Agnes Feher papers

Agnes Feher was born on October 24, 1925 in Miskolc, Hungary. Her father, Andor, was a tailor and her mother, Ilona Klein Feher, was a hairdresser. Andor and Ilona also had a son, György (George) born in 1928. On April 1, 1944, Agnes married Endre Erdos, who was from Budapest and was serving in a forced-labor camp in Miskolc. Shortly after the wedding he was transported to Budapest. In May 1944, Agnes received a permit from the Gestapo that enabled her to move to Budapest where she lived with the Erdos family. Shortly thereafter, Endre was transported to Germany. Left alone, Agnes was wandering the streets. One day, a man approached her and told her to take off the Star of David that she was wearing. He was a member of the Jewish underground. She assumed the name Elizabeth Kovacs and was given a false workbook and identification papers. For a while, she was in a different location every night and she rented a room where she worked as a hairdresser. Her workplace was close to the Swiss Embassy and Agnes went there every day on her lunch hour hoping to see someone from Miskolc. One day, a young boy her brother’s age told her that he escaped from a train that was still in a rail yard in the outskirts of Budapest and that her brother was on that train. Agnes managed to sneak near the wagons and get her brother off the transport.

In December 1944, the Russian Army reached the street where they were living in a basement shelter, and they were liberated. It took them two weeks to get back to Miskolc from Budapest. In the summer, Endre returned from Mauthausen concentration camp. In October 1945, they returned to Budapest and eventually traveled to Vienna, Salzburg, settling in the Pocking DP Camp in Austria. On March 10, 1947, Agnes and Endre’s son George Erdos was born in Pocking. In May, the new family traveled to Belgium where Endre was working in the coal mine. In August 1948, they departed from Marseille aboard the SS Zion for Israel.