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Oral history interview with Veronika Roth Varga

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1996.A.0586.8 | RG Number: RG-50.407.0008

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    Oral history interview with Veronika Roth Varga

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Veronika Varga (née Roth), born in 1921 in Hungary, near Kisvarda, speaks about her childhood, her father’s work as a bank manager and his sudden death in 1928; moving to a new house (Horthy 28 in Kisvarda); her extended family and schooling; having an ordinary life in the pre-war years and early 1940s; the Jewish community of Kisvarda; their disbelief of news or personal reports of antisemitic actions elsewhere; her marriage in April 1944 to a member of the Hungarian army, a “sad wedding” as carts bringing people from the country to the new ghetto passed by the window; gendarmes seizing her mother’s house, just inside the ghetto perimeter, the following day and moving more people into it; the brief, six-week-long existence of the Kisvarda ghetto and cruel treatment by the gendarmerie; deportation in June 1944 to Auschwitz, where her mother and grandmother perished; conditions in camp; being selected for a work detail; being taken to Birkenau; being disinfected with other women; traveling to Stutthof and their quarters there; living in a tent at Ollec; doing hard labor during a cold winter, digging ditches for cables, and her role as Blockälteste; the Germans fleeing in January 1945 and her escape with the woman who was Blockälteste for 50B; staying in various houses as they made their way out of Poland; walking and riding in wagons and Russian trucks; searching for her brother, Ivan, at a camp in Krakow; going to Red Cross in Kosice, Slovakia and learning her husband, Imre, had survived; returning to Hungary and reuniting with Imre at his house in Nyíregyháza; visiting Kisvarda only to see her father’s grave; the birth of their daughter, Zsofia, in 1946; losing everything again, this time to the Communists; changing their surname to Varga to obtain visas; and immigrating to Australia in 1958. (Near the end of the interview, she displays two documents, a permit to travel through Poland and a Red Cross paper from Czechoslovakia to facilitate travel.)
    Interviewee
    Veronika R. Varga
    Interviewer
    Raie Goodwach
    Date
    interview:  1995 November 28

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre conducted the interview on November 28, 1995, in Melbourne, Australia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired the tape of the interview in July 1996.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:29:04
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn505791

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