- Interview Summary
- Suzanne Barbara Smeed (née Zsuzsana Borbala Terezia Kalmar), born on September 12, 1942 in Budapest, Hungary, describes being the only child to Laszlo (Les) Emery Kalmar and Erzsebet (Elizabeth) Kalmar; her parents converting to Catholicism in October 1943, believing this might help protect them from antisemitic laws; her father’s successful wholesale and retail textile business before the war; her few, happy memories of her childhood in Budapest; her father’s conscription into the Hungarian Forced Labor Group, run by the Luftwaffe; her father’s return from the forced labor group in early 1944; going with her mother to Papa (a historical town in the Veszprém county of Hungary) in 1944; the ghetto that was created in Papa after the Germans arrived; the deportation in July 1944 of her grandparents, who were killed in the gas chambers; escaping from the ghetto with her mother; hiding in Budapest with her mother; her father escaping a labor camp in October 1944 and reuniting with the family; being hidden by a friend, George Ola, for six weeks; returning to their apartment and hiding in the ceiling loft; their two servants, who were Seventh Day Adventists, bringing the family a box of apples to eat; being sneaked out of Budapest and staying briefly in an orphanage; being hidden by seven different people, during which her parents had no idea where she was; the Russians arriving in Budapest in January 1945; her parents’ search for her and their serendipitous discovery of her; her affection for the old woman who hid her towards the end of the war; her family’s escape to Vienna, Austria in 1948; sailing on the SS Ugolina Vivaldi to Sydney in February 1949; living in Rockdale, Sydney then in Kingsford, Sydney; her parents changing their name to Kent and converting to Catholicism so Suzi could get a good education; attending a boarding school in Maitland, New South Wales, and being bullied as a refugee; attending Saint Sabina in Strathfield, N.S.W.; working as the assistant manager of the heritage listed Strand Arcade in Sydney from 1979 to 1982; getting married in 1983; living in Noosa, Queensland; visiting Hungary in 2002; and her work in her community.
- Interviewee
- Ms. Suzi Smeed
- Interviewer
- Janet Merkur
- Date
-
interview:
2016 February 19
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Janet Merkur
