Ghetto

January 18, 1945 was the day the Soviets liberated the Budapest ghetto and that was 70 years ago yesterday. There were some remembrance ceremonies in Budapest in the Grand Synagogue since the people liberated were all Jewish. As I read the news account it said there were not too many survivors present since it happened such a long time ago.

Then I remembered that I was there on that historical day. It was one of those days that I will never ever forget.

My Mother, my Grandparents (Her parents) and I were in the Budapest Ghetto for quite a while by that time but luckily survived intact that terrible ordeal. We had some close calls with the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazis) thugs but my family was not hurt.

Since our apartment house was right at the entrance of the ghetto we were probably harassed the most.

On January 18 we woke up to a kind of peculiar quiet. It was peculiar because to that time we were constantly hearing the noise of the battle that was going on just outside of the ghetto walls.

Because of the constant bombardment we were all in the basement of the building in the air raid shelters. Eventually some brave souls ventured up and outside and came up all excited telling us that the doors in the ghetto walls were open and all the guards were gone. One by one we all came up and started to wander out and around.

We were dirty and hungry and scared. Eventually a truck puled up close to the ghetto walls. It was a Soviet military truck loaded with loaves of those funny looking brick shaped Russian breads and the soldiers started to give them out to us. That's when we all realized that we were alive and we survived!

My Mother took me back to our ghetto apartment and started to pack our belongings in anticipation of going back to our own apartment when suddenly the apartment door burst open and my Father came in. Up until that time we had no idea if he was alive or not since for a long time he was in hiding. I can't describe he happiness that we felt at that time.

We started our way back home that was not really far but was outside of the limits of the ghetto. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of us leaving that place of horror.

At one point there was a line of Russian soldiers standing across the road with knives in their hands that really looked scary at first. But as we approached we realized that they were cutting off the red star of David we all had on our coats because if we didn't we could have been shot. They did shoot people for a lot less in those days.

When they cut off those discriminative markers everybody really accepted the reality that now all that we went through the years were over!

In short, we went home and in a week or so we got our apartment back, my Father went back to work and I never again had to be afraid that I would be spat upon because of my religion.

Whatever the Soviets did after the war is another story. Some people argue that the Soviets did not liberate Budapest but just brutally overran it. They don't admit to the fact that in the process they saved the lives of 70,000 to 100,000 Jews. As far as I am concerned, I am not afraid to say that I and my Family can thank our lives to the Soviet Army liberating the Budapest Ghetto on that day!