February 9, 1997

I have been in and out of the UCLA libraries and the collections of many others for decades but not once have I chosen to pick up a book on the Holocaust. I am a Jew. In 1944 I was a thirteen- year old living in Budapest. I remember it well.

Tens of thousands of books have been written on the Holocaust available in all languages. The UCLA Research Library alone lists over a thousand books on the Holocaust and over a hundred titles on the Holocaust in Hungary. Well, I am making up for lost time and reading now, up to my ears in these books and I am flooded by memories not only about the Holocaust but my entire life.

Why now? Last year I had breast cancer, a big shock both physically and emotionally. I had surgery and treatment and I am on my way back to good health but I was touched momentarily by the angel of death and faced my own mortality. It is a shock for me to realize that I too, am a Holocaust survivor.

Recently I read a book by Magda Denes entitled “Castles Burning”. It is the recollection of her life in Hungary during World War II. At five years of age in 1939, Denes was three years younger than I. Reading the book reminded me of the horrors I myself had lived through during that period. I was eight years old in 1939 when the Hitler-dominated World War began and the vision of my world included a panorama of events that ended in 1956 when I left Hungary and fled to the United States on an American Army plane. The details Denes was able to bring forth from her early childhood were amazing but she was a psychoanalyst so that might explain her extraordinary memory.

Inspired by the book I have decided to write down my recollections. I hope that my sons, Peter and Paul, my grandchildren, Alex and Katie and my nieces, Gaby and Susie, will be interested in reading of my experiences during the Holocaust. How I survived it and what has happened to me afterwards.

I am very much aware of the resistance in me and I’m not anxious to relive the pain. But the time has come to add my testimony to that of countless others. Yesterday I heard a caller on a radio show denying the fact that the Jews were gassed and that Hitler ordered the extermination of the Jews. Although I have heard about these neo-Nazis and revisionists, this was the first time I had personally heard one of them speak out. I felt frightened.