Description: Remembering a family who has its roots in the Hungarian/German Jewish Communities.
The Holocaust wasn't spoken about much around the house. My parents wanted to protect me and my brother. I knew my mother had been in Auschwitz and my father in a Labor Camp. There was my cousin Thomas who had been murdered at Auschwitz when he was nine. And my father spoke about seeing his mother and sister for the last time at a train station.
Dad's side of the family was from a small town in Hungary . The Hungarian Jews almost made it out of the War. But between May 1944 and July 1944, 435,000 Hungarian Jews were rounded up and shipped off to Auschwitz. Most of whom, including my Grandmother Sura , Aunt Izabella , and Cousin Thomas , were murdered upon arrival. D-Day was June 6, 1944. Germany surrendered less than a year later on May 7, 1945. So close.
My mother was born, raised, and lived in Leipzig, Germany. In October 1938, at the age of 21, she was arrested by the Nazis and deported to Poland along with my grandmother and 17,000 other Polish Jews . At 23, Mom was housed in the Krakow Ghetto. At 24, sent to Międzyrzec Podlaska . When she was 26, Auschwitz became her hell. Then came Wilischthal Flossenbürg.