About my family in Hungary during the Second World War

The earthquake in Haiti recently prompted me to recall these memories about survival of a different sort.

I grew up with the stories of my family – their courageous attempts to save themselves and those around them during the 10 plus years of the Nazi onslaught:
There was the German soldier who waved my mother away from the ghetto where German soldiers were rounding up Jews.

The Hungarian couple, Gozon neni and Gozon baci who found work for my aunt Lilly as a maid with a Hungarian family, and accepted my teenage uncles to stay in his home when they escaped the Nazi soldiers who were marching their school group through Budapest saying to anyone who asked, “these are our cousins visiting us from the country.” I visited the home of this dear man, five years ago when I and my sister Anita and her two sons Noam and Yair and their wives, Maya and Ilana, visited Hungary with my Mom, Edith, who was then in her eighties. During the war, Gozon baci was the superintendant of a small apartment building in fashionable Buda on the way to the national park overlooking the Danube, which still exists with its monuments and overlook, and which had been the billeting site for the German army. Gozon baci’s daughter was dating a German officer and he would come to the house.

All these people, my aunt Lilli, my aunt Margit, my uncles,Tibi, and André as well as my dear Mother, Edith are alive today due to the bravery of this man and his wife and sister. Sadly Gozon neni and Gozon baci and even their children are long gone, but their memory will always be with me and with my family, and I hope through this blog with you.


Abigail Hirsch
Montreal, 1/27/2010

AskAbigail Productions
Shalom Foundation for Healing in Community: Fondation Shalom pour la guérison en communauté



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