My family, my mother's family, was a wealthy family and well-respected in their town.

However, they were in lumber.

And times weren't very good.

And this is in the '30s already.

And my father, on the other hand, was well-to-do, had lots of land in near Miskolc.

He had vineyards in Eger and my father was 17 years older than my mother.

And it was a match-made marriage.

My mother's family needed the money that they were losing.

My father's father died when my father was, he died in 1907, so he was six years old.

And my aunt, his sister was five, four.

And so my grandmother kept the land.

And my father was the inherited person.

And so he was well-to-do.

And so the match was made in 1939, February they got married.

My father adored her.

But my mother did not like him.

And as a child, I knew that.

She had a very tough childhood because she was ostracized by the Jewish community from where she was.

So when she went back with her mother as a baby, my mother never had a friend.

She had one friend.

I'm sorry.

But she never had anybody.

Why did they ostracize her?

Because her mother was a divorcee.

Her mother divorced.

I see.

She was.

And then my grandparents, my mother's grandparents raised her while my my grandmother, my her her own mother went and took care of ill aunts and uncles and went to Italy and went to the mountains in Katra and so on.

So there was a lot more to my mother than the Holocaust.

The Germans wanted all the men in Hungary between 16 and 60 in the workforce, and they needed to go to workforce to to do their bidding.

They were there from six to nine months.

They would go back home for two to three months, but they would go back always to the same unit.

When the Germans came in, they immediately took over half of his land and was a marked man because he was a Jew and so on.

So mother really didn't enjoy much of the what she was hoping for.

In 1944, when I was born, my father was already out in the front.

By that time, they were using the same men who were in the work as human shields.

Where the Germans were against the Russians and they used the Hungarians as a shield front of them.

And the Germans, the Russians coming.

I mean, the Germans and the Russians were so who got in the middle, got killed.

My father was taken prisoner some time, and I'm not sure what date.

But it was it was sometime in '44 and my mother never heard from him again until '45, after the war.

My father was, that's when she found out that he was in jail.

I mean, a prisoner, not a jail.

And he survived because of his knowledge of how to take care of animals and how to cook.

Because in the Russian army, the rich people who were on the horses, they were used to having somebody take care of their animals.

And now they had all these prisoners, but they didn't know who can.

And my father shined because he was a he was a we had lots of horses.

We had those beautiful white horses that he raised from years and years.

And he knew how to take care of them.

He also knew, because he had a large farm, how to cook for the field hands, because apparently that's what you did in Hungary in that time.

So he became the cook and taking care of the animals.

And that's how he survived the war.

In the meantime, mother was already pregnant, not, my father not knowing that for sure.

And we lived in a small town called Onga.

That's a northern part of Hungary, very close to Miskolc, which is next biggest city.

Even when she was already pregnant with me, the Germans would come in and destroy her home.

You know where they were.

For example, they used her piano.

She was a she played piano.

They used the piano as a bathroom because they wanted to make sure no one can ever use it.

They couldn't move it out of the out of the house on the farm.

So they used it as a bathroom.

I do know that she was raped.

She knew her mother would be in Budapest taking care of her Aunt Szeren neni.

That's the lady who who was blind and she was helping, taking care of her.

So my grandmother was living up there already.

So my mother knew that she has a place to go and she will have help and family members, where on the farm she would have nobody.

Now, she can't go anywhere without papers.

And I was born in July, and this was sometime around May, June when she took this trip.

She hides in a wagon that has hay on it.

And she hides in there and they take her to the train station.

When she gets in the train station, she doesn't know how to get what to do, so she decides, I'll get on the train.

I'll get myself a seat, and when I hear that the man comes to collect the papers, because there would be police and so on coming, including Germans, who would be coming and checking your papers.

And my mother said, okay, when I hear that he's coming in, you, I mean, I even remember it because in Hungary, when you went on a train you could hear it two cars ahead when he's coming.

And so my mother decided, what I can do is I go to the bathroom, lock the door, and, you know, and when he when I hear that everything is clear, I go back to my seat.

And my mother sits down in the seat and nobody was there.

and she was very pleased with herself.

And the last moment, a young German officer, very high-ranking officer, from what Mother said, sat down next to her.

Now she says, okay, well, plan B, what can I do now?

Because plan A is not going to happen.

So she hears the guy coming down to get the tickets and all of a sudden she says, okay, I'm going to make pretend that I'm going to give birth.

I'm in labor.

Of course, the trains were running very slow.

The whole train ride today wouldn't take that long.

I mean, whole Hungary's not that long.

I mean, from Miskolc to Budapest would be maybe two, three hours, I would assume.

But then this in the war, it took like five, seven hours, something like that.

Because you had to if there was a train with Holocaust people who were going to Auschwitz, because that's where they were going, then you always gave right, right of way to them.

And so my mother started going into labor.

And so this gentleman who was actually a gentleman, was very concerned and started helping her.

So by the time the guys came to get the tickets, they looked at this high-ranking officer and said, oh, this must be his wife.

And they didn't ask for anything because this high-ranking officer outranked all of them.

And my mother was in labor for the rest of the trip.

And this is at the very beginning of the trip.

So for five to seven hours, she was in labor.

So when they got to the train station, this gentleman helped my mother off, got her a taxi, told the taxi driver, immediately take her to the first hospital because this woman is in labor and has been in labor for hours and just, you know, you know.

So there they went.

And when they were and of course, I have to tell you that my mother spoke German fluently because she went in her younger when she was going to school she went to school in Vienna and she became a Montessori teacher.

But again, so her communication with the this man was very natural.

And it was came out perfect for, you know, for the need.

So anyway my mother sits up in the car once the car was out of sight of the train station and says, hey, gentleman, just take me to [address] because that's where that's where I need to be going.

And he says, well, okay, fine.

In those days, a lot of the the Germans made sure that all the Jews lived in the same place as much as, you know.

We didn't have, we did have ghettos.

We had three, three different ghettos in Budapest.

One in Buda and two in one in Csepel, one in Pest.

But the rest of the Jews, because there were a lot of Jews in Hungary, lived in the starred homes.

Where there was a big yellow star placed upon certain buildings and all the Jews were made going to that building.

If you were not enough, if you were non-Jew, you had to move out and take the other apartments.

My Aunt Szeren neni, she lived in one of these apartment because her son designed.

He was the architect to this building.

And so he had the top floor, three, four huge rooms, a hallway, kitchen, maid's room and so on, which wasn't unusual in those days to have.

And my grandmother was there and a lot of people.

So there were about 30 to 30 to 30-some-odd people were already in that house.

So when my mother rang the bell and wanted to come in, everybody said, oh no.

And it wasn't just that it was one more person.

It was a baby.

Because my mother showed already that she's going to have a kid and they didn't want her.

But because this was my aunt's great, great-aunt's house, they didn't have a whole lot of choices.

And I mean, but that doesn't doesn't mean that they will be happy about this.

So my mother came and stayed there.

And when the time came in June that I'm going to actually be born, my grandmother took her to the hospital.

And she was going to have the baby.

And the baby was me.

And she's in the operating room ready to deliver.

And I'm just about crowning when they say, stop pushing.

Don't do anything.

Because there was a siren going off and it everybody go to the shelter.

So they told my mother, please get off the table, walk down to the basement.

She walked down to the basement.

And after a couple of hours, you know, the sound went off that now you go go back upstairs.

So they told my mother.

Well you, remember, this is war.

Elevators weren't weren't working.

Electricity was, you know.

So they had to walk upstairs.

So she walked upstairs and they told her, okay, now have the baby.

And I say, oh, no, this is very comfortable.

I already tried this once.

I'm not coming.

I'm staying right here in this warm, nice place.

And, and I wasn't coming.

And so they ended up doing a C-section.

And now this is not just any old C-section because you had no medication for a Jew.

You not even an aspirin.

Nothing.

Because you were Jewish.

You were, you you know, we have to save it for the Germans on the field, you know.

I mean, so I was born June 20, 1944.

My mother stayed in the hospital for several weeks because of the C-section, because of the complications and whatnot.

My grandmother met me.

I don't remember her.

But July 12th, according to my mother, she was.

My mother, the day before she begged her.

She had a feeling and she said, Mom, don't leave me.

I'm 26 years old.

I'm having this baby.

I don't know what to do.

Please stay and don't go.

And my grandmother said, no, I have to take care of your aunt.

And so she, she left.

And that morning, they took my grandmother on the 12th of July to Auschwitz, and she died there in the selection, the very first ones, because she had gray hair.

So mother was by herself.

My grandmother was in her early to mid-forties, but she had gray hair.

And for a matter of fact, it was so much my mother's mind that when I started getting gray, she immediately, you color your hair, you, you know, you can't, you know, because, you know, you never know, you know, you can't do that.

And so she was very conscious and she stayed, she had very little gray hair at 91, 94, when she died.

But it was just amazing that, you know, she was able to do that.

But for her, gray hair was the end of everything.

So eventually my mother was able to go out from there.

There came a group of people who were taken, being taken to the train station, because you have to remember, the Germans came early in the morning, like 2:00 3:00 in the morning, and they would yell out your yell out the family name, and then that everybody was to come and line up and go.

I mean, this is how my mother told me.

And so they were coming and there was some ruckus going on someplace else.

And the guards were not paying attention.

And so my mother slipped out of the line with me and she told me, that I kept telling you, please be quiet, Theresa, don't make a sound.

Don't make a sound.

And she said, you had big brown eyes.

And you looked at me and you looked so smart, like you understood everything I'm telling you.

Just don't make any sound.

And so she went under this bridge and stood there in the water until these poor other people left.

Now, the miracle of the whole thing is not one Jewish person made a move to follow her, gave her away.

Not one of them did anything to bring attention to the Germans that this woman is going to get away.

I mean, think about it.

That you see somebody sneaking out and you're going to your death or possible death.

But that's what happened.

And Mother stayed there for hours into the evening.

When she got out, she didn't know where she was exactly.

Remember, she just got to Budapest, so she really wasn't that familiar with the city yet.

So she went and she saw this convent.

She knocked on the door and the Mother Superior came to the door and said, can I help you?

And Mother said, well, could you please save my baby and help me out?

Obviously she was Jewish.

And so the Mother Superior said, well, you know, well, we can if if you promise that you will let us baptize the baby and you promise that you raise her Catholic, then we probably can help you out.

Even before my mother crossed the doorway, they baptized me first before we were let in.

But we were saved.

And my mother did keep her word.

I was raised Catholic.

I never knew that we were Jewish.

In the convent one thing that, you know, my mother's job was to clean clean the place.

She would be on her hands and knees and scrub the floors, number one.

Number two, she had to go to the Danube River and get water because the plumbing and things were.

I mean, this is, you know.

The problem with the getting the water was that the Germans.

Budapest is two cities, Buda and Pest.

And the Danube River is in the middle.

The banks, you had to go down on the banks to get this.

But the Germans loved to play target shooting.

And if they saw obviously, I mean you know, they had guns that had sights.

So they knew who they who they are shooting.

And they would shoot people down as they would go to the get water.

So there was a lot of blood right there.

So when you got down there to get the water, you had to clear it off to get the blood out before you get your bucket.

In the meantime, you might be one of the targets because you're taking time.

And mother went with another woman who was also being hidden.

And one of them would always go down and the other one stayed up and then they just carried the water.

However, this one time they targeted the woman who was up on top.

Killed her.

And so after that, my mother had to do that.

All the hauling.

As far as food, there wasn't very much.

I mean, whatever the nuns had, certainly weren't going to be sharing with the guests, for lack of better word.

So Mother, they had a iron stove, one of those round iron stoves, and Mother had a big pot of water and she put in there whatever she could find.

It was beans, lots of beans, potato peeling, apple peeling, apple cores, whatever.

All went into this pot and, you know, it was cooking all day and all night and all the time.

I know my mother told me one time that there was a horse killed and when they went out to get the water, they found it.

And so they took a piece of that meat and they put it that in there, too.

So so for a few days there was meat in there, but that was unusual.

And but like I said, Mother only said once that that happened.

But and then she would take that soup, that whatever it was and put it in a diaper and then I sucked on it.

Remember, she hasn't been eating I you know, so there was no milk.

So there was, you know, so the what I was eating is from whatever came out of the bottom of the pot and I sucked on it all day and all night.

I do know that she said I was about six, seven pounds, a normal baby born.

When I was nine months old in 1945, when we were liberated, I was about two and a half to three pounds.

I had a huge stomach because all the gas from the beans, I mean, you know, it's a baby.

So there wasn't much food.

Well, she well, she told me one story about that she went to a grocery store and she stole a jar of mustard.

And I didn't know, but according to Mom if she would lick, when she was really, really, really hungry and she couldn't take it, then she would take a lick of the mustard and that would settle her stomach so she wouldn't be in so much discomfort or pain.

But I know that that always she could never eat mustard.

She could never eat honey.

There are certain things that, you know, brought back too many memories.

Mustard was never in our home.

We lived in the attic.

And I know that she told me that in winter or whenever it rained, there was it was, you know, it had a square window.

But unfortunately, with the war going on, the glass broke.

And so you never were warm enough.

And in the summer, you were never cold enough.

Sometimes they had to she and the other person had to hide when the Germans came to the building.

So she had to go up on the roof, out that one little window and hide on the roof until they left the building.

But in the meantime, they had to be very careful not to be seen or heard.

And that they cannot even suspect because, again, that that would be punishable for the nuns also and for them, of course.

But they had to make sure that they weren't seen.

They weren't heard, you know.

She slept up there [on the roof].

But because, like I said, you never knew when they come back.

And so if they come back while she's sleeping, so they had to stay up there, you know, because they would I mean, the Germans would come in any time and they didn't have to give you warnings or any thing you know.

So it's it was again, it was day to day and night to night.

It's you didn't feel safe going down, but you didn't stay safe up there either, because you can't be seen.

And remember, these are all old-fashioned pitched roofs.

And she I mean, we didn't have roofs like we have flat roofs or anything that you can actually hide.

So no, that's yeah, that's what she had to do.

When we were liberated, Mother went to the Russian camp where the Russian soldiers were and there was a very nice soldier, young soldier.

And my mother showed showed him what I looked like.

And he felt terrible, I'm assuming, and and saved a cup of now from his own rations he saved a small cup of soup for me and a piece of bread.

And he told her in no uncertain terms, that's not for her.

That's for the baby.

And Mother went back day after day to get my cup of soup and bread.

My dad came back maybe four or five months later.

That's how come the Russians had a good time with some of these women who were still alone.

And so he came back, and of course I was not much of a baby.

I mean, although we had the land and that said, our wonderful neighbors made sure that they stole everything that could be taken.

And Mother told us, the story that she went to one of the neighbors and she saw her trousseau, you know, that you before you married.

And she had all her initials in the linen.

And they said and my mother said, this is my mine.

No it isn't.

And she says, but this is my initials.

These are my.

Oh, no, it isn't.

That's.

Now, t he thing is, when you are a young girl and you make your trousseau you know what's yours, you know your stitches, but none of it got back to us, you know, I mean, this.

And this is a place where my dad was a good landlord, you know, people who supposedly liked him.

And like I said, it was all his life he was there.

The Germans came in and they took what they wanted.

And if you were a Jew, they took you and treated you any any old way.

Made no difference what.

The Russians came in.

They took the rest because the Russian, the communist motto is, it belongs to everybody.

It's nobody is better than anybody supposedly, except the real good communist.

And so they took everything.

So now we had nothing.

And they gave it to the peasants.

They gave it to whoever showed inkling towards communism.

That, you know, they would rile them up.

And look, for all these years, this man has owned you and blah, blah, blah, you know, worked for and you have nothing, just this little hut.

And look at his house.

So they were the same.

You still couldn't be Jewish, you still couldn't be a landowner.

You still couldn't be what you were if you weren't a communist, you were nothing.

You know, my father was a very quiet, man.

My mother always told me this story.

And I he had his his cousin, who was his best friend.

And I loved that man when I was a little girl.

And Mother tells me this story.

They wouldn't see each other very often, but every so often my dad would go down to meet him in Miskolc and they would sit down, sit with a beer for three, four hours, and they would say, okay, now we can go home.

We had a good talk.

And not a word was said.

They were just there together sharing a beer.

And that was my dad.

I don't remember my dad ever talking or telling anything or saying anything.

My dad was very soft-spoken.

And my mother was the one who yelled and screamed and you know, my dad would just no reaction.

Nothing, nothing.

When I was bad, my mother would tell him, Paul, you have to be a man.

Just once, be a man and punish her.

You know, my dad would just walk out When I was little and still in Hungary and I was six, eight, nine, ten, whatever.

I always said that she is my step-mother because no mother could be this mean.

She always told me how stupid I am.

How can't do anything, can't remember anything.

I was not very good in reading and writing.

So you are just so stupid.

You can't do anything.

You forget everything.

And she often hit me, and beat me, and punished me.

She would tell you, go do this, and then if you didn't jump, and this is what I saved you for, and this is why I struggled and brought you, you know.

And once we got to America, you know, I was a teenager.

Now I know now it's normal to be a little obstinate.

Yes.

And I didn't say I was good.

I never said that.

But every time I did anything wrong, if I got a wrong answer in my school, she always said, for this, I had to save you.

You know, you owe you owe me your life.

I brought you here.

I brought you and I saved you.

And it's very hard.

It's very, very hard to live with that day in and day out.

Possibly she resented me.

I mean, look, she might have gotten the papers from Wallenberg if he she wasn't having a baby.

And might not be caught and might not, you know, I mean, she might not have had to leave.

I don't know.

Very easily I get depressed, but that has also been my mother's life also.

She had a difficult time.

I see my sister struggling with the same.

When she was born my mother wouldn't look at her for over two weeks.

My father named her.

My mother wouldn't touch her.

And she very proudly told this to my sister.

I didn't know this, but we would go to my grandmother every Sunday.

And every so often, not very often, but every so often, my father disappeared.

And then he would come back and eat, and then we would go home.

But it wasn't.

And I was, like I said, supposedly a bad girl.

And I followed my dad, you know.

And he's going and he's going and he's going.

I had and, you know, I lived in Buda and this is now Pest.

And I really you know I didn't pay attention.

I was focused on following him.

And he got to this place.

It was all boarded up and he pushes this thing aside and he goes in.

So I went in.

And I saw these ghosts.

Now, I know, now it's it was the Jewish men having their white.

It must have been probably one of the High Holidays.

Well, I'm thinking it was the High Holiday.

And I got scared.

And I ran out.

But then I didn't know where I am and I didn't know how to get back to grandma's house.

And it was getting dark because it was the fall.

And that's why I think it was the High Holidays.

And somebody was very nice.

Got me on a train and told me where to go and so.

And once I knew I got to my familiar area, I just walked home.

But I was so scared.

And of course, Dad came right behind me, you know, maybe half an hour later.

I was so happy to see him because I didn't understand.

It was these ghosts.

I mean, okay, I was eight, nine, maybe ten years old.

It's really dark.

Religion was not very important other than Mother made sure that my sister and I go to church every Sunday.

That we look like Catholics.

And if we got punished for being Catholics that was okay because that's how everybody was.

But you can't be Jew.

So until I came to America, I didn't know that there was any Jewish line in my life or anything.

When we came here, we came to New York City and we were in the Bronx.

And we lived on the Grand Concourse.

Now the Grand Concourse is a beautiful place.

It's a gorgeous, I mean, it I mean, I love it the way it was when I came here in '56, '58.

But that's not what it is today.

But it's in my mind, it's still.

And we went to Catholic Church, but we had to go past this beautiful synagogue.

And the High Holidays I saw all I mean, the whole street, all of the Grand Concourse, everybody's sitting in their chaise lounge and whatever.

And their minks and whatnot, you know.

I didn't get it.

I didn't, I mean, I didn't know what that was.

And it was really the relatives of my mother who started talking about being Jewish, that that's what we were.

And so on.

And and then after that, so by the time I was in my twenties and was going to marry my first husband, and she didn't like him very much.

And she one of the things that she was holding over me is, wait till I tell him that you're Jewish.

And sure enough, before we were wed, she brought it up to him and says, well, what do you think of this Jewish girl?

And my ex-husband looked at him and said, I don't know.

You know, I mean, he is he was a Lutheran who had no idea what a Jew is.

She's he was from Grinnell, Iowa.

After I had my second child, I wanted to I needed to belong to a church.

I needed to belong to a group that gives me an anchor in believing.

And I was very disillusioned with the Catholic Church.

Because when I divorced my first husband they excommunicated me.

And I went there to get help and they said, well, you can come any time to the Church, but, you know, you can't get the sacraments.

I mean, you know, excommunicated.

And so for me, that was a very difficult time.

And I wasn't married yet to my second husband.

But he said, look, Theresa, you're Jewish.

There's nothing, you know.

And my mother was very angry when I did that.

When you did what?

When I decided to go back to Judaism.

When I decided that my boys' going to be bar mitzvahed.

When my boys got bar mitzvahed, my first one, she, even the second one, she came completely unglued.

And, I saved your life and now you, you giving them giving this to the whoever wants them, because now they are in the Jewish books that they are Jews, and you sold them and I, I broke my back, and I did all this for you.

And you're spitting in my eyes and.

She was afraid that if there is another Holocaust, and now good thing that she didn't live through Trump, but she was worried about another Holocaust, another roundup of Jews.

And how they rounded up the Jews is they went to the books, the Jewish synagogues and they found the names.

And that's how they found who was Jewish.

They didn't need any.

And here now I'm putting them in the books, where she has raised me Catholic and she she was never Catholic while we were in Hungary.

And I hate to say this even, but she was more Catholic than the pope by the time she came to Arizona.

I now belong to a congregation, Bet Shalom.

I have a wonderful relationship with my synagogue and people.

I feel accepted.

And I feel very honored to be a Jew, recognized as a Jewish person.

I think that's my, that that's what I should be.

That's my father died as a Jew.

My grandmothers all died as a Jew.

All my relatives died as a Jew.

So I feel much closer to being Jewish.

I think I was born in the right stars, and somebody up there loves me.

For whatever reason.

I thank Him every day, multiple times, for loving me and helping me through my hard times.

Do you have a feeling of fear these days as a Jew?

Do I have fear?

No, I'm now old enough to say nobody wants me.

I have I have fear for my boys.

Yes, yes.

But I I'm you know, I feel.

Look, I'm 78.

I lived a long time.

I have six grandchildren.

I have ten or so great-grandchildren.

It's I'm I'm doing fine.

I mean, I'm not.

And I also find that being in the congregation helps me.

Well, I would like them to hear that this happened, that it was real.

That people are around now to tell you, but they have to be the next ones to keep this in mind and say, yes, I heard this woman.

I did hear the sufferings that went on and this is real.

It's not made up.

It's not over-emphasized.

It's not embellished.

This was the life in the '40s, early '40s and late '30s when Hitler came to power, when Hitler made the youth be a flock following him without any reason, rhyme or reason.

And don't, don't be a follower.

Just remember that this was real and it can be real again.

It's very easy when a charismatic person enthusiastically calls on you.

That you need to make an honest evaluation of what is really going on.