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Part 6: My School Years
Leslie Rübner
In Hungary, primary education lasts till the age of 14, followed by secondary education till the age of 18. Matriculation was your entry certificate to a University. Formal schooling starts after the child’s 6th birthday, on the 1st of September each year. I was born in October 1937, so I was due to have started on the 1st September 1944, but, due to discrimination against Jews, I had to wait until after the defeat of Nazism in January 1945.
Following the Red Army’s liberation of Pest, the Orthodox Jewish Primary School opened its gates for business. On an extremely cold January morning, my mother took me, for the first time, to school. On the way, we had to cross Klauzál Square, the only open space in the Jewish Quarter, (where the Budapest Ghetto had been until just a few weeks earlier). The Square was filled with frozen corpses; some buried, others were just scattered all over, all of them had their personal information on a label, attached to one of their legs. We had to negotiate our way through this morbid maze. In school, there was no blackboard or even a single bench to sit on. As we set on the cold tiles, uncle Speizer, our teacher, began to introduce us to the mysteries of ABC.
In the early spring of 1945, the municipality had cordoned off Klauzál Square and workers exhumed the remains for proper Jewish burial in a consecrated Jewish cemetery. An overbearing stench was hanging over the Old Jewish quarter, your clothes, your hair, even your food smelt of death.
In June, the school broke up for the summer vacation.
There was a famine following the Second World War. I remember my mother selling her recently deceased father’s gold pocket watch for food. Housewives were searching for food in stores looted by the Russian soldiers, to survive. One day my mother managed to find a bag of soy flour, she had no idea what to do with it. She made some sort of concoction and fed it to us. I found it inedible. My mother declared “If Hershi (my Yiddish name) does on eat it, it is not fit for human consumption”, and she threw it all out.
Winter of 1944/45 was a bitterly cold one, so cold that the River Danube froze over, and we had no means of keeping warm. Respectable, middle class Jewish women were scouring the streets for wooden scaffolding for firewood.
The American Joint Distribution Organisation arranged a summer holiday, to relieve some of Budapest’s starving Jewish children, in Timisoara (Temesvár), Romania. My brother, David and I qualified to for this holiday. As there were only so many children they could take, only those in very bad shape were accepted. As I could easily have passed for as a child on an African famine poster, I became the benchmark.
Post-war transportation on the Continent was chaotic, infrequent and inadequate. People clambered on the roofs of trains, hung on to the door handles like a bunch of grapes and clustered on the buffers of cattle trucks. Our party had a reserved goods truck, so we travelled in comparative luxury, but if you had to answer the call of nature, you had to sit cross-legged until the train stopped at a station to pay a visit to the conveniences provided there. This was a difficult arrangement for a seven year old and a five year old, but we managed to arrive without any mishaps
Timisoara was historically Hungarian therefore there was no language barrier.
Once we had alighted, we were made to form a neat little line. Like merchandise, we were displayed, and people came to choose children. My brother and I were billeted with a Chassidic looking couple. As soon as we entered their house, the man rifled through our belongings and took what he thought would fit his absent boys. He even took the shoes off our feet. In no time we were booted out without our belongings.
There we were - two small boys in a foreign town with nowhere to go. We came across a Shul, as it was early afternoon; we just set down on the steps and waited. Eventually people started to gather for the afternoon service. When they finished one of the men took us to an orphanage where we waited for this “holiday” to come to an end.
On occasions, we managed to get hold of some loose change. 100 Lej paid for a ride on the merry-go-round of a travelling fair. It felt like going home. Before departing for Budapest, all of us were outfitted with new clothing. For the first time in two months we had shoes on our feet.
We travelled back the way we had come, in cattle trucks. On arrival, we were deposited on the platform and one by one, parents came to take their children home. Because we were wearing ill-fitting, unfamiliar clothes and were very filthy, our mother just walked by, not recognising us.
This was the first of three holidays organised by the American Joint Distribution Organisation. The other two were happy occasions.
September 1946, was the start of my second year of schooling, but unfortunately learning and I did not mix. Playing with bits of wood, pretending to be a tram driver was much more fun. We lived opposite a covered market. I spent many a happy morning there, playing truant. In the afternoons we attended ‘Toras Emess’, the Talmud Torah for Limudei Kodesh. Every time the Rebbe asked me a question, I just simply went up to him and showed the palm of my hand to receive a couple of strokes for not knowing.
My parents were unaware of my extra-curricular activities. Obviously, there was no communication between my parents and teachers, or was there? One day I decided to pretend that I was put up into a more advanced class, so I asked my father to buy me a Gemarah Betza (what they were learning). One evening when my father looked me there was thunder and lightning in his eyes. It turned out; my Rebbe had been in touch with my father enquiring about my absence - he answered “but you put him in the higher class”. The truth came out and, mainly for lying, I received a hiding I’ll never forget.
Hungary went through a cruel and debilitating inflation between the end of 1945 and July 1946. In 1944, the highest monetary denomination was 1,000 pengő. By the end of 1945, it was 10,000,000 pengő, by the mid-1946 it was 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengő (20 zeros!). A special currency the adópengő (tax pengő) for tax and postal payments was introduced. Inflation was peaking at 1.3 × 1016 percent per month (prices doubled every 15 hours). I remember, my mother giving me money for the tram, but by the time I boarded, the fares went up and I was booted off.
Although it was against the law, most businesses were quoting prices in dollars, or goods simply were bartered. The milpengő (1 milpengő was 1 million pengő) was replaced by the bilpengő after just three months.
Following that was Hungary's highest face value note ever issued the 100 million bilpengő (18 zeros). The government printed, but never put in circulation the 1-billion-bilpengő note (that is 21 zeros!). On 18 August 1946, 4×1029 pengő became 1 forint.
My brother David and I made paper bags from old newspapers stuck together with dough which we took across the road to the market. Installing ourselves in one of the many empty stalls, we were open for business. Interestingly, both the public and the stallholders were buying them, we even had forward orders. Presumably, they were just playing along with us, but nevertheless we still made some money! One day a man in uniform stopped by ‘our stall’ and informed us that we needed a permit to conduct business and we also had to pay rent. That was the end of that.
After returning from Germany, my father, in common with some other fit Jewish men, was approached to join the State Police. They were told that in the police there was a possibility to repay the Nazis for their brutality. But soon enough, it became their official duty to beat up their ‘reactionary Zionist’ relations and friends too. My father refused to join.
My father with one of my mother’s cousins opened a shop in the middle of the Jewish Quarter, diagonally opposite the Orthodox Main Synagogue, where he sold materials clothing; the cousin provided the accessories needed for sewing (cotton, needles, buttons, zips and the like). When this cousin of my mother went on Aliyah the shop closed down. Next, with his brother, he started a wholesale textile business, but gradually they returned to their own expertise - feathers. They were feather wholesalers and exporters.
Our mother had a housemaid to help around the flat and occasionally she took us to the Municipal Park where we splashed about in an ornamental pool, trying to cool ourselves in the searing heat of the Hungarian summer. This is where we learnt to swim; later we went on to take part in competitions.
My father employed two private tutors to help with our education, one for Limmudei Kodesh [Melamed] and the other for secular studies. The secular tutor taught us English. He kept on trying to escape to the West. Each time on nearing the Austrian border, he developed cold feet. However, one evening he did not turn up for lessons. A few weeks later we received a letter from him postmarked Buenos Aires. The fate of the Melamed escapes me.
On 18 August 1949, Hungary became a People’s Republic in other words a Communist state and a satellite of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, most of the Hungarian Communist leaders, including the party chairman, Mátyás Rákosi and his deputy Ernö Gerö, were Jewish and as such, more anti-Semitic than their non-Jewish comrades!
There were posters, pictures of Stalin and Rákosi and red flags everywhere. Statues of different Communist leaders and monuments depicting the Red Army’s heroism sprung up all over the place. The most important was a bronze sculpture of Stalin in Budapest. The monument was erected on the edge of the Municipal Park (Varosliget) of Budapest; a Catholic Church had been demolished to make way for this obscenity. The monument was completed in December 1951 a birthday gift to Stalin, from a “grateful” Hungarian people, on his seventieth birthday (December 21st, 1949). This monument soared 25 metres high in the air. Just the statue itself was eight metres tall standing on a four-meter high limestone base which stood on top of a tribune eighteen metres wide and 13 metres high. Stalin was portrayed delivering a speech, standing tall and rigid with his right hand on his chest. The sides of the tribute were decorated with relief works depicting the Hungarian people welcoming their leader. This edifice overlooked a huge parade ground.
Of course, the statue was created in the style of Socialist Realism. Socialist Realism meant that all works of art had to depict the class struggle and the superiority of workers and peasants. Abstract art was frowned upon, art for the sake of art was not allowed. Art had to have a useful purpose in the class struggle. Modern art was not considered art at all.
Every 1st May there was a march past of the Hungarian Army and on the 7th November, the anniversary of the October Revolution, we had to march past the statue under which the Party leadership waved us by. Personality cult knew no boundaries.
As a matter course, all commercial undertakings were nationalised, our family business included. The authorities were disappointed with the level of stock and the liquidity of the company. My father and uncle as proprietors were accused of emptying the company coffers and unlawfully smuggling feathers to Israel. For a while they had gone underground, but eventually gave themselves up at a Police station and were arrested there and then. For nine months, they were locked up. Our mother, with a new baby [my youngest brother Moishe], could not look after us and my brother David and I went into day-care at the Orthodox Jewish Orphanage. Eventually our father and uncle were found not guilty and were released.
My Bar Mitzvah was an embarrassing affair. As I never bothered with learning, to my father’s disbelief, my Hebrew reading was very inadequate. He decided, in order that I should learn it, my brother David should learn my Haftara with me. In the end I simply learnt it all by heart.
My Orthodox Jewish school was closed down by the authorities; I had to attend my last [the 8th] year at the nearest state school. As we lived in the Seventh District, Elizabeth Town, Budapest’s Stamford Hill, some of the pupils in my class were religious Jewish boys from my old school. The school week in Hungary, in those days, was six days; we had to attend school on the Shabbat day. Luckily, our non-Jewish teacher was an understanding person and appointed Christian boys to carry our bags to school on Shabbat. In the evening, they would come to our flats or we would go to theirs to copy out the day’s work. All this happened in Communist Hungary! In June 1952, by the skin of my teeth, I just about scraped through the year.
When Stalin initiated a vicious anti-Semitic campaign a few months before his death in 1953, his self-declared best pupil in Hungary, the Jew Matthias Rákosi, ordered the A.V.H. (political police) to investigate the Wallenberg disappearance. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat during the War in Budapest. He was instrumental in saving literally thousands of Jewish lives. After the Russian occupation, he was abducted by the Red Army and disappeared in the maze of the Soviet gulag system. The A.V.H. were intending to prove that Wallenberg was the victim of a cosmopolitan Zionist plot and furthermore, reactionary Jews were trying to put the blame on a ‘squeaky clean’ Soviet Union. The accused Miksa Domonkos, László Benedek and Lajos Stöckler (all prominent Jews in the Neolog Movement) underwent extensive torture. The show trial was to be held in Moscow. Luckily, on 5th March 1953, Stalin gave the world his greatest gift: he dropped dead. In the morning, Stalin’s staff knocked on his bedroom door to deliver his breakfast but there was no answer. Entering without invitation would have meant certain death, so no one dared to go in to see if he was all right. For three days he lay on the floor, gradually suffocating to death. All preparations for the trial were abandoned and the prisoners released. After his release, Domonkos spent a week in the hospital and then died at home shortly afterwards of his injuries suffered.
The next leader was a nondescript office worker, Malenkov, but soon after Khrushchev came to power. At the Party conference he denounced Stalin the dictator, but he was not that different.
My brother David and I attended Pirchei Agudat Yisrael on Shabbatot, where we socialised with other boys, listened to Jewish stories and partook in seudat shlishit. Our madrich (youth leader), Shlomo, one day pointed to a picture on the wall and asked what was the shield with a six-branched menorah and a lulav on either side with the word Yisrael at the bottom. To our shame none of us boys had the answer. He told us it was the arms of the State of Israel with a slight change. We were told that if should anyone ask the meaning of it, we should say that they are symbols our religious holidays. Later, during the anti-Semitic rage together with Jewish Community leaders, our madrich, a newly married man, was arrested. His crime: Zionism. Apparently, they found a map of Israel in his flat and this was the compelling evidence against him. He was charged and of course tortured. This was considered a serious crime and he would have lost his life if it were not for Stalin’s sudden demise. During the Uprising in 1956, he escaped and settled in Bnei Barak, Israel.
In a Communist country, there was always full employment. Being out of work carried a prison sentence. Workers were tied to their jobs. Only an employer had the right to transfer workers from one job to another. There were well publicised ‘work competitions’, but despite this, productivity level was very low. The employees were told that they owned their workplaces. Pilfering was common practise. (Can you steal from yourself?). Unless one was working for the State Police, or one was a high-ranking Party functionary, the take home pay was not enough for survival. You HAD to thieve.
Budapest was destroyed by the war, creating serious housing shortages, but instead of building new homes, single rooms had to be shared by families. Setting up a new heavy industry was the first ideological priority. Following the Soviet economic template, Rákosi declared that Hungary would become a “country of iron and steel”, even though Hungary lacked iron ore completely and produced a very low-grade brown coal barely good enough to heat a home. Enormous amounts of the country’s resources were spent on building industrial cities and plants from scratch, while much of the country remained in ruins. Traditional economic strengths of Hungary, such as agriculture, food and textile industries, were neglected.
By 1950, the state controlled most of the economy, industrial concerns, large agricultural estates, mines, banks as well as all retailers and exporters were nationalised with no compensation. The government tried to force the land-owning peasantry to enter co-operatives, but there was stiff resistance. The government retaliated with ever-higher compulsory food quotas imposed on produce. Middle sized landowners, the ‘kulaks’ (Russian for snake), were declared ‘class enemies’ and were discriminated against, their holdings were confiscated, they were imprisoned and their children were barred from secondary and tertiary education. By removing them, agricultural output greatly reduced and what was actually produced, was sent to the Soviet Union as part of reparations. This led to a constant scarcity of food. People spent many hours queueing for staples like potatoes or bread. When we heard through the grapevine that apples were available at a certain shop, half of Budapest was there forming a queue. People spent almost all their spare time standing in line. We forgot the taste of meat. Hungary, Central Europe’s breadbasket turned into a basket case.
In the cities, the situation was just as bad. The authorities nationalised all properties. In 1951, class aliens i.e. ex-factory owners, bankers, businessmen and the like who lived in well-appointed flats or houses were booted out, their properties were given to Party functionaries. These dispossessed people were exiled to remote country villages where local farmers who had more than about 20 acres of land and were not members of the co-operative had to provide them with accommodation. Some had to reside in small kitchens, in barns or even caves. These exiles were not allowed to leave their new abode. Although none of these regulations were directed especially against Jews, about 20,000 (most of them from Budapest) were exiled. In 1953, the situation eased, and they were allowed to move to the outskirts of Budapest. To be a Budapest resident required a special licence not given to ‘class aliens’.
For reasons beyond me, the Jewish Secondary School, run by the Neolog Community, was allowed to operate throughout Communist rule. So in 1952, my parents enrolled me into the only Jewish Secondary School in Eastern Europe, in order that I could keep Shabbat. Although it was not orthodox, most of my class mates were from religious homes. The parents argued that this way their offspring could keep Shabbat and Chagim. In truth, most of them abandoned the faith. This wonderful institution totally changed my attitude to learning. Suddenly I became interested. In no time at all, I caught up with the class and found myself near the top quartile. In new subjects like Illustrating Geometry, I was way ahead of the rest of the class.
Although this was a Jewish school, religious education was confined to just half an hour a week, but we attended Toras Emess every afternoon bar Fridays.
Not everything went my way though; there was a negative attitude toward religious students. For example, during PE, the teacher kept on throwing a ball at my bald head (my hair was clipped with a zero clipper and I sported tiny peyot (sidelocks) on either side of my face). It seemed ironic that when I had attended the state school, no one made fun of me; yet it had to happen in a Jewish school! I still remember the astonished Jewish barber’s face when I told him ‘Short back and sides’.
One of my classmates played water polo for one of the sporting clubs and invited me to join. Unfortunately, I had little ball sense so I was told to try swimming. My brother David also joined. We soon were engaged in competitive swimming. We trained every morning before school and every evening after school except Saturdays and we competed on Sundays.
The Budapest mikveh was something special. Built on a natural hot spring, it had ladies and gents sections. In the men’s there was a choice of different classes of mikvehs. The first class had a private bathroom with a mikveh, the second had a private bathroom and a communal mikveh, the third class, where my friends and I spent many happy Friday afternoons, was a large pool with banks of showers before entering. One had to go under the showers to enter the actual pool. For school boys admittance was free, but we had to dump our clothes in a corner. The cabins were reserved for paying patrons. We swam 3,000 metres each session.
On Shabbat mornings we attended the School Synagogue, where on one side the girls were seated and on the other we boys. As it was customary in Neolog Synagogues, the Bimah was in front of the Ark and the Torah was read facing the congregation. The School regularly put on plays at the Neolog community hall, the Goldmark Hall. I played Othello and numerous other characters. A neighbour of ours was an actress and she coached me. She also found me summer jobs in the movies as an extra. On these occasions, I earned considerably more money than my father did and it enabled us to buy little luxuries like a radio set.
My parents, like other parents, were struggling to make ends meet. My father found a job in a co-operative company making egg trays. My mother was an outworker sewing second-hand potato bags for re-use. Their combined earnings were not enough to feed one person let alone a family of five. I remember one cold winter when I needed an overcoat; my mother sold hers to buy me one.
One day my parents had a visit from a member of ‘the Party’. He warned my parents that unless they transfer me to another school, my chances of gaining entry to a university were nil, yet in May 1956, I matriculated with a good university pass.
Life in Hungary became unbearable for most people. Something was bound to happen. On 23rd October 1956, there was a student demonstration against the Soviet occupation and the government, followed by an armed uprising. This gave us a window of opportunity to escape and I, like the rest of my class in school bar two, took this opportunity.
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