Béla Ingber (1913-2003) was born in Munkács, Hungary (later Czechoslovakia; now Mukacheve, Ukraine) to Kálmán Ingber (1882-1944, born in Kielce) and Eszter Mermelstein (1884-1944, born in Gdansk). He had seven siblings: Ilona (1905-1944), Jenő (Eugen, 1906-1942), Ferencz (b. 1908), Jóska (1910-1989), Adolph (Oli, 1915-1998), Miki (1922-1981), and Erzsébet (Libu, 1925-2012). Kálmán worked as a horse and cattle trader. He was religiously observant and the family’s life centered on Jewish holidays and practice.
In November 1938, Germany gave Hungary control of part of Czechoslovakia, including Munkács. Soon Hungary instituted anti-Semitic restrictions limiting Jewish economic and educational opportunities. Béla and Ferencz were both conscripted into Hungarian Labor Companies (Munkaszogalat), auxiliary Jewish units to the Hungarian military. Bela had previously served in the Czech Army but, as a Jew, he could no longer be a soldier. Oli illegally immigrated to Palestine in 1939, and later joined the British Army. Jóska obtained a visa to come to the United States to attend the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow, New York in 1939. He remained in the U.S. after start of World War II and enlisted in the United States Amy to both assist in the war effort and obtain citizenship to help his family emigrate from Europe. By sheer coincidence, he and Oli met each other in a movie theater in London shortly before D-Day.
Jenő moved to Prague where he worked as a journalist writing anonymous anti-Nazi editorials. After someone betrayed him, he was arrested and deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp. He was shot and killed on 1 October 1942 while trying to escape.
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, conditions worsened for the forced-laborers, and their Hungarian supervisors grew increasingly sadistic. Ferencz’s unit was sent to support Hungarian troops fighting in Russia, and he perished in unknown circumstances. The last letter the family received from him was dated October 1942.
Béla’s parents, Ilona and her family, Miki, Libu, and Ferencz’ wife and child were all deported from Munkács to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. Everyone but Miki and Libu perished there. Libu was later deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After the camp was liberated, Libu was taken to Sweden by the Red Cross to recover. She later immigrated to the United States. Miki was deported from Auschwitz to the Dachau concentration camp. He was left for dead among a pile of dead bodies after the camp was liberated but was rescued when someone heard him breathing.
Béla spent much of the war in Hungary in forced-labor battalions. He met Marika Leiner (b. 1925 in Budapest) through a mutual friend in Budapest in 1942 while he was trying to obtain warmer clothing. Marika’s mother died from leukemia when she was a child and her father, a commercial painter, later married Roszi, a tailor. Her father was killed in an air raid toward the end of the war, and she survived in Budapest after receiving false-identity papers from her Christian friend in October 1944.
Béla was taken captive by the Romanian Army in Cluj in fall 1944. He served with them as a laborer until Hungary was liberated by the Red Army in early 1945. He reunited with Marika after Budapest was liberated. They married on 7 June 1945 in Munkács. He was also reunited with his brother Miki. In October 1945 Béla, Marika, and Miki fled communist Czechoslovakia and went to Italy. Miki immigrated to the United States in 1946. Béla and Marika’s first child, Esther, was born in 1947 and in May 1947 they immigrated to the United States onboard the Saturnia. They settled in Queens, New York. Their son Jeffrey was born in 1954.
