From Darkness into Light. Robert Ratonyi
family members together in broad daylight with bread under their arms, my grandmother declared, “There is something wrong with this child. He must have been affected by a bomb blast and now he is hallucinating. It is not possible that what he describes is true.” Despite his protestations, Miklós was summarily ignored. However, Miklós proved her wrong after we moved back into the ghetto for the second time.
The situation in Budapest was becoming more and more critical. The Red Army was moving closer and closer to the outskirts of the city. The Germans were withdrawing but didn’t surrender Budapest without a fight.
Knowing that their glorious time of terrorizing defenseless Jews was coming to an end, the Arrow Cross thugs were even more brazen in their attacks. They captured Jews during the hours they were allowed on the streets or dragged them out of their protected houses, taking them to the Danube, murdering them, and dumping their bodies into the river.
One day we were told to pack up and be prepared to move again. All the Jews in the houses on Szent István Park were gathered on the street, and we were marched off, Miklós carrying me on his back. Laci Spitzer was nearby and kept an eye on us, but we still didn’t know where we were going. Were we heading to the embankment of the Danube or into the Big Ghetto?
As we turned left on the main road, we knew we were heading toward the ghetto. Suddenly, we heard the roar of airplanes flying over, and we soon saw and heard the bombs exploding near us. Aunt Klári panicked, decided to bolt from the row, pushing her son Iván in the wheelchair, and ducked inside a house along the road. Normally, this would have been suicide due to the Arrow Cross shooting all deserters on the spot. This time, Aunt Klári got lucky. Because of the chaos of the bombing, and before anything tragic could happen, my grandfather swiftly dragged her back into the line.
We moved back into the ghetto around the end of December 1944, and this was the last place we stayed until the Red Army liberated the ghetto in January 1945. This second and last entry into the ghetto was through the same gate we used the first time. Unlike our first entry into the ghetto, I cannot recall going through the same gate. Laci came into the ghetto, wearing his black Arrow Cross uniform, armband, and shiny boots, and managed to put us in a single room in an apartment building at 34 Kazinczy Street, right across from a small synagogue.
Somewhere along the way, moving from one place to the next, my new white long pants that I was so proud of and had barely an opportunity to wear had disappeared. I was inconsolable over their loss, no matter how much the grown-ups tried to convince me that I would get another pair.
As soon as we moved into the ghetto, Miklós took off to look for the cousins he had seen a couple of days earlier. He was determined to prove to our grandmother that he wasn’t hallucinating. Sure enough, after going from house to house, he found them all and was hoping they still had some of the bread they were carrying on the street. This is when he learned that the bread they had carried was allotted for the whole squadron and was long gone.
Miklós brought our two cousins, Pisti and Gyuri, to visit us in our tiny room, where there was a bittersweet rejoicing at having reunited. Everybody was indifferent by now. Having seen and suffered so much, we all sensed that the outlook was grim. It was difficult to celebrate a reunion when everyone was starving and when so many of our family were missing and presumed already dead.
The food situation in the ghetto was desperate because there wasn’t any. A potato skin found on the floor was a treasure. Kitchens were set up at several places within the ghetto that were supposed to dispense about seventy thousand portions a day. Unfortunately, the raw materials the government was expected to provide for the ghetto were rarely delivered. It fell to the International Red Cross to provide the staples, which often fell short. After all, we were on the front line of a war zone.
The food shortage created a despondent situation for everyone in the ghetto, and only those with money or outside connections could secure additional food for their families. Documents found among the papers of the ghetto administrator, Captain Miksa Domonkos of the Hungarian Army, indicate the caloric content of the daily portions distributed:
| Child’s portion: | 931 calories |
| General portion: | 781 calories |
| Sick portion: | 1,355 calories |
According to the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005” released on January 12, 2005, by the US government, daily calorie intake recommended for “moderately active” people between the ages of thirty-one and fifty was 2,000 calories for women and 2,400 to 2,600 calories for men. Therefore, nobody could survive on the portions in the ghetto for long.
These documents also showed the weekly menu in December 1944:
| Monday: | bean soup with pasta (14 ounces)15 |
| Tuesday: | dish of cabbage (10.5 ounces) |
| Wednesday: | potato soup (14 ounces) |
| Thursday: | dish of dried peas (10.5 ounces) |
| Friday: | caraway seed soup (14 ounces) |
| Saturday: | sholet16 (10.5 ounces) |
| Sunday: | vegetable soup and pasta (14 ounces) |
At that time, the only physical discomfort I felt was the cold. Heating materials weren’t available as winter arrived in the city; most modern city apartment houses were heated with built-in stoves that used wood and coal. The mean temperatures in Budapest in November and December are 41oF and 34oF, respectively, with the temperature often dropping below freezing at night. The windows were all broken, and the walls of our room provided the only protection against the elements.
I kept getting weaker and weaker until I was no longer interested in getting up in the morning at all. I didn’t miss much fun since we were crowded into a small room, sleeping on blankets on the floor and huddling together to keep ourselves warm, just waiting for something to happen.
We were on the second floor of the building, and to my right there were two windows facing the synagogue across the street. There was not a single piece of furniture save for a wall-mounted grandfather clock that hung over my grandparents’ heads across the room. All other furniture that once made this room part of a family home had already been sold or used up as firewood. The image of the grandfather clock with its motionless brass arm is stuck in my mind like an old photograph. I was frightened that it could come crashing down on my grandparents’ heads at any time. Miklós stated that the building belonged to the clock makers’ union, explaining the presence of the wall clock.
I went to Hungary in 2007 to attend a family wedding, and I decided to find 34 Kazinczy Street. Amazingly, this was the only house on the street whose façade has not been renovated. It stood exactly like it was in 1945 with its bullet holes and scars from bomb shrapnel, a testament to the events of more than sixty years ago. The only difference is that all the windows had been replaced. It is now a surreal picture of wartime Budapest since almost all the surrounding buildings on both sides of the street have been rebuilt or renovated. The small synagogue across the house was no longer in use. I thought maybe this house stayed this way so I could take a picture and show it to my grandchildren.
9. 34 Kazinczy Street in 2007, where we survived the final weeks of the Holocaust.
Raids on Budapest continued, but we didn’t seek shelter in the basement as my mother and I used to do in our home. There was a cellar under the building; however, the grown-ups decided that it was unnecessary to trek up and down every time the air raid siren went off. The bombs fell on Budapest day and night, some of which landed in the ghetto. Strangely, I didn’t fear the bombs, but as I later discovered—twenty years after these events—I didn’t totally escape the psychological impact.
In July of 1964, when I was already married and our son was less than a year old, I had just started working for General Electric in Philadelphia. It was my first job after graduating from college, and we had recently rented an upstairs furnished apartment in Broomall, a suburb of the city.
One night I awoke suddenly to the sound of sirens. I immediately broke out in a cold sweat, jumped out of bed, and ran to the balcony. I stared at the sky, seeking the air-raid searchlights that