Maria Madi diaries

Maria Louise Kiss Madi (14 May 1898-4 December 1970) was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. Around 1920, she married [Lajos Felsöbuki], who was an orthopedist. They had one daughter, Hilde Felsobuky, born on November 26, 1920. Maria, who attended school in Leeds, England, and in Budapest, earned a medical degree in 1922, specializing as a radiologist. She and Felsöbuki divorced in 1924. Maria alternated her name as “Maria Madi Kiss” and “Maria Kiss Madi.” In 1939, Hilda married George G. Walton, a geologist originally from Indiana, who was doing surveys in Romania. She emigrated to the United States in April 1941 and spent most of the war in Shreveport, Louisiana, giving birth to daughter Barbara in August 1941. Son Stephen was born in 1947. Maria, who had been planning to join her daughter in the United States, began her diaries when the United States entered the war, ending her immigration plans. She describes her life in Budapest, keeping her diary as a means of “communicating” with her daughter and sharing her experiences. She also describes the invasion and occupation of Budapest and what she saw and heard of the war. She also writes extensively about the persecution of the Jews, including her efforts to aid a seven-year-old boy, Alfred Lakos, in the fall of 1944. Maria was finally able to emigrate to the United States in December 1946. She lived first in Boston, becoming a naturalized American citizen in June 1952, later moving to Columbus, Ohio, and eventually to Houston, Texas. In the United States, Maria worked as a psychiatrist. She passed away in Houston, Texas, on December 4, 1970 at age 72. Maria Madi was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 2015.