Overview
- Interview Summary
- Kornel (Friedman) Tarjan (1893-1978) born in 1893 in Szekszard, Hungary, discusses his studies in mechanical engineering in Berlin, Germany; serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army as an officer during WWI; being wounded on the Italian front and discharged; recovering from his wounds and becoming the city engineer in Pecs, Hungary while the town was under Serbian occupation; his escape from Pecs after the arrival of Nicholas Horthy who marched into Pecs as a "liberator”; traveling to Vienna, Austria with his teenage brother; restoring a mill in Bosnia and learning the Serbo-Croatian language; settling in Zagreb (now in Croatia); opening a business where he imported radios and electrical equipment; his two children, Lucia (aka Medi) and Ivan (aka Jancsi or Van) born in 1925 and 1930 respectively; Germany’s invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941; the family’s deportation to an Italian concentration camp on an island in the Adriatic; joining Tito’s partisans after the fall of Mussolini; his two years marching with Serbian partisans; being taken by boat to liberated Southern Italy; how everyone in the family survived except for Lucy’s teenage husband; the family’s immigration to the United States; and their lives in the Boston, MA area after the war.
- Interviewee
- Kornel Tarjan
- Interviewer
- Ken Tigar
- Date
-
interview:
approximately 1970
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Peter P. Tarjan
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
6 sound cassettes.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Guerrillas--Italy. Guerrillas--Yugoslavia. Jewish families. Jews--Persecutions. Jews, Hungarian--Croatia--Zagreb. Mechanical engineers. Men--Personal narratives. Soldiers--Hungary. Soldiers--Wounds and injuries. World War, 1914-1918--Personal narratives, Hungarian. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Italy. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations. World War, 1939-1945--Jews--Yugoslavia. World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements.
- Geographic Name
- Adriatic Sea. Bari (Italy) Berlin (Germany) Boston (Mass.) Grugliasco (Italy) Islands of the Adriatic. Italy. Kraljevica (Croatia) Novi Vinodolski (Croatia) Pécs (Hungary) Rab Island (Croatia) Rivoli (Italy) Szekszárd (Hungary) Turin (Italy) United States--Emigration and immigration. Vienna (Austria) Yugoslavia--History--Axis occupation, 1941-1945. Zagreb (Croatia)
- Personal Name
- Tarjan, Kornel Friedman, 1893-1978.
- Corporate Name
- Kampor--Rab (Concentration camp) Kraljevica (Concentration camp)
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Peter P. Tarjan donated the interview with his uncle Kornel Tarjan to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in February 2020.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 10:05:38
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn715901
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- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
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Also in Tarjan family collection
The collection primarily consists of wartime family correspondence between sisters Erzsébeth Steiner and Ágnes Steiner Takács in Budapest, Hungary and their parents Margit and Simon Steiner in Pécs, Hungary from 1941-1944. Some letters include transcriptions and translations provided by Erzsébeth and Tibor’s son Peter Tarjan. Also included in the collection are a personal narrative by Peter regarding his family’s Holocaust experiences, prewar family photographs, and a small amount of documents related to Ágnes. Included in the documents are a prewar address book related to Ágnes’s salon clientele, and a letter of protection issued to Ágnes by the Portuguese consulate in Budapest, 1944. Photographs include depictions of Ágnes, her sister Erzsébeth, and their parents.
Date: 1904-1998
Tarjan family papers
Document
The collection primarily consists of wartime family correspondence between sisters Erzsébeth Steiner and Ágnes Steiner Takács in Budapest, Hungary and their parents Margit and Simon Steiner in Pécs, Hungary from 1941-1944. Some letters include transcriptions and translations provided by Erzsébeth and Tibor’s son Peter Tarjan. Also included in the collection are a personal narrative by Peter regarding his family’s Holocaust experiences, prewar family photographs, and a small amount of documents related to Ágnes. Included in the documents are a prewar address book related to Ágnes’s salon clientele, and a letter of protection issued to Ágnes by the Portuguese consulate in Budapest, 1944. Photographs include depictions of Ágnes, her sister Erzsébeth, and their parents.
