RelatioNet GY BL 28 CS HU

GYONGYI BLUME

Holocaust Project Katzanelson High-School

Kfar-Saba, ISRAEL

Mail: Lielf1999@gmail.com

Galmenachem98@walla.com

relationet2014@gmail.com

First name: Margalit

SharonLast name:

GyongyiPrevious name:

1928 Date of birth:

Csány City of birth:
Country of birth: Hungary

Csány

Csány, Hungary
Budapest

Because we couldn’t find information about the town Csány, we wrote about

.the nearest town to it

.Budapest is located approximately 70 kilometers from Csány

Budapest is the capital and the largest city of Hungary. Approximately 300,000 Hungarian soldiers and more than 600,000 civilians died during World War II, among them at least 450,000 Jews. Many cities were damaged, most notably the capital of Budapest. Most Jews in Hungary were protected from deportation to German extermination camps for the first few years of the war. Despite being protected, they were subject to a series of anti-Jewish laws which imposed limitations on Jewish participation in Hungary's public and economic life. Immediately after the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, Jews and Roma were deported to

the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Interview with Margalit

Margalit was born in 1928. Before the war, she had a big family: a 44 year old mother, father, and 6 brothers and sisters aged 2, 17, 18, 13, and 10.By the time the war started, she was 15.5 years old. In the village they lived, there were 6 Jewish families. All the rest were non-Jewish.Her family was rich and established. Her grandfather was a religious person, but he didn't force other people to go this way .He had a lot of horses and cows, and their status was considered high.They studied 'Torah' privately, because the school didn't allow Jewish studiesThe 'Sonderkommando' took Margalit's father to forced labor camp for a couple of months, and after he came back, the Germans took him and the whole village to the trains and asked each person to take a small suitcase. Margalit took her dolls. The conditions on the trains were very bad they didn't have any food and it was overcrowded.They arrived to the 'Ghetto' that was located inside a town, and they were divided to houses. The non-Jewish people who were living at this place didn't agree that the Jews would stay there, because it started to be crowded and smelled badly. Therefore, they were taken to 'Nirshpusten'. Then they were still all togetherMargalit had to do everything she was asked for. One day one soldier asked her if she wanted to leave her family at night and escape to the forest, where she would be safe and no one would find her. He warned her that the Jews were going to destruction. She told this to her parents and to her grandfather, who told her to go, thinking maybe she would be able to help them from the outside. But she couldn’t leave her mother because they were very connected. She told them that what would happen to them, would happen to her too. Nowadays, she says that she is glad for making this decision, because she would never have forgiven herself. If she hadn't stayed with them, she wouldn’t have known what happened to them.

Margalit's father

Margalit's mother

Margalit's little brother

Margalit's brother

Margalit's sister

Because her grandfather was religious, he lay phylacteries (tefillin). A soldier from the 'Sonderkommando' saw him, and suspected him of being a spy because of how 'tefillin' looked. So he took all the people who were at the 'Ghetto' outside, where the grandfather was hanged for 2 hours with his legs up. Everyone had to watch it. There were thousands.

One day, they got an order that all the Jews had to leave on trains and not take anything with them. They didn’t have what to take anyway.

The wagon was a closed place without windows and airing, and they didn’t get food or water. Most of them fainted because there wasn’t a place to sit or lie down. They were standing very close like beasts. They didn’t know where they were going.

After 3 days, the train stopped and the doors opened. They were at the camp before 'Auschwitz', it looked like a very nice place with kids running and playing around so her mother told her ' There is no reason to worry, this not as bad as we thought it would be.

They were the last transport from Hungary. When they got down from the wagons, the Germans put them in rows. They wore clothes with strips, and they were asked to stand with their family. There was a Jewish worker who ran to Margalit and told her to say that she was 16 years old and stand near her sister. He was forbidden to say this to her.

Then they were asked to go separately. Her mother told the family that Margalit's father would go with the boys, she would go with the baby and their 2 little children and Margalit would go with her older sister.

Then came a German soldier that looked very official. He was Eichmann (at that time, they didn’t know who he was). He asked her sister how old she was, she told him 19.

So he told her and Margalit to go on one way and to her parents to another way. Her mother told her they would meet in the evening.

She had never seen her parents again. Margalit and her sister were taken to a place where there the Germans cut their hair (Margalit had long braids).

Everyone was bald. They couldn’t recognize anyone, but by calling each other's names. There was a lot of mess and crying. The Germans took the babies and the children from their mothers. But after a couple days without any food or water, they were so tired that they weren’t able to understand what was happening to them. Then they were divided up into blocks. Each block included bunk beds, and each bed was specified for 8 people (each floor).

They were all pressed together, so if one person needed to move, everyone had to move too. Each person got a square (of bread). However they didn’t understand what it was, so they used it instead of a pillow. In the morning they woke up, and saw it was stolen.

It was already 4 days without food and water, the only water they found was unclean water.

Then it all started. There were people who were called 'Blockstreets'. Their block was called 'The Block'. There were managers (beautiful women from Slovakia) who ran the whole business. Every night, they met with men from the 'S.S'.

In Slovakia, like in Poland, the Germans started to take people younger than 4 years. The people from Slovakia hated the Jews, and they did not care what they were going through. They hated the Jews because they have been through the same things, and the Jews didn’t do anything about it.

But in fact, they didn’t know about what was happening to the people from Slovakia, they didn’t have radios or newspapers, they didn’t even know what was happening in their country, so how could they have known what was happening in other countries?

In Auschwitz they got bread to eat. This bread was poisoned. It caused memory problems, and disruptions in body process.

At that time, the days were very hot, and the girls were asked to stand in rows without moving. If they were moving they were hit. A lot of girls fainted, and the German soldiers took them to some place, and they didn’t see them again.

Margalit was very strong, because she was an athlete before. She had a brother who was 1.5 years old older than her, so every sport he was doing she did too.

Her sister who stayed with her during the war was beautiful. Before the war she was photographed all the time, and she was kind of a lady compared to Margalit who was a tom boy. Before they were separated, Margalit's mother asked her to watch her sister, but her sister was acting like a lady. The Germans said that she wasn’t listening to anything. As a result, she was beaten but it didn’t bother her. However, Margalit was listening and followed their orders

After being there 2-3 months, there were people who came and asked women with pretty hands for special work. Everyone wanted to go, because they thought something good was waiting for them there. One old woman told her that she recommended not to go to any place she was asked, because she was still a little girl. Those people took the girls to clean toilets- those were just holes. Whoever disagreed to do it, was hit.

For lunch, they received soup made of white sugar beet. It was their food for the whole day.

2 weeks later the block-tester managers said they needed 200 girls. They didn’t ask who wanted, but chose themselves, because there were a lot of girls. They chose Margalit, but they didn’t choose her sister. Margalit said that she wouldn't go anywhere without her sister, so they let her sister come too.

In that place, they had different clothes that didn’t fit anyone.

They were at the roads for 2 days, and after that they were returned.

They were standing in rows every morning and every evening.

During the day they were going to work in the forest (they built an airport- all the 200 girls, this airport still exists).

The forest had fruit trees, but the Germans told the girls that whoever would dare to eat them, would get 25 hits.

Her friend didn’t do anything wrong, nevertheless they took her to the basement, and she got 25 hits. She didn’t say anything about this since then.

In winter, when it was very cold and snowing, they needed to run naked to the showers. The girls who didn’t run fast enough, were hit. They had been there for 2 months, and got a bed, a plate and 2 meals per day.

The commanders who were watching the girls were peeling apples, and were throwing the peels to the girls who were fighting about it like beasts.

One morning, the commanders told the girls that they would be taken to the next place, because the airport was ready.

They were taken by trains to "Rabinzgut". It was the worst place on earth .They'd rather die than get there.

The soldiers who were there built up a tent that should contain 500 people, but instead they put there thousands. It was impossible to move. If one moved his hand, everyone had to move.

Diseases started there. They had all been very sick and skinny- you could see the bones through their skins.

They were put to work into factories that dried vegetables like onions.

But they weren’t allowed to put anything in their mouths.

People started to die there as a result of a disease called 'Tifus'.

They were taken to another factory (fixing airplanes). They were exhausted.

Then Margalit and 500 girls were taken to another camp, where they started to work.

One afternoon, when they came back from work, they heard a sound of 50 motorcycles. Those were S.S soldiers. They came into the girls block and asked each girl to open her legs, and then put a finger inside each one. It was sadism.

Then came an owner of a wool factory "Zilartel" and asked for 200 women. This was the fifth place they had been at.

He chose those one who looked human. He didn’t choose her sister so she started screaming and crying. Then he asked her why she was crying, and she said that she had a sister and that she went nowhere without her, so he chose her sister. They took care of her sister because she had wounds in her body. They got there food and clothes, they had a shower and felt as if God sent them a gift. Margalit was told that she needed to gain some weight because she was only 28 KG. They were there almost 2 months, and then they were asked to leave the camp, because the Russians got close. They started to go on foot for a few days, and at night they slept in fields. Whoever didn’t wake up in the morning was murdered. Suddenly, they noticed that the Germans started talking nicely to them "Don’t we treat you well?"

They didn’t dress up in S.S uniform anymore, and asked them not to tell anyone bad things they had done.

They arrived to Slovakia border, and then the Germans started to run away from the Russians. The girls arrived to a village and saw there bread carriage with hot bread- and jumped over it, some of them died, because it was very hot.

After this, people started to invite them to meals, but they realized it was better if they brought them the food outside not to catch diseases.

Then, they told them that they were free to go any place they wanted. But there wasn’t transportation. They didn’t know where to go.

They didn’t know where they were, they had never been in Slovakia.

One Jewish officer told them that the Russian soldiers didn’t see women for 2 years, so they would better run away.

Margalit and 50 girls of the 200 kept walking for more 2 weeks till they came to the Hungarian border.

They didn’t know where they were until they heard people talking in Hungarian, who told them they were the "Joint" (an organization who helped the Jewish).

They asked from each one to give an identification sign in order to prove they were Jewish. So Margalit and the girls knew the pray "Moda Ani", so they gave them food, and told them to find a way to get home, because there was no transformation. Suddenly, they saw a train covered by something, they got in because they heard that it went to Hungary.

They waited there, and the next day it began to move. And then the driver of the train felt something wrong, so he went to check and found them there. He asked Margalit where she was from, so she told him she was from "Csa'ny". And her name was "Blume Gyongyi".

The driver told her that her father was his friend, and that he was his officer in the camp. He released Margalit's father after he told him that he had 6 children.

The driver told Margalit and the girls to stay on the train because there were Roman officers outside looking for women. That was the way they got to Budapest. When they arrived to Budapest they had been taken to a Jewish camp, where Jewish families were looking for their family members.

A lot of the Jews who lived in Budapest didn’t survive the war.

Every day during a month and half they were going to the town because people started to come back from the war, and they hoped to see their family (they didn’t know they were murdered). After several months, her brother came back and told her he wanted to go to 'Palestine'. Their sister didn’t want to go with them, because she met a man who wanted to settle down with her. He asked Margalit to come with him, but she didn’t come. He went to a camp taking people to 'Palestine'. They hadn’t seen him since then. But they knew he was alive because they received a letter from Italy that he was in 'Cyprus'.

In 1949, they arrived to Israel; her brother was already a soldier. He settled down in Israel. He died at the age of 63 from lung cancer.

The doctors claimed that the cancer was as a result of the bread they had eaten in the camps (which contained mercury).

Her sister got married and came to Israel with both her children.

She had a trauma from what she had gone through during the war, so she was closed in the house because she was afraid of the Germans. She didn’t cut her nails, she was hospitalized at 'Geha'.

She died as a mentally exhausted soul.

One man from her town, knew her father, and told Margalit that he had died from hunger, and that all of her siblings and her mother were murdered in the crematoriums at Auschwitz.

She couldn’t come back to Germany after the war, but she came back to Frankfurt, and needed to see a doctor because she was very emotional.

Margalit has 3 children. One daughter named Mirav, she works at the T.V, one more daughter named Orna, she is a makeup artist, and a painting artist. Her son was an army officer, and he was sent to Singapore for air industry. Today Margalit has 8 grandchildren and 7 great- grandchildren. Her husband passed away at the age of 42 and she stayed alone to raise her 3 children.

Margalit worked through her whole life. Her goal was to build the country for her children and for the next generation. And to bring her children to success in life. She told her children "wherever you are, be the best that you can".

Today Margalit is 88 years old and she lives at "Gil Paz".

She has never taken advantage of being a Holocaust survivor in order to get pity. There were a lot of survivors that passed their pain and suffering to their children. She didn’t want to pass this on.

She raised her children to think that there aren’t bad people, everyone has something good inside himself.

Her children know everything she went through.

Every time she closes her eyes she feels at home. She loved her mother, and she misses her very much until today. Her dreams don’t leave her.

"If Hitler saw what a family I raised, he would be turning in his grave"

:Margalit in Israel