Medallion awarded to a Hungarian Jewish athlete

Kálmán Clarence Gutlohn Grant (born Kálmán Gutlohn, 1910-1986) was born in Budapest, Hungary, to Zsigmond (1870-1937) and Janka Sonneschein (1877-1961) Gutlohn. Zsigmond served as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, and ran a grocery store over which the family lived in an apartment. Kálmán had two siblings, Sándor (1909-1942) and Rózsa (1914-1979). Kálmán attended a traditional Jewish elementary school followed by a Jewish gymnasium, where he graduated in 1926. Following his schooling, Kálmán attended the Academy of Commerce for training in banking practices. Afterwards, he secured a job at the Budapest City Savings Bank, where he worked as a clerk in the Foreign Currency Department for 11 years. He was also an active athlete and competed in many shooting and rowing competitions.

In 1939, Kálmán married American-born, Catholic, Anna Farkas (1912-1983), becoming stepfather to her sons, Gaston (b. 1932) and Rudolf (b. 1933). Anna’s parents had immigrated to the United States from Hungary around 1907, but moved back to Hungary when Anna was a young girl. Anna had nine siblings, and at 17, she left home and moved with her older sister to Budapest, where she became an English tutor for wealthy children. In September 1938, Anna began working for the Totis family, teaching their daughter English. After Anna married Kálmán in 1939, the two boys lived with her parents on their farm in Bucsa. Between 1938 and 1941, Hungary passed race laws similar to Germany’s Nuremberg laws, and joined the Axis alliance in 1940. In 1941 Kálmán was conscripted for forced labor in the 109/36 Company. The company commander was a well-known Budapest lawyer, who tried to maintain decent living conditions for the laborers, and the guards for the company were often permissive and lenient. Their first assignment took them away from Budapest, but the company commander was able to get them assigned to the Goldberger Textile Factories is Budapest with the help of Paul Totis (Anna’s employer), the city’s Jewish Community, and the Ministry of Defence. Kálmán was sent to Obuda, close to the couple’s home in Pest, which allowed him to visit his family on occasion. While Kálmán worked on the labor force, his brother Sándor was serving in the transportation corps of the Hungarian Army and was killed in 1942.

Anna gave birth to their first daughter, Victoria (1944-2014), in January 1944, and later moved in with Kálmán’s mother and sister at their Pest apartment . In March, German forces occupied Hungary. In April, Hungarian authorities began ordering the Jewish population into ghettos with police-guarded perimeters. During this time, Kálmán was transferred to Diósgyőr, the Hungarian State Railway’s foundry, about 115 miles to the northeast. A regular train schedule allowed Anna to travel there in secret, sometimes bringing her daughter along. Under German occupation, the labor company’s guards were replaced and increased in numbers, and the Jewish men were assigned the toughest work. As an industrial plant, Diósgyőr came under severe bombardment by Allied planes. During the attacks, Kálmán’s labor unit fled to nearby woods, and afterwards, they were responsible for clearing rubble and moving the bodies.

In October, a new Hungarian government took control, dominated by the fascist Arrow Cross party. In an attempt to prevent deportation, Vice-Consul Carl Lutz at the Swiss Legation began issuing diplomatic protective letters to Jews, and Anna obtained one for her husband (as an American citizen, she had already been under the protection of the Swiss consulate). She was also granted permission to move her family into an American internment camp under Swiss protection, but Anna chose to remain at home awaiting Kálmán’s release. He returned home on November 9, 1944 and two days later, the Arrow Cross and police arrested him and other Jewish residents and then collected them at the brickworks in Obuda. They were supposed to be sent on a forced march, but Kálmán and four other men were able to bribe a soldier to help them escape before they left. He made his way to the American internment camp, but was unable to contact Anna at their home. Unaware that he had escaped, she followed the march over 20 miles before returning home to find a message from Kálmán. On November 18, a Jewish ghetto was established in Budapest and Kálmán’s mother was forced to move there. Anna had given Kálmán’s sister her baptism certificate from the U.S., allowing her to avoid the ghetto by posing as a Christian seamstress.

On December 13, German S.S. surrounded the American camp and Kálmán managed to escape and return home. On Christmas day, the Soviet army besieged the city and airplanes began bombing the houses around them, knocking out the windows in the couple’s apartment. They took shelter in the bathroom with the baby until January, when Anna and her daughter moved to the basement with the other building residents while Kálmán remained upstairs in hiding. They managed to survive a direct hit to the building, but Kálmán continued to hide alone without heat or running water, only able to eat what Anna managed to sneak up to him. He remained in hiding until Russian forces liberated Pest on January 18, 1945, though Buda was still under siege. Many in Pest died of starvation, but Anna’s American status enabled her to get daily rations for her family from the British Church. Kálmán retrieved his mother, Janka, from the Budapest ghetto, and brought her to live with him, his sister, his wife, and daughter.

In February 1945, Kálmán left for Bucharest, Romania, and found work in the Identification Department at the American Joint Distribution Committee. Anna brought her daughter to join her two sons at her parent’s farm in Busca, and in June, they left to join Kálmán in Bucharest. As Americans, Anna and the children were able to sail to the United States at the end of November, settling in New York. Kálmán had to wait for his paperwork to be approved and did not sail to the US until August 1947, his trip sponsored by American cousins. He reunited with his family and met his new daughter Alexandra (1946-2005), who was born in the US while he was awaiting passage. They later had another daughter, Mary (b. 1948). Kálmán worked as a banker for a Hungarian firm. Anna and Kálmán separated, and he moved to Miami in 1957.