapest, after leaving strict instructions to John, that if he asks or even instructs him to return to Hungary, John should regard this as having been done under duress and therefore under no circumstances should he return. At that time war was still unimaginable and Mr. Chamberlain was still making agreements with Herr Hitler in Munich. There was to be peace in our time, but my Father knew better.
Before he left London, Father also wrote to me, telling me that we shall probably immigrate to Brazil. Hearing this, I decided that if I have to go to Brazil, I may as well spend the summer in Hungary first, and asked M. Honegger, the headmaster of Ecole Alpine for my ticket, which he gave me and I took off for Budapest. I changed trains in Monthey, Montreux and Lausanne, got to Zurich at 12 midnight, walked the streets all night and walked across the City for another station, from where the Orient Express was going to Budapest. I was 13 years old and while in a toilet in Zurich received the first and only homosexual offer of my life. Not having been subjected to gay liberation propaganda, I am afraid I threatened the poor little man with the police, who disappeared immediately.
Boarding the train, I felt very lonely and rather frightened of the prospect of traveling alone through Nazi Germany. I did remember that on my way out of Hungary the wife and 14 year old daughter of Mr. Pick, who was Mr. Hungarian Salami, were taken off at the border and returned in tears after a humiliating body search for non existing jewels. Now I was to travel all alone through the same area.
Ostmark, formerly Austria and now part of Nazi-Germany, was full of soldiers, SS people, swastikas, guns and policemen. If there was anything else there, I certainly did not see it. I was tired from my night of walking the streets and would have loved to sleep my way across the German portion of my trip, but could not as I was frightened out my wits and also I had the sorest chapped lips I ever had before or since.
I was all alone in the train compartment until at the German border an SS officer and his wife joined me. They realised my plight, produced some cream for my sore lips and looked after me until Vienna, when we said a friendly good bye. They were the only nice Nazis I ever met, but in spite of this I am glad I did not meet him again, when his solution to curing a sick boy could have been to put him out of misery with methods other than the cream his wife provided for me, a very frightened 13 year old.
After a 40 hour trip I arrived to Budapest, engaged a taxi and just about caused my Mother to collapse from surprise when I bowled in asking for my taxi to be paid. My Father was to arrive from England next day, but he had more sense than to travel via Germany, and after crossing the Channel he went from France to Italy, then Yugoslavia and finally Hungary. I traveled next morning to a railway station some 30 kilometers from Budapest, awaited the train from Yugoslavia, boarded it and went through the various sleeping carriages until I found him shaving. After 8 months he was happy to see me.
To his credit he did not throttle me then, although he has probably never forgave me to spoil all his plans by uni-literarily leaving Switzerland and returning. Had I stayed in Switzerland, he and Mother would most certainly have left Hungary before war broke out two months later, but my unscheduled return has caused plans to be thrown out of gear. There was another attempt to get me out of Hungary, but that was also frustrated, and I never made it.
My stay in Switzerland lasted only five months but I believe it to have been a very important portion of my upbringing and subsequent development. The atmosphere at the college was extremely free and easy and without knowing what democracy is, I was part of it. The teachers were our friends and the pupils of the college responded. There was a co-operation between the staff and the pupils, which was all very new and very impressive to me.
Our teachers worked and played with us. One of them was an excellent ice skater and he competed in the 1936 Winter Olympics. In spite of his fame he could be seen fooling around with us boys on the ice and yet he had the respect of all the kids in the class room.
We had a lot of opportunities to ski. Near the Ecole Alpine were several fields ideal for skiing and we had our run every day right up to May, when the snow disappeared and the green grass became speckled with the millions of flowers, a vision which will never leave me.
During our holidays, pupils either went home or we were taken away from the college for a change of scene. Thus Easter was celebrated on the mountain in a ski hut, while in June we were taken to Zurich to see a large Expo type exhibition.
Our Easter holiday was unforgettable for more than one reason. We climbed up to Planachaux, a walk which took us 9 hours in 1939, but which would take 10 minutes some 30 years later, by which time the "teleferique" cable cars were in operation.
Our getting to Planachaux was "le grande aventure" in itself. We had to pack up a bag, which was to be taken to Planachaux by the cable on which an open platform hung. Our luggage, food and other supplies were tied onto this primitive platform, set up to take building materials to the site where the cable car towers and the stations were built.
We were carrying a rucksack and our skis and stocks and the skins which were tied onto our skis. The skins were strips of cow skin and fur stretched onto the underside of skis. The long hair of the skin allowed the skis to slide downhill, but if pointed uphill those same hairs grabbed the snow and stopped us from going the same number of steps forward as back. It certainly helped us to get to our destination which was a one room hut and which was all of Planachaux!
There was also a lean-to shed in which our straw palliasses were stored during the day. At night they came out and were laid out on the floor and the thirty or so people bedded down on them. One wall of the hut was where cooking took place and the oven was kept going day and night, using the wood we collected during our skiing expeditions.
One night a spooky thing happened. We were all asleep when almost all of us heard a cry for help. The kerosene lamp was turned up and many of us got dressed and went outside. It may have been 1 a.m. and while we were shouting about and hoping for an answer, we were not allowed to go on a search with some of our teachers, who got their ski and torches and went off to find the man or men who were in trouble.
Most of those who were left behind went back to sleep, but once again, around 5 a.m. we were wakened by cries of help. We all heard clearly the man shouting that he needs help, that he has money and that this money is of no value to him. We discussed amongst ourselves what the shouts about the money meant and came to no conclusion. We certainly heard it correctly, because later, when our teachers returned from their unsuccessful search, they confirmed that they also heard what was said. Later in the day, two French border guards (Planachaux was right on the French-Swiss border) arrived and they also heard those same cries.
We could not find the lost man and it wasn't until we returned to Champery after the holiday, that we read in a paper, that the bodies of smugglers, who were carrying large amounts of money, was found. The date when they disappeared was the same day we heard their cries of help. There was no doubt about it, these were the same people. The unbelievable and spooky part is that the smugglers were found on the border of Italy, some 150 kms east of Planachaux!