By Chance Alone Read online

  CHAPTER 2

  Summers on the Farm

  My mother’s family lived approximately two hundred kilometres away in a small farming community called Kolbašov, near the large city of Michalovce. Grandmother Friedman and my two unmarried uncles, Herman and Pavel, ran the large family farm, where they produced corn, grain, and flax. They had a herd of milk cows, sheep, and goats, as well as several teams of horses that they used for tilling, hauling, and other kinds of work. This was a very enterprising farm with many young people hired to help out. At sunrise the cattle were taken out to the various pastures to graze, and they were brought back at noon and again in the evening to be milked by hand into pails. The farmhands processed the milk in separators for skimmed milk and butter. They made cheeses from sheep and goat milk. At the end of the day, the teams of horses were also returned from the fields, unharnessed, groomed, and freed to take a run to the water trough.

  My first extended visit to the farm was in 1935, when I was six years old. I spent the entire summer there that year, almost two months. I returned again in the summers of 1936, 1937, and 1938. Summer holidays at the farm were a time of freedom, with no public school or Hebrew school. I felt so unconstrained. Many of my cousins from nearby towns came for the summers as well, and we were a happy group of eight or ten children. I was particularly attached to two older cousins, Edith and Lily Burger. Another cousin, Laly Friedman, was allowed to saddle his horse and ride at any time, whereas I could ride only in front of my uncle on his saddle.

  We children had so much to occupy our minds. We used to visit the newborn calves, putting our hands in their mouths and letting them suck our fingers with their toothless gums. We picked wild strawberries in the fields. Uncle Herman and Uncle Pavel were very busy running the farm, but they always managed to find some time for us. We were given the task of taking the sheep and goats to pasture. Trying to keep them all together was a challenge, especially when the goats wandered off, climbing ever higher on the hillside. I loved it when my uncles took me on their saddles and galloped off to faraway fields to see how the harvesting work was progressing.

  At the end of each long day of activities, we children were dirty and dead tired, and we were allowed to go to a nearby mountain stream to splash around and wash. The water was freezing cold.

  The first summer, I met a local boy my age, and every year we spent time together exploring the wider area. One day we found a cemetery that was overgrown by trees, and he told me there were ghosts there that came out every night. I was scared, but we dared each other to go inside. Neither of us was able to muster enough courage alone, so we went in together. In the middle of the cemetery, there was a large pear tree loaded with huge fruit. We could not reach them, so we found some stones and pelted the branches to shake a few loose. The pears were sweet and juicy, and I really enjoyed them. We had all kinds of fruit in our orchards at home, but the fruit from someone else’s garden always tasted better. We revisited this cemetery quite often.

  My last trip to the farm was in the summer of 1938, when I was nine years old. My visit was interrupted midsummer when my uncle Herman abruptly took me to the railway station and sent me back home. Czechoslovakia was under threat of invasion by Nazi Germany and the situation had become unstable. I never saw my mother’s family again. At nine, I didn’t fully understand what was taking place, but I noticed the rising tensions in my hometown. Since we lived so near to Hungary, the streets had to be patrolled at night and the Czechoslovakian army was moved up to reinforce the border. As children, we were excited to see the soldiers with all their equipment, and we didn’t realize the dangers looming ahead.

  CHAPTER 3

  Big Changes

  Czechoslovakia was established as a democracy under the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Its population was made up of four ethnic groups: the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Hungarians, and the Sudeten Germans. The official languages were Czech and Slovak, but each ethno-regional group spoke its own language (including German or Hungarian in some regions). We lived in the eastern part of the country and spoke Hungarian at home and Slovak at school. We revered Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the president of Czechoslovakia from 1919 to 1935. When he died in 1937, an era died with him. In particular, the Jewish people lost a president under whose leadership they’d flourished for seventeen golden years.

  Not long after Masaryk’s death, civil disobedience erupted in the Sudeten part of the country, which shared a border with Nazi Germany. Hitler capitalized on this civil strife and used it to wrest the Sudetenland away from Czechoslovakia. In 1938, he summoned the leaders of Britain, France, and Italy to the Munich Conference to make the German annexation of the Sudetenland a reality. Our own president, Edvard Beneš, was excluded from the meeting, so the fate of the territory was decided without his input and in contravention of the Versailles Treaty, which said that Great Britain, France, and Italy would come to the aid of Czechoslovakia if its neighbours threatened it. But Hitler had threatened war unless they agreed to allow Germany to annex the region, and so they acquiesced. It was ironic that two democracies, Britain and France, signed away a fellow democratic country to appease a dictator. The country’s fate was decided by the stroke of a pen. Not a single bullet was fired during the partition, yet it opened the floodgates to the Second World War.

  Upon his arrival back in Britain, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved the agreement he had signed with Hitler and the other leaders and declared it to be a guarantee of “peace for our time.” He wrote in his diary that he had no intention of going to war for a faraway country whose name he could not even pronounce. The French did not realize that they had signed away their eastern defences, and there was champagne flowing in Paris to celebrate peace with Nazi Germany. Six months later, on March 15, 1939, German troops crossed the Czechoslovakian border and took control of Prague. Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, and the country was partitioned into three regions: Bohemia and Moravia became the protectorate of the German Reich, overseen by Hitler’s deputy Reinhard Heydrich; the fascist autonomous state of Slovakia was created under the leadership of a Roman Catholic priest, Dr. Jozef Tiso; and the eastern part of the country, inhabited by Hungarian-speaking people, was given to Hungary under the fascist leadership of Regent Miklós Horthy. The Czechoslovakian Jewish population was left with a deep sense of dread.

  One day in 1938, about ten of my father’s friends came to our home to listen to a major speech by Adolf Hitler on my father’s crystal radio. All of us understood basic German, and I heard Hitler’s poisonous words pouring out of the box. At one point he said, “Wir werden die Juden ausradieren” (We are going to eradicate all the Jews of Europe). My father and his friends appeared shocked by this statement, and I felt in my gut that something terrible was going to happen.

  Indeed, life as we knew it was about to change in ways we could not have imagined. In March 1939, when I was ten, the Slovak bureaucracy in our town was dismantled and the Hungarian fascists took over. We were taught to sing the Hungarian national anthem in readiness for the new regime. There was no school to attend because the Slovakian teachers had left, and the people of the town prepared to greet the new authority by erecting a large victory gate with a sign that read “Welcome, our Hungarian liberators.” The flag of Hungary and ribbons of red, white, and green were displayed throughout the streets and on homes. We Jews could not foresee what these changes meant for us, and as a child, I was unaware of the deeper dangers until some days after the Hungarian troops arrived, bringing with them an overt ideology of anti-Semitism.

  For Jews like us, allegiance to this new regime meant that we had to succumb to a fascist ideology that was alien and unfriendly. Yet we had to find ways to ingratiate ourselves to this change. My grandfather, for example, took me up to the attic, where he stored his old officer’s cavalry uniform from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We cleaned the clothes, brushed and polished the boots, and attached all his medals. He presented quite a figure to me in this uniform. All Jew
ish veterans who’d fought in the First World War on the side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire gathered in their uniforms in front of the welcoming gate to show their old Hungarian stance. I was too young at the time to understand the significance of what was going on. I saw the Jewish adults in our town trying to adapt themselves to the new reality, but they hid their deepest fears as they suddenly found themselves thrust into a hostile fascist system, knowing their vulnerability as Jews.

  After several hours of waiting in the centre of town, we received word of the arrival of the Hungarian troops. In the distance, we observed a column of soldiers, led by an officer on his horse, slowly marching toward us. I looked at the soldiers as they passed and was not impressed by their appearance. Their uniforms were dirty and full of patches—no comparison to the Czechoslovakian army, which was always so well outfitted. A cry went up from the crowd, and everyone sang the Hungarian anthem as the military column marched into the town square. There, the welcoming committee officially handed over our town from Czechoslovakia to the new Hungarian administration. The ceremony ended, and the soldiers were dismissed and allowed to wander throughout the town. They headed to the pubs, where townspeople gave them food and other provisions. My father’s establishment, the Cellar, had a big sign that read “Free drinks to our liberators.” In a span of approximately two days, my father’s inventory was exhausted and he could not afford to continue with this largesse.

  Hungarian soldiers were posted as guards on several roads coming into the town as if we lived in a war zone. I experienced my first encounter with Jew-hatred under Hungarian rule when I crossed into town over the railway tracks and was stopped by a guard who recognized my cap as Jewish. He yelled at me, “You dirty Jew, where are you going? You should take off your cap when you see me!” When I told my father of this encounter, he prepared little bottles of schnapps for me to give to guards as I entered their posts, which allowed me to reach my destinations unharassed from that point forward.

  With the new administration, our town was suddenly flooded by shoppers from Hungary. They came on bicycles, by horse and buggy, or on foot to buy yard goods, hardware, shoes, and anything else that they had not seen in a long period of time. I felt overwhelmed by all these strangers buying up everything they could find. Soon after, the gendarmes (police) arrived, along with new teachers and bureaucrats, and our town became the seat of the province of Abaúj-Szántó. The new currency was the Hungarian pengö, which replaced the Czech corona.

  School started and we met our new Hungarian teachers. They taught us in Hungarian, and Slovak was no longer officially spoken in our region. Jewish businesses and stores operated as best they could, but the shopkeepers could not replace goods that sold out because the sources were now across the border in the Nazi protectorate. Amid all these changes, we suddenly realized that my mother’s family now lived in fascist Slovakia and we were in fascist Hungary. We could communicate by post, but we could not travel across the border, which meant my summer holidays with my grandmother, uncles, and cousins were now only a memory.

  With all these changes, we Jews felt ostracized, and ugly Jew-hatred started to surface in many ways: name-calling, fights with other kids, and newspapers filled with propaganda about Jews coming to Hungary from the east (Ukraine). Eastern Jews were depicted as having hooked noses and beards, wearing dirty black garb, and coming in hordes to endanger the lives of local populations. One story, entitled “Tarnopolbol Indult El” (He started out from Tarnopol), was meant to convince the Hungarian population that Jews were threats to be wary of. Repeated enough times, lies become a “truth” that people believe. Even I was confused and ashamed by the characterization because it was so oppressive, one-sided, and dehumanizing. I did not want to be singled out in such a negative way. I tried to insulate myself from the horrible, hurtful rhetoric, but it was a constant daily burden.

  In hindsight, I see how negative pressures were continually assaulting us in our daily lives, and we had to get accustomed to living with this adversity. The Jewish community tried to maintain hope that this persecution would pass with time, and we came together to make life bearable in spite of the hardships. It was the parents who dealt with many of the new stresses, but at least our family was still intact. It was still only 1939, and we had many unknown and unthinkable obstacles ahead of us. But we could live only one day at a time, and each of those days carried more than its share of hardship.

  CHAPTER 4

  Life under Hungarian Rule

  The Hungarian bureaucracy was in full control of the town’s offices when I started grade 5 in September 1939. All boys were required to wear a navy cap with the Hungarian emblem on it, and to salute any military officers and teachers we met on the street. The new Hungarian teachers were noticeably stricter, especially with Jewish students. I felt additional pressure, not only because I was Jewish but because I had an attention deficit disorder and became easily bored with subjects in which I struggled, such as mathematics and grammar. I liked geography, history, and art, and while I loved music, I could not get the hang of reading music notation.

  During teacher changeovers, we often let off steam by throwing crayons, sponges, and other things around the classroom. Of course, this behaviour was always noted and reported by the next teacher. As punishment, we were handed over to the physical education teacher after classes and ordered to do hundreds of leapfrogs and push-ups in the schoolyard. Those of us who could not keep up were beaten with a stick.

  My family in 1940: Alfred (left), my mother, me, my father, and Eugene.

  In 1940, the government posted more edicts in town specifically targeting the Jewish community. Jews were no longer allowed to use radios, and we were ordered to take our crystal sets to town hall and relinquish them. Without radios, we were cut off from the outside world and we could receive our news only from government-censored newspapers. An edict that particularly affected my family barred Jews from selling alcohol and tobacco. My father lost his main source of income when his business was confiscated without any compensation and all his merchandise was handed over to the authorities, along with the key to his establishment. Another oppressive edict decreed that all Jewish families be photographed by the police, and we were certain those photographs were then used as a surveillance tool. At school, we had weekly cadet drills with a military officer. Jewish students were always placed at the end of the column and made to carry shovels and rakes, while non-Jewish students carried wooden guns at the front. Upon arrival at the shooting range, the Jewish students had to clean, rake, and shovel the area while the others performed drills with their wooden guns. Marching through the town, I was acutely aware of being a second-class citizen, and I dreaded this humiliating weekly session at school.

  In 1941, all Jewish males from ages eighteen to forty-five, married and single, were sent away to labour battalions. My father, my uncle, and all the others were taken to work in mines, forests, and military installations on the Eastern Front. They had to pack a backpack with winter clothes and boots, and they paid their own fare to their designated postings, leaving their families to fend for themselves. This, of course, was a physical and economic hardship for the entire Jewish community, including my mother, my grandparents, and all the children. Suddenly, my mother was the single parent of three children, and she did her best to meet all the demands on her and hide her worries from us. We children also had to pitch in and do work that was normally done by adults. The whole Jewish community had to support the needs of its members and provide the necessities of life, particularly for destitute families. Our Hebrew classes ended when our teacher was also taken away to the labour battalions.

  The men in the labour battalions were not compensated for their work, and they were given only a one-week furlough once a year. When they arrived home for that visit, it was a huge event. And when they had to leave again, it was a very sad goodbye. To send them on their way, every household was busy for days, preparing food and provisions to help sustain the men while they we
re gone. With my father and uncle away, my grandfather was in charge of the daily grind and morale in my home. The gaping absence of our men particularly struck me during Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) when there were only old people, women, and children at the synagogue.

  Another crucial edict forbade Jewish people from employing non-Jews, which meant that Anna, our household helper, could not be with us anymore. When she refused to leave us, the gendarmes came to remove her forcibly from our home. Anti-Semitism reared its ugly head again when the Jewish population was blamed for the wounded soldiers who came back (some with missing limbs) from the Russian front in late 1941 and early 1942. Jews were held responsible because Hungarians claimed that all the Russian communists were Jewish.

  In the spring of 1942, we received word by telegram that all the members of the Friedman family, my mother’s relatives, had been deported from Slovakia to an unknown destination. We had no way to communicate with them or find out where they were. My mother was devastated, and I thought of all the time I had spent with them during my summer holidays, especially my two cousins, Edith and Lily, who were close to my age. It was unthinkable that people could simply be removed from their homes and were suddenly gone, disappeared. I could tell from my mother’s demeanour that this news weighed heavily on her and filled her with worry. She had no idea what had happened to her own mother, her brothers, or her three sisters and their families.

  One day, months after their deportation, we received a postcard that read, “We, the Friedman family, are all here together. We are working on farms and we are awaiting your arrival. (signed) The Friedman family.” Other families in our town received similar cards, which were printed with a big German eagle and a stamp that said “General Government Lublin District,” the new name of the German-occupied area of Poland. While the postcards may have provoked suspicion in some members of the community, they gave me a deep sense of relief. I felt hopeful to learn that my relatives were alive months after they had disappeared.