Óbuda
Óbuda was like a family. The Jewish community kept together, everyone knew each other. It’s not true that only wealthy Jews lived in Óbuda. Many of them were poor, as some of the families had a lot of children, like ours. My four siblings and I were brought up by my mother alone after the early death of my father. My brother, Richárd trained to be a goldsmith. In 1937 he went to Africa to join his cousin, where a number of family members, me and my husband included spent short and longer periods of time.
We didn’t have any relationship with Christians.
School
One of my best friends was Bözsi Braun. I also remember Margit Waldnann, Rózsi Burger, László Reisz. Bözsi Schön and Teri Schön were twins, and so were Klári Fried and Magda Fried.
Jenő Gümzer died at the concentration camp.
The Weisz family lived in the building in the school yard.
We were first graders, when the school director rabbi Ignác Schreiber was hit by a tram.
He became the first dead of the Bécsi Road Jewish cemetery. People carried his body on their shoulders to the cemetery.
Religion
Friday evenings and Saturdays we always went to the synagogue. We celebrated the Jewish festivals and the Sabbath. My mother spent the whole Friday cooking, and lit the candle in the evening. Unfortunately, we could not celebrate the seder night at our house, as my father died young, and I was 3 and a half years old. So we held it at my mum’s brother’s house, led by my uncle. They had two children, one of them is my age. Custom had it that on seder nights they hid away presents for the children. But only for their children, for me, the half-orphan they didn’t. I didn’t get anything. It is a sad memory, I can’t forget it.
Yello star
Wearing the yellow star was terrible. One day I went through the house with a passage through it in Kiskorona Street. A woman came with her 7-8 year-old daughter, and told her to spit on me, which the child did.
Discrimination, deportation, return home
At the time I could not find a job. In 1937 I was employed at the Goldberger Textile Factory, where I learned how to retouch textile photographs. After 5 April, 1944, when wearing the yellow star was compulsory, 18 women and a few intellectual men had to live at the factory until we were deported. There were mattresses on the floor with mice and rats around them. On 1 December, 1944 the national socialists came, and we had to be handed over to them. From there we were taken to the brick factory at the Bécsi Road. After a night, which is impossible to forget, at the Józsefváros railway station 70 people were locked into a wagon used for transporting cattle. On this day 3000 women were deported. We had no possibility for eating or going to the toilet. On the Hungarian border, we were put into another wagon were we could ease ourselves. We travelled for 14 days to Ravensbrück, where there were even more women. We sat on the ground for days waiting until we were given a huge room. Three people slept in one bed. Every night in the icy snow and in bad clothing we were counted. Nobody could escape, because the camp was protected with barbed wire with electricity in it. During the day we had to build a road. We hardly received any food, my condition turned very bad. Many starved to death. When the war was coming to an end, in the winter we were led into an open wagon. After that, following an approx. one week long walk, we went home with a friend of mine from the concentration camp, as there were no trains anywhere, the Germans destroyed everything. I arrived home, sick, on 28 May, 1945.
Anti-Semitism
When we went to the synagogue, we were often shouted at: “stinking Jew”. After we came back from the camps, the Jewish were told: more have returned than had gone.
The 93 year-old Margit Falk’s message to the Jewish youth of today
I wish for the Jewish youth of today a nicer and better future than the one I had, and don’t forget the events of 1944. Fight for the Jewish, so that there will never be persecution again.