By October 1944 the Jews of Budapest were the last large Jewish population left in Hungary. Robert Ratonyi's father had been taken to a labor battalion two years earlier; he and his mother lived in a two-room apartment without running water on the outskirts of the city, running to the cellar when the sirens went. Their building had been made a yellow star house, the Christians moved out and Jews from across the district moved in, so that everyone could be taken at once.
On the night of October 10, someone banged on the door and soldiers shouted for everyone to get out. His mother dressed him in a hurry and they stepped out of the kitchen door into a courtyard already full of people. The order came: all Jews, single line. Then the next one: all adults, three steps forward. He felt his mother's hand slip out of his. She stepped forward, and they marched the adults out of the building in a single line. He would not see her again until July 1945.
He was left in the courtyard with the other children, in shock, he thinks. An older friend of his mother's named Julia found him and told him to put his clothes in a bag; she would take him to his grandparents in the city. The streetcars were gone, so they walked through a bombed-out Budapest. The women taken that night were marched on foot to a labor camp in Austria. He learned where his mother had gone months later.
Guest: Robert Ratonyi, Holocaust survivor, author of From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom, and a speaker for the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust and the William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum in Atlanta.
In this segment:
• The last Jews in Hungary: why Budapest came last
• Bombers by day and night, and the cellar under the building
• Yellow star houses: everyone in one place, ready for the trucks
• October 10, 1944: soldiers at the door
• All Jews, single line; all adults, three steps forward
• His mother's hand slips out of his
• Julia: put your clothes in a bag
• The walk across a bombed-out Budapest
• The brick factory, and the march to a labor camp in Austria
Read Robert Ratonyi's memoir, From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom, available on Amazon. All of the royalties go to an educational charity that helps families send their children to college.
Share this with a young person who has never heard a Holocaust survivor speak.
Subscribe for daily analysis from Tea Party Patriots Action, and watch the full October 7 anniversary conversation with Robert Ratonyi on The Jenny Beth Show channel.
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00:00 — The last Jews in Budapest, and the date: October 10, 1944
00:25 — American bombers by day, British by night; the cellar
01:43 — Woken by soldiers banging on the door
02:10 — Yellow star houses: why the Jews were gathered in one building
02:43 — Dressed in a hurry, out the kitchen door into the courtyard
03:07 — All Jews, single line
03:20 — All adults, three steps forward: his mother's hand slips out of his
03:43 — The last time he saw his mother until July 1945
04:06 — Julia: put your clothes in a bag
04:46 — The brick factory, and the march to Lichtenwörth
05:28 — What he learned months later
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