Oral History with Emile Szekely Part II

Emile Szekely Interview Part II

INTERVIEWED BY

ARWEN DONAHUE

JANUARY 18, 2000

BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.4c, EMILIE SZEKELY, SIDE A

ARWEN DONAHUE: This is tape number three, side A of an interview with Emilie Szekely. So, let’s backtrack a little bit, you, you needed to get, you wanted to get mar – was your main motivation to get married because you needed another name ?

EMILIE SZEKELY: …..a different name.

DONAHUE: So it wasn’t necessarily that you were in love with your husband at that point?

SZEKELY: I didn’t know him. He was in labor camp and I was with my grandmother. I absolutely didn’t know him. I went with him about three weeks, when we got engaged and then they took him away. And he was madly in love with me. And I then I said, God, who knows whether he will stay with me? He will go through that. I don’t know what’s going to happen with me. He had his parents still then. For three more years he had his parents, because they were killed in nineteen forty-four. I says what are his parents going to say to it and that kind of a business, you know? I didn’t know.

DONAHUE: Did you have any kind of false papers at all before you got married?

SZEKELY: False papers? No. I got the papers late. I have it here, Christian birth certificate. Because when he came to the ghetto, I think somewhere it’s there that a day before, when we were in the ghetto, and one day he comes to the ghetto and I almost fainted. I says what are you doing here? He says, we were just transferred to Budapest. The company was transferred to Budapest and I am not with them because I am driving a horse and carriage. I am in a private house with the horse and you come right away with me and my sister is going to send you a Christian birth certificate and until then you are going to stay with me there. You stay where I stay with the horse. And during the day, I don’t know. And I said, where is it? He says, well it’s not far away from here. I said, well if it’s not far away from here, why can’t you come tomorrow, that I should put something together, some clothes. And he just didn’t want to leave. Okay, he said, but I must tell you something. If somebody wants to put you in a train, don’t let you do it. They saw it, when they came already, what’s happening in the country. I didn’t know what he meant. When I learned what he meant, we were pushed by the Nazis with the machine guns, so how can you not let yourself, you know? He didn’t know either how is it, how they do it. But he said, don’t anyway. So he left.

DONAHUE: Well, let’s get to that story a little later, and go chronologically and stay back at the time and tell me about the time, how it happened that you and Firenz got married.

SZEKELY: When we got married?

DONAHUE: Uh huh.

SZEKELY: He came home for two weeks…

DONAHUE: You were telling it off the tape, but tell it on the tape.

SZEKELY: Oh, oh, oh. So he came home, he got two weeks furlough and everybody was telling him that he was crazy to get married in those times. But he didn’t want to tell the whole story to everybody, that I need another name to survive. We thought that I need another name to survive. And we found a Justice of Peace, who, when I was twenty-four years old, that day, we got married, because before then I couldn’t get married. Only when you are twenty-four years old without father’s consent. And they changed my father’s birth certificate to Romania, instead of Russia. And so he was covered. And he married us. My aunt, we had two witnesses, one was a distant relative and I don’t even know who was the other witness. I have to read it from the certificate. I don’t know. We got married. My aunt made a big dinner for the family. And they send us to the city, to a very nice hotel. And we went to the hotel and I was just very, very afraid because they constantly were checking on people and asking for their identifications. And especially at night when we went down to eat. And I said, I cannot swallow, I can’t. I’m so afraid here, but we stayed there overnight. And next day we left and it wasn’t too far away from my cousin where I met my father. That hotel wasn’t too far away. And I remember that we went to that cousin, to his wife. He didn’t know my husband. And they didn’t come even to the wedding because it was in Budapest, that was in outskirts and they were already very bad times, so it was no traveling. So I introduced him. I spend there about, we spent a day there. And then we went back to my grandmother’s house and we stayed there for two weeks, until he stayed there. And then he left. And I stayed with my grandmother, later, not with my grandmother, but with my aunt, because she had the much bigger house. So, we stayed with my aunt, not with my grandmother when we stayed. It was with my aunt. And I stayed with my aunt, too.

DONAHUE: With your Aunt Illona?

SZEKELY: Illona, with her. The other one, the other aunt, she was a widow and I don’t know. We didn’t even go on one train with her. Somehow she went with his aunt, with my husband’s aunt, together on a train. She wasn’t with us. Only Illona, my grandmother, my uncle’s sister, my uncle’s sister’s husband, they thirteen year old, two thirteen year old boys, then the four years old boy and my uncle’s brother’s wife with the four years old boy. We were together in one train. That part of the family, but the rest of the family, they were in another wagon, not in that, you know? My grandmother’s sisters, because they were all there, but not in the same wagon. We were eighty people in one.

DONAHUE: But before that you started living, you described how you were moving from house to house and then you started living with your aunt full time?

SZEKELY: With my aunt.

DONAHUE: Can you say something about that?

SZEKELY: Full time, the third year, my aunt said, it’s enough. It seems they are not looking for you. It was enough, you are our child. You will stay with us. And I stayed with them. Once I was very, very sick, my pulse went up to a hundred and sixty. And they called they doctor. And the treatment was so different at that time. I remember that I was in bed and they rented from a medical supply store a big, big bottle what was full with ice cold water and it had tubes in it. And that tube was put on my chest, on my heart and the water was circulating in it. That was the treatment. And that was – I thought it was a heart attack, because it didn’t want to go out. For three weeks it didn’t go down, the pulse. And then I had another thing in nineteen forty-two, that was terrible too. I had the appendix taken out and I couldn’t have it done under my name. I didn’t go to the hospital. I went with my mother’s, with my mother’s oldest sister, whose son was in Siberia. And I went under her name to the hospital. It was a private hospital. And the doctor was a private doctor, who, he was a gynecologist. Because I was constantly complaining about pain and pain and pain and pain and he just couldn’t find out what is it. And one day my husband was there visiting. It wasn’t my husband at that time. And I just was like a tooth, I had such a pain. And his office was in my, my grandmother, where my grandmother lived, in that house was his office. And I went to him and I said, I tell you the diagnosis. I tell you what I have. He says what, what are you talking about? I said, it must be appendix. And he says, God, you are right. And he took me to a private hospital to Budapest and they started to operate on me. And it was under my aunt’s name. I was Helas. That is the grandson is Helas, who is in Canada. And I went under that name. And the operation was so long, they didn’t know what happened there, that the doctors are running for more anesthesia. And my aunt is standing there and didn’t know what happened. My appendix was completely, completely curled up with my colons and it was a very, very long operation. And my heart, it was weak. They took me home by ambulance after. But next morning, six o’clock in the morning, the doctor is there. And he lived, that was in Budapest, in the city, the hospital. And we lived in Neupest, so it was a big distant. I says I am so sick that you are here? And he said, no, no, don’t worry. I just wanted to know how you feel. Then I found out what was happening and they had to take me home by ambulance. And it was in forty-two. And in forty-four I had an unusual big cut and that’s how I went to Mengele. So I thought that will matter when he sees that. But you know what was interesting? I had a friend, she was a woman, who had a mastectomy and she survived. And Mengele saw it and she survived. So they were very odd things. And she came to Canada and she died in Canada. It was a terrible thing. Her son is an engineer. He and my cousin, in Hungary, they went together, they started the engineering college together. Her son and my cousin, who is in Canada, that lady’s son. And they lived in Montreal. And my cousin lived in Montreal at the beginning. He went to Montreal to finish his degree. And we went to visit her, the lady and she was alive for a few years. And once her son had to go to Paris, to France for business. I don’t know what kind of engineer is he, because mine is a chemical engineer. I don’t know what kind of engineer he – and while he was away, she got the pneumonia and she died. They had to call him home. She lived together with the son and daughter-in-law. He married a Hungarian girl. He wasn’t Jewish. She was Jewish, the woman. Her husband wasn’t Jewish, so the son wasn’t Jewish. So he married a Hungarian, non-Jewish girl, who was already in Canada at that time. And she spoke perfect French and she worked for the telephone company. Very nice person. We went there three times to visit her. And for longest time, they couldn’t – he retired. They couldn’t sell their house. And two years ago they wrote me a letter, finally we sold the house and we moved to Kingston. It’s Canada, but it’s very close to the border. And it’s a beautiful place. And they live there. They have two children. And he said, my son married a French woman with a daughter. The son. A French woman, who has a daughter. And the girl, she was a, they wanted a child very badly and finally she became pregnant and she was a premature baby. And she was very small, so they didn’t know that she survive. She survived and she went to college and then she became the hostess on the Canadian Cruise Line, for, I don’t know how long she did it. They were always – every Christmas they write me and I write them. That’s how I know about them. But when they lived in Montreal, they went, many times – my cousin and they were friends. But since that time, I know only from Christmas cards what is happening to them. And what’s interesting, my cousin’s son went to Magill, too. And they live in Toronto. But they stayed there and he went to Magill. And he finished Psychiatry. And he wants to, I don’t know how they are doing it. It’s not a bad idea. Be a lawyer and a psych, psychologist, psychologist and a lawyer. So, he’s going to law school in Kingston, where they live now. You know. The father’s friends. He’s going to Kingston, to law school. It’s interesting. I don’t know whether they see each other. I don’t know what he was writing me about it. I have to call them some day. I call Sundays only because it is cheaper.

DONAHUE: Tell me, going back to wartime, where were you on the day or do you remember the day that the Germans invaded Budapest in March of nineteen forty-four?

SZEKELY: Yes, of course, of course.

DONAHUE: Can you describe that day?

SZEKELY: Oh, that was horrible. I was in my grandmother’s house and we, we didn’t have televisions that time. We just had radios. We didn’t have televisions. We just heard it on the radio and how do we see it? Because we saw them marching in. And I don’t remember how did we see it, because we didn’t have televisions. But I know and I see with my eyes how they marched into Budapest and where they stopped in the middle where it is divided, where the Danube divides the city, you know, into two parts. And they stop there and right a way the Hungarian Army, right away they went to greet them and cater them and did whatever they want even more. Because they would never find out nothing if those countries wouldn’t help them, what they occupied. Because they, who, which German knew for instance, that my sister-in-law was married, that she was once Jewish? Who knew it? Only the Hungarians who live there and they went and told on them. That here is a couple who was married, converted and who was married to. And then they came, the Germans and the Hungarians together to look for her. They did it themselves, the Hungarians and they did it, I’m sure, in every country. Otherwise how would the Germans know who to take, who was the rich man, whom to call to the department, to their offices, whatever, and torture them? How would they know? Because they help them. Because they were anti-Semites. We didn’t know.

DONAHUE: Let me ask you something kind of funny, question. How did you feel about being Jewish?

SZEKELY: Klingel.

DONAHUE: Oh, the last name?

SZEKELY: You know, I’m constantly thinking about it, since I’m talking to you. You know the boy’s name.

DONAHUE: What was it again?

SZEKELY: Klingel.

DONAHUE: And his first name was Nicholas.

SZEKELY: And he had a nickname, Mitvah. Was very, very good looking. I think he was the best looking Jewish boy in the city. Very nice boy. Very nice, respectful, very, very nice. And the parents, that’s interesting, too. They moved then, after the war they moved to Prague, the parents and the sister. And my friend, who is now in Brooklyn, whose husband was a dermatologist, her children went, she gave them lessons, piano lessons – his sister gave them piano lessons. And they were saying it, I should have known that he would marry me. Can you imagine? That’s what they were saying, the parents. And he was telling me, that he cannot talk about marriage, because he is working for his father. He is not on his own. And then they blame me, that I should have known. We never spoke about marriage, only that one time he said that I’m not talking about marriage, until I am not on my own. You know? Probably they were against me. I wasn’t a wealthy girl. And she went with a, she left a girl for me, who was a bank director’s daughter, very wealthy daughter, very wealthy girl. And he went with her and she left her because of me. And then the parents were saying, my friend was telling me, that they were, the sister was telling it, that I should have known. What did they know what went on? I was introduced to his sister once. I didn’t want it. I was, I didn’t want – I don’t know. And once he went to swim in the summer and there is his sister. And he did it by purpose, that she should know me, the sister. And one day then, before he went away to, I don’t know where, the army. And he left a book with me and I didn’t finish it. And he said you bring it back to my mother. I was shaking, you know? I was never in they house and I was shaking. And I was so clumsy that I went upstairs – she was very nice to me. And in the hallway and I gave her the book. And she was very nice and I was so nervous that I, she had some kind of a flower pot and I pushed it with my hand. [LAUGHING] It broke. It was terrible. It was very uncomfortable to meet them, because I had always a feeling that they are against me. You know? He would never, never say to me that, but I had a feeling that the parents were against me, because I wasn’t in their category. And she left that girl, who was wealthy, because of me and that was my feeling about them.

DONAHUE: Did you think about him a lot? Afterwards when you were in hiding, for example?

SZEKELY: When I was hiding? About him? I already knew that he’s dead.

DONAHUE: When did you find out?

SZEKELY: Nineteen forty-two. In nineteen forty-two I found out through friends from Uzhgorod, that all that, I don’t know how many friends together there went. They took them to Russia. And maybe they killed them the same way as my parents. I don’t know. They put them on the trains and they were in labor camp and that they were killed in nineteen forty-two. I really didn’t know about to whom first, you know? To think about my parents, to think about him, to think about my husband, my future husband. I really didn’t know. I was terribly mixed up, terribly. And always worried, terribly worried. The fear was unbelievable, that now they are going to get me, now they are going to….Because I saw what they are doing. If you didn’t wear the star, for instance, the Hungarian knew you. And that was only in forty-four, when we had to start to wear the star, when the Germans came in. But still, if you, I didn’t look Jewish I could have gone wherever, but they knew me and they could tell it to please the Germans.

DONAHUE: Did you think about being Jewish?

SZEKELY: At that time? I knew I was Jewish. I couldn’t think different way. I knew that I was Jewish. I knew that I am trouble with all of the Jews.

DONAHUE: Did you…?

SZEKELY: I never thought about converting. It wouldn’t help me. Conversion. It wouldn’t help me. But I found lately, I found that Christian….I don’t even know [INAUDIBLE] , because the last time when my husband went to Hungary – He went many times when he was retired. He went to Hungary because his sister was very sick for years and he said I want to see my sister. But his excuse was, because we had two little children buried there, he went to the grave. And I was saying always, Frank, they are in our hearts, those are only stones. I couldn’t say he wants to see the grave. He wants to have it redone, the letters if they are in bad shape or whatever. But his sister, he had that only sister and she was very, very sick, but her son-in-law was a doctor and he kept him alive, her alive. And he was telling me, if not me, she would be dead ten years ago. I think she had cancer of the liver, because on the end they had to operate on her. And I saw her, the last time I saw her, that summer in eighty-nine and January she died. And we came back in nineteen ninety, January. She became yellow and he couldn’t help her anymore. But he was telling me himself, if not me….because my niece was unbelievable. She called him from every meeting and everywhere, come right away because mother has fever and right away the injection. Unbelievable. She was a very good daughter. And I was surprised how he was talking to him over the phone. I said, Munnie, her name is Anna Marie, everybody can hear you. I don’t care. My mother comes first and that kind of a thing. So, he kept her alive, really. My husband went to see her every year and that year when he went, in eighty-two, in eighty-one, February, he had a heart attack, and he lived seventeen months. And in eighty-two, June, he says, I’m going to see my sister. And I spoke, I knew that three quarter of his heart was gone. And I spoke to his doctor, I says, what should I do? How shall I tell him that he cannot go? He says, you know what, he can go. He has a doctor there. He will be safe. But he cannot go tooling around nowhere in Europe. He goes to one place and he can go. And June 13th is his birthday, but I called him many times. But I called him on his birthday. I’m sorry, June 17th. He was born, nineteen thirteen, seventeen. And I called him and he said, I feel wonderful. I feel very good and I always gave the report to the doctor, because he was from the same hospital were I worked, the doctor. And he says yes, he has around him more sick people than he is, so he’s feeling fine. And he came home and every first of July, we went out to the country house. They were there already, here in nineteen seventy-nine. And we met there and I spend one week vacation there, because Illona was born third of July. And we spend her birthday. And my husband came back end of June to spend the week in the country for her birthday. After that, we supposed to go to Canada, all of us by car. And he said, you know what? I came from a big trip. You go with them to Canada. And she was pregnant with Anna that time. She was pregnant with Anna, Illona. She knew that he wanted, because he always wanted children and the two died. He always wanted children, so at least George should have more children. She was pregnant with her. He said, you go to Canada and I go home. And he was alone, traveling home. And then I got a call from him in Canada that please bring a present to one of my co-workers. I said, why to her? He says because I was sick and she took me to the hospital. So we packed and we came right back. He was a few days in intensive care or in coronary care, I don’t know what happened. He didn’t feel well. And August 12th, August 12th, he died. And I wasn’t home. I was working and after work I went to the dentist and I had to have a tooth pulled. And he was very upset about that and he came with me. I went by bus. They had private buses, because I went to the city periodontist. And he came to the door and he looked so beautiful. He had brown pants and a yellow shirt on. And he said, nothing, nothing hurts me, because he had back trouble, too. He had a spine operation. He said, nothing, nothing hurts me. And you know, you don’t think if it’s about your own, that the last day when you live, nothing will hurt you. And that’s true. But you just don’t think. And I’m sorry happy that he said it…….

END OF TAPE 20.U.4c, EMILIE SZEKELY, SIDE A

BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.4c, EMILIE SZEKELY, SIDE B

DONAHUE: …Szekely, took a little break for a few weeks there. And now I wanted to just ask you, because I was reviewing the interview that we did last time and going over it, I had a couple of questions. One of them was, right at the beginning you were talking about the cousin of yours, who was the painter, who lived in Odessa. And I wanted to make clear, was it his daughter that came over and stayed with you? It was his daughter? Okay.

SZEKELY: It was his daughter that came over and stayed with us. We had an apartment here.

DONAHUE: You told the whole story, so I don’t want you to go through that again. But I just wanted to clarify…

SZEKELY: It was my cousin’s, my father’s brother’s daughter and her family. And he, himself, lived in Boston.

DONAHUE: Okay. Did he come over at the same time as her?

SZEKELY: No, no. He came over five years ago, six years ago because his [INAUDIBLE] is about up, so it has to be five years ago. He became citizen last year, ninety-nine. So, five years ago, because he came with his sister and sister’s family. Husband only, sister’s daughter and husband, because the husband had the parents there. And they always, he and his sister lived always together and a niece and a husband. So he belonged with them. I couldn’t bring him, because only you could bring parents or sisters or brothers. So, he went with them because he lived with them and he had his son, brother-in-law actually, because they had the parents there already and through them. That’s why he didn’t come here. But his aim was if his daughter is here and they family is there, everybody to be, get back together. That’s what he wanted.

DONAHUE: And tell me what his full name is.

SZEKELY: He is, Isislav [INAUDIBLE] Klugman. That was my maiden name.

DONAHUE: I see, so he was your father’s brother.

SZEKELY: My father’s brother [INAUDIBLE].

DONAHUE: Okay, and we, last time we were going over mostly some questions about your childhood and some things that weren’t covered in the interview that the Shoah Foundation did. And what I wanted to do mostly today is to talk about your experiences after the war, after the war ended. But one of the things that wasn’t clear to me from the Shoah Foundation interview was, tell me if I have this right, when you were on the transports from Hungary to Auschwitz, you were with your grandmother and your Aunt Illona.

SZEKELY: With my Aunt Illona and other aunts, too and her son. My mother had four sisters, so I was with three of them. But the closest to me always Illona, because when they took my mother and they killed them in, my parents in nineteen forty-one. So, she was the one who was unbelievably helping me. And then the last year, before the Nazis came in, she didn’t let me go to hiding and she said, you are our child, no matter what. You stay with us. And so for one year I was with them until they took us all. And after, when she survived and I survived and her husband survived, but not her son. And my son was born. To my son she was like a grandmother. When we left, we left to Vienna and we left them in Hungary, but we knew that they are coming after us, three weeks. Because they had, they were elderly people already and they had VISA to Israel and England and we knew that they are going to come. And the time came then we came to America and we left them there. And my son, he was so blaming me and he so crying. How can I do it, to leave them there? He was nine years old. He was the only relative whom he knew. She took care of him when I had to go to work. Because under the communism we had to work. And she was everything to him. And my heart was going out and I was explaining to him, when we get to America and we become citizens we are going to bring….That was the plan, that we are going to bring them over. But she died, unfortunately from a gall bladder operation. But I think that she already had cancer, but they don’t tell me, because nobody dies from a gall bladder operation. It must have gone to the liver and the operation was okay. She was alive for a few days. And one day my uncle and his brother went to visit her. They went every day, but one day when they went, she was dead. I didn’t go, to the funeral. Because we were here in fifty-eight and that was in sixty-three and in fifty-nine I got a job in the hospital when I was working and I said, we don’t have either the money for the three of us to go, so we couldn’t go. But it was in the summertime and George was with some of our friends in the country. They were having a bungalow that they rented and we went over on the weekends. We went to Poughkeepsie. And he was there and I was afraid to tell him. I was afraid to tell him. And he wrote to his pediatrician in New York, who was the head of the Pediatrics in the hospital where I worked, and asked him to find out from me the truth, because he thinks something is very wrong. And he showed me the letter and he said you have to tell him. So, I was very, very upset to tell him. And I found it out, my husband did, he got the letter and he didn’t want to tell me. And we are driving out to the country and when he told me, we made an accident with the car. I was, you know, so upset. It was an old car and we had the first car. It was a big Pontiac. But somebody ran into us. It wasn’t our fault and he went away. The guy went away. But I was so upset that how I am going to tell him, because it was like the end of the world. He didn’t know no one from the family and he was the kid of the family, because his brother, my uncle’s brother lost his four years old child and the second wife never could have children. So he’s named after my, Illika’s son, he was George, too. And he was everybody’s child, only child. And when I had the other little boy, he was five months old when he died. I named him after the four years old, who died. He was four, he was four, my little one, who died in one day from the croup.

DONAHUE: At one point in Auschwitz, you told in your interview with the Shoah Foundation about how you arrived in Auschwitz and how you were there for, I think two weeks before you were given your tattoo and before you started working. When were you separated from Illona?

SZEKELY: Three weeks later. She was, when we went to the barracks, she was put in the next barracks. Because they put sixty people in one and she would be the sixty-one. So she was put in the next barrack. But when I came back from work, they didn’t get food, those people who didn’t work and I gave them my half of the bread and I dressed them up. I’m saying “them”, she was there with one of her friends, who had two twin sons and they are alive. They went through all the – I told you that, no?

DONAHUE: No.

SZEKELY: No? She had two twin sons, her friend and they went through all the experiments with Mengele. They are alive. They are in Israel. One is in high, he has, I don’t know what kind of position, but they are not men. They cannot get married, that’s what they did to them. And I met them when I was in nineteen seventy-six, I was in Israel. We went to restaurant and my uncle’s brother was there with his second wife, who is alive and she is in Vienna. She married him when George was born, the second wife. And she was much younger than he was. He wanted children and she couldn’t have children. When we went to the restaurant then – what a surprise. My aunt’s friend was there with her husband and she said she would never forget what I did for them. Because they were naked. I was [INAUDIBLE] and the forewoman, she let me take out clothes, because I told her that my aunt is in the next camp. And she let me take out clothes. And I dressed them and I gave them food. And one day when Mengele came to the camp and he was sorting out, because he came every week and sorting out people. We had to get undressed and walk around him. He had a stick in his hand and he’s pointing one here, one there and I was one here. I knew I go back. And she was on the other side and I didn’t know what happened to her. I thought she goes to gas. I didn’t know about nothing else. And I knew that there’s gas there. It turned out that they took her to Theresienstadt with her friend. And they were working at manufacturing and stayed at Theresienstadt. And only when I went back, I knew that she is alive. And she was everything to me.

DONAHUE: Why don’t we jump forward to that time, because you described the rest of that experience in your Shoah Interview. And then you, so after the war eventually you returned to Budapest and you were reunited with your, with your Aunt Illona and your husband. Talk more about that time, talk about the reunions with those people and how you were feeling and what your thoughts were…

SZEKELY: I came, I think that [INAUDIBLE] when I came to our station, people were standing there and waiting for people to come, because in all Europe they were waiting for people to come because they knew who is alive, because Eisenhower – that I said, he made a list from everybody and send it to the places where they came from. So, they knew I am alive after liberation, but I didn’t know about no one. And when we got to our station, I saw many people and I didn’t know no one. I was shaking and I went to one of them and I says, excuse me do you know someone by the name of Eugene Schwartz? And he started to scream and he says, you are Emilie? I says, how do you know it? He says, your uncle is waiting for you every day. He was here today, too, but he had to go for some kind of business. I said business? It was October fifth, forty-five and they were liberated in April already. He says, I’m going to phone him. And I says, telephones? You know. So, he came in ten minutes. He has even a car, she said, he said. And I knew that he doesn’t drive. He had a chauffeur. They were very wealthy people before the war. And they started to pull themselves together. He came and we were just, we couldn’t talk. We were crying and crying and crying. He loved me very much and he was just crying. And finally when we stopped crying and he thought that he could talk he said, your aunt is alive, but not my son. But I knew that thirteen years old wouldn’t be alive. I had one of my uncles, my mother’s brother, that was the only man in the family, who was never married because my grandmother was thirty-five years old when she was a widow and left with five children. And he didn’t get married because he was supporting the family and he wanted the girls to get married and probably – but he was never married. He was fifty-four years old. And he was in labor camp in Hungary, but at the last minute when the Germans left they managed to take him and he was in Buchenwald. And he was alive. And they all lived together when I came back.

DONAHUE: Who all lived together? What was the whole group?

SZEKELY: My [INAUDIBLE], her husband,…

DONAHUE: I’m sorry, say the first one again, because the mike….

SZEKELY: Illie, Illie, Illie, Illona, Illona, Illona…

DONAHUE: Illona?

SZEKELY: Illona, her husband, his brother….

DONAHUE: Can you give everybody’s names?

SZEKELY: Lazlo, Lazlo was his name…..I don’t know what is Lazlo in English. I have no idea.

DONAHUE: That’s okay.

SZEKELY: Lazlo. And my uncle, Joseph, they all lived together, because his brother wasn’t married yet. He lost his wife and four years old child. My uncle’s brother wasn’t married. And they live, they lived, before the war, it was a beautiful, new house. And the two families, my uncle and his brother lived in one house, two exact, the same apartments, most modern. And the German soldiers were in it when they came back and they ruined the whole house. So they had to re-do it. So, they lived next door, it was my uncle’s parents’ house. It was an older house and they lived in that apartment in his parent’s apartment, my uncle’s. And then we came, I came back and my husband. I think it is there how I met my husband when I came back. Okay, so we stayed there, but only for a few days because it was no room for us. So we went to Eger, to his sister, what is another city. It is about, I don’t know how many miles away. It was a very nice town. I knew the town before the war, because I went to visit his mother there, his family, his mother and father, who lived already with his sister, who was converted. That story is in there, no?

DONAHUE: You mentioned, you talked about the sister last time, last time we were here, his sister.

SZEKELY: Okay. His parents lived there. And part of the house was my husband’s house, because that house was inherited. And there were other relatives there from that part of the family and they wanted the part of the house. And they shouldn’t get it. My husband paid it out. So a part, it was a very big house, it was his. We had like a separate apartment, but together with them. The kitchen was together, but we had two rooms and after the two rooms was the big dining room what separated us. And in that apartment his parents lived, because they took away they farms. They were big farmers, not in Eger, it was in another city, I mean village. And they took away everything from them. They took away, it was interesting, first the Romanians before, after the first war, they took away, then the Russians took away. The Germans took away. So, they went back and forth and on the end was the Germans. When the Germans took away, they had to leave. And they let them leave and they left to their sister and their daughter. And the son-in-law couldn’t save them, but he saved his family, my sister-in-law and his daughter.

DONAHUE: I have a few questions about that time. One, did you have any hope at all that your parents and your sister were alive?

SZEKELY: Hope? No. After Auschwitz, no, but before Auschwitz, I thought that they must be somewhere alive. When we went to Auschwitz I thought we go somewhere, where I’m going to meet them. I had no idea. I think I said it then, that once I went to a fortune teller and they say that my parents are alive, but they are very far away. And it turned out that they were really alive when I found it out from the Museum. Because I thought after I came back that they were killed right away in June, July, when they took them. August 24th they were killed according to the Museum. And they showed me pictures and where they took them. They knew about it. Thirty, what did they say….I don’t know how many. How many people, one day they were killed, because they were not only from Czechoslovakia, that part where we lived, but they were from Romania, what belonged once to Hungary, where Eli Weisel comes from. They were people from there, too. And they were there, too. And they were, I think, thirty-eight thousand in one day they killed. Because they took them to Poland first – I know from them. And they didn’t know what to do with them because all the Polish people were in the ghettos and they didn’t know what to do with them. That’s why they were killed.

DONAHUE: Can you tell me when and how you found out what had actually happened to your parents?

SZEKELY: Actually I found out in nineteen forty-eight, because one of my first cousins was taken in nineteen forty-one to, we didn’t know where. They took him from the street in nineteen forty-one. He was an engineer. And he just disappeared. And in nineteen forty-eight, he came back from Siberia. And when he came back and we met, that was my first cousin, my mother’s sister’s son, and when he came back, he asked me, where are your parents? What happened to your parents? And I was telling him that I have no idea. I got a card from my sister from communist Poroski and she’s writing, we are here. We don’t know what are we going to do. When do we get an apartment or something to eat. We have no idea. And the card had a Hungarian stamp on it, so I assume that she sent it with a soldier, a Hungarian soldier, back. And from then on I didn’t know nothing. And then my cousin was telling me, my God, I was there when those people were killed. I was on a horse and carriage. He was in – he went to underground with the Russians. How, I don’t know up to today, how he was riding a horse and carriage and he was there, he said. He saved a lot of people. He put them under the hay. He had no idea that my parents were there. That was the first when I knew how they were killed, in nineteen forty-eight. And I was back nineteen forty-five already from concentration camp. And I still didn’t know what was happening.

DONAHUE: During those three years then, before you found out and after you got back did you make any effort to find out what had happened to them?

SZEKELY: I didn’t know where. We became right away communists. In nineteen forty-eight we were communists. I didn’t know where to ask, no idea. And George was born in nineteen forty-six and my mind was – I am not saying that I was happy, but you know, I was happy that I have a family. I always wanted a family and I never knew that I can have a family. I never knew that I can have a child anymore, so I was very happy that I had a child. I never knew. And I didn’t come with no one. Because a lot of people I met from my, from the place where they were home when they took my parents – I have in Brooklyn two friends, only two, who knew my parents, before, were only two. Those people knew my parents and my sister. And they knew what was happening to the non-citizens. Because we were not citizens that time. We were Czech citizens, but the Hungarians took it over, so we were not citizens. And those people were Hungarians. I don’t know, yes, they were Hungarians. They weren’t Russians. They took only the Russians, no other citizens. So they knew that they took them somewhere, but they didn’t know why, because I was questioning them in Brooklyn. I said, did you know what happened to them? They said they never knew what happened to them, they just knew that the transport went and never came back.

DONAHUE: And I wanted to go back again and ask you a little bit more about the time right after the war had ended and you returned to Hungary. You talked about how you wanted to have a family. What else, what were your hopes at that point? Were you thinking about the future? Did you want to stay in Hungary? Did you and your husband talk…?

SZEKELY: We couldn’t go, we couldn’t go, we couldn’t go nowhere. We had to stay in Hungary. It was nowhere with the Russians, that we could get….I got in touch with my uncle, here in America. And he wanted us very badly, but it was no way that we – maybe old people got Visas already at that time to Israel, but young people didn’t. And we were young people, so it was impossible. And then in forty-nine, I had the other boy, so I didn’t even think about it that we should go anyplace, to try. And we didn’t have a bad life until it was really communism. Because I had a maid, sleep-in maid. I didn’t have to work. Then in nineteen forty-eight when it was really communism I had to let her go, the girl, and I had to go to work. Because everybody had to show what they are living from, because my husband was in private business and he couldn’t show how much he is making. He made nice money. But I had to go to work.

DONAHUE: Did your husband lose his business at that time?

SZEKELY: No, well he lost it after, yes. After he lost it. And he couldn’t get a job, because they said he is a Capitalist. It was very hard for him to get a job in his profession, but then later on he got a job. He got a job later on, but it was not a state job. It was again private. He went together with somebody and they – he actually, he finished business college, but actually what was his business before the war, he was [LAUGHING] I have to always laugh that we eat the oats, because that they gave to horses in Hungary. And he was in that business, feeding, oat feeding, because everything was horses, not cars. The transportation was horses and it was a big business, the animal food for the horses. And they connected with the, with the, gosh, with the market. Stock Market. So he had a big business and he made a lot of money, but whenever he made the money, we bought a Persian rug or we bought silver. I have forty kilo silver stuff. I have a beautiful case and it was everything silver in it, because we couldn’t show the money. We couldn’t put it in the bank or something. And then they didn’t bother us. They bother us in one way that we had a big apartment. Because when my aunt’s apartment was ready, they renovated it, we moved in, in the old apartment and it was a very big one. I mean large rooms, there were three large rooms. Actually the fourth one was a room, too, the foyer, because we had furniture in there. And we had a kitchen and bathroom and we had a room for the maid from the kitchen. And the third room was a very big, it was so big that George when he was little, he could bicycle in it. That was his room. And they took away from us that room. You know? And they made an apartment from it, a one bedroom apartment. And they put in a family, only with one son. A family with one son. It was so big that they had a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom – I don’t know, I never went in, what is it. They were our neighbors. But otherwise we didn’t have trouble. They took away the business of my uncle. He had forty pairs of horses and two big trucks. They were the first ones, because they were in….that business, when people moved. It’s a moving, not moving, actually it’s not moving. But with the horses, too, they were renting it or whatever, to companies. And very, very big business. Forty pairs. And when it happened, they took my husband and he worked for them. He loved horses, that was his life, the horses, horse back riding actually. He loved it. And so he worked for them. But then they took away the business from them, from my uncle. They didn’t work anymore because they were elderly people. And when the opportunity came after the Hungarian Revolution, my uncle’s brother escaped to Vienna with his wife. And family is supposed to go after them, but we didn’t succeed.

DONAHUE: You did tell that story. So your husband, what was the name of your uncle, who your husband worked for?

SZEKELY: That was my uncle Eugene.

DONAHUE: Okay, Illona’s husband.

SZEKELY: Illona’s husband and his brother, they were together. And that was the business what they inherited from their parents. It was a very old business.

DONAHUE: And is that the same uncle, you uncle’s brother, who got out after the revolution? Is that the same one?

SZEKELY: Okay, no. He started to work with them…..

END OF TAPE 20.U.4c, EMILIE SZEKELY, SIDE B

BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.4d, EMILIE SZEKELY, SIDE A

ARWEN DONAHUE: This is tape number four, side A of an interview with Emilie Szekely.

EMILIE SZEKELY: My uncle, my mother’s brother was in labor camp in Hungary and when the Germans were leaving, they managed to take him to Germany and he was in Buchenwald. And one day I was prescribing, I got always the Smithsonian Magazine and it was a picture there, a nice article about the Holocaust. And the picture showed Buchenwald and a part of the bunk beds, a part of the…

DONAHUE: Barracks?

SZEKELY: Ja, and on the end of one of the beds, on the end was, the picture, they were all looking in the camera because it was after the war, and it was marked, Eli Weisel. And on the other side there were three men, between them, it was my uncle. I recognized him. It was my mother’s brother.

DONAHUE: And his name was…?

SZEKELY: Joseph. And when Eli Weisel was here about, that’s now four, five….Illona was a senior, that’s four years ago. Four years ago, he was here in Lexington and he had a wonderful, wonderful speech. It was the Jewish Federation and UK, they did it together. And it was in UK, in the Memorial Hall. Before that, they had a dinner in the club, but it was a hundred and fifty dollars a plate, and I didn’t have a hundred and fifty dollars for a dinner. And people were coming out and they telling what a wonderful thing it was just to shake hands with him. And I was very upset that I know that man from my co-worker, who was a very good friend, her father was very good friend, her husband, of Eli Weisel and I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t talk to him. So when it was everything over, Anna was telling me, wait, wait, maybe you can see him go to his dressing room. So, a gentleman was standing there from UK, they didn’t let nobody to see him. And I went there. It was the rabbi’s wife [INAUDIBLE] she was talking for me. And she says, would you let that lady in only for a few minutes? She is the only survivor here in Lexington and she would like to talk to him, only for a few minutes. So he said, yes I will do it, but she has to wait until the hall is empty, because if people see somebody’s going, they want to go, too. So, I was waiting, I say, I gladly wait. So, I was waiting and he helped me down the steps, because they were wooden steps in the basement. It was the, I couldn’t believe it. He says, yes we are hiding people. [LAUGHING] And it was nothing to hold onto and it was wooden steps and he was helping me to go down. And suddenly I came and the door is open and he’s standing there. He was a very, very attractive man. And my heart was beating, that I couldn’t say nothing, so I says hello. He was very friendly. I says, hello. He says, who are you? I didn’t say even my name, I was so excited. I says, I am a Holocaust survivor and I am the only one here. He said, if you are a Holocaust survivor, you must be from Europe. I says, yes. He says, where are you from? I says, Budapest. He says, Budapest? And he starts to talk to me, Hungarian. I couldn’t believe it? I said, you speak still Hungarian? Because he didn’t, I mean, I don’t know where he learned, because where he was, they were very religious people, his parents. And I think they spoke Yiddish and not Hungarian, but he spoke Hungarian. And he was fifteen years old, maybe in school, correct in school, probably he learned. He spoke wonderful. And he says, no I can because I have no one to talk to. His wife is French. I says, don’t tell me, you speak Hungarian. And from then on he spoke Hungarian to me. And he asked me where I know him from. And I mentioned his friend’s name. And he says, Korman. He says, I saw him last week, that’s what he’s telling me. I says, yes, because of you he didn’t want to retire to Florida, because he was often….He lives in New York, actually and teaches in Boston. And they had from that part of the town, [INAUDIBLE] they had an organization. And that my friend’s husband was always there because he loved him. And she then was telling me what went on in that organization and [LAUGHING] what happened at that organization when they were together, so I knew a lot about him. And I was telling it to him. He says, because of you, he didn’t want to move to Florida. He says, you know what? I saw him in Florida. When he was down in Florida, he saw him. He was very nice and then he said, what I’m doing? And I told him that I am talking in schools and he says, wonderful. He says what grade are you starting? I says, sixth. He says, that’s the right grade to start, don’t do younger ones. But I did, because they were begging me. Lexington School for fifth graders. Anna went to SCAPA, they were fourth graders. They were begging me, especially in SCAPA, they were very smart kids. And here too, in Lexington school, they are very, very – I spoke twice already there. And now I, the teacher was always asking me whether I know a book for children. I am reading now in a magazine that he, Eli Weisel, wrote his first children’s book about the Holocaust with pictures. So, I try to get that book and I try to call that teacher in Lexington School, because she is very intelligent. She is teaching fifth graders. And they understood it. What kind of letters I got from them, the fifth graders…I just cannot believe it, how they understood it and how sorry they are for me. And they cannot believe it, that I lived through that. Fifth graders. I tell you the truth, I spoke about a hundred and fifty, hundred and sixty times since I am here. That if I cannot do it, because I will be the most unhappiest person in the world, because I feel the commitment that I have to do it. I still have to do it, because there are many, many people, who don’t know it still and those are adults, mostly adults. The children are starting to know me in schools, because I go back always, because they are different classes, and most of them they know. In the colleges, too. I was all over in every college, Berea, Midway and the private college, Transylvania twice, UK three times. Community college. So, they know all ready. But the adults, lot of adults, in churches, they don’t know. And even if they call me to schools, next graders who didn’t hear me and I cannot do it, I am depressed and I always think about it. It give me, I cannot explain it, when I talk, I am very enthusiastic and I live it through again. That’s true. And I have to take a tranquilizer, I must take before I go. And I never spoke about my parents, because I couldn’t. I was always crying. And lately I am even showing the pictures of my parents. And if they give me enough time to tell them that story on the end, I am including it, what happened to them and I am showing their pictures. And I was so relieved that I did it. Okay, I didn’t sleep at night, but I was relieved that I did something good for them who died. You know? I took it in my head that they died and they won’t be at peace until the last survivor is going to tell their story. It’s uh….I cannot explain it, what happened to me, because I never spoke. I never spoke.

DONAHUE: So, in those years immediately after the war that you were in Hungary, you didn’t speak about your experiences at all?. I didn’t speak, even in New York, never. New York, I didn’t have to because there were so many, I never heard denial. And here I started only because I heard denial. In Hungary I never spoke about it because the Hungarians are very anti-Semitic. And they told you that too many of you came back. It’s a Catholic country. I am not saying that the intelligent people, but I heard it from people saying it. So, in Hungary, I even went to a doctor, I wanted to take off my number because it was so uncomfortable when I was holding onto the train. I went to the city. I worked for the book publishers, you know, the dictionaries. And that’s where they were telling, they were looking at those numbers like I would kill you, you know? Maybe it was in me that I thought it, but no. Even today, even I told you, I was in nineteen seventy-eight, in Hungary with Illona – nineteen seventy-eight? What am I talking about? She was born in nineteen seventy. Nineteen eighty-nine I was with her. I told you that story, no? And we lived there for months?

DONAHUE: You mentioned it.

SZEKELY: We lived, my sister-in-law was still alive at that time, my husband’s sister and she took an apartment for us, because they had only a one bedroom apartment. A very beautiful place. And he took us for an apartment, a rental, close to them. And it was a woman, whose husband was a school principal, but they were divorced. And she had a son, an engineer and he didn’t live home and she had three rooms, two bedrooms and a living room. One room was separate and then she had a room in, near [INAUDIBLE] that she went there. If she rented the apartment she went there, that she shouldn’t be home. But we were always begging her, it doesn’t bother us, she should stay home. Because she was the only person who spoke English and Illona could spoke to her English. She was the only person. She worked for the, she was babysitting in the Canadian Embassy for somebody. So, she spoke English well. We were glad when she stayed home and when she stayed home she went down and she brought us always fresh bread and milk. She was very nice to us. We didn’t speak about religion, absolutely. And the last day, the last day before we left, she came to me and she said, I didn’t sleep the whole night. I says, why? She says, because I just find out, I just notice your number that you are Jewish and I am Jewish, too. Nobody knows it in the house. In nineteen eighty-nine, nobody knows it in the house. They are suspicious she said. But her husband, I don’t know. I don’t remember already her name. But it was a Hungarian name. He changed his name because it was a Jewish name. He changed it when he was a school principal. And once, she was telling that she was here in America in Los Angeles for a month and she’s mentioning a name, who invited her. And I knew them, those people, that they were Jewish people. [INAUDIBLE] But still I just didn’t realize it that she’s Jewish. And she wouldn’t ask me and I wouldn’t ask her. But one day, she wasn’t home and I see – I took the mail and a letter came from Israel. And when I gave it to her, she right away put it in her pocket. Because she knew that my sister-in-law was converted and married to a non-Jew and she got that apartment and she thought we were non-Jewish. She was afraid to say that she is Jewish. So then – it was unbelievable. And when we came home, I sent her some nylon panty hose because she couldn’t get it. And for two or three years I was writing her. And I didn’t realize it, she said I mentioned to you so many times who took me, who took me, who invited me and her son was there too. I don’t know how long he was in Los Angeles, in California. And I didn’t realize it, he went out once with that man, but he was married. And both of them, he and the wife, invited her, but I didn’t….you know? [LAUGHING] I didn’t know him personally. But I knew and I knew his name, those people who were in Los Angeles.

DONAHUE: Did you…

SZEKELY: So that’s the situation, and even today, they are hiding people, they are Jews. It’s no good, it’s still no good in Hungary. Under the communism, it was no Jew, we couldn’t say, no religion. They were forcing us to work. A Jewish boss, he was forcing us to work on the Jewish holidays and he was a lawyer. And one day, I thought, I said it, one day, his secretary was a very nice person. She was Jewish, too. But many people worked there, they were all intellectuals. Whatever we had intellectually, if it’s something medical, the doctors that were there and engineers or whatever. It’s very interesting. He, on the biggest holiday, Yom Kippur, he called us to his office, me and his secretary and he made us eat. He was in the Party, the Communist Party because of his job. But who saw it? Why did he have to do it? I couldn’t go to the synagogue, so I went home by bus, I remember. Because it was, we lived in Neupest and that was in Mittau. We were passing the city where they synagogue is, I jumped off the bus at that station and after work I went to the synagogue. And in the concentration camp I didn’t know that it’s holiday or not holiday, but the Polish people knew it. And they were telling us when it’s Yom Kippur. They knew it from outside the world. Because people who went to work outside, they somehow got in touch with Polish people. And then they said, tomorrow is like Yom Kippur, so I didn’t eat. I was used not to eat, because eat, the food was only bread when we got off from the work, you know. I was fasting there and I go back and I have to eat.

DONAHUE: Did you have a sense of faith at the time? SZEKELY: At the camp? I lost my faith.

DONAHUE: After….

SZEKELY: In camp, I was always saying, where is God? Where is God when I found out what is going on in camp, that they killed all the little kids. I says, where is God that he let, that he let it do those people. Where is God? Is there a God? I absolutely didn’t believe it. I was saying that too always, that I was, at night when we couldn’t go out after work, when we were already inside, but if we had the chairs just to look outside and look at the stars. And I was unbelievable homesick, unbelievable. And I was just always saying, I says, my God, my God, I didn’t say it. I just said, does Frank, Frank was my husband, see the same stars what I’m seeing? Terrible homesick and never, never thought that I can survive from there. Never. It was so impossible, you know? It was impossible. First of all, I didn’t know where is Auschwitz. I didn’t know that we are close to Krakow, we are in Poland. I knew that we were in Poland, but I had no idea where we were. And I never thought that it can happen, that the Russians are going to liberate it and we have to go.

DONAHUE: So after the war when you went to synagogue, did you just go because of tradition?

SZEKELY: Oh, no. After the war, no, after the war, we lived under communism and we went to synagogue secretly. And it was a, a nursery, preschool in the synagogue and George went there. But it was everything secretly. When he went to school he had no religion. He wasn’t allowed to say that he has religion. No religion. When we went to Vienna, for seventeen months we lived there. He was the only Jewish kid there. And they were suspicious because they were praying every morning. And once the teacher called me, why is it he doesn’t pray? I said because he has no religion. We lived under communism, that’s why he doesn’t pray. And every day I was dying until he came home from school. I was so afraid what’s going to happen, that they find out that he’s Jewish. It was terrible, terrible. Hitler came from Vienna. I told you that. That even in nineteen fifty-seven, when we went to Vienna, the workers, when they worked, they started with a bottle of beer and Heil Hitler.

DONAHUE: So, when you went, but did you go, you didn’t go to synagogue because you had religious faith?

SZEKELY: No. When I went back and I found Illie, Illona, when I find her and I find her husband. Her husband, they weren’t, they weren’t religious. They were religious and not religious. We didn’t have nothing to eat. So my sister-in-law managed to buy every year a, she was close to the countryside and everybody knew them there where they lived. Her husband had a very big position with the state. And he, himself, was an anti-Semite, my sister-in-law’s husband. It’s unbelievable. I was telling you about it. Okay. But they managed, somehow, I don’t know how…We got every year a pig. Pig! And it was a butcher, who came to the house and they made for us and for Illona, for them, my uncle wasn’t alive at that time, Joseph. Because he was already just, you wouldn’t believe it that he went with a little prayer book to Buchenwald and he managed to bring it back with him. Because at that time already they weren’t killing there, in Buchenwald when he got there. And he brought it back. He was really just….That was why he stayed with us and not with Illie, Illona, because of the pork. But we ate the pork, too. We had it, too. Especially when he died, it was. We ate it because there was nothing else and we had food for the whole year. George doesn’t know it. He doesn’t remember it, so I am not telling it to him. And I am not telling it even to the grandchildren. Anna is crazy when she would hear it. She’s watching always what you are ordering. But he was the president of the synagogue, my uncle and he was helping many, many Jewish, young boys to go to Israel. At that time it was secretly, secretly, they went through Czechoslovakia. So, that way he was religious, but we couldn’t show it that we were religious or not religious. But we ate pork. But I got back my religion. I got my belief. I got it back slowly, slowly I got it back. I was always thinking about my mother, how he taught us, she taught us to pray in Czechoslovakia. And when we went to the synagogue Friday night or something, I was always thinking about it, how we were crying, but every week we had to read one more page. And it was so hard for us, myself and my sister. And I was thinking about them. And as I was thinking about them always, you know, I got back my religion. And especially when I came to America. When I came to America and my uncle – he wasn’t, he ate everything. I’m not saying that they didn’t cook pork, but he was religious. And I remember him and my father when they were together and Passover, when they were together. And every Saturday they went to the synagogue and then they came to us and they were singing after lunch those songs that you are supposed to. And when I thought about those things it came back to me, you know. It’s very interesting. And now I love to go to the synagogue and I am so heartbroken. I wasn’t there now three weeks, I think. I am missing it. And I’m missing it. We don’t have a rabbi now. He left. I loved him. It’s interesting that he’s near Cincinnati and Illona was teaching here Sunday school art for four years. And now he’s teaching in his new congrega – she goes down to the new congregation and she’s teaching, but only twice a month because it’s forty miles away. She sees him. And I cannot see them. I was very good friends with….She’s a very young woman. His wife is from Cincinnati. He’s from Minnesota, the rabbi. And his parents were Czechoslovakian, Czechs. His father, I met his father many times, he’s an optometrist. When he came to visit he still speak Czech.

DONAHUE: What was his name? The Rabbi.

SZEKELY: The Rabbi? Slatten.

DONAHUE: And he was at the Orthodox, no it’s …

SZEKELY: Conservative.

DONAHUE: Conservative.

SZEKELY: Conservative. Slatten. He has three sons and he was here eleven years. My grandson was the first Bar Mitzvah with him.

DONAHUE: About the question where was God, did you just stop asking it or did you come up with some kind of answer?

SZEKELY: No, I didn’t get no answer because I knew what’s happening. I didn’t get no answer. But I was just always questioning, where is God? Is there a God, that’s what I was saying. Is there a God, does he see what’s happening? Why, why is it happening?

DONAHUE: Do you ask yourself those questions anymore?

SZEKELY: Yes I am. Why did it happen, actually? Why did it happen? For those innocent little kids, what could they do? What kind of sins they had? Babies. What kind of sins they had that it happened? And then I am going back to Spanish Inquisition. [LAUGHING] What was that? They killed the Jews all over. Always. The Jews are always the [LAUGHING] for everywhere and everything they are blaming the Jews. So, it’s no answer. It’s no answer. First the Blacks came and after that the Jews. Some places they are no Blacks, when there are no Blacks, then there are the Jews who are blamed for everything. Why? If anybody knows why. I lived under democracy in Czechoslovakia. It was a real, real democracy. Nobody knows what’s democracy. Only if somebody lived under that time [INAUDIBLE] They always said we cannot be Anti-Semitic, never. Because we have the brain and we are businessmen and we are everything what the Jews are. So I was thinking about it, that’s it’s jealousy. It was jealousy from Hitler that they, he took it from, they were supporting him, the Jews in Germany. They made him big. And then when he knew what they are doing and why, then they killed them and he wanted to have it. Why are they anti-, anti-Semitic here, I don’t know. I never heard it from no one, but I can imagine that the Southern Baptist are anti-Semitic. I am thinking it only because I was invited [LAUGHS] to every church, every denomination, but never to a Baptist church. So it must be something against the Jews. They won’t say it to your face, but it must be. They know it. They saw me in the paper. They know it. And I was never, never, and I was on every Christian church. What is that? How do you call it? What is it? And I’m telling it to the children. I’m finishing my speech and I’m saying it to them that why I am doing it, I’m doing it so you should learn not to hate and you should teach your parents not to hate, because I don’t think so that a little kid knows what is to hate. It’s coming from somewhere, from the adults. Correct?

DONAHUE: Can you remember and describe the events of the 1956 uprising?

SZEKELY: Yes. In 1956…

DONAHUE: From your perspective.

SZEKELY: …Nixon was in Hungary at that time. And the students from university, they got in touch with him. And what was discussed, what wasn’t discussed, I don’t know between them, but when Nixon left, next day, it was the uprising. The students, the college students, they took over the radio station. That was the first. We didn’t have televisions. That was the first. And the Russians actually never left Hungary and they were all over scattered in the woods and around. But we didn’t see them in the cities, but they were there. It was communism. And Nixon was telling them do it. How do we know that? Because the last Prime minister, [INAUDIBLE], who was killed by the Russians. He was on the radio and he was begging, he was begging America and he was begging Nixon – He was telling him, okay, do it. He thought that we get some help. So they came in with they tanks and with they soldiers. It was a war. They bombed….

END OF TAPE 20.U.4d, EMILIE SZEKELY, SIDE A

BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.4d, EMILIE SZEKELY, SIDE B

SZEKLEY: …the apartment and we lived in Budapest, yes. We lived there. And so when they came in, no that was 1956, the uprising. Up to that point it was all right. We worked and we were communist, but we worked. I mean, the wealthy people were very afraid and we were very afraid with my uncle, that they are going to take them. Because they came at the night. They knocked on the doors, they take people on they, on they cars, on they – The Russians with machine guns. And they took them to villages and they took them to villages and they left them. There were certain villages where they were designated where they took the wealthy people. And they couldn’t come back to Budapest. But thank God, thank God it never happened. Because that was again, again it was somebody had to tell them who are the wealthy people. And they were in very good friendship with everybody from the higher ups there. Because that was a borough, New Pest, where we lived. And like New York has five boroughs, the same thing Budapest has. And so they knew everybody and they were friends with everybody and so nobody told on them, so they weren’t taken away. Their business was taken away, but they didn’t. They weren’t taken away. What was done to them, they had to move together, the two families, in one apartment, because it was too big for two people. Gorgeous apartment. House. And they took away they apartment and they had to live together, the sister-in-laws and brother-in-law – two brothers. And they had to rent the upstairs apartment. They decided they’d take the first floor and the second floor, it was a doctor, a gynecologist with his family. But they didn’t take them out. And from that, that they take out many wealthy people, many wealthy people married non-Jews, but not non-Jews, but it wasn’t a match. Just only because those people were giving them stay, somewhere to stay. Because it is an example, my cousin, I have a second cousin in Budapest, my mother and her mother were sisters, cousins. I’m sorry, first cousins. And she is the only one who survived from that family, nobody. She had two uncles and the grandmothers were sisters, my grandmother and her grandmother were sisters and that’s how the mothers were first cousins, my mother and her mother. And she was an only child and the only survivor. She survived. Her parents put her in a factory. I didn’t tell you all that? I don’t know. To a factory where they were making like General Electric. They were making light bulbs. It was a tungsten. It was a very well known company. I think, in fact, now after the war, they are together [INAUDIBLE] and General Electric. Something, I don’t know. But young girls, they worked there. And when they took her parents, she was working there and they slept there and everything. So they worked for the army and when they finished with the work, when the work was finished, they let them go. But they didn’t have where to go because they were, nobody was there already, we were all gone. And that’s, I think I, somewhere I said that story that she was hiding. One of her aunts had a maid and she recommended where to go, to a woman, who was non-Jewish and her husband was Jewish and he was in labor camp. And she had a house. And she took in about eight people, Jewish people. It was a doctor, she took my cousin and her boyfriend and I don’t know, about eight people. And she was hiding them. I told that story? Okay. So why did we say that?

DONAHUE: So, going back to the 1956 uprising…remembering the events of the uprising.

SZEKELY: …1956, okay. They came in with their tanks and they were horrible. They were raping girls, the soldiers, the Russian soldiers.

DONAHUE: Did you see that happening?

SZEKELY: No, no, but we were very worried, because we had a maid at that time. We were very close to her. And it was terrible. I remember that it was George’s birthday and he wanted a car. Before that he knew what he wants in the toy store and we went there and stood on line to get him the car. And the tanks were turned towards us. The end was so close to us. Every minute, or when we are standing for bread, the tanks were turned always to shoot us. It was terrible. Then one day, I don’t know what happened, what one day, they did it many times. But they were very close to us and they were shooting during the night. And we were in the apartment and basements were on the other side of the building, the basements and we had to run to the other side with the children. I had at that time my cousin’s, who was in Russia, his two daughters. They were with us because they went somewhere for vacation and it happened under the vacation. And they lived far, very far from us. They lived in Buda, what was very far from us and they couldn’t pick up the children. And they stayed with us, two little girls. We had to go to the basement because they were shelling in the backyard. Terrible. I don’t know how many nights we spent in the basement. When it stopped, when they already were in control – I don’t know how long it took them. It was a long time and they were in control. Then Austria opened the borders, their borders and people who lived close, they could just walk over to Austria. And thousands and thousands and mostly the peasants, because they were all farmlands around the border. They went all over to Austria and Austria they put up camps for them and America was sending money for them. We were far away, we couldn’t go, because we were four hundred miles away from the border in Budapest. So we couldn’t go. That story is in…how did I get out and the Russians. That’s it.

DONAHUE: I wanted to ask you – we’ll go on to Vienna and then talk about your journey to the United States. But I wanted to ask you whether you wanted to say anything about your husband and your relationship with him, because last time we talked you said he was a stranger to you and then all of sudden you met him after the war.

SZEKELY: He was a stranger to me in that way, but I knew him for three weeks, when he wanted to marry me. And then he couldn’t marry me because I was underage. And then they took him in labor camp. He was away and I don’t know, a few times he wrote me cards. But I didn’t know what’s going to happen, whether he stays with me whether he will wait for me. And he was four years in labor camp, so I didn’t know what’s going to happen. That’s why I say that I really didn’t know him. I told you about the other boy, whom I went with somebody for four years. So, I was very mixed up. I was very mixed up. I don’t know whether I fell in love with my husband right away. But my heart was broken when the other one find out and then wrote me a letter, why did I do it? If he would know that I need a name, he would marry me right away. And but it was late already, everything was arranged that he fell in love with me, my husband. He was seven years older and I knew he was very good looking. And I knew who was the family, first of all, because my aunt and his aunt were very good friends. So, I knew the family real well. I didn’t know what’s going to be and when I met him, you know, when I came back, I was terribly crying and he was crying, too. But he knew I’m alive. He knew, because he knew months ago already when they got the notice. But he was waiting for me. But I wasn’t sure whether he has somebody in between or not, though we got married. We were married in nineteen forty-four, February, when we got married. For two weeks we were together and that was that. And I was always, you know, afraid that they are going to take me still. I am married, but we went to a hotel, I remember on the marriage night. It was unbelievable. We went down to eat. It was in the city, a beautiful hotel. And everybody constantly was afraid that they are coming and asking for identification and that kind of a thing. It was horrible. So I said, let’s check out. I don’t want to stay here. We went back. We went back and we stayed with my grandmother. Then we stayed with Illika, too, with Illona. Illika is a, in Hungarian, I don’t know what it is in any language. If somebody has a name, they make it like softer. Illika is softer than Illona. You know? But that’s from Illona, so we called her Illika. And I was Millika, my name was Millie, I mean my nickname is Millie. Nobody knew me as Emilie, only in school and at work, but otherwise, the whole family and my friends….And then we came to America. I didn’t know that it’s an American name, too. And I never mentioned it. It was always Emilie and that was it. But my friends are still calling me Millie on the phone and my cousin and everybody is calling me. I have a cousin in Canada. My cousin who was eight years in Siberia, seven years, from forty-one to forty-eight. He has a son. And he escaped after fifty-six, they sent him, the parents. He went to University at that time already, two years as an engineer. He was, when he came back he was a communist. He wasn’t a communist, he was in the party and because of that, that he was in Russia and spoke already Russian, he got a very big job in the Ministry. He was, as an engineer. He knew that he never can come to America, because he was in the Communist Party. So when it was finished, the Communism, I mean when they opened the borders, he sent his son alone to Vienna. But he had to go to Israel, because the plan was that the parents are going to come after him to Israel. They knew that he cannot come to America. We weren’t here. He went alone to Israel, but the mother had a lot of friends, his mother and he stayed with the friends. And he went to the Israeli Army and he was an officer, too. And the parents went after him, they got passport. Parents and two sisters, who were born after he came home, the two sisters. But he escaped with his mother’s mother, grandmother, grandfather and he, they escaped the middle of Budapest. I don’t know whether you heard about Wallendorch, that Swedish man? He was hiding them. He was from that group and his mother, his grandmother and his grandfather. Grandmother and grandfather died before they went to Israel. The grandmother went with them to Israel and she died in Israel. My cousin went with them. I mean of course he went with them. He died in Israel. And it is very interesting that his father was in the First World War and he got, he was in Siberia, too, his father. And he got a nerve disease, nerves. It was terrible. I remember him very well. That was my mother’s sister’s husband. And he got the same disease in Israel. He was a young man. He was sixty, sixty-two when he died. And he got a job as an engineer, but in a different field. It was a [INAUDIBLE] factory where he was in engineering, like making colognes and that kind of, you know? Entirely different. But they were okay. Her father gave a lot of money to Israel, so they were okay in Israel. The two sisters, my cousin’s two sisters were in Israel, the two sisters. And the mother, she was here. When she was seventy-five years old, she came to Canada and she came to me here and it was winter and she said, oh, I love to see the snow. I never snow since I am in Israel. It was a big snow when she was here. And she spent her seventy-fifth birthday here. And two years later she died. She had diabetes and she didn’t take care of herself. She ate everything in the world, but she lived well. I spoke to her daughter and she said, that’s the only thing, we are happy that she lived well.

DONAHUE: Let’s go back, because we got off the subject, you were talking about your relationship with your husband.

SZEKELY: So again. So, I wasn’t, when I came back. I said, this was a long, long time. I don’t know, maybe he find somebody. I don’t know. I was two weeks his wife, that was it. I got back. I met him before they came, before they took us, he came to the ghetto. I told you that. But it was just that, nothing just that. [LAUGHING] And then he left the ghetto and five minutes later we were surrounded. But he was telling me that don’t let you take them to the wagons. I didn’t know what he’s talking about. He saw it on the way from Romania, of course, Romania, it was near the border there where they were. What they are doing, they putting people….When the wagons came, I remembered his words, I says, don’t let you put yourself – does he know that there are guns involved here? He didn’t know that it was done with machine guns. But he told me that you are going to get a Christian birth certificate and you come with me. It was true, everything. I told you that I find the birth certificate here. I didn’t know about it. Last time he was in Hungary he brought everything. His sister was very sick for ten years, but her son-in-law is a doctor and he kept her alive. Because he was telling me when we were there, if not me then she wouldn’t be alive anymore. Because the daughter was always hysterical and even from meetings she called him. He was in a hospital like here, Walter Reed. He was there, a pathologist, under the Communism. So, he had a big job. And she called him, right away come and give mother injections, it is the end. And I was there when she did it. And he right away left everything and gave her injections. I think that she had liver cancer, that’s what I think. Because she had diabetes, diabetes, I don’t know whether it comes for me than. That’s family [INAUDIBLE] My father’s sister had diabetes in Russia. So it was in the family. I always forgot about it and when they were asking me, did anybody have it in the family. And I always say, I don’t know, they were killed when they were forty-five years old. And I know my grandmother didn’t have it. I know the other sister didn’t have it. At that time I probably , I didn’t know it, that his sister had it, because she was writing, my father always to his sister. And he translated the letters to us, but I didn’t think about it, you know, that she had it. And now he was telling me, my cousin, that she had even a leg amputated because of diabetes. So it is in my family. But I don’t know whether I got it. I don’t know because it was really, I had such a good doctor for twenty-seven years and he never said that diabetes. Only my periodontist always said that I had diabetes because of my gums. It was always, he said, what are they talking about? You have diabetes. And he always said, no, you don’t have diabetes, it’s just elevated because of the medications what you are taking. Here the urologist was arguing with me, that I don’t have – I had urinary tract infection. And he said, you don’t have diabetes. What are they talking about? Because it’s not in your urine. Would you believe that? Well, anyway. Then when we lived in Eger and we started to know each other. [LAUGHING] And right away I got pregnant, a month later I got pregnant. We got very close and he was a very, very good man. Very good. He had such a heart. He was so good. He never said, like George, he never said nothing bad about nobody. And he tried to help people and he was a person like, he worked in a hospital. Even in the [INAUDIBLE] they don’t care about the blacks. He shook hands with the elevator man or whatever. You know? He was unbelievable good. Unbelievable. And when he retired, even before he retired, he went without me to Hungary, because I right away had four weeks vacation with the hospital. And when he retired, he went every year back to Hungary to see his sister. But the main thing to see the children’s grave. And one day I told him, listen Frank, you see I am the mother. You think I don’t think about them? I says, you go only to the stones. You must realize it that you go only to the stones. He says, yes, but at least I can fix up the letters if they are not in shape. They are not buried separate. They are buried with my Uncle Joseph, in the same day, the two little kids. And then that was the reason that he has an only sister and she’s very sick. And then when he was very sick, he had a terrible heart attack in eighty-one and in eighty-two, seventeen months he lived. And in between that he went to Hungary. I said to the doctor, what shall I tell him, that he cannot go? He says, no, he can go, but he cannot go around nowhere else, just to Hungary. And he’ll be all right there because his nephew is a doctor and he will be very safe there. And I called him every week on the phone. He said, I’m fine, I’m fine. Three quarters of his heart was gone. I am fine, he said. And I always gave the report to the doctor. And he said, he’s fine because probably he sees sicker people around him and then he has the nephew there. And that was the reason, because when he came back in July, end of June. Every July we were in the country for Illona’s, Illona was born July 3rd and I left every vacation for that. We went to the country house and he came back before that and he came with us and he was fine. We wanted to go, all of us, to Canada after. It’s not close, but it’s on the same highway to go to Toronto, where it’s close, like a company house. It was a long ride, but still it was – I don’t know about four or five hundred miles, to Niagara Falls. We wanted to, all of us go and he said, you know what? I came from a long trip, now I go home myself. I drive home myself. And you go with them. Illona was pregnant with Anna. And he was so happy, because he always wanted a lot of children. He was crazy for children. And George was an only child, because the two others died. And he always, he was very happy. He loved them so much. There’s a nice picture from them before he left. That was only Jacob and Illona. And he [INAUDIBLE] No. No, because George took him to the airport. It was before he left. He died in eighty-two. While we were in Canada, he got sick and he went himself to the hospital. They took him in intensive care, coronary care. I don’t even know, but I called him when he was already home. And he said bring a present to so and so. I said, why? He said because he help me. I was in the hospital. So right away I packed and I went back. And in August he died. I wasn’t even around. You know that story. It was terrible. He was so good. And he was so worried about me, because when I was sick, he didn’t get undressed. He was….the whole….Because I had two heart attacks, in sixty-seven and in seventy. So, it was always me they were worried about. So, he was always, he didn’t get undressed and he was….Unbelievable nurse. You know? He was very, very good. And with the children, everything that they want, every vacation they were always for those two children, because they lived upstairs. They lived in the same house. He loved them. He loved George. He was very upset that he’s an artist, because he thought that, he always the Hungarian artist, and he was always telling them, you know how the artist are living? They are going barefoot because they don’t have money for they…[LAUGHING] He was always worried. But when he said don’t worry, I am going to teach them. He was very happy and he was always the first one whom George called. And I got tenure, I got even no, he wasn’t alive when he got full professor, only when he got tenure. He was alive. And he was very happy with every exhibition, though he didn’t like his paintings. But he said he loves it, because he went from that kind of a, ultra modern. But he was supporting him. And that was everything for him, George was always saying. That’s why we bought the house there, that he should have a studio. But he always said to him if you want to be a real artist, don’t get married. He didn’t have no one else but us, that was a family, so he wanted a family. So he got married and he loves his children. He’s a very good father and he’s very good to me, unbelievable good. And nobody can understand it.

DONAHUE: Why is that?

SZEKELY: His wife cannot understand it. And I, I….Because they don’t know what it is….We went to ask the psychiatrist, because she was very jealous of his love towards me. She cannot, she cannot understand it that somebody can love two people differently. And the psychiatrist explained it to me. She would never understand it, because she never get along with her mother. She loved her father and the minute her father died, she left home. So, she would never understand it. So, I said to him, so I am here, why I am here. You won’t understand me either. It was an Italian guy. What is it to be in the world alone? Two of us, nobody, no family, just two of us. Would you understand that? So he says, I didn’t know that, she didn’t tell that. The trouble was, I walked in – he said to walk in. I was in wheelchair because I fell on the steps here. In the wheelchair I was forced to go to the psychiatrist. And he said to me, when I walked in, he says, when we went together and separate. And he says, how many times your son called you when you were in New York? I says, that’s the complaint? I says, if you are a good son, that’s how I talked to him, and your father would die and your mother is alone in the world, you wouldn’t call her every night? And I paid the telephone bills. So, that she was complaining that he’s calling me every night when his father died. And it was something, [INAUDIBLE] and Illona, which I thank God, he always told me, you can always talk to Illona. He loved Illona. Jacob was very little. He loved Jacob, but Illona was six. Eighty-two and she was born seventy-six. She was six years old. Illona was already a bigger girl. And she always said, you always can count on Illona. And I must tell you he was always teaching me if he dies, what is going to happen and how much I should [INAUDIBLE] I said, Frank, please don’t talk about that. He says, I know I am going to die when I am sixty-nine. I says, what are you talking about? He says, because my uncle came home from hunting, he was fine, too. And he dropped dead when he was sixty-nine. And he had a heart attack. And so every night, I didn’t sleep many nights with him, every night he got shaved. He got dressed. And he was sleeping in that chair. He was always prepared that he has to go to the hospital or something, after the heart attack. It was terrible. And he was always teaching me what to do and how to do it. And I leave you enough, he said, that you can live like a princess if you want to, but if you want to live….

END OF TAPE 20.U.4d, EMILIE SZEKELY, SIDE B