CHAPTER TEN

CECILIA’S STORY

Cecilia’s Story

The following autobiography was dictated on October 20, 1990 by my mother to a volunteer while she was residing at the Ventura Town House, a facility for senior citizens. At the time of this undertaking she was eighty-three years old.

In September of 1914 my parents took my two brothers, my sister and myself to a town very close to the Russian border to visit our grandparents during the Jewish high holy days; Sukus, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

We went to the temple and prayed for our sins for ten days. We fasted and we celebrated the Jewish New Year or Yom Kippur, the highest holy day.

While we were visiting our relatives, my mother became very sick and she died. She was about thirty-eight years old. As a seven year old girl, I heard her loud crying and I saw my mother dying. My brother cried very loudly. Later we went back to Grandpa’s house and I saw them open the casket. According to the Jewish religion she had to be buried before sundown. I did not understand it all but I cried and cried.

This was during World War I and this city near the Russian border was almost empty, people were packing their possessions and they were moving because the Russians were coming. My uncle still lived in his house because he provided for the military and they protected him, but he had everything packed and ready to move.

After my mother died, my father and my oldest brother went to Budapest to make a living for the family. It was a very difficult time for my father who was a businessman.

I went to live on a farm with my father’s sister. They had nine boys and two girls. I have never lived in such a small village, there were only about twenty farms. They rented out some of the land to share-holders.

In January 1916, my father, age 46, married a beautiful girl about 22 or 23. She was from a small village and wanted to escape and live in the city. The marriage was a bad thing for myself and my sister and brothers. My step-mother was a nice person, but we did not have a good life. My brother and sister did not accept her as their mother. I was a good girl, but I was frightened. My brother left home when my father married. My brother was very religious and our step-mother, though Jewish, was not religious and that was one of the reasons my brother left home.

Two years later my step-mother had a baby girl, Eva. We loved this baby but she was spoiled. Later my step-mother had a boy.

I was seven years old when I started at a Jewish school and later, I attended a Jewish high school in Budapest. Eva, our half-sister, was the first one in our family to go to a University.

We came from a proud middle-class family. Times were bad, my father was sick a lot and it was hard for him to make a living. I had only one doll in my life and it broke the day my half-sister was born. I did not have any toys. I had to help with the housework including cooking. When I was eight years old I had to make noodles. I wanted to be married and get out of the house because it was not a peaceful home.

My step-mother knew how to sew and she wanted me to learn. I went to a good master and he told me that I was talented. After I spent six months with him, he bought some material and I had to make a pattern, cut the material and make a dress. I went to a technical school to learn how to make patterns. At that time nice girls didn’t have a job, they stayed home and learned to cook, sew, keep house and then they married. I remember when we went somewhere my brother said

“Don’t tell them you are sewing.” My sister learned photography.

In 1917 there was a big revolution in Europe. They wanted the aristocrats and the elite out of the country. Many of them escaped. They changed the borders of Yugoslavia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The King died. The communists came.

Before my mother died my father was a very successful sales representative for a chocolate manufacturer in Vienna, and he traveled most of the time. I helped my father in his business, and of course, I helped him at home in the kitchen and I learned to sew to help the family.

In 1924, at the age of seventeen, I went to visit my mother’s grave. During that summer I also visited my step-mother’s parents in a small village and there I met a handsome young man. We fell in love but six years passed before we could marry because my older sister had to marry first.

Miklos was a fine young man, a high school graduate. He came from a family of four boys and three girls. His mother loved me and this was very important to me. Every day the postman delivered a wonderfully written letter from him. We also talked on the telephone often.

My sister, Sari, married in 1928 and then moved to a small town in Yugoslavia. Her husband was not well liked in our family. In 1930, when Miklos asked for my hand for the third time, my father said we may marry. We had a big wedding with many guests, beautiful music and lots of food.

We had a beautiful bedroom set and a few other pieces and we moved to a one bedroom apartment. We were very poor and we lived in a poor neighborhood at the edge of Budapest. I was lucky to get away from my family where life was harsh because of a lot of fighting. My husband and I were very, very poor but happily married with lots of love that I did not have before.

I became pregnant and I told my father that I was very frightened. He said if God provides for little lambs, He will provide for you and your baby. Nine months and two weeks after our wedding we had a cute healthy baby, Agnes. My father gave me a small check. Eight years later we had a baby boy, George. It was very cold outside and we did not have enough fuel for heating.

My husband lost his job. He worked for twelve years for a large textile business. He was entitled to a pension but the Nazis would not let pension money be given to the Jews. I was a licensed seamstress and we decided to go into business to make fine lingerie and Miklos sold our product to shops. He had connections in the factory so they gave us materials. We had ten to fifteen ladies working for us.

In 1942 the Nazis took my husband to a slave labor camp, although they told us he would not be a soldier. Later on, I remember, I was taken once by the Arrow Cross henchmen in Budapest. It was raining and my children were not with me. I cried and cried and I was lucky, they let me go.

In 1942 conditions were very unstable. I was working like a dog in my business. Materials were very hard to get and I had to let some of my employees go. It was hard to get food but we never went hungry. We exchanged clothes, sweaters, etc., for food. We even ate horse meat. Sometimes we could buy eggs and butter, and we all shared. My employees would bring food, too, since they felt sorry for me and they shared their food with us. They were very good to us, just like friends.

In March 1943 I talked on the telephone with my husband’s parents and they told me that their village probably would not be bombed and they thought it would be safer for little George to stay with them. On March 19th,1943 (Friday), I took George to his grandparents and I brought a friend and her little girl with me. On Sunday I went back to Budapest.

George had asthma and Grandma was very concerned about what she would do with him if he had an attack. She was afraid. She took him to the Rabbi and the Rabbi blessed George.

On my way back to Budapest the train stopped at many places. People wondered why because this was an express train. We all wondered what was wrong but nobody would give us an answer. In Budapest the policeman at the railroad station asked me,

“What is your religion?” I said “Jewish.” He said “You stay here, you cannot leave the station if you are a Jew.” I begged the policeman to let me go -- I was close to the door by the wall and he said

“Go.” I found a taxi and gave the driver a big tip to drive me home fast. My neighbor, a good friend, was as white as a sheet and he asked me,

“Don’t you know what happened? The Germans have occupied the country, nobody has the right to do anything except what the Germans say.”

Now, my son was 300 kilometers away. I begged my mother-in-law to send or to bring him back home, but the Jews were not allowed to go on the train. I sent warm blankets to Grandma.

I always found Gentiles to help me. I begged my friend, a Christian, to get my son when he went to get his little girl. On the train some of the travelers questioned George and he was only five years old. A lady told him,

“You can’t have a seat, you sit in the corner.” He fell asleep and a coat fell on him. When the Germans came through the train and asked for identifications, they did not see George. Our friend had papers for his daughter only. At the station in Budapest I could not see George at first but when I called out his name, he came running to me. I had left money with Grandma for taking care of him and when he returned, he had the money sewed into his clothes. Both grandparents went to the gas chambers.

There were large posters on the street corners stating “New Rules for Jews”. We had to leave our apartment because we were Jewish and go to a place like a ghetto. There were bombings. It was cold, no heat, and I slept on the floor. We were afraid that we would be taken to Auschwitz because everyone we knew was gone. We were lucky, the Nazis did not have time to take us.

After the War my cousin Frank came back from a camp in Russia. It was a miracle! He had been a successful grocery store owner and when he went home he said

“Where are my two children and my wife, and where are the things in my store and in my home?” His place was empty. They had taken everything except his prayer shawl, prayer book, and candelabras. He said it was a miracle they were there. I felt so sorry for Frank because he had lost everything.

Frank fell in love with me. He opened his grocery store again and he would buy a few supplies, sell them and put the money back into more merchandise until he was able to stock his store.

He asked me one day to go to his home. I said

“I don’t have anything to wear, can I come like this?” One Sunday afternoon he came to my apartment and we talked. When he left he was not kissing me as a friend. Frank said to me

“Promise me that you will wait for me.”

He pushed me a little bit to marry him. How could I marry when I prayed with my children that my husband would come back? I went to see the Rabbi to ask him. The Rabbi said

“Your husband would walk home from Siberia if he could but he cannot and will not.”

Frank and I were married in 1946. I still had my business. My daughter graduated from high school and from the University and she became a high school teacher. My daughter became my enemy. When she was in high school she wanted to be a communist. When my father left Hungary for Israel, he hugged Agi and said

“Please don’t believe the communists.”

My daughter and Tony were married in 1952. When Agi was married she was twenty and her husband was twenty-two. Tony’s mother was Jewish and his father was a Gentile but he was a Socialist. They were happy. Agi was teaching twelfth grade. Tony was an airplane engineer and he had a good job. It was impossible to get an apartment and therefore they had to live with Agi’s mother-in-law. Everything was fine. I was happy she married because I was afraid she would not marry because she was very independent. Their son, Peter, was born in 1954. George went to the University. We were afraid they would not take him but they did because he was an A student. One day Agi and Tony and their little boy, Peter, and George left Budapest. It was in 1956 during the revolution against the communist government when 200,000 people left the country. They went on a train that was filled with people, there were even people on the top of the train and hanging onto the sides. After that they walked to the border.

One night the telephone rang. I was so excited because the telephone never rang anymore since I did not have my business any longer. The call came from my husband’s brother who flew to Vienna from America. He told us that our children were safe. America took the young people who were well educated. I was so glad because it was a life saver for them.

My brother-in-law helped us to go to America. One day he sent a man with a note. It said

“I paid this man (who was a total stranger) fifteen hundred dollars.” The note said that this man would help us to get out from Hungary and we should go with him. Agi’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law wanted to go with us but did not chance it. We walked all night through the border and then rode the train to Vienna. My brother-in-law was there in a hotel and we slept in his room. It was wonderful. Later on we paid the money back.

We were in Vienna for four months waiting for visas. It was a very long plane ride (before jets) and we arrived in California in the spring of 1957, Passover time. Tony and George were working as draftsmen. Later George went to the University of Arizona majoring in Electronic Engineering. Afterward he was accepted to Harvard Business School where he earned a business administration degree.

I went to work in a doll clothing factory. Then I was sick for a year. After that I began doing alterations by placing ads on bulletin boards, etc. I enjoyed alteration work for many years.

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