When the Danube Ran Red

23 Witches' Shabbat

135 23 Witches’ Shabbat But for that we had to wait for a long time. On December 3, 1944, in the Vatican house, we woke up again to the screams of the Nyilas, the gang of Hungarian National Socialists. “Out of bed, lazy swines,” the call echoed all over the house. “Men between sixteen and fifty, women between sixteen and forty-five, must gather downstairs in separate groups, the rest, in another, forming lines of five. Only the sick may stay. You must be there in ten minutes. One second late, and you’ll be shot dead.” Our window opened directly on the corridor that curved around and led from the apartment where we lived to the staircase, while four flights underneath, a closed courtyard stretched across. We saw through the curtain the shadows of men running with rifles slung from their shoulders, but we did not dare draw the curtain: they would have noticed us immediately. We got dressed hastily. In the meantime, we heard the front doors’ glass shatter and the men shouting and smashing objects throughout the apartment. We dared not move. Suddenly everything grew quiet. A minute later, a policeman entered our room; staring at us, he turned to my father: “Take off your coat and let the children go,” he said. “They will be taken to the ghetto. And that’s OK for the moment; but get them out of there as soon as you can. As for now,” and he pointed toward my father, “you should immediately go to bed. Say you are sick, and for the time being your wife will be allowed to stay with you as your caretaker.” Then he disappeared. When the Danube R an Red 136 To this day, we wonder who this man was. Several of our friends to whom we told the story after the war thought he might have belonged to one of the Zionist underground groups of young Jewish men who wore Arrow Cross or police uniforms and appeared in the chaos of the evacuation processes, even during the shootings in November and December 1944. They tried to pretend to be members of the police or the Nyilas. At the same time, they did everything to stop or at least slow down the ongoing atrocities. Or perhaps he was just a truly decent police officer, sick of the cruelties and destruction committed by the Arrow Cross. At this moment, however, we had no time to evaluate his advice. We believed him and did what he said we should. Almost automatically, my father started to undress. I ran to him and my mother for a last embrace and left with Iván. Assembling on Aréna Street, we saw for the first time the large mass of people gathered in the Vatican house. I started to count them, but there were more and more coming, so that I lost track again and again. After a while, I gave up counting, but thought that there were several hundred people standing in line. Our guards were screaming constantly; and somewhat later, they started to shoot into the air. Then they had roll calls; if there was no answer from the group, they ran back into the house, trying to locate the missing person or persons. If I remember well, in the end, they found most of them. After hours of waiting, we were marched off. The sky was dark; it started to drizzle. “Swines,” one of the Nyilas boys shouted. “You won’t live for five more minutes unless you move faster.” We tried to do so, marching toward Podmanicky Street. On our route from the Vatican house on Aréna Street to Dohány Street, we stopped in front of several houses. Some were under Swiss or Red Cross protection, others were under that of the Vatican or Sweden. In front of each of these houses we had to wait, at times for hours. But after the third or fourth building was “cleansed” of Jews, the Nyilas got tired and impatient, starting to fling their rifles about, even aiming at people assembled for the roll calls. Reading long lists of names, they ordered those whose names were not on the lists to stand in line and marched Witches’ Shabbat 137 them off separately “for a good swim,” as our guards informed us (which meant to be shot into the Danube). The rest were forced into...