Rohony family papers

The Rohony family is comprised of János Rohony, his wife Anna Gereben, and their daughter, Zsusana (later Susan). The family lived in a wealthy part of Budapest, Hungary, where János owned a factory employing over one hundred employees producing chemicals and plastics. In the summer of 1943 János, a Jew, was forced into the Hungarian labor battalions and taken to Transylvania. After a little over a year of labor there, János was moved to a work station near Budapest, where he was granted visits with Anna and Zsusana from time to time. He was later deported to Buchenwald and then Ohrdruf, where he died in December 1944 from injuries he sustained. Around this same time, Anna was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to prison. Zsusana meanwhile had been sent a neighbor’s home and evaded capture. She was subsequently sent to an orphanage owned by an Evangelical minister, Emil Koren, in the outskirts of Budapest. After suffering immensely there from hunger and lice, Zsusana and another young girl left the orphanage and returned to Budapest. Zsusana returned to her grandparent’s apartment to find them very ill with typhus. Shortly after, Anna was released from prison and returned to the apartment where the mother and daughter were reunited. They stayed in Hungary until the Hungarian revolution in 1956, at which time they fled to Austria. In 1973, Zsusana immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City, where she worked as a literary agent.