- I seem to remember more events from our deportation in 1944-45 than from many of the subsequent years. But these memories are like still pictures to me rather than a continuous movie. It is probable that some things that I seem to remember are merely a reflection of what others have told me. I vaguely remember that between our triple-decker beds at the camp there was a little space that mother converted into a “home” consisting of a small stand with some belongings. There was a small container, which I now imagine to be of the size of a very small glass. Once my mother got hold of some butter, which filled this container. She asked us to decide whether to eat it all at once or make it last for a while. I was for saving it, and this made quite a story in our camp, the lager, because everybody knew that I was hungry all the time.
In the camp, I cried day and night, especially night, and my crying kept everybody awake. This I do not remember, but I had to listen to comments about this for many years by survivors from the lager. If they recognized me, they would tell me immediately about their predicaments due to my crying. Mother must have gone through additional suffering because of my crying. She must have felt sorry for me and for her fellow inmates, too. When I hear a child crying in a bus, on board an airplane during a long flight, or similar situations, I have great understanding for the child and its mother.
Excerpted from my father István Hargittai’s book Our Lives: Encounters of a Scientist posted here in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. My father was three years old when he was in the camp described above.
{ 17 comments }
Bloix 01.27.15 at 3:50 pm
“I had to listen to comments about this for many years by survivors from the lager. If they recognized me, they would tell me immediately about their predicaments due to my crying.”
What an extraordinarily insightful passage: thousands of uprooted people deprived of their homes, families, dignity, and slated for death, and against whom do they feel resentment? A small child. And if I had been there, I would have had the same emotions.
Hal 01.27.15 at 3:57 pm
Never again (said with a bit more urgency after recent events).
My wife’s father was the only member of his family to survive and it took a trip to Auschwitz for my own (Irish Catholic) parents to comprehend the enormity of what happened.
MPAVictoria 01.27.15 at 4:07 pm
Thank you for sharing this Eszter.
John H. 01.27.15 at 8:13 pm
Yes, thank you.
Helen 01.28.15 at 12:46 am
Poor wee scrap.
Alan White 01.28.15 at 5:00 am
Thank you; we must never forget, and those voices however young must always carry.
John H. 01.28.15 at 8:06 pm
norman birnbaum 01.28.15 at 8:28 pm
Impossible, there are times and situations which make comment offensive, intrusive, irrelevant……
Main Street Muse 01.28.15 at 10:52 pm
They are so small when they are three-years-old! I think of your grandmother, and how powerless she was to help her child… did she survive?
Thank you for sharing this memory of your father’s.
ZM 01.28.15 at 11:41 pm
Main Street Muse,
“I think of your grandmother, and how powerless she was to help her child…”
But also her determination to create a little bit of homeliness for her family even in the face of the horror of the camps and the holocaust…
thank you for sharing this Eszter
dn 01.28.15 at 11:53 pm
The Shoah is unique in its endless capacity to surprise you with its awfulness. Thanks for sharing this.
P.M.Lawrence 01.29.15 at 1:52 am
This may be a slight digression, but here is a crying baby story from the Armenian Genocide.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, when I was a child in Iraq in the 1950s our family had an Armenian nanny. This is her story, as passed on to me later by my mother.
When the nanny was a baby herself, her family and others were fleeing from the Turks, who were guided in their search by the local Kurds who hoped to gain by dispossessing the Armenians (which they in fact did). At one point, the Armenians took shelter among rocks on a foggy hillside, hoping for the search to pass them by. Just then the baby started to cry, drawing the searchers ever closer. The heartbroken family were just about to smother the baby to save the rest, but then, as babies do, she simply fell asleep. So all escaped, eventually winding up in exile in Iraq.
PJW 01.29.15 at 2:28 am
Thanks for this.
Meredith 01.29.15 at 6:51 am
Crying babies. Sometimes even smothering them to save everyone else (a TV MASH episode, no less, works this sad truth — set in Korea). I’m told there’s a Chinese saying (born of experience with famine): a crying baby is a happy baby. And we do want to hear that cry when a baby is fresh from the womb.
Sorry for the odd comments. I am at a loss before your words here, what they evoke. Thank you, Eszter.
Eszter 01.29.15 at 3:34 pm
Thank you for the sweet comments.
Main Street Muse – Thank you for asking. Yes, my grandmother survived, moved her two boys back to Hungary, and picked up the few pieces of her life that remained. She lost her husband, my grandfather, in 1942. He was killed in a labor camp in Ukraine. As my father goes on to say in the book, my grandmother was eternally optimistic. She was amazing. She lived until I was 14 and we had a very special bond.
Main Street Muse 01.30.15 at 2:27 am
“As my father goes on to say in the book, my grandmother was eternally optimistic. She was amazing. She lived until I was 14 and we had a very special bond.”
HOW did she do this? How does one survive the Holocaust and remain eternally optimistic?! How LUCKY to have known such a woman, Eszter!
Batocchio 01.30.15 at 7:42 am
Thanks for this.
Comments on this entry are closed.