Escape from Munkacs Part V | TheArticle

Something so special arrived last Tuesday. The email may well become a family treasure. Moreover, it came on a special birthday of one of our treasured children.

The email will, I hope, help create a silver lining of hope and a measure of redemption, no matter how small, on the eightieth anniversary of two events of 30 June 1944. The first of these

is now the subject, marginally late, of Part V of my eightieth anniversary series in TheArticle, “Escape from Munkacs”. I found, incidentally, that I had wrongly typed “Auschwitz” instead of

Munkacs in my first draft. In fact “Escape from Auschwitz” more closely expresses both today’s subject and that of Part VI.

It turned out that Shaya Halpern of Manchester knew of and was in the midst of reading “Escape from Munkacs, Part I”. He is named Shaya in honour of my grandfather, gassed in Auschwitz on 26

May 1944.

Attached to Shaya’s email was an invitation to his eldest daughter’s forthcoming marriage. The young couple had hand delivered the invitation to Esti’s great grandmother, my cousin Sori and

niece of my grandfather Shaya. Now living in a retirement home housing elderly members of Manchester’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, Sori is the only living relative who was then housed

illegally with my grandparents, great grandfather, great uncle, my Mother and her younger sister Ruthie and me during that final Passover before we all were forced into a wretched ghetto.

But for Sori’s exceptionally plucky mother, none of us who gathered at that final Seder Night could have survived and several of us did not. That part of the story has already been told.

My rush of emotion at receiving Shaya’s invitation to his daughter’s wedding reflected deep pleasure that my Cousin Sori’s great granddaughter was about to embark on the next, joyous stage

of her life and that Sori’s grandson — one of many — had gone so out of his way to include my wife Shelley and me. In no way does Etsi’s marriage, that ultimate affirmation of life, act as a

compensation, still less as a “triumph” over Holocaust victimhood. That cannot occur. The young bride should realise that her happiness is ours to share, but for her and her fiancé alone.

A dimension that added a surge of gratitude was that Shaya, Sori’s grandson and father of the Kala, devotes his life to a charitable, difficult and valuable enterprise.

Doubtless, a strong background element to my feelings — especially on 30 June — was that the day marked two grim 80th year anniversaries: the departure of Kasztner’s Train from Budapest and,

at around the same time, my own deportation to Budakalasz. This will be the subject of Part VI.

This article is not being written to repeat the endless controversies about Kasztner’s  wartime activities. For those unclear of the details, I’ll give the briefest of summaries in this

section before proceeding to the main point: the belated impact of the Wiener Library conference of 1994 and the unseemly clash there between Holocaust ‘professionals’ and Hungarian

Holocaust survivors.

On 30 June 1944, a cattle train left Budapest filled with a greater than originally authorised complement of nearly 1,700 Jews. They were bound, so the story went, for Palestine.

In 1957, Kasztner was assassinated in Tel Aviv. One of his closest associates, my Father’s first cousin Erno Marton, was one of the last to see him alive.

This raises a question about the other happening on 30 June 1944: my deportation together with my paternal grandmother and a small group of relatives from Rakospalota to the entrainment camp

for Auschwitz at Budakalasz. What happened at Budakalasz on 8/9 July 1944 will be my final topic in this series.

I owe my life to Kasztner via a secondary, less known bargain which led — at least for my paternal grandmother, aunt, cousins and me — to the miracle of Budakalasz.

Much continues to be written about the Jewish-Nazi negotiations held following the entry of the German army and of Eichmann’s team of extermination experts into Hungary in March 1944. A

great amount remains to be done. Particularly disappointing are some of the over-simplifications and seeming errors in television documentaries.

In 1994 the Wiener Library organised a conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the deportations from Budapest. For me this meeting, which took place near Great Portland Street

Underground Station, was a new and shocking experience. It brought together some of the best known scholars involved in Holocaust history in general and, in a few cases, of the Holocaust in

Hungary in particular.

The atmosphere was toxic, attitudes in some cases unduly condescending and to my mind disrespectful of the tragic dimensions of the subject. Why did one of the panellists — whose trip to

London presumably had been paid for — see fit to exit for a considerable time to embark on what appeared from their bundle of shopping bags to have been a chance to tour the nearby West End

emporia?

Hungarian Holocaust survivors were present in the audience. Some became restive when the “top table” crowd indicated to them that they didn’t know what they were talking about. They should

defer to the experts. I see from a book review I wrote a few years ago that survivors had been shouted down by the self-appointed grandee historians. Several of them are no longer living and

I do not feel it appropriate to cause grief to their families. One of them later met my daughter at a Holocaust event at a European embassy and told of his surprise that someone like her

could have a monster of a father like me. The same historian had been criticised elsewhere for his condescension to survivors.

One particularly provocative insult to a survivor was the claim from the “top table” that the survivor ought to listen to someone who was an Oxford don. I could stand it no longer. Since

historical questions about the dealings between Kasztner and fellow members of the Hungarian Vaada on the one hand, and Eichmann and his fellow killers on the other, understandably remain

controversial and surprisingly under-researched, I do not wish here to enter into the substance of the debates. My concern is simple compassion for survivors.

At that meeting, something quite basic and permanent happened. I found myself walking from my seat among the survivors up to the front of the room to where the insults were being hurled.

They could attack the survivors because of their academic status, but could not talk down to me in that way because I too spoke as an Oxford don but took the survivors’ side.

I had crossed a Rubicon. In later informal conversation, when I mentioned to a youngish historian to need to listen to survivors, he replied that it was up to the survivors to raise the

money for his fee (not, incidentally, a modest amount). When it came to the lunch break, the grandees withdrew, leaving us survivors to use slot machines to access soft drinks and the like.

It was a huge relief to be in their company.

I was to discover that there was considerable division within the UK Jewish survivor community and discontent with some of its leaders who, some of the rebels felt, were too cosy with the

present-day German authorities.

In years that followed, I was blessed to be asked by some exceptional survivors to work with them. Alas, time has meant that most of them have passed away. In some cases, I was out of touch

during their final months and days and missed the chance to attend their funerals and mourn with their children.

The architect and artist Roman Halter was helping me in a campaign for which the editor of TheArticle, Daniel Johnson, was providing essential platforms. The issue was Oxford University’s

continued associations with an arguably Nazi-tainted body.

Roman provided evidence from his father’s death in the Lodz ghetto. Roman remained afflicted by nightmares. In the morning, he would then express his feelings in a painting. Commenting on

the campaign against Oxford’s acceptance of the controversial benefits from a foundation whose donor company had operated in the Lodz ghetto, he sent a copy of a book of his post-nightmare

art. With it was a card. “I love you,” he wrote.

The next thing I found out was that he had died. I have never yet reached out to his close family to tell them that I loved him too.

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