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Oral history interview with Jaffa Munk

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1996.A.0554 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0049

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    Oral history interview with Jaffa Munk
    Transcript
    This is a recording for the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum, an interview with Jaffa Munk conducted
    by Margaret Garrett on August 8, 1996
    in Baltimore, Maryland, tape one, side A. What
    was your name at birth?
    My name at birth was Noemi Donath.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in Ónod, which is the county of Borsod.
    It's about 9 kilometer or 9 miles from Miskolc.
    And what was your date of birth?
    My date of birth was April the 10th, 1931.
    Would you talk about your childhood?
    Yes.
    I grew up as the daughter of a rabbi.
    My father was a rabbi.
    And 26 little towns belonged to his congregation.
    I had a beautiful childhood, growing up
    among three brothers and sisters.
    And what were their names?
    The name of my brother was Joseph.
    And my sister is Esther, who is alive and is
    living in Montreal.
    My parents were very educated people,
    and they looked into it that the children should
    be going to the best schools.
    I attended a Lutheran school, because there
    was no more Jewish school at the time when I grew up.
    However, we had been learning Jewish studies
    in the afternoons.
    Also, I had a private teacher who was
    teaching the German language.
    That was the language that more advanced people,
    more intellectual people had been learning.
    And my father was originally from Bratislava Czechoslovakia,
    and he wanted his children to be very cultured.
    We are always going to the library, picking up books.
    My father would see what we are reading.
    He would discuss with us.
    I come from a very religious background, but yet very
    open-minded.
    We had lots of celebrations.
    The holidays, Purim, everybody would come to the house.
    Everybody, who?
    Relatives, friends?
    Friends.
    Friends and people who lived in the town.
    The whole town had only 50 Jewish families.
    And how large was the town?
    The population of the town was less than 3,000 people.
    And from that, about 300 were Jewish people--
    50 families, but large families.
    Mostly, the Jewish people in the town, they were storekeepers.
    A lot of the people, they had big farms.
    There were doctors, some lawyers,
    but mainly, really, shopkeepers.
    And your father was the rabbi in the town?
    My father was the rabbi of the town.
    And they really loved him.
    He had a special school for big boys,
    which one, we call yeshiva.
    And I remember very clearly, the beautiful times
    when they were making the matzah near to the house, singing.
    And I used to love, as a young kid, to walk around
    and all these lovely boys, they used to pet me.
    And I used to tell them that, leave me alone.
    So they named me "leave me alone" in Hungarian.
    We had a beautiful house, lots of fruit trees,
    about 50 fruit trees.
    My mama used to cook all the fruit.
    It wasn't like today, you go to the store,
    and you buy the canned goods.
    She would be putting into jars, making her own jams
    and prune nectar, all these things.
    It was all a lot of fun.
    At the end of our house was a river named Sajo.
    And we used to go to the bank of the river.
    It had a lot of grass.
    And cousins would come from the big city of Budapest,
    and we would get out there.
    And we would be dancing there, going swimming there,
    so we had a lovely upbringing.
    I remember that my mother used to bring a sewing lady,
    and she would be sewing for us beautiful outfits
    for the holidays.
    She was a very devoted mother to her children.
    We used to tell, mama, you need, also, something new.
    But first was her three children.
    She had a lot of pride in two daughters.
    My sister's name is Judith Esther, and my brother, Joseph.
    And my brother was educated in the big city in Budapest.
    And we used to love when he came home,
    and he told us beautiful stories about his experience
    in the big city.
    I can thank him a lot, what I am today,
    because he was the one who was always introducing to me
    a lot of things about science and books.
    He would come home, and he would encourage that, whatever
    you have you, can lose one day.
    But what you have in your mind, nobody can take away.
    So that was our life in the small town.
    We have been very friendly with the Gentile people.
    You went to a Lutheran school.
    I went to a Lutheran school, and we were very friendly
    with the minister.
    We were very friendly with the doctor of the town.
    We were very friendly with our simple neighbors,
    too, who used to love to come.
    And my mother was called the midwife of the town,
    because when anybody gave birth to a child,
    my mother was rushing and helping, warming
    water for them, giving them some kind of food.
    So this is not just Jews, but also Gentiles.
    Also Gentiles.
    We were very friendly.
    We went to school.
    And matter of fact, I happened to be, in my childhood, very
    good in arithmetic.
    And there was the daughter of the so-called mayor
    of the town.
    She had difficulty, and I used to go to her house,
    or she would come to our house.
    There was no separation between us, except religiously.
    They went to their church, and we went to our temple.
    But there was such a friendship.
    Or we would go to the farmer to fetch our milk,
    because in those days, you didn't have milk in the store.
    So we would go, and we would sing with them while they
    were milking the milk.
    Or they would come over to us and taste the cookies.
    My mother was an excellent baker.
    And we didn't feel that there is any kind of hostility
    between us and our gentle people in the town
    until about 1942 or '43 when they started
    to throw bad words towards us.
    Now, before 1942, were you aware that there was
    anything different going on?
    No, nothing that was going, on except certainly kind
    of restriction, such as that the Jewish people could not
    any more have beef, because they did not
    allow any more to kill cows according
    to the rituals of the Jewish faith.
    So that was the very--
    So this was the Hungarian government that said--
    The Hungarian government had said.
    --you can no longer kill cows according to the Jewish faith?
    According to the-- that's right.
    That was the very first thing that I recall.
    And then later on, when we started
    to fear that there is something going on,
    us, as children, was that we went one sabbath afternoon,
    a Saturday afternoon, we went for a walk.
    And we were singing some kind of Jewish song.
    And the first time that a lot of the town people,
    they started to scream, dirty Jew, go to Palestine.
    That time, Israel was called Palestine.
    Were these people that you knew or?
    These were not people that we really knew.
    These were-- you can call it sometimes,
    hoodlums, who were in the street.
    So we didn't pay too much attention to that.
    Yet I have to state it that my father had
    brothers and sisters living in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.
    And he used to receive some letters from them.
    And I, as a young child, who happened
    to be hardly maybe 10 years old at that time,
    I remember hearing my father that, oh, poor brother of mine.
    He has to be in a bunker.
    Or poor brother of mine, they don't know where he is.
    But I think being the youngest of the family,
    or even if I wouldn't be maybe the youngest,
    perhaps they wanted to shield us children.
    And they were not too much talking
    about what's going on in the world.
    I remember very vividly that my father used
    to listen to the secret radio.
    There were certain channels that brought news
    from out of Hungary.
    And they would come home and tell, oh, thank goodness
    that Americans are advancing, or that the Britons are advancing,
    that they are hoping that they are going to succeed
    to win the war against Germany.
    That, I remember.
    But being a young kid, they did not involve too much
    into the politics.
    But here and there, I get it, that
    must be something going on.
    And it's very important that the German people should not
    be able to capture more and more countries.
    I also remember-- that is already in 1943--
    that a lot of people smuggled into Hungary, Jewish people
    from Poland--
    not to small towns, because in a small town,
    they rightly would notice if somebody is foreign.
    But we had relatives-- my mother had two brothers and a sister
    in the city of Budapest.
    And they wrote that they have some guests
    from different country, and they telling us terrifying stories.
    But what exactly they were telling, that my mother
    or father would not tell us.
    So I assume, remembering these little episodes,
    that my parents were, to a certain degree,
    aware of it, that there is something bad
    going on in Poland and in Czechoslovakia.
    Also, in 1942, '43 a lot of girls
    came over from Czechoslovakia, who escaped from bunkers where
    they were already hiding and they could not
    hide any more, certain relatives who arrived to the big city.
    And that was the other sign that something going on there,
    that they had to run away from home
    and abandon even their own family.
    You said that you would not be able to hide Jews
    in a small town.
    Where you lived if, a Jew had suddenly
    shown up and started to live in your house,
    what would have happened?
    Well, the local police would come,
    and they would arrest them.
    Now, when we are talking about hiding in a small town,
    this is really a story for later on.
    But it's related to this.
    In 1944, when the Germans marched into Hungary,
    my parents approached the Catholic priest,
    would he hide the children?
    So that also is telling that my parents were aware
    that something bad is waiting for us.
    And at first the Catholic priest was thinking of it,
    that he would hide us children.
    And then he said, how can I do that?
    They right away knew that these are the children of the rabbi.
    That's number one.
    Number two, he said, I have no wife.
    I have no children.
    How can I have children suddenly in my household?
    So my father told him, but after all, you
    can have some students.
    But the end of the story is that he refused to hide us.
    So back in 1942, if extra Jews had appeared,
    would anybody have done anything about it then?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    In '42, they would have.
    In '42, already.
    But your family, as Jews, were living as they had before?
    We had been living as before, yes, I think.
    But if new Jews had arrived, something would have happened?
    Something would happen.
    The local police would come, and they
    would have to identify themselves, who are they?
    In many fact, in 1942, we had a cantor
    who was singing in our temple.
    And since he had no Hungarian nationality--
    in Hungary, it takes much longer than in America.
    In America, in five years, you can become a citizen.
    He was not a citizen, because it takes 25 years.
    I don't know what the law today, but in those days
    you had to live in Hungary 25 years
    in order to get citizenship.
    And this fellow was from Poland.
    And he had no Hungarian citizenship.
    He had to leave the country.
    And we were crying that he is leaving the country,
    and where is he going?
    He went to Palestine.
    And today, he is alive with all his family
    and with grandchildren and so on.
    And my family is in ashes.
    So in a way, it was luck that you were not a citizen
    and you had to leave.
    But that was the law.
    If you were not a Hungarian citizen,
    you could not live in the country.
    If you were not Jewish, you also could not live in the country?
    If you were not Jewish, also.
    Also.
    Also.
    So it wasn't just Jews who had to--
    Well, I don't really know what happened with the people.
    If you were just a temporary citizen,
    you were allowed to leave, except if you were a Jew.
    If you were Jewish and you did not have the citizenship,
    that was the first thing that came out in 1942, that you
    had to leave the country.
    So that applied to Jews--
    To Jews.
    --only?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Yeah, only to Jews.
    So you were saying that you were aware that something bad was
    happening and at the--
    Yes, I was sensing.
    I was sensing the tenseness.
    I was sensing that my father is always
    secretly talking with Mama.
    And when they notice that the children are coming,
    they would change the subject.
    I was noticing that my parents were shielding us
    more than before.
    If it was going to the streets or traveling,
    they were much more alert to what's going on than before.
    Until 1942, '43, we were living a fairly free, happy life,
    traveling, going to the theater, going to the circus,
    anywhere we wanted to go.
    Then later on, I am aware of it.
    I mean, I remember it, that the parents did not
    want the children too much to be in the streets
    and not to go to public places.
    We were not questioning why, but that's what I remember.
    And what do you remember next?
    The next thing that I remember, in 1943, September, my older
    sister--
    I am the youngest in the family--
    she went to study, also, in Budapest in a special school.
    And my brother was away, also, in a special school.
    And I remember that the parents were very worried, are they OK?
    When before, they were also away, except till this time,
    they were not so concerned if everything
    is going OK with them.
    And in 1944, when the Germans marched into Hungary,
    my parents wanted the children to come home.
    And there was restriction.
    Jews could not travel any more in train.
    So we are very worried if ever my siblings
    will be able to come home.
    And one morning, my father is just
    stepping out from the congregation, from the temple,
    and here is my sister.
    How did you get home from Budapest?
    And she told us the story, that my aunt
    dressed her to look like a Gentile,
    because the Gentile people were a little bit differently
    dressed.
    We were a little bit more fashionable dressed,
    the Jewish people.
    She should look more like a peasant.
    It's maybe not right to say Gentiles.
    It's right to say that she should look more
    like a peasant girl.
    And she shouldn't be too attractive.
    She was a very beautiful girl.
    And my father was asking, how did you got home?
    And she said let's go home quickly.
    So she came home and she told the story,
    that relatives put her on the train.
    And luckily, it went smooth.
    And when they saw her looking like a little peasant girl,
    they didn't approach her.
    And when she arrived, there was no train station in Ónod.
    It was about seven kilometer from us, a train station.
    And when she unboarded, when she came down from the train,
    she thought, it's night.
    What do I do, a young girl?
    How do I get home?
    I can't walk this in the night.
    She remembered that there is a Jewish family nearby,
    and she knocked on the door.
    And lo and behold, there was the headquarter
    of the German SS army.
    And she is opening the door, and she said, oh, I am sorry.
    I don't want to disturb you.
    I just wanted a little bit of water.
    And she quickly went out.
    And here, she is wandering and wandering.
    And suddenly, she remembered there
    is the other Jewish family living in the town.
    She went there, and they told her, your sleep over.
    And the next morning, they brought her home.
    So that's how my sister arrived.
    And then later on, my brother arrived home, too,
    also in a very special way.
    He got some papers from a Gentile friend.
    And he arrived home, too, so that time, we already
    know that we are occupied by the Germans, Hungary.
    Yet Horthy, who was the head of the Hungarian government,
    was refusing to let to do anything to the Jewish people.
    But it didn't take too long.
    The Germans override him, and they fought against that.
    And the new decree that came out was
    that we have to have the yellow star on our clothing,
    that we are not allowed to be in the street,
    only at certain times during the day.
    The Gentile people are not allowed
    to sell us any merchandise.
    We are not allowed to hire any non-Jewish people working
    for us.
    And slowly and surely, later on came out
    that we have to make a inventory of whatever we
    have in our house and submit it to the mayor of the town.
    I remember that my mother was taking out
    from the closet, the beautiful tablecloths.
    In those days, years before a girl was married,
    they were embroidering and having
    the monograms on the tablecloth and on the bed
    sheets and the pillowcases.
    And by each one that she was folding and writing down,
    her tears running from her eye.
    And my brother was helping her to make the inventory and--
    And you were watching all this?
    And I was watching all this, because I
    was a very curious little girl.
    And I think that I did not grasp it in the depth
    that this is not going to be ours anymore.
    I was just admiring to see the beautiful colors
    and the beautiful embroidery and counting.
    And my brother was saying, Mommy, don't worry.
    We come back, I will buy you the most beautiful linens.
    That is ringing in my ear until this day.
    He said, when we come back.
    When we come back.
    So that time I understood that it means
    we have to leave our house.
    And hopefully, we will come back.
    I have to tell that my father has been chosen to be the head
    of the ghetto, which one was is located not far from Miskolc,
    called the place Diósgyor.
    It was a town where they had factories for iron.
    They emptied the workers houses, which
    one was very poor, like one room and kitchen kind of apartments.
    And they had to organize that place
    to become the Jewish ghetto.
    And at the time when we were doing this inventory,
    my father was away, because he had to go and organize
    the ghetto in Diósgyor.
    Do you know how they chose your father
    to be the head of the ghetto?
    I have no idea why he was chosen to be,
    because not only people from Ónod,
    but from all the surrounding towns,
    except that he was the chief rabbi for all these towns.
    So maybe that's the reason that they
    had been choosing him to be the head of the ghetto.
    And we were expecting that Father should come back
    from that after he is doing that job, organizing the place.
    However, he never came back from the ghetto.
    After a few days, the inventory was made.
    My mother succeeded to take a few precious pictures
    from the family and from us children and a few tablecloth
    and a few silverware, such as in which one
    she was lighting the Shabbat candles, some Kiddush cups,
    and some silver cups--
    one of them, I happen to have it here--
    to our neighbor, who was very devoted neighbor to us.
    Well, we were very devoted, very good friends, helpful
    for each other all the time.
    And she asked her, do me a favor,
    Martha, put these things away.
    And you know we have to most probably leave the town.
    But when we come back, you will give this back to me.
    And if I am not coming back, then please,
    would you give this to my children?
    So all these little things indicate
    that my mother and father, they were informed somehow
    that elderly people are killed, or that elderly people,
    they don't make it.
    They had prayer and hope that the children will remain.
    And she wanted us to have some mementos, something
    that is from our household.
    And--
    At the time, you did not realize what your parents did.
    But looking back on what they said,
    you can see what they knew.
    Exactly.
    Exactly.
    At that time, I couldn't understand
    why Mother was hiding gems in the attic,
    why was she putting away certain things or some money,
    giving to other Gentile family in a small town who came
    to see if we have everything.
    I mean, there were, which one, we called
    them chasidei umot haolam.
    They called them the righteous Gentiles, who were worried.
    And they understood and endangered themselves,
    such as that family from a little town, Hídvég,
    coming in and bringing some potato,
    knowing that we can't anymore buy food.
    Now, this is before you went to the ghetto?
    You couldn't buy food.
    Before we went to the ghetto.
    Before we went to the ghetto.
    So that family, my parents used to have
    a collection of silver coins.
    Today, people are investing in stock,
    or they're putting in bank.
    In those days, if you had a little money,
    you bought some silver coins.
    The value didn't go down for the children's education
    later or if a child has to get married.
    So my father had a collection of silver money,
    and he gave it to this Gentile family.
    Let's stop here and turn--
    Yeah?
    --over the tape.
    OK.
    Tape one, side B.
    OK.
    Shortly after we had been submitting the inventory,
    giving to our neighbor, certain items to keep,
    it came announcement--
    in those days, it was in the marketplace.
    They used to announce in the loudspeaker,
    all the Jewish families have to pack up.
    They are able to take only certain amount of clothing
    with them.
    And they have to go into the ghetto.
    Now, we had to hire with our own money, a horseman,
    buggy, pack up, and go.
    We had to leave the keys and all the inventory
    at the house of the mayor.
    And we had to be at 9 o'clock in the morning in 1944,
    end of May--
    I don't exactly remember completely,
    the date, but I do remember that it was in May--
    we had to go into the ghetto in the Austria.
    Now, the mayor was the father of your good friend.
    Is that right?
    Yes, that's right.
    And what happened to your friendship with her?
    We were friendly until the last minute.
    However, at the time when the yellow star came out,
    that we had to wear it on our clothing,
    our relationship cooled off.
    And the last thing that I remember him saying, the Mayor,
    that I am sorry.
    I am not in a position of helping you.
    In other words, he must have to have some kind of emotions.
    And yet, he was really maybe in a position
    where he was watched by the German occupying army,
    that he could not do anything since he was the only one
    important person in the town.
    So I am not able to blame him.
    It hurt at that time, but you have
    to put yourself in the shoe of the other person.
    And I have to state here that the Hungarian police
    department, the Gendarmerie, they
    were worse than the Germans.
    They were more brutal.
    They were more beating us up and more hostile in every way.
    So we hired the buggy.
    We packed up.
    My mother took with her, one chicken.
    You have to understand that we lived in a town.
    And in the backyard, my mother was growing chickens and ducks,
    turkey.
    And so somehow, she was so sentimental
    with her little chickens, that one chicken,
    she wanted to take with her.
    So she took a basket, she put some straw,
    and she took one chicken with us to the ghetto, and some dishes,
    some little leftover potatoes and little flour,
    whatever we still had in the house.
    And each one of us packed up some suitcase
    with some clothing.
    And here, we went with the buggy arriving to the ghetto.
    And did you take any favorite things that you wanted to have?
    Only our personal jewelry, but we were not allowed to.
    We had to leave everything, such as clothing--
    Books?
    Books.
    It had to be in the inventory.
    We had to write down how many books we have
    or how many lamps we have, how many--
    So you couldn't--
    --furniture we have, but we could not take with us.
    You couldn't take a favorite book?
    No.
    No, we couldn't take a favorite book.
    The only thing that we took with us
    was really our personal jewelry.
    And my father took with him, when he--
    at the beginning, he went, he took with him
    some books to study.
    But we, when we had to leave the house,
    we had to leave everything in the house.
    And the official statement of the German
    was that you will come back and you
    will-- that's why we are doing the inventory,
    so that we can claim, when we come back,
    what is missing from the house.
    That's where now, you know that behind
    of all these decrees and organization of the Jews
    to go into the ghettos in Hungary was Eichmann.
    Eichmann was in Budapest, and he was
    the one who was organizing the departure of the Jewish people
    from Hungary.
    And the inventory and what you can take
    and what you can't take, this was
    all from the Eichmann office.
    And the Jewish organization was hoping
    to have some kind of dialogue with him,
    some kind of agreement with him, that if people
    are going to give you a certain amount of money,
    would you leave the Jewish people
    to stay in the ghetto in Hungary, or some of them
    even in their homes?
    We arrived to the ghetto, and we were
    shocked to see how many Jewish people have
    been occupying already.
    And the headquarters that was given to us
    was one tiny, small room and a tiny eensy-peensy little
    kitchen.
    And yet, I have to say that all was luxury apartment compared
    to many other people who had to sleep together in two,
    three families in one room.
    Is this, do you think, because your father was
    the head of the ghetto, that--
    Maybe.
    --you had better quarters?
    Maybe.
    And maybe, they, after all, felt that the rabbi still
    is somebody important.
    Let's give him--
    I really think that that was the reason for it.
    My mother placed the little basket with the chicken
    in the kitchen.
    And this made she felt like there is some part with her
    from her childhood.
    She was brought up, she was born in Ónod.
    She was the daughter-- her father,
    my grandfather was the previous rabbi
    before my father became the rabbi there.
    So everything from the town, the river, the grass, the chicken,
    the fruit--
    everything was a part of her life.
    And at least, this chicken reminded her.
    And the chicken is a very special story, because usually,
    chickens, they lay egg every other day,
    except today, when they are in incubator,
    and the food is different.
    But in the primitive way of feeding them and raising them,
    chickens used to lay egg every other day.
    And while we were in the ghetto, that chicken
    laid egg every single day.
    And I remember that my mother always
    said that this egg is for my youngest daughter
    because she is so skinny--
    in those days-- and she should be eating.
    And I refused.
    So sometimes, she made a scrambled egg
    and divided between all of us.
    Sometimes, she collected at least two eggs,
    and she baked a cake with the little leftover
    flours that she brought with her.
    And then, we celebrated Shavuot, which
    one is the holiday of receiving the Torah and half Sinai,
    on Mountain Sinai.
    We celebrated.
    That was the last holiday that I was with my parents together.
    And before that, there went a whole discussion, what should
    we prepare for the holiday?
    We were used to have nice meal.
    And my mother started to cry.
    And she said, should we kill the chicken,
    and I make a nice meal?
    Or should we keep the chicken?
    I'm sorry.
    So the decision was that they kill
    the chicken, because you don't know what will be,
    really, our fate.
    Apparently, they sensed-- again, it's a indication,
    which one at that time, I didn't understand, but looking back--
    and Mother made from that one chicken--
    name it, everything.
    She made chicken soup.
    She made roast chicken.
    She made hamburger from the white part.
    And that was the last chicken soup that my mother made.
    And what was your religious life like in the ghetto?
    In the ghetto, the religious life
    was that my father had a special room where
    the people went to pray, and--
    This is where everyone in the ghetto--
    For everybody in the ghetto.
    But it didn't take too long, and the Hungarian police
    came to the ghetto.
    And they came to pressure and question the people,
    where did they hide things, and where did you
    put certain things?
    You didn't have everything in the inventory.
    We know that you had more silverware.
    We know that you had some silver money.
    We know that you had a store.
    Where is all the money that you have been
    collecting all these years?
    And many times, they will very brutally beat up people,
    thinking that if they are really hiding some things,
    seeing that they are so tortured, they will give in,
    and they will tell.
    And the headquarters of the police department
    was behind our window.
    And my mother used to hear the screaming of the people
    when they were beaten up.
    And she just fainted.
    She just couldn't take it.
    She grew up with all these people from her childhood on,
    and seeing them, that they are blue,
    and that they are losing blood, and that they are beaten up
    so severely, she just couldn't take it.
    Either she was sitting and praying, either she was crying
    or once, I remember when she fainted,
    and I do remember when that took place,
    when our doctor, who was helping the whole town, giving birth
    to children, he was everything, a general doctor, who
    helped heal children and birth children
    and whatnot, he was beaten up very severely, to that extent
    my father had to intervene and to get permission
    to take him to a hospital.
    And unfortunately, he died from the beating-up.
    So that was the time that my mother--
    we used to live next door to the doctor--
    and she just-- this was the height of what
    she could suffer, my mother.
    And after being in the ghetto about three weeks,
    the new decree came out that we have to leave the ghetto.
    Now, going back to the room--
    Yes.
    --that your father had set aside for people to come and pray--
    Yeah.
    --did that room remain set aside for people
    to pray the whole time you were in the ghetto?
    The whole time that we were in the ghetto.
    And were there services held for people to come?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And your father--
    Three times in the day, and my father conducted--
    Every day?
    --the prayer, yes.
    Three times a day.
    Yes.
    As well, my father was corresponding
    with the Jewish organization in the big city of Budapest,
    who were in contact with Eichmann, trying
    to ease the life of the people in the ghetto,
    questioning them, what is our fate?
    What do we have to do?
    Do we have to listen to all this, or should we rebel?
    Should we organize something to escape or just follow orders?
    And that, I recall, that the order came
    in from the Jewish organization in Budapest
    that Eichmann is promising that we will be taken
    to a working camp and nothing is going to happen to anybody
    of us, and that we should be obeying all the laws and all
    the decrees, because that's the only way
    that everything will be smooth and everything will be good.
    So you remember your father talking about that?
    Yes.
    Yes, that I already remember very well from the ghetto,
    and--
    And the services that your father conducted in the room,
    did the police ever try to interfere with that?
    No.
    Do you think they knew about it?
    They knew about it.
    And that was not their concern, because as far as I remember,
    they said, let them do what they want to do.
    It won't last too long anyway.
    OK.
    That was their approach.
    OK.
    So that, they did not interfere with it.
    And from the ghetto, first of all,
    they collected all able working men.
    And at that time, it was my father taken
    from the ghetto and my brother and all the people
    that I can recall from age 16 till about 45,
    50, all able working men has been collected and taken away
    from that ghetto.
    It was very sad kind of a farewell
    from each other departing.
    We didn't know where they are taking them
    and what will be our fate.
    All woman and babies and children,
    we are remaining, and only old people.
    But they said that they need some workers,
    so we hope that it's true, that they are taken to work.
    Did you say they took your father?
    Yes.
    So he had been the head of the ghetto.
    So he was no longer--
    No longer head of ghetto, no longer organized things
    in the ghetto, no more praying in the ghetto.
    The men were taken.
    Two days later, they said that all the people who
    remained in the ghetto, they have to march 7 kilometer,
    which one is approximately 3 mile in our measurements
    here, into a brick factory in the city of Miskolc,
    and that from there, hopefully, in a short time,
    we'll go to Czechoslovakia, where they need working people.
    And we will be transported to that place, the working
    camp in Czechoslovakia in a short time.
    So we are walking.
    And at that time, not only Hungarian policemen,
    but the German SS soldiers were going with us,
    marching with us.
    And if you were going slow, they were beating you up.
    And they were hollering that you go faster.
    We have no time.
    And we arrived to the brick factory, which consisted only
    from a roof and no walls, no nothing
    on the ground except some leftover bricks.
    And as we are arriving to that place,
    we hear some men screaming to us.
    And we thought that we hear the voice of my father,
    but we couldn't recognize him.
    Lo and behold, he was there.
    And they sheared his beard.
    They took off his hair completely.
    He did not had any more, his nice suit.
    He was in pants and a shirt.
    And then, we got united.
    And we were in the brick factory,
    not doing nothing except crying and starving for a few days.
    Did you have anything to eat?
    Only some leftover bread that Mama
    baked yet in the ghetto and maybe a few potatoes.
    I remember that my mother went out in the ground,
    and she collected some woods.
    And she had still with her, one pot.
    And she cooked some kind of a potato soup,
    but it was more water than potato or anything else in it.
    But at least it was warm.
    And really, what we ate, mainly, it
    was stale bread that we had still with us.
    And one day, the Germans soldiers came in,
    and they said that they need some few hundred girls
    to work in their headquarters, to clean and to shine shoes.
    So my mother thought that, here, my girls are
    going to die from starvation.
    Let them go to work.
    Maybe they will be fed.
    Maybe they can bring home some food
    for the rest of the family.
    We were taken with army truck.
    Yet my mother gave a whole speech-- be careful,
    you're going with soldiers, et cetera.
    And they said that they bring us back in the afternoon.
    We went with the soldiers two times, two days.
    And our work was to clean dishes, to wash their clothing,
    to iron for them, to shine their shoes.
    And they threw us some bread and some cooked potato,
    which was luxurious for us.
    And we brought home, we hide it in our pocket, a few potatoes,
    a little bit bread.
    And they brought it back to the factory.
    And the third day, we were waiting and waiting
    that they come to pick us up again, because at least we
    were occupied.
    We were doing something.
    Plus, to eat, we were given a little bit something to eat.
    They didn't come.
    And instead of that, again, they announced
    that we have to march from the factory, which
    was very close to the railroad, we
    have to march to the railroad.
    And we can take as many things we have still left over.
    And we are now going to travel to the real good place.
    We are going to travel to the factory
    in Czechoslovakia, to a working camp-- not to a factory,
    but to a working camp.
    So little we understood or little, really,
    we knew what that meant, to go to the railroad.
    Again, the Germans, with their huge dogs
    this time, they were the ones who were taking care of us,
    watching over us.
    And whoever was collapsing, the dog just tore it apart.
    We were walking, rushing to work, rushing to the railroad.
    And we just couldn't believe our eyes, what kind of train
    was waiting for us.
    It was the cattle train without window.
    They pushed us in, 70 people into one cattle
    train, to one wagon.
    And they gave us two bottles.
    In one was water, and the other one, instead of bathroom.
    Old people screaming and crying, squeezed like sardines.
    And they closed the door.
    Here we are in the cattle train.
    And my mother and father were sitting next to each other.
    And it was nighttime.
    And I heard my mother crying.
    And my father said, I wish that at least the children
    should remain alive.
    So again, I am sure that they sensed it.
    They knew it.
    They had some kind of information.
    They were fearful, their instinct, whatever,
    but they knew that this is not going to a good place.
    You don't take people in a--
    And what about you?
    Do you remember what you were thinking at the time?
    At the time, I was just thinking, where could
    I have some air?
    Where could I have something to drink?
    How could I calm the younger children that were crying?
    So you were thinking of the immediate present--
    Of in the--
    --and not--
    Yes.
    Nothing that--
    --thinking about what going to happen so much?
    No.
    No, I was not thinking.
    For sure, I was thinking of my mother,
    because I saw that she is really not feeling good anymore.
    And I was very close to my mother.
    And I used to pet her and calm her and say to her that God is
    with us, and it will be good.
    And my mother would say, for sure, you will have yet,
    a beautiful life.
    And then, she would overcome her sadness,
    just to reassure her children that everything will be OK.
    When we got to the city of Kosice,
    which is a border city between Hungary and Czechoslovakia--
    What was the name of it?
    Kosice.
    And they opened the wagon, the train, the cattle train,
    and they said that one person can
    go down and fetch some water and empty the bathroom bucket.
    So nobody was daring to do that.
    They thought that this is some kind of a trick
    that the Germans are trying to have some person to go down,
    and they will kill that person.
    My brother volunteered.
    And he went down.
    And he looked around, and he saw that we are in a city.
    From the train station, he could sense it or recognize it.
    And he fetched the water.
    And he asked, aren't we getting all off from the train?
    And that the German soldier said, no, no, no,
    we are not yet in the place where your working camp is.
    It is taking a little bit longer.
    And before they really closed the door,
    they asked that if you still have on you any jewelry,
    please give it now.
    You will get it back.
    But because we are going over a border, and it's not good,
    and it might get lost, and all kind of stories,
    and they took away the last jewelry that we still had.
    By the way, I forgot to start that before we went away
    from the ghetto, they already took it away
    from us all the jewelry except each one of us
    was trying to hide a mementos, ring, or my mother, her wedding
    band, or my father had a very special gold watch that he
    had it in his pocket.
    And they came, and they screamed.
    And they said, you better give it, because otherwise, we
    beat you to death.
    So everybody got scared, and the last jewelry
    or the last possession that we had, we gave it right away.
    They closed the door, and the train
    was going like mad, was rushing.
    Where is the train rushing so much?
    And the noise was tremendous.
    And the crying, and people died--
    people in the train.
    And after three days--
    3 and 1/2, they said, actually, traveling in this abnormal kind
    of situation--
    no more water.
    The bucket was full with what people made.
    This smell, the starvation, the crying, the screaming,
    the unknown--
    people were completely washed out.
    Some old people who died, they smelled.
    And suddenly, they open the train.
    We are in Auschwitz.
    When we arrive to Auschwitz, first the German soldiers
    with their dog, they came to the door.
    And they said that you have to get off
    very fast from the train, because you
    are going to start to work.
    And leave your belongings.
    That will be shipped to your camp.
    Why should you carry it?
    Then there were some striped-clothed men,
    who were screaming also that, go fast!
    You have to line up five in a row.
    And in between screaming to us, they
    talk to us in Yiddish, a few verse in the Jewish language,
    saying to us that, don't go, the mothers with the babies.
    Give the babies to the old grandmothers.
    And we thought they're crazy.
    Why are they saying this?
    Why should a mother give up her child
    and give it to a old grandmother that hardly can walk anymore?
    We all looked pale, hungry, tired.
    There are none.
    The mental facilities, they are not working properly
    anymore when you've starved for such a long time, when you've
    suffered with the darkness.
    We didn't want to believe what they are saying to us
    or to do what they are telling.
    There were people, though, whose mind was maybe working better,
    who took the babies and gave it to the grandmother, which
    one saved many people's life.
    But we didn't want to depart from Mama.
    They said, don't go families together.
    Then, they would holler in German.
    But in between, each time, they would give us
    some little advice, something that later on, we
    understood how much they wanted to try to help us
    and to save us.
    Then, when they noticed that the German soldier with the big dog
    is coming, they would holler, schnell, schnell!
    Los, los!
    You have to go fast and line up, separate the men,
    separate the women.
    We lined up.
    And we were standing, Mama in the middle, my sister, and me,
    and then two other girls from our home town,
    and the men in a separate line.
    And I remember my father screaming my name.
    He was very worried because I was the youngest.
    So you were then about 13?
    Yes, and I was very, very skinny girl.
    They used to send me to a resort place
    to gain a little bit of weight.
    When I was a child, I just happened to be very slim.
    And my father was screaming my name.
    And I turned around, and he said, whatever happens,
    wherever you go, you continue to believe in God.
    And that's the last verse of my father
    that's ringing each time in my ear.
    Apparently, he knew that terrible things are coming,
    and he wanted to reassure that we should continue
    or that the faith should give us strength.
    Let's stop here and turn over the tape.
    This is an interview for the Holocaust Memorial Museum
    with Jaffa Munk, conducted by Margaret Garrett on October 8,
    1996, in Baltimore, Maryland, tape 2, side A.
    You were talking about the last words
    that your father spoke to you at the entrance to Auschwitz.
    Yes.
    Then we were walking, and there was a huge, tall, beautiful man
    in army uniforms.
    He had white gloves on his hand, shiny boots, and a silver stick
    in his hand.
    When our turn came to approach him,
    he pointed my mother to the left,
    my and my sister, and the two others sisters, [? Solomon, ?]
    from our hometown, to the right.
    When I noticed that my mother was pointed to the left
    I grabbed her skirt and I wanted to pull her.
    My mother, who spoke beautiful German, she said to him,
    please mister, I am capable of working.
    I am a young woman.
    May I go to the other side?
    How she knew that left means not to go to good side,
    I can't tell.
    Most probably, she saw that more young people
    are put to the right.
    Or she just wanted to be with her children.
    But I remember her words that she said,
    I am capable of working.
    And he became so angry that with his beautiful shiny boots
    he beat into my mother and he threw her to the left.
    I still was holding her skirt and trying to pull,
    but he pushed her so hard that that was
    the last time I saw my mother.
    As I know, my mother was gassed that very same day
    in Auschwitz.
    We were taken to a big huge place where
    there were "beauticians," quote unquote, waiting for us.
    They shaved our hair off completely.
    They said that we have to take off our clothing.
    We had been traveling for a long time.
    We have to have some shower.
    And that we just should pile up nicely our clothing.
    We were taken into a shower.
    And when we came back, no more clothing was waiting.
    We then naked, we had to stand and German soldiers
    came to count us--
    naked without hair.
    I remember screaming, Esther, Esther.
    That's the name-- Judith Esther--
    my sister.
    And she said, I am standing next to you.
    I couldn't recognize her without hair, without clothing.
    And after they counted us, then they
    threw us, each one, some kind of an old shoe and an old dress.
    Then when we were about dressed, we had to march again,
    five in a row.
    And there was a painting lady who had a red can of red paint,
    and she painted in the back of our dress.
    I remember that I felt that the paint goes into my body.
    Why are they painting our dress?
    Well, in case we might in some miraculous way
    try to escape from Auschwitz.
    We can't because we will be noticed from far away
    that we are inmates of Auschwitz.
    From the bathing house we were marched into Birkenau, which
    was the camp for the womans.
    Yeah, that's a sub-camp of Auschwitz--
    Auschwitz-Birkenau.
    And we were given to go into a huge bunk.
    It was about the length of 2 times, 3 times, of my living
    room, where we had been pushed in, 1,000 girls.
    And no beds, no blankets, nothing was in that room.
    They again called us to stand for Záhlappell,
    which is roll call.
    And I happened to want to make, you know.
    And I asked the head of the camp, where can I go.
    And she said, in the back, but do it fast.
    So until I find it, and until I made it, and I came back,
    and they were already-- the Germans-- they
    were coming again to count us.
    She became very angry and she gave me--
    she beat me up in my face, that I could not see for days.
    I got so swollen in my face, because she
    was blamed that there is missing one person from the counting.
    Then I was standing in the row and they counted again
    and everything was OK.
    We were given food.
    And the food consisted of black coffee
    and a little piece of bread, the size of half of my palm.
    We ate and we asked, where are we going to sleep.
    So the head of the bunk said to us, what do you think,
    you are in Budapest?
    What do you mean, "beds."
    You go and lay down on the bare floor.
    And she threw, for every two girl, a blanket.
    And she said, that is it.
    That's for covering and whatever you want to do with it.
    We were so exhausted from the trip, from their separation,
    from the shaving our hair, from starvation,
    that we all fell asleep with the blanket, two to one blanket.
    The next day, they took us to a different bunk.
    And that bunk had some kind of bridge beds.
    You know, like how you call children have those kind of--
    Like bunk beds?
    Bunk beds, that's right.
    So we were taken there.
    And again, counting-- and this counting business
    meant sometimes three or four times in a day,
    sometimes we had to be standing outside early in the morning.
    And in Auschwitz, even though it was June when we arrived,
    the nights were very cold.
    And sometimes we were standing for four hours,
    until the Germans they arrived and they counted us,
    with the dogs surrounding us, jumping.
    If they saw somebody look to them too pale or too skinny,
    they would call out.
    At that time, we didn't understand
    where they are taking them.
    And each day, we were less and less.
    This was a camp that is called Vernichtungslager, which word
    means that an elimination camp.
    Nobody was working.
    Nobody was doing nothing.
    Every day less and less people remained in the camp.
    Opposite of our bunk was a so-called hospital.
    And if somebody was sick and did go to that hospital,
    never returned back from there.
    My best friend from my childhood, her name
    [? Anniko ?] Weiss, who came down with scarlet fever
    after a few days we were in Auschwitz.
    We tried to hide her.
    We tried to hold her.
    We tried to massage her.
    We tried to give up our little bit of warm stew
    that we were given, just to make sure that she should not
    go to the hospital.
    But nothing helped.
    One day she collapsed from the high fever
    and she went over to the hospital.
    But luckily, there was one German nurse
    who had pity on her.
    She was a very beautiful 13-year-old,
    cheerful little girl whose mother happened to be with us.
    And she told her, you are enough good, go back.
    Don't stay here in the hospital.
    We used to see trucks coming.
    And they would pile on the truck sick people.
    Well, they used to ask, where are they taking them?
    The answer used to be that they are taking them
    to the hospital.
    But they never came back.
    So we understood that it couldn't be the hospital.
    After we have been maybe two or three weeks
    in the concentration camp--
    Lager B3, Birkenau-- they announced
    that all those children who are under the age of 16, from age
    whatever, remained alive, they should be lining up.
    They will be united with their parents.
    They will be given better food.
    They are going to have milk and cake and bread.
    Who didn't want that-- to be united with their parents?
    We did not know yet, you know, that nobody from our parents
    is any more alive.
    Or even, if it's alive, we will not be united with them.
    We lined up happily.
    We going to a better place.
    Now, was Esther under 16 also?
    Yes.
    Esther is two years older than I am.
    So we lined up.
    And the two other sisters--
    the [? Solomon ?] sisters, who were members
    of my father's congregation--
    they said, oh, you're going away,
    you know, we will remain here.
    Because they were older.
    One of them was already married.
    And the other one was 22, 23 years old.
    And they said, oh, we will miss you so much.
    Why are you going?
    But we said, you know, we will be united with the family
    and we are going to be served better food.
    So we lined up.
    Here we are lining up, 5 again in the row.
    They're again counting us.
    Around us all the time, SS soldiers with huge, big dogs
    that, God forbidden, we can't move now any more from the row.
    As we are standing and they are counting,
    I hear a voice saying go back, don't go with this group.
    And I was looking, who is talking to me?
    I believe that the German lady soldier,
    she would be saying this to me.
    Why is she saying this to me?
    Now, until this day, I don't know
    if she was the one who was talking
    or it was an inner voice, instinct,
    or the soul of my mother.
    The end of the story is that I grabbed my sister.
    And she was very annoyed-- why, we should be going,
    we will have good.
    And when I heard this voice three times, saying to me,
    just get out from this, I took her.
    And the German soldier, the lady, with her dog,
    did not interfere.
    She let us go out from the row.
    And we walked back to our bunk.
    And the whole group was taken.
    Not to be united with their parents in this world,
    but to the gas chamber.
    And many times, you know, until this day, sometimes
    I feel guilty.
    Why I have been the one who was told,
    if it was by this German soldier or by the soul of my mother
    or an angel or whatever, you know,
    why the other girls had to go to their death?
    But that's fate, you know.
    And perhaps God had a special reason
    to save us from that time, from the death.
    So a lot of miracle things happened in Auschwitz.
    After a while, we were taken over in the same camp
    to a different headquarters.
    And one night, I will never forget it,
    we heard tremendous screaming.
    And there were no windows.
    Only through the cracks of the wooden bunk
    we could be looking out.
    And we saw a lot of fires and a lot of smoke going.
    All the Gypsies who had been also taken to Auschwitz
    have been gassed that night.
    And the Gypsies were very defiant in that matter.
    The Jewish people, when they were taken to the gas chambers,
    they were singing Shema Yisrael.
    They were saying their prayer.
    The Gypsy people have no religion, you know.
    They are very primitive people.
    They were trying to fight.
    They were trying to take their nails and attack the soldiers.
    It was such a night that it's still ringing in my ear--
    the screaming of the Gypsy people
    who were gassed that night.
    And then the fire that we saw was their body
    was burned to ashes.
    That was the very first time that we really
    saw with all our own eyes that there is a gas chamber
    and that there is fire.
    And from that day on, we knew that if you
    are taken from this camp you are taken to the gas chamber
    and you are being burned.
    So we were very much aware what is going on in Auschwitz
    In about end of August, beginning of September--
    because the dates are not so clear, you know--
    except that through some miraculous way,
    we were aware that when is our holiday coming.
    There was always one girl, or one--
    [INAUDIBLE] marching, they used to take us to the bath,
    to the collective bath.
    We would march near to the men's camp.
    They always used to scream names.
    Maybe that is my relative.
    Did you see this?
    Did you see that, you know?
    They also would scream to us, do you
    know that tomorrow is Shabbat?
    Or do you know that tomorrow is the New Year?
    One day we were marching, and one of my uncle was screaming.
    And he was asking if we saw his wife, Olga.
    So we knew that he is still alive.
    The mens were mainly in Auschwitz.
    And they have been a little bit working.
    What their work was exactly, it's hard for me to know.
    What?
    Do you want to stop and rest your voice?
    Just for a minute.
    OK.
    In about beginning of September, they
    called again that they need some workers for a factory.
    But the entire camp has to line up in a very empty field.
    And they are going to choose some people for work.
    I had no choice, because this time not age, not group,
    or not one part of the camp, but the entire camp,
    had to be naked, stand.
    And the German soldiers, and the head of them,
    Dr. Mengele, that we called him The Angel of Death, he came.
    And he started to count.
    And after he was counting the entire camp--
    that was a few thousand girls--
    he started to point to the right, again, and to the left.
    How did you know that it was Dr. Mengele?
    We know it because when we arrived the striped soldiers--
    the striped inmates-- they told us
    that there is a doctor whose name is Dr. Mengele.
    And then later on, the head of the camp,
    who happened to be a Jewish girl who
    was working for the Germans, she used to throw this,
    oh wait till you meet Dr. Mengele.
    So we knew it, that that was Dr. Josef Mengele.
    And he came.
    And he started to point people.
    But this time the left meant that you remained still
    in Auschwitz.
    And right is the group that is going to leave the camp
    and is going to be taken to some kind of a factory to work.
    They said that the soldiers are very busy on the front,
    you know.
    They are fighting the war.
    And there are no more able people
    working in the factories.
    So my sister has been chosen to go to the work,
    and I to remain in the camp.
    I didn't want to get separated from my sister.
    And somehow I felt that if I remain alone here,
    I won't be able to endure anymore.
    Being together gave strength, each one of us strengthening
    the other, you know.
    We were, at least, giving each of us
    faith and strength to continue.
    So what should I do?
    I started to crawl on my stomach towards the group that
    has been chosen.
    And one of the SS soldiers noticed me
    and beat with his bayonet on my back, which there is still
    a mark of it.
    And he said, in German, [GERMAN]..
    You devil Jew, you will anyway die.
    Go where you want to go.
    And I crawled into that group.
    And then, again, they started to count and count and count,
    you know.
    And somehow I was very lucky that,
    even though that they counted again and again, that there has
    to be only 300 in the group.
    How it happened, it was 300 with me together.
    Now if somebody left because her sister was--
    I can't tell you.
    And at that time they took us to a train and we left Auschwitz.
    They planned to then take us, really, to a factory,
    but the Allies were, by that time, bombing.
    American and British soldiers were already heavily fighting.
    And I remember that the train was going back and forth
    and back and forth.
    They couldn't really go--
    advance-- because each time when the bombing was,
    they would ship the train backwards to Auschwitz.
    So we didn't know, is this a new method of killing us?
    Because in the train we, again, didn't have air.
    We didn't have food.
    And we thought that we are going to die.
    And no one will ever know what happened to us
    because we are in the train.
    However, after three or four days
    of being shifting back and back and forth, we arrived to a camp
    in Bergen-Belsen.
    And when we arrived to Bergen-Belsen,
    it was exactly a day before our most holy day
    of the year, Yom Kippur.
    Yom Kippur is the atonement of the Jewish people.
    And we made that decision that we are going to fast.
    You and Esther decided.
    That's right, and a few other friends
    who were with us in the camp.
    And the German people there in Bergen-Belsen,
    they didn't do really nothing with us--
    no working, not so much roll calls, you know.
    But in Bergen-Belsen the other problem
    existed that a lot of people came down with typhoid fever,
    dysentery.
    The food was tiny bit maybe even better than in Auschwitz.
    That day we requested that we want to fast.
    Would they give us two portions?
    They said, what, are you crazy?
    What you think where you are?
    You are back in Hungary?
    However, we fasted.
    And we were in Bergen-Belsen sleeping
    on the bare floor, a little bit of straw, somehow,
    we collected.
    And I remember that I came down with the infection of my gums.
    My whole face was swollen from it.
    Yet I would not dare to go to the infirmary
    because, by that time, we had enough knowledge
    that if you do go to the infirmary,
    that's the end of you.
    Back to Yom Kippur.
    So you and Esther and some friends fasted.
    And did you observe in any other way than the fasting?
    No, we couldn't.
    Except that a few prayers that we remembered.
    Some older girls who remembered a little part of the prayer,
    we would be singing together or saying together.
    This was on Yom Kippur.
    On Yom Kippur.
    And we remained in Bergen-Belsen for a couple weeks.
    And then, at last, we were taken to another camp
    called Rochlitz, where there was really a factory.
    And it amazes me until this day that-- not only
    that they took us to work, but they
    were teaching us certain technical measurements.
    We were schooled.
    They were hoping-- the Germans--
    that the war will take such a long time,
    or that they will be enslaving us for such a duration of time,
    or just, this is the way of the Germans,
    to educate all the time.
    It was amazing.
    Every evening we were taken to a school for two weeks.
    And we were learning special kind of measurements
    of aeroplane little appliances.
    The factory where we have been working
    was doing all kind of little tools and gadgets
    for aeroplanes.
    In that factory, we worked three shifts.
    Each time, eight hours--
    sometimes in the night, sometimes in the day,
    sometimes in the evening.
    And the foreman, who happened to be a German fellow,
    was having such a pity on me.
    And I am, until this day, very thankful, in a way, for him.
    And he used to call me in, into his office, and close the door
    and gave me a little bit of his farina.
    He was always eating cooked farina in the morning.
    So I always looked forward to the shift
    when I worked in the morning because that day I
    know that I am going to have something in my stomach.
    One day, while I was in his office eating
    the farina, the German soldiers who came once in a while
    to observe if we are working, if we are producing, if we
    are doing our job [INAUDIBLE].
    And she sees me inside.
    He quickly grabbed the plate and threw it down.
    And he's started to scream at me,
    so tomorrow you'll know better how
    to measure the alliance that you have to do.
    I understood that that was a cover-up.
    He himself could be in trouble favoring or doing
    anything for me.
    While we were in that camp, it came our holiday, Hanukkah,
    the holiday of lighting the menorah.
    And we wanted so much to light because they were so
    broken by then-- spiritually, mentally, emotionally,
    physically.
    We thought maybe that would cheer us up.
    Maybe that would give us some kind of a hope,
    thinking how the war between the Greeks and the Jewish people
    many years ago took place.
    Maybe that light would bring in some kind of warm.
    But where do we have--
    where do we have a menorah?
    Where do we have oil?
    What can we do?
    So there were girls who were working
    in the kitchen, that was cooking for us that little bit of food.
    And one of the girls said, you know what,
    girls, let's not talk about it.
    I'm going to bring home some potato.
    We will cut the potato and carve it, and make from it
    like a menorah.
    Lo and behold, every evening she put one potato,
    until she had four potatoes.
    Cut it in half, we scooped it out.
    I don't know how we did it, but we did it.
    And now is the problem where we could get some kind of an oil
    to light the menorah.
    So the other girl, who was working, she said,
    just don't talk about it.
    I'm going to find something.
    And she find a old bottle.
    She filled it in a little bit of oil
    that was used for the cooking.
    So now we have potato and oil but we don't have the wax.
    What we are going to do?
    So we tore from our one dress that we had.
    We had no underwear.
    We tore and we made wicks, you know.
    And put it in the oil, dipped it in.
    We have no matches.
    And was one soldier who, every evening,
    used to come and just go by the little houses.
    At that time, we were put up four to a little house.
    This was a camp that was taken away,
    working, for a summer camp or some sort of thing.
    It had small, tiny, little houses and four girls
    to each little house.
    And the soldier used to come to see
    if it's quiet, if everybody is doing what they supposed to do.
    And I went out and I said to the soldier,
    you know what, I need desperately just one match,
    if you would give me.
    He says, for what.
    I said, well, don't ask too many questions.
    Could you give me one match?
    And he threw his match.
    We lit the Hanukkah candle the next evening.
    And we were all crying.
    And the whole camp came to that one house.
    And they said, how did you got this?
    How did you made it?
    And we remembered one Hanukkah song.
    And we were singing the Hanukkah song.
    And that gave us strength.
    We are human.
    We celebrating a holiday.
    We are not completely oppressed.
    And the soldiers who came to check this evening
    was a different one.
    He was himself, that a few came and started
    to knock on the door.
    What are you doing?
    What do you think where you are?
    You are inmates.
    This is an N-O. You can't do it.
    You can't have Hanukkah candle.
    They didn't say Hanukkah candle.
    They said, you know, you can't have fire in your house--
    out, out.
    And we had to kneel on our knee for four hours as punishment
    that we dared.
    But we were all smiling to each other.
    Never mind this kneeling.
    But we did.
    We shout to the Germans that we are still human beings
    and what they are aiming to completely destroy in us--
    our emotions, our spirit--
    they did not succeed at.
    Many times, you know, when I am asked,
    how did you revolt, why didn't you revolt--
    our main revolt was showing that we are human.
    Physically, we couldn't.
    We were surrounded with barbed wires, with electric wires.
    We could never escape.
    But we always tried to remain human, to help each other,
    to try to celebrate here and there a certain holiday.
    This way we revolted.
    We show to them that as much you would like to destroy us,
    you can't completely destroy our spirit.
    So your religion really helped you to keep going.
    A lot.
    Let's stop here.
    Tape 2, side B. You were talking about how important religion
    had been as helping you to survive.
    All the time that we have been in the camp,
    religion gave us a lot of strength.
    And the devotion to keep religion,
    and the devotion to each other, the helpfulness of one
    to another, gave strength.
    And that ever we could observe any of the customs or holidays,
    I think that spiritually, mentally, and emotionally gave
    us always uplift and strength.
    I remember in Bergen-Belsen, there was a girl with us
    who remained from the Holocaust, lives in Israel,
    in Jerusalem, who would collect in a old broken can some rain
    water, in order that she can wash
    her hand to that little ration, tiny bit of bread,
    and bless over it, so she can thank God
    for sustaining her life and giving her food.
    I remember celebrating in Auschwitz the day
    that we called Tisha B'Av.
    And we are remembering the destruction of the Holy
    Temple in Jerusalem, we fasted.
    And being able to do all these things
    gave us a lot of emotional strength as well as
    spiritual strength.
    I would say that most of the people who
    had faith, who had religion, who tried
    to say a certain prayers that they remember,
    or, here and there, smuggled people in a prayer book.
    And we were, at least once in a week,
    saying some kind of a prayer.
    They were the ones who could take the suffering.
    And they are the ones who were able to overcome
    a lot of the hardship.
    I would say that people who had no faith,
    and mainly people who came from very spoiled backgrounds,
    very well-to-do people who never knew any kind of hardship,
    they were the first one, at least from my own experience.
    The ones who came from Miskolc or from Onód.
    If I look and I see who remained from the Holocaust, definitely
    from my hometown, all the girls who
    came from very well-to-do families, no one of them
    came back.
    And even though that I come from a middle class family,
    and we had a maid, my mother always
    made sure that we have some kind of job, such as making beds,
    washing the dishes.
    And we always used to ask her, but why not Mariska, our maid?
    Why do we have to do?
    Mother said, you never know when you will need it.
    And I am very thankful for her having this foresight.
    If it was for Auschwitz or for my life later on, you know.
    I think that it was very beneficial and very special.
    And I thankful my parents, that they raised me
    to have faith in God, you know.
    And whenever anything very bad happened,
    I know always to whom to turn.
    It was my God.
    And now I am going to go back to the camp
    where I have been working in that factory,
    and where we celebrated Hanukkah.
    And around middle of January, one day
    we were just roaming around in the camp.
    The group that was in the factory was in the factory.
    That girls were working in the kitchen.
    And the group that was off, we were just roaming outside,
    trying to breathe a little fresh air.
    Suddenly from far away, we see a column of mens marching.
    And they were very, very tired, very weak.
    Some of them in striped clothing.
    And they were screaming, the war is over.
    We they thought that they crazy.
    Why is the war over if we are still in a camp
    and they are marching?
    But they probably had some kind of knowledge
    that the Allies are advancing.
    They passed by.
    We didn't know nothing what their fate was.
    We continued to work.
    However, about two or three weeks later,
    we were told that we have to empty this camp.
    And we are going to be taken to a new concentration camp.
    We were taken to a new concentration
    camp called Graslitz.
    Graslitz was actually not a camp.
    It was a jailhouse.
    We were put up, how they emptied,
    or it was an old jailhouse.
    I do not know.
    But we were 1,800 girls put up in a jailhouse.
    They had bunk beds.
    We were given very meager food there, only twice in the day.
    The German soldiers kept on saying,
    we don't have any more food, either,
    so we can't provide for you.
    Every morning, they would march us
    few kilometer away from the jailhouse,
    under the supervision the guard of the SS soldiers,
    to a huge mountain.
    We had to chain line from the top of the mountain
    to the bottom of the mountain.
    On the top of the mountain was a huge pile of stones.
    We had to take those stones down.
    But how?
    One was throwing it to the other person.
    And if you dropped it, you were beaten up.
    Well, we thought, at least we are instrumental.
    We are going to have to build something.
    That's why we are taking the stones down.
    But the next day came our surprise.
    We have to pile the stones and take from the bottom
    up to the top of the mountain.
    And this went on for couple of weeks.
    It was just to destroy us.
    Because even if you are enslaved and you work, and you
    see that something is growing from it, that something
    is built from it, you have a certain kind
    of meaning, satisfaction, you feel that you are instrumental.
    But just to work to make fun of us, to belittle us,
    to make a mockery of us, was very bad for our morale.
    And some of the girls, they just said,
    I wish I collapse already.
    Who wants to live anymore?
    There is no end to this.
    We are not going to make it.
    We have no family anymore.
    We have been in that camp and doing this work.
    About middle of March, end of March,
    one day the SS group of soldiers comes in.
    And they said, stand up next to your bed.
    We have to have a serious talk.
    We thought that they are going to shoot us.
    What do they want?
    Or why they don't take us to work anymore?
    They said, well, we have to tell you, you have a choice.
    Either you stay in this jailhouse,
    but we leaving the building, and we do not
    provide you with any food and not
    with guarding you, anything.
    What will happen to you will happen to you.
    Or you line up, five in a column, and you march with us.
    We have to leave this place.
    We didn't understand why they have to leave the place
    and why they are offering for us that we can stay.
    No one of us dared to remain because we thought,
    who is going to provide us food.
    They might lock the door.
    We won't be able ever to go out.
    The windows had iron bars.
    The door had iron bars.
    If they close us, we will suffocate there.
    So everybody marched out, 1,800 girls.
    And they were marching with us, which one is called
    the Death March, for six weeks.
    Marching every single day, sometimes 40 kilometers,
    sometimes 35 kilometer.
    And we were sometimes sleeping outside on the bare ground.
    Sometimes, I remember, this was Súddeutschland,
    where it's cold still in March and in April, fairly heavy.
    Sometimes on the top of the snow we went to sleep.
    We were licking the snow because we were not
    given any kind of drink.
    No food.
    We were collecting some of the grass, eating.
    Once in a while, they would take us to a big barn
    where we were given some straw.
    The animals in one side and we on the other.
    And I don't have to describe to you what smells we had there.
    And we went to sleep.
    We collapsed-- hungry, wet sometimes from rain or snow,
    without food.
    In the morning, many times I wanted to get up
    when they called us to line up.
    And I couldn't move, people laying on me.
    I would call, please, would you get up.
    Would you move?
    We have to line up.
    They don't move.
    They are dead.
    Each day, less and less of us remained.
    My sister, who was older--
    two years-- than I am, she just asked me, please leave me here.
    I don't want to go anymore.
    Her leg was all swollen.
    She lost her shoe.
    She had swollen legs.
    She had pus in her leg.
    She couldn't move anymore.
    I used to grab her.
    I, the young one, the skinny one, but very determined.
    My personality, I am very active until this day.
    I used to put her on my shoulder and a little bit carry her.
    And then I would say to her, I can't carry you more,
    but you have to go, because we will go back
    and we will tell the story, and we will remain in life.
    And God is with us.
    And, again, going and going and going.
    And this repeated every single day.
    If we were lucky, once in a while,
    they would be able to ask the farmer, the German soldiers,
    if they have some leftover potato
    that they cooked for the pigs.
    And we would be jumping on it.
    And that would be a feast for us.
    Many times we were given some flour.
    And we would just lick the flour.
    Once, I remember we were going marching,
    and by the roads in Germany, in Súddeutschland,
    there are ditch next to the road.
    And we would find some rotten apple.
    We would pick up and we would be just eating.
    Sometimes if the Germans, they noticed
    that you went off from the road even for that one single minute
    to grasp--
    grab-- an apple, they would shoot the person.
    If some people couldn't walk anymore, they couldn't march,
    they would be shooting the people.
    One evening we arrived to a farm,
    and before we were even given an opportunity
    to go to sleep in the barn, one of those German soldiers--
    and the rest, somehow, they were not there.
    One of the soldiers-- a very handsome young fellow--
    he starts to talk to us.
    Before, they wouldn't talk.
    We were like dogs in their eyes.
    Even to the dog they were talking better than to us.
    But this time, he comes over and he says,
    I have to tell you a big secret.
    I am actually Jew.
    My mother was a Jewish person.
    My father was a German.
    And I enlisted to the SS in order that I can help you.
    We were shocked, you know.
    You help us?
    You used to beat us up.
    You used to shoot the girls who were standing,
    who could not move anymore.
    And now you are telling us that you--
    what is the reason that you want so much to find
    favor in our eyes?
    But we could not think any more clearly.
    And he said, but I am going to get for you tonight also food.
    And I am good, right?
    I am good to you.
    So we were not responding to it.
    We just wait, and if he really is going to give us food.
    At that moment, the only thing that we wanted
    was to drink something, to eat something, and be able to go
    to sleep a little bit.
    So, lo and behold, he brought us, again,
    some kind of cooked potato that was half rotten, that
    was cooked always.
    Those days, that's what they fed, usually, the pigs.
    We ate and we went to sleep.
    The next day, we were marching.
    And in the morning, we left that barn and we went by a bridge.
    There was a little river there.
    And we looked how beautiful that water,
    and how lovely it would be just to go down
    and to wash our face.
    We are full with lice.
    Our clothing is full with lice.
    We are dirty.
    We haven't been drinking.
    We haven't been washing our self for weeks already.
    Could we go down just?
    No, the German soldiers are surrounding us
    with their huge dogs.
    And they are keeping us, telling us go fast,
    you know, you have to march.
    We have to get to a place.
    We are marching.
    And then two of us, that evening,
    we see that we are back in that very same place.
    And this went on a few days that they surrounded us
    in that very small spot, maybe two, three little towns.
    But each time, we are back to the same spot.
    So we started to think it must be something going on that they
    can't take us further away.
    But still we didn't believe that the end of the war is coming.
    That time, I think we were already left maybe 400 girls.
    The rest either collapsed, died during the night in the barns,
    or were shot by the Germans.
    Esther was still with you?
    Esther was all the time, and the two sisters.
    That what I think, you know, gave a lot of strength
    to each other, that we remained all the time, from day one
    till the end of the war, together.
    As we are walking, and each one of us fears that any minute
    we are going to collapse.
    And what will be the collapse?
    We will be shot or we will expire anyway,
    from no food, no strength, nothing.
    One of the [? Solomon ?] sisters--
    the older one, [? Mende-- ?] she said,
    I am going to sit down in the ditch.
    If they kill me, they kill me.
    I have been married already.
    I tasted life already.
    But if they don't shoot, then you all come and join me later.
    So she sits down in the ditch.
    And no German soldier is coming back or shooting or counting
    or seeing who is here.
    And we don't see the German soldiers.
    They went ahead of the column.
    So we went back.
    And we sat down with her.
    And we sitting, all four of us, in the ditch next to the road.
    We hear some shooting and we got very scared.
    We thought, oh, this is a trick.
    They just left us to sit, but they will return back
    and they are going to kill us.
    So we look around.
    Where can we go?
    Who will take us?
    There are no houses.
    Opposite of the road we see a little forest.
    We said, let's go into the forest and hide there.
    We go over the road.
    We go into the forest.
    And we are hiding in the forest.
    This is late afternoon, May the 7th, 1945.
    We are sitting there and we are starved.
    What will happen to us if we are not going to have any food?
    That will be our end.
    But the first thing, we look at in the forest.
    Maybe we find something-- a grass, a apple, a garbage.
    Nothing we find.
    We shake out our blanket, which one was full with lice.
    And let's sit down, because if we
    are going to stand or walk around,
    we wasting the little strength we have.
    We sitting down and then we hear some kind of little noise.
    So we walk around and we see a little creek.
    We went, we drank from that water.
    We washed our face.
    We started to say a little prayer,
    but we remembered by heart.
    We sat down and we started to cry.
    What will be our fate?
    What will happen to us?
    As we are sitting and we are quiet, holding each other hand,
    suddenly we hear a rooster.
    And then a mooing of a cow.
    So my sister said, listen, girls,
    we must be close to a farm.
    If we hear so vividly, so clearly, a rooster,
    we must be close to a house.
    I am going to go there.
    Suddenly, she's strong.
    Suddenly, she's willing.
    Suddenly, she's able.
    Suddenly, she wants to do.
    I'm going to beg for food.
    So we said, are you crazy.
    They German.
    They are also going to shoot you.
    She said, I am not going to tell.
    I'm going to tell that I am--
    we spoke very well, German--
    I'm going to tell that I am a refugee.
    My house has been bombed.
    My parents died.
    I happened to be outside.
    I remained in life.
    I have nobody.
    I am an orphan.
    Would you give me some food?
    So one of the [? Solomon ?] sisters
    said, I don't let you to go alone.
    I go with you.
    But how we will find back the way to the forest?
    So like in the story of Hansel and Gretel,
    we tore from our dress, tied to a few bushes.
    And we were in the beginning of the forest.
    We were not going in deep, you know.
    And they walked according to the noise of the cow.
    And they got-- it was not far, really.
    It was at the edge of the forest, a little farm.
    And they went and they begged, and they
    got some mashed potato.
    And in a little jar, a little bit of milk.
    They came back.
    We had a feast.
    We sat down and we ate.
    And then we made the decision that we
    can't sleep all in one time, because just in case
    we hear that the Germans are coming back,
    we have to go more deep.
    Maybe we have to hide, whatever.
    Two, each time, were sleeping.
    Two were sitting and waiting.
    We rotated.
    It was early in the morning, about 4:30,
    5 o'clock in the morning.
    It was still dark outside.
    Suddenly we hear a tremendous noise between the trees.
    We held each one the hand and said
    our little prayer, God, please, just now, keep us still.
    And suddenly we thought, this is our end,
    Maybe a beast, maybe a lion--
    who knows what is in the back of the forest and he
    smelled human being.
    And he's coming.
    And if we were not killed by the Germans,
    we will be killed by a beast.
    But lo and behold, suddenly, a huge, tall soldier is standing
    in the front of us, who screams to us in Jewish language,
    and says, children, don't be scared.
    I am your brother.
    You are liberated.
    That was May 8.
    In the morning, the Russians captured that part of Germany.
    And they knew that there was a group
    of inmates who were marching.
    And they were looking for girls where they are.
    And he was searching in the gardens and in the roads
    and in the forest and in the woods and wherever to get.
    And he says, get up, don't stay here.
    You go into the town.
    It's very close by, a town.
    And any house that you want, you go in
    and you say that the Russian occupying army
    told you to be put up.
    We had no strength to walk.
    We walked a little bit.
    The second house we saw, we opened a gate,
    and a priest comes out and greets us.
    Hello, who are you?
    We told him that we are inmates.
    That we are inmates, and the three
    are going to be here by you, because that's
    what the Russian army told us.
    And he said, OK.
    So he points to the barn, that we should be going there.
    And we didn't wanted to go into the barn,
    so we went into the yard.
    And we sat down in the grass.
    And he had--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I'll shut it off.
    So the woman who was his cook, she
    brought out, again, mashed potato,
    and this time warm milk, you know.
    And we eat and be very happy.
    And we are sitting in the fresh air.
    What was the name of the village?
    The village was [PLACE NAME].
    And we are sitting outside and very happy.
    Later on we went to sleep in the barn.
    It was a clean barn.
    It had hay.
    It didn't smell because, apparently, he
    didn't have any more cow there.
    And we slept.
    In the morning, we getting up and we sit outside.
    We wanted just to be in fresh air.
    She brought us some bread with a little bit of butter on it,
    and again some kind of milk.
    And if I recall, I think she made us some cooked farina.
    About 9, 10 o'clock in the morning,
    the same Russian soldier who came into the forest
    comes to check on us.
    So girls, how are you doing?
    We said, fine.
    How was your sleep?
    OK.
    Where did you sleep?
    So we show him the barn.
    He rushed into the house and he said to the priest, excuse me,
    you have such a huge house, and you
    put these girls who went to a whole year of troubles,
    and you're putting them in a barn to sleep?
    How about you sleep tonight in the barn and these girls
    inside.
    So he gave us a room.
    He slept also, you know, there, in other room.
    He really had a big house.
    And from that day on, he became a whole different person.
    He realized that this is what his mission is now,
    to help the refugees to come to certain kind of health,
    strength.
    And he gave us beds.
    She made us beautiful pillow and covers--
    you know, with feather.
    In those days, the pillows were--
    I just couldn't sleep in the bed.
    So I had to go down on the floor and sleep
    because I was just not used anymore, after a whole year.
    It was too soft.
    I just couldn't find myself.
    For a few days, until I got used to it, first the pillow,
    and slowly I got back and I slept in the bed.
    About three days later, unfortunately, my sister
    came down with a very high fever, and the two
    other sisters.
    And all three had to be put in Libschitz,
    which one is a nearby city.
    And they have been put up in a hospital.
    They all came down with typhoid fever.
    And I started to gain weight.
    And my hair started to grow.
    And I started to look human.
    And this priest was very kind.
    Every day, he wanted to learn to me.
    He was learning with me Hebrew.
    He said, how about you become my daughter, you become Catholic.
    I will provide you with everything.
    I told him, I really appreciate everything
    but I am a daughter of a rabbi.
    And I promised my parents that whatever will happen,
    I will remain faithful to my own faith.
    And from that day on, he never bothered me.
    He was very kind to me.
    And then, there were Czechoslovakian soldiers
    in the town who had a special headquarter.
    And you could go to their headquarter
    if you were a refugee, if you were an inmate from a camp.
    And they would give you a little bit of clothing.
    And they would direct you a little bit.
    And I told them that only one thing that I am requesting
    is if I could get a bicycle so I can go into the other city
    where my sister and my friends are in the hospital
    so I can go and visit them.
    Lo and behold, they gave me-- how
    they got for me the bicycle, I really don't know.
    They gave me a bicycle.
    They gave me a scarf that, until this day,
    I think I never got such a scarf in my life.
    I started to put around my head, you know, around my neck.
    The humanity started to come back.
    The woman in me, you know, to look decent, to look human.
    And the lady who was the cook of the priest,
    she would bake with me cookies that I
    should take to the hospital.
    And I was, at first, shaking.
    How can I ride the bike?
    I haven't been riding a bike for over a year.
    How can I do that, you know?
    But God was good to me, and I started first around
    in the yard.
    And then I went.
    And lo and behold, I was on the road, on the bike,
    going every day to visit the sick.
    Until one day I felt this is quite dangerous on the road.
    There were still Russian army coming in
    and they are not the nicest.
    Except this one fellow who liberated us,
    the rest were not so nice.
    There is a lot [? more ?] to talk about it, you know.
    And I just felt very bad.
    And, also, my sister was very, very sick.
    She-- her mind wasn't any more there.
    So I begged the head doctor if he
    could give me some job in the hospital
    so I can be near to my sister.
    I told him, otherwise she will die.
    We're getting near the end of the tape, so better stop here.
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Jaffa Munk conducted
    by Margaret Garrett on October 8, 1996 in Baltimore, Maryland,
    take 3, side A. You were talking about asking
    for a job in the hospital where your sister was.
    So the doctor looked at me.
    And he said, what do you think?
    You look skeleton.
    You want to have a job?
    I explained to the doctor the need
    that I have to be near to my sister.
    And he told me that it's OK.
    I can be in the hospital.
    I can be in a--
    he said to me, I understand the need of you
    to be near to your sister.
    And I tell you.
    There is a little porch that is enclosed.
    I'm going to provide there a little bed.
    And you'll be there.
    You don't have to work here except if you want to cheer up
    the sick people here.
    He said, I see that you have some special ability in you
    and that you are a very cheerful type of a person.
    And I said, yes, indeed, I should be cheerful.
    Do you know what I went through?
    Well, look, I am here, and I am normal.
    So they made me a little room, and that
    was very near to the bed of my sister.
    She was unconscious.
    And yet I used to rub her feet, and I used to talk to her.
    And, slowly and surely, she came back to herself.
    And the other two girls also got better.
    And I used to go to the other sick people
    and sing for them songs that I remembered from my childhood.
    And my sister got better.
    When she was released from that hospital,
    they told us that we are not allowed to leave.
    Going back, we wanted to go back to Hungary.
    We wanted to see maybe somebody remained from the family.
    We hoped for my brother who was the oldest.
    He was 17 years old.
    We thought that maybe he came back, maybe our father
    because my father went from Auschwitz to Mauthausen.
    We didn't know that he perished later on.
    Maybe someone is alive, but they said that we can't travel.
    She's much too weak for such a trip.
    And how they organized it, I really don't know,
    but we were given a room in a kitchen.
    And, every few days, we had to go back
    to the hospital for a checkup with my sister.
    And that time, I came down also with some kind of--
    I had staphylococcus infection all over,
    all kinds of things on my body, you know?
    And the Russian doctor came.
    And, without any anesthesia, without anything, she just cut.
    I have marks from it, painful and whatnot,
    but at least I got here.
    Do you know?
    And, about end of August, we got the permission to leave Germany
    and to go to Hungary.
    Again, the Czechoslovakian organization, the army,
    gave us some money to purchase tickets with the train.
    And we went to Prague first, the capital of Czech.
    And there the Joint, the American Jewish organization,
    had already a headquarter.
    They had already a list of names of people
    who perished, not correct yet completely,
    but they had plenty.
    And, unfortunately, that was the place
    where we find that neither one of our parents and not
    our brother remained from the war.
    We were very torn.
    We didn't want to stay there.
    Maybe some cousin, maybe some uncle, maybe somebody remained.
    Let's go back to Hungary.
    And we took the train from Prague.
    We went back to Budapest.
    And, lo and behold, we found we had two uncles who remained.
    One of them was in the Swedish house of Raoul Wallenberg who
    gave them papers.
    And two of them were in the Jewish ghetto.
    And, in a miraculous way, they remained
    with their whole family, but they didn't have place for us
    because, after the war, everybody was living together.
    There was a shortage of apartments
    or maybe shortage of good will too.
    That, I don't want to go into it.
    It's a painful kind of thing.
    We were put into an orphanage home.
    And our education began right away.
    It's amazing how people who survived
    and were right away active and organized
    schooling for children.
    We both went to school.
    Although, my sister had to be in a sanatorium for a couple
    more months, but, once she was released from there--
    you see the typhoid fever was so strong
    that it attacked her lungs.
    And she had to recuperate fully from the sickness.
    And we both had been in school.
    And, in 1946, at the beginning of the year,
    they were talking about it that all the orphan children should
    go to Israel because the memories are much too
    heavy to be in Hungary.
    We can't return to our hometown.
    We have no parents.
    Maybe if we are in a new environment,
    maybe if we are in a new country,
    maybe it will be easier to forget.
    Psychologically, it will be an easier transition
    from the terrible experience that we went through.
    I didn't want that so much to go yet
    because I wanted at least that one school year to end.
    I felt that so much was deprived from me from my education.
    However, they said that, even though that I didn't finish
    the year, since I was doing very good,
    they are going to give me credit for that year.
    And, in 1946, about May, we went with the illegal boat
    to Israel, which was occupied at that time by the Britons.
    And, even though the Britons knew what we went through,
    they were not much of fans to admit us to Israel.
    We were a lot of orphans and a lot of broken people.
    And we went on the deck of the boat,
    and the British boat came to greet us.
    And they wanted to send us to Cyprus.
    We begged them that, please, we are so broken,
    and we need to get out from here.
    And we need to be in the country.
    After an hour-long discussion, they admitted us to Israel.
    We were put again in a camp for three weeks.
    But then some teachers from the Jewish agency,
    they came, and they released first the young children.
    And I arrived in 1946 in June to Jerusalem,
    and I was put up in an orphanage home, and I went to school.
    So most of my education is really from Israel.
    I have my BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
    And I became a certified teacher over there.
    And then I continued here in Lehigh University in Allentown.
    And how did you get to the States?
    To the States I came as an exchange teacher to New York,
    to Brooklyn, Flatbush, to Yeshiva of Flatbush.
    The principle visited.
    I was teaching already.
    I was newly married.
    And I was teaching in Israel when
    he visited me in that class.
    And he asked me if I would want to come for a little bit
    to America and teach here.
    And I had my only sister Esther was married,
    and she lived in America.
    And I thought to myself, for sure, I want to go.
    This is my only family I have.
    And for two years is not so terrible.
    And the two years lasted for 38 years.
    And I'm very happy to be in this country.
    So now I would like to tell I have been first in the ghetto,
    Diósgyőr.
    Then I was in the brick factory in Miskolc.
    We were taken to Auschwitz.
    I was in the Birkenau lager.
    And the camp was named [? B3, ?] which
    was a camp of elimination.
    Everyday, they eliminated.
    It was called the vernichtungslager.
    It means that camp.
    From there, luckily, in end of the summer,
    about beginning of September, I was taken to Bergen-Belsen,
    in December, from Bergen-Belsen to Rochlitz where we
    worked in a munition factory.
    We made little appliances for airplanes.
    From Rochlitz, we were taken to Rochlitz, Graslitz.
    Graslitz, we were in a jail house.
    And our work consisted of piling stones
    from the top of the mountain down and up and down and then
    for six weeks about the Todesmarsch, the death
    march, and liberated in nearby to Libschitz, [PLACE NAME],,
    Libschitz-- that's Sudeten Deutschland--
    by the Russian army, living by a Catholic priest for a while,
    then in the hospital, and then in a little apartment
    in the city of [PLACE NAME].
    And, from there, we returned to Hungary.
    I can thank to my parents that I was
    able to hold out in the depth of the darkness
    and the most difficult days due to their upbringing
    and due to the special supervision of God
    who, even at the time when there is darkness in the world,
    he wanted people to remain, perhaps to tell the story what
    took place.
    And I am very happy.
    I have a nice family.
    God was very good to me.
    I have four lovely children and 13 beautiful grandchildren who
    know what I went through, and they are really
    trying in each day and in each moment to sweeten my life.
    And you married a rabbi.
    And I married a rabbi who happened
    to be my teacher in Israel.
    And we got married in the Israel,
    and we had two children there and two in this country.
    And your name when you were born was Naomi.
    And now you use a different name.
    My name was-- you see, in those days,
    Jewish people gave a Jewish name.
    And they had to give also a name that was accepted
    by the country where you lived.
    So my Jewish name was Shaindel, which means pretty.
    And my Hungarian name was Naomi, spelled in Hungarian N-A-O-M-I,
    Naomi.
    When I arrived to Israel, the people,
    they thought that I am not Jewish.
    I was blond, very fair face.
    And they asked me, what is your name?
    So I said to them Naomi because, in my papers,
    it is the official name.
    They said, oh, this is not a Jewish girl.
    And I said, what do you mean?
    I have a Jewish name.
    My name is Shaindel.
    Oh, Shaindel, that means pretty.
    Why should you have that name?
    That name in Hebrew is Jaffa.
    Jaffa means pretty.
    In Yiddish, Shaindel means pretty.
    So they said, from now on, your name is Jaffa.
    And, from then on really, in all my papers
    is both of my names, Jaffa Naomi.
    The only name that I do not carry anymore
    is what had been given to me in the Jewish language, Shaindel,
    by my parents, which one is translated into Hebrew.
    And that's why it's the different of the name.
    I also forgot to ask your father's name.
    My father's name was Philippe Donath.
    And your mother's name?
    And my mother's name was Olga Donath born Shick.
    My grandfather, Rabbi Shick, was a very great rabbi
    who established a very special kind of high school, one
    of its kind in Hungary, that people not only learned Bible,
    but they learned--
    it must like a vocal school.
    They also learned some kind of trade, either being a tailor
    or being a shoemaker or carpenter.
    My grandfather believed that a person
    should have some kind of a trade and not
    depend on it that, from somewhere,
    he is going to have an income.
    And I am very proud of him because I
    think that that's how we should be in life, combining the two.
    It's one thing not enough.
    You have to have both.
    And my brother's name was Joseph Donath
    who perished in the Holocaust.
    And my sister Esther Judith, Judit in Hungarian, Judit,
    she's alive, and she lives in Montreal.
    And my name now is Munk because I am
    married to a rabbi, Yona Munk.
    Well, your story has been very important.
    Thank you very much for giving your testimony.
    And thank you for your time.
    This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Jaffa Munk.
    Thank you, Mrs. Munk.
    My pleasure.
    This is a recording for the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum.
    Interview with Jaffa Munk conducted by Margaret Garrett
    on March 11, 1997 in Washington, D.C. Take one, side A.
    Mrs. Monk, when we had the interview several months ago,
    we left off about the time that you and your sister, Esther,
    went to Prague for a day and then to Budapest.
    So can we pick up there?
    And could you tell what happened when you arrived in Budapest?
    OK.
    First I want to go back for a minute to Prague.
    The main reason that we went to Prague--
    A, it was on the way, but mainly because that
    was a center of information--
    who, the people, survived?
    And there were charters already put up in the Jewish centers
    and in the temple there.
    And we looked if our father and brother survived.
    Somehow we knew that mother perished at the very beginning
    in Auschwitz.
    However, we didn't find their names
    and we still had a slight of hope.
    We didn't want to spend any more time in Prague.
    We took the very first opportunity of train
    and we went to Budapest.
    As we arrived to Budapest, by the train station
    was big trucks waiting for the survivors, which
    one was organized by the Joint.
    What?
    Organized by who?
    By the Joint.
    The Joint?
    Joint is an organization that is from America,
    Jewish organization helping refugees.
    I really don't know exactly the details of the name,
    but it's a well-known organization.
    It's in existence until this day.
    And they do help out--
    in the diaspora and many, many other countries--
    people who are in need of help.
    And they greeted us.
    They took us to a headquarters that they established
    in a school for the refugees who came back and had no family.
    As we were going through the streets of Budapest,
    suddenly I noticed that we are passing by the house
    where my aunt lived.
    And I started to scream, "This is [PLACE NAME]..
    This is the street where my aunt lives."
    However, they did not let anybody
    to get off because they were not sure
    that anybody survived in that address,
    that aunt really is alive.
    So we continued and we went to that place that was established
    for the refugees.
    And after a day, somebody from the orphanage home
    visited the place.
    Her name is Esther Eckstein, who today
    is still alive and lives in Israel
    in the city of Bnei Brak.
    She was the head of that orphanage home.
    And she made every effort to collect as many Jewish girls
    who remained after the Holocaust and try to bring them
    to the orphanage home that she established in Budapest
    immediately after the liberation and to try to re-educate,
    again, those people who lost--
    some of us a year, some more years of schooling.
    So the orphanage home was located in Budapest.
    And she took us--
    not only me and my sister, but a lot
    of girls who arrived with their transport-- back to Budapest.
    And we were put up in the orphanage home
    where we had regular schooling during the day.
    Teachers-- how she organized this?
    From where she got the money?
    And the energy?
    Her herself, a survivor, who was for many years
    first hiding in Budapest.
    Then she was caught.
    And she was sent to a concentration
    camp in Theresienstadt.
    But upon her return, that was her aim and her dream
    that as many children that survived
    she wants to see them being educated again.
    And in that orphanage home, we had very meager
    but we had some food.
    And we had very simple headquarters
    for sleeping and resting.
    And we had excellent teachers.
    In Budapest, a lot of professors and teachers from the gymnasium
    remained alive--
    thanks to Wallenberg, or some of them just in the ghetto,
    some of them who were hiding or with false papers.
    And they also felt that this much
    what they can do to educate the generation that remained alive.
    So we were studying.
    Now how did that feel to you to be in that situation?
    Well in that situation, in a way,
    I was missing the home atmosphere.
    Your home?
    My home.
    Also, I have to tell you that two uncles and one aunt
    remained alive in Budapest.
    And I had been visiting them once in a while.
    They had free time that we could go visiting museums or going
    for books or to the library.
    And each time that we had that kind of period,
    I would jump over and go to visit my aunt.
    And it was very traumatic to see that they
    lived in their own home.
    They had their own furniture.
    It was a family life.
    And here we had no family life whatsoever.
    Did you wish that your aunt would
    invite you to live with her?
    Not really.
    Because I think not being in the camps,
    she had not enough understanding what we went through.
    So in a way, I cherished that I am together
    with people who have the very same fate that we had, and had
    more understanding of our moods, our crying,
    or not being able to cope sometimes
    with the regular daily situation.
    Because we were together.
    We had all together that very same background,
    that very same kind of faith.
    And we helped each other to overcome.
    And what were the moods and the crying
    and the difficulty coping like?
    Well it was very difficult that we
    had no mommy with whom we could discuss.
    In a simple way, even our menstruation,
    our monthly period did not return back
    yet because of the starvation and the medication
    that we got in Germany.
    It would be lovely to talk over with the mommy
    and to hear from a mother that "don't worry" or "eventually
    it will happen," or that mommy would
    say, "let's go to a doctor."
    All we had to deal with--
    little and big problems-- by ourselves,
    even though that we had teachers and we
    had the mother of the orphanage home.
    But it's not the same, like talking with your own mother.
    So you were able to talk to these people?
    We were able to.
    But it was not as helpful as talking to your own mother.
    It was not as easy.
    Maybe helpful, it was.
    Because they did seek out doctors to take us
    and have checkups here and there.
    But it wasn't the same like talking with your own mother.
    You are shy more.
    And there are certain things that you were just
    keeping to yourself and you wouldn't
    want to share even though they were trying and very warm.
    But nevertheless, it wasn't the same.
    So we were missing family very much so.
    And in the light, that Budapest family life more or less
    returned to normality.
    Of course, the ones who remained there remained intact--
    the families.
    And to see that was a contrast to the life
    that we maintained in an orphanage home.
    But really, I have to praise--
    there were three teachers besides this Esther Eckstein,
    whose name today is Esther Weinberg.
    There were two other teachers.
    She recruited them.
    Very knowledgeable girls.
    And they all are still alive, one of them
    in Brooklyn, New York.
    And the other one is also in Israel.
    Do you have contact with them?
    I do have contact with them.
    And in many fact, this past summer, I was in Israel.
    And Esther, who was the head teacher and the head
    of this whole organization of the orphanage home
    and looking after us--
    she organized a get-together evening in honor of my visit
    to Israel.
    And it was very moving because some, very few,
    who remain still from that school, the orphanage home,
    came to greet me.
    And I am in very, very, very strong contact with Esther,
    mainly.
    However, the other teacher, Rachel, she was also there.
    And the third one, Miriam Gross, she
    is less involved with the group, if it
    has to do with it that she moved away
    from the circle of the girls.
    The majority of the students from that orphanage home
    are living in Israel.
    But I visit very often these.
    So I am in touch with the teachers.
    And each time, a very interesting reminder
    of the era that we all went together after the war.
    And is it partly upsetting for you to visit again with them?
    Really not.
    In many fact, as the years are passing by,
    I am more and more admiring their mission,
    their undertaking, and all the effort and all the attention
    that they gave us.
    And for instance, I remember that Esther
    went to a sewing lady and ordered
    for all of us beautiful blouse and beautiful skirt for one
    celebration to give back to us the feeling of humanity,
    to feel good about ourselves and to look good,
    which was very important.
    We had no clothing.
    We came back from the concentration camp--
    in many fact, my winter coat was a German soldier's army coat
    that I shortened.
    And somebody helped me to change the buttons that I should
    feel a little bit better.
    And here was a woman--
    and you have to understand at the time, the situation
    in Budapest was very difficult. I mean,
    I'm talking about time that it was still
    under a regime of the Russian army.
    And people were standing for bread in the street.
    Clothing was a rarity.
    So we didn't feel that outcast with our poor clothing.
    And yet, she was driving and doing everything to get for us
    some dresses, some blouse, some skirt
    that we should be looking more decent.
    Aside from standing in line, were you
    aware of any abuses from the Russian soldiers--
    personal abuses?
    I personally not.
    But on the train traveling here and there,
    I used to see them seeking out nice-looking girls and when
    the train stopped, stopping these girls of continuing
    their trip and just grabbing them and taking them down.
    And whatever they did with them--
    that could be understood.
    Were you frightened to travel by yourself on the train?
    Very much so.
    And I very rarely traveled, if at all.
    I went on a trip I took once with my aunt to Onod because--
    I don't know if I told you this, that my mother, before we left,
    she hid some of the family pictures
    and some silverware by a Gentile lady.
    And my aunt wanted very much that we should have
    some mementos from our parents.
    So we traveled together.
    And my aunt was putting a babushka on me.
    I shouldn't look decent.
    I should look very frightened and very skinny,
    which one I was anyway, and very pale.
    But she was protecting me.
    And I don't think that ever I would travel
    by myself at all in those days.
    And when you had time off from the orphanage,
    did you walk to your aunt's by yourself?
    We would walk but never alone.
    Never alone.
    We would never walk alone and never in the evening.
    It was mainly in the daytime.
    And luckily, it wasn't too far from my Aunt.
    But if I visited my aunt, I would always watch my watch
    that if it's starting in winter a little bit to be dark,
    we would be already going heading back to the orphanage.
    So you were very cautious?
    Very cautious, yes.
    And when you went back to Onod with your aunt
    to see if you could find the mementos, what happened?
    When we went back to Onod to find the mementos, we came in--
    and she was a neighbor of us-- and she
    greeted us very friendly.
    And when my aunt said, "You know my sister, who
    you loved and loved you, she left with you
    a few very important items.
    Would you be able to give it back?
    This is a child that survived."
    My sister was in a sanatorium so she couldn't travel with us.
    She wasn't well yet.
    And she said, "Well, I am very sorry.
    I know she gave me a lot of things,
    and I was very happy to do that for her.
    But the Russian army passed by here,
    and they came into the houses and they emptied everything.
    And they took."
    Somehow, looking around it didn't