A historic dedication heralds new hope for Budapest’s Jews
One day in the winter of 1944, the Nazis came looking for my mother.
She was one of hundreds of children in an orphanage in Budapest, a safe house set up by the International Red Cross. Her mother had already been force-marched to Bergen-Belsen and her father had died in forced labor on the Ukrainian front. Now, on a cold winter day, a Nazi officer told my mother and all the other Jewish children to exit the building immediately.
The children were told to raise their hands and march into the Jewish ghetto. They did, until their little legs could no longer carry them. The Nazis then led them into the back of a grocery store, and told the children to lie down on the floor.
This is according to Mrs. Judy Zylberger, a former educator in the New York City public school system, and my mother’s first cousin. At the time, Judy was six years old and my mother was five.
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