Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Oral history interview with Alice Halasez

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1996.A.0586.60 | RG Number: RG-50.407.0060

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward

    Oral history interview with Alice Halasez

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Alice Halasez, born on January 21, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her parents, Shomrai Klein (born 1899) and Esther Shpitz (born 1905).; growing up in town a half hour from Budapest; her younger sister; her father’s button factory and two button/embroidery shops where her mother and other relatives also worked; attending a commercial school in Budapest but never graduating; parents keeping kosher at home and attending an Orthodox synagogue; speaking only Hungarian (her mother’s parents only spoke German); the beginning of the war, which had little effect on her family at first; a detective accusing her father of being a spy in 1942 and her father bribing him to drop it; Jews not being allowed to attend universities, which was the only restriction on Jews from 1939 to 1944; not knowing about the concentration camps, but her father was sent to a labor camp in 1942; being forced with her family to live in the ghetto in April 1944; being sent via cattle car to Auschwitz along with her grandmother, aunt, mother and sister; her grandmother’s death on the journey; the killing of her mother and sister upon arrival; taking care of her aunt; being sent to Birkenau; eating potato peels found in the garbage; being sent to Bergen-Belsen to work in a munitions factory; a German foreman giving her sandwiches which she shared with other prisoners; being treated better than at Auschwitz; being hospitalized for a month and being very weak when she returned to work; being liberated by Russians around April 1945 before the Americans arrived; staying at Bergen-Belsen until June 1945; returning to Budapest; reuniting with her father and future husband, whom she knew before the war (he was in hiding during the war); getting married to Laszlo Halasz on July 14, 1945 in a religious wedding; her father getting married in 1947 to a widow who had a son named Peter Handelsman (born 1937); working with her father; the broth of her son George; her family’s immigration to Australia in 1957 and the immigration of her father and stepmother, and stepbrother in 1959; her father starting a printing factory; and working for Kodak and then for her father.
    Interviewee
    Alice Halasez
    Interviewer
    Kitia Altman
    Date
    interview:  1996 July 03

    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

    Personal Name
    Halasez, Alice, 1927-

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre conducted the interview on July 3, 1996, in Melbourne, Australia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired the tape of the interview in July 1996.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:29:22
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn505843

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us