Vera Hauser papers

Vera Hauser (Vera Weil) was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1927 to Elias and Regina Hirsch. The family lived in the Pestszenterzséb suburb of the city. In 1936, 3,978 Jews lived in Pestszenterzséb. The suburb had a Jewish school and most of the Jewish residents worked as laborers. In November of 1940, Hungary joined the Axis Powers, allying with Germany and Italy. Between 1938 and 1941, Hungary passed a number of racial laws based on Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws. They barred Jews from many professions, took away equal citizenship for Jewish people, and forbid marriage between Jews and non-Jews. In 1941, the Hungarian authorities began deporting Jews from the annexed territories of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. In 1942, the German government began to pressure Hungary to deport their native Jewish population. The Hungarian government refused.

On March 19, 1944, Hungary initiated talks for an armistice with the Allies. In response, Germany occupied Hungary and installed a pro-German government. In May 1944, the authorities began deporting Hungarian Jews to concentration camps in Germany. On November 8, 1944, Vera was rounded up along with 70,000 other Jews in Budapest and forced to march to Austria. She survived a mass shooting of her fellow prisoners and was taken by train to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony, Germany. Vera was a prisoner in Bergen-Belsen from November 1944 until the camp was liberated by the British on April 15, 1945. At liberation, Vera was so weak and sick with typhoid fever she was unable to walk.

After the war, through an arrangement with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), Sweden agreed to receive approximately 11,000 concentration camp prisoners and provide care for them while they recovered. Vera, along with 1,200 other survivors were transported to a hospital in Sigtuna, Sweden to recover. Initially, Vera stayed with the other survivor patients in a school modified to accommodate them. She became friends with one of the nurses and lived with her family for the following year. In 1946, Vera wanted to return to Hungary to find her family. Before she left, her host family gave her several gifts. When she returned home to Hungary, she found her family still living, but destitute. Vera sold all but one of the items she received in Sigtuna to provide for her family.