A Story to Tell: Part 1

MY WAR-MEMORIES (DEC.1944-JUNE 1945) FOR MY FAMILY in case they may be interested sometimes in the future. Based on my memory and on the essays written by me in 1948/9 while learning English. (20.4.96)
STEVE GUTTMANN
(At the time, a 16 years old motor mechanic apprentice in Budapest)


It was on the 10th December 1944 that a large number of posters were placed on top of all the placards around Budapest. A new poster was put up every day, full of orders which were not at all pleasant to read. This one was - printed in red letters - the most unpleasant to us all. Every man from the age of 16 to 56 must go to defend his country. It said to whom it applied, how and where they must go. In the last few lines we read about those who refused or just did not report. It was all in a very short clear sentence; - those who could not justify themselves after a certain date would be summarily dealt with according to the "martial law" the Fascist government invoked on the 25th November 1944 which also dealt not only with the fugitive but also with his family. So there was no doubt the order applied to me, as the previous July I had reached the age of 16. Anyway, I had nowhere else, and no-one to go to and so I reported at the appointed place and time.

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Back in September 1944, the Russian Army was advancing westward and food was becoming scarce in Budapest. I was told to leave the workshop, where I had lived for the past eight months, and go home to my mother's family. The small town was some 90 kms. down river from Budapest, on the west bank of the river Danube, called Dunafoldvar and was my home where I had been brought up by my grandmother from the age of two weeks to 14 years. It was a noted agricultural area, famous for supplying the first spinach in the spring; taken by Danube steamers to Budapest. The area also produced vegetables, cherries, apples, plums, pears, peaches and not least delicatessen-grapes all through the season. The town had a well supported football club with its ground no more than 150 meters from my grandmother's home. It was also of strategic importance as it had the first road/railway bridge across the Danube down stream from Budapest. I believe the bridge was commissioned as a road bridge in the year I was born. In the late thirties the railway was laid into the road so it was used also as a railway bridge. When the train came, the barriers were lowered, to stop the road traffic. The first village on the other side was Solt, from where one of my famous country man, Sir George Solti, (I am sure he was christened Gyorgy and not the English George) got his name.

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However, within a week or so of my homecoming, the Russian army arrived on the opposite side of the river Danube. I had my first glimpse of Soviet soldiers through binoculars. I also saw some of the Hungarian and German soldiers, with their telescopic Mauser rifles, taking pot shots at them from their vantage point, the hillock we called the Calvary just below the bridge, when the Russians appeared in the open, collecting firewood about one mile away. The Red army's appearance prompted the local authorities to force non-residents to return to their normal residence, which by now for me was Budapest, or join the army there and than! I returned to Budapest.

I felt dejected for being kicked out from my childhood home, where I was brought up by my grandmother, went to school and had all my friends. My granny was born in 1866. She was 62 years old when she began to look after me as a 2 weeks old infant. She was 76 when I left for Budapest to become a motor mechanic apprentice. Over the years I have thought many times what a lucky little chap I was to have been brought up by such a courageous, hardworking, old lady with so much common sense. She had brought up three of her own children, all girls, my mother being the middle one, more or less on her own. My grandfather died, I believe, in 1902 when my mother was six years old. I gather he left his surveyor's business in such a mess (or were his partners crooks?) that there was nothing of his assets left for the family to bring up his children. The only help my granny had was from her two younger sisters who lived three houses away. They were daughters of the owner of the area fishing company, by the Saxon name of Arnold, who owned the fishing rights of some 25 kms. up and down the local area of the river Danube. The elder, Aunt Nina, whose husband died in the 1st World War on the Italian front, was a dealer of eggs in the town market while aunt Juliska (Julia) who was a very frail little spinster with a limp, was the dressmaker of the family. She made all my shirts and my "adjustable" underpants, that I used to be so proud of, on a pedal operated family Singer sewing machine. We lived in one of the row of 20 houses (No.12) separated from the Danube only by the town's promenade some 3/4km. long, that ran along the river from the football ground on the north to the bridge over the river in the south. Before the war, after the Sunday afternoon 3 o'clock litany, groups of local peasant girls used to promenade six deep in their colourful Hungarian blouses and almost ankle long flowing full skirts of various reds, blues, pinks and black, with, I was told, some 14 underskirts pulled in at the waist and billowing out rhythmically as they promenaded together. Their young men were also immaculate in brilliantly shining black high riding boots, gray breeches, white shirts, string ties and black tailored jackets. To me even now it was a memorable sight, the like of which is unlikely to be seen again. During the week we boys played football and head-tennis all day on the promenade in front of my granny's house. Every summer morning I used to dash down to and into the Danube in my black shorts, then I soaped myself with the family lump of home-made soap and dived in again to rinse myself off.

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I made my way back to Budapest, on the roof of a packed passenger train. The journey took almost a day compared to the normal time of about four hours.
Back in Budapest I took up residence again, in a bed suspended from the workshop ceiling. There were some 30 mechanics and eight apprentices, myself being the second youngest, but I was the only country-bumpkin among the street-wise city apprentices. We worked seven days a week 12 hours a day with one Sunday in four off. By now the workshop had been commandeered by the German Army to repair their diesel lorries. The owners were two Jewish brothers; one had a family, the other was a well known mechanical engineer and a bachelor. They all lived in a large apartment on the front of the workshop buildings, till about August 1944. The women folk of the married brother were taken away and crammed into high rise apartments in a salubrious district in Pest. Whether it was a designated ghetto or one of the Swedish or Swiss houses I cannot recall. At the time, perhaps because I belonged to no one and hence I was dispensable and no one would miss me if I disappeared, I ran errands in my greasy boiler-suit made out of sisal, a coarse sack type material. It had not been washed for months and allowed most of the garage dirt to percolate through to my underwear and skin. When I was on an errand I carried a small mechanic's tool box as a foil, with a Certificate issued by the German Army (who had occupied Hungary in March 1944) saying I was an important craftsman drafted into their service. This was meant to cover me as a courier of small automotive parts expediently through the streets of Budapest free on the city trams for the German army lorries.

However, most of the errands were quite different, like those between the Swedish houses that housed hundreds of Jews rescued from the Nazis by the Swedes, like Raoul Wallendberg, and the Swiss Embassy and Red Cross. The greatest danger was from the Hungarian Nazis, who took over power on the 15th Oct. 1944 called the "Arrow Cross Man" (nyilasok), who were roaming the streets in their shabby civilian clothes, their Hungarian Army type "beret" and a green arm band with two double ended black arrows at ninety degrees in a white circle. They were ignorant, vicious thugs and they stood out a mile. A 16 years old greasy boiler-suited apprentice mechanic did not seem to be of interest to them and most of my errands were quite incident free.

There was one occasion when I was taking to my boss's family some eight liters of goulash in a blue enamelled milk can in one hand and a wicker basket full of bread, fruit and two large 8 inches by 10 inches jam tarts. Although the area was heavily patrolled by the "Arrow Cross Man", as many times before, I managed to fox them by stopping frequently and resting at the edge of the pavement by pretending that my load was heavy and not destined for any of these houses. I repeated the same procedure at the gate of my destination, waiting for the meandering Arrow Cross Men to move on and an opportunity to make my delivery next to the gate when they were not looking. However, in spite of my trying to indicate to the people inside the gate that I was in danger, my boss's wife shouted at me not to listen to any one and to bring the food to the gate immediately! That was all the dammed Arrow Cross Men needed since I think they already suspected me. Three of them descended on me and marched me a few hundred meters to one of their headquarters. I think it was the Vig Theatre,(or was it the infamous 60 Andrasi ut that was their "interrogating" H.Q. and later also the Communist's!!?) with encouragement from their machine gun-butts, curses, and the promise of what was awaiting such traitors like me!

They took all the food away from me, nudged me up a wide grandiose staircase into a large second floor room where one of my captors reported me to a man behind an imposing desk, with some of his side-kicks standing about menacingly. The man behind the desk ordered me to stand close to the wall facing it. I turned around and saw there were quite a few men standing facing the wall and I took my place next to a tall ceramic fireplace. These were fashionable in large houses. This fireplace was one of those classic designs, placed diagonally in the corner of the room, with a square meter base and 2.5 meter high, built of molded patterned, cream coloured ceramic tiles with two small iron doors, one for fuel (coal or wood) and the lower one for the ashes with the flue pipe unseen behind in the corner.

I heard some thumps and a man crying out in pain. I turned instinctively only to see a big well-dressed man being beaten up by three Arrow Cross Men. Another jumped up, kicked me, and told me to stand close to the wall, as I was told, and only do what I was ordered to do! I did just that and stood close to the wall while all the beatings were going on behind me. I was full of terror like a cornered bird in anticipation of what might happen to me and I wondered how I would stand up to it as a boy, for it seemed to me that these thugs were all used to dealing with grown men. I became very acquainted with the cream coloured wall in the vicinity and noted that there were some "rusty" specks of various sizes. Then I looked at the ceramic tiles of the fireplace on my right and noticed that there were more rusty specks. Pretending to rub my nose, gingerly, I extended my little finger and scratched at one of the bits. Hell! - it was a piece of flesh! It dawned on me slowly that all those rusty specks were blood. I must have been standing there for three or four hours and with the realization of what might happen to me, my knees began to shake and buckle. One of my captors must have noticed, came over to take a look at me and told me to sit down before I fell over. Whether it was compassion on his part or the possibility that I would pass out before he could lay into me I will never know.

I hardly dared to look around me. Two men were also sitting on chairs. Both were badly beaten up. No-one spoke. The one next to me had dark crusted blood covering the left side of his face, his left arm was hanging limply and his expression showed utter dismay. Another man was bundled into the room by some Arrow Cross Men , pushed, kicked and pistol-wiped, ending up on his knees in front of me. This had happened to some eight or nine men whilst I was standing at the wall. All this was devastating to me, as cruelty and blood always made me sick. A couple of years before, on one of the very few occasions that I had met my father, a surgeon, he asked me if I wanted to be a doctor. I told him "no" because I could not stand blood or to see any one suffering. All that I had been able to avoid so far in my life was happening right in front of me with the prospect of me being next! In this state I wished I was still at the wall. Two more men were roughly bundled in, making the room quite crowded but giving me the opportunity to slip back to the wall, to blank out at least the terrible spectacle. The men in the room with me were wearing good clothes - especially compared with my grease-caked boiler-suit - although torn and buffeted from the recent treatment their owners received.

Suddenly my wicker basket was crammed in my back and I was told that since I said that the food was for me, I had better eat all the jam tart (8inches by 10inches of it!). Some quarter way through the jam tart marathon I heard a commotion in German from the stairways and some German solders - I cannot recall if they were SS or Wehrmacht - burst into the room and with them was the German- speaking mechanic from my workshop.
"There is Steve, are you all right?" he said.
The Germans barked at the Arrow Cross Men and spirited me down the stairs with my wicker basket and jam tart.
"Where is the milk can" asked my colleague.
I told him that the Arrow Cross Men had taken it away. Back we went up the stairs and the Germans demanded the return of the milk can. What a turnaround it was to see the Hungarian thugs running around their German masters who did not take the slightest notice of the beaten bodies around them. It turned out that the goulash was given to prisoners in the cellar who apparently were already "processed" and for whom the jam tart was too good! I was driven back to the workshop in the back of a German army lorry. I learned later that someone from my original destination managed to send a message to my work place that I was captured by the Arrow Cross Men and that my rescue party had been looking for me for hours.

End of Part 1

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