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Oral history interview with Márta Kovalik

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2011.288.21 | RG Number: RG-50.670.0021

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    Oral history interview with Márta Kovalik

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Márta Kovalik, born in 1929, discusses her family genealogy and memories of living in Vác, Hungary; the discovery that her paternal great grandfather was Jewish; her father’s service in World War I, joining the Communist Party and then the Red Army in 1919; her father’s work at the Kodak factory; his marriage to a Christian woman and hiding his Jewish heritage; attending a Catholic school that admitted non-Christians; the lack of discrimination against Jewish classmates; seeing SS soldiers during the German occupation; feeling afraid of Jews after watching the Nazi propaganda film Jud Suss; her father’s assertion that she should not be afraid because Jews are good people; working in the summer at the Kodak factory and witnessing a Jewish man be required to perform a low skilled landscaping job; watching Jewish acquintances on their way to the train station from which they were deported; hearing about a local Jewish doctor who committed suicide by lethal injection; hearing about people taking Jewish belongings; the requirement for her father to present his birth certificate at work; his boss Alfred Polster who protected the secret of his Jewish background; referring to Alfred Polster a “humanist fascist” because he greeted people with Heil Hitler but rejected the extermination of the Jews; the postwar trial and incarceration of Alfred Polster during which her father testified that Polster saved his life; seeing Polster thank her father for his testimony; learning from her aunt about her Jewish heritage when she was 20 years old; and never discussing her family’s Jewish lineage with her father.
    Interviewee
    Márta Kovalik
    Interviewer
    Borbála Kriza
    Date
    interview:  2012 January 15
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation

    Physical Details

    Language
    Hungarian
    Extent
    1 videocassette (DVCAM) : sound, color ; 1/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Corporate Name
    Germany. Heer

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    This is a witness interview of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Witnesses: The Jeff and Toby Herr Testimony Initiative, a multi-year project to record the testimonies of non-Jewish witnesses to the Holocaust. The interview was directed and supervised by Nathan Beyrak.
    Funding Note
    The production of this interview was made possible by the Tziporah Wiesel Fund.
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 09:21:50
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn50805

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