Kestenberg Archive

JM was born in July, 1935 in Budapest, Hungary. JM has an older brother. Her family was affluent: her father was an internist and her mother a housewife. She claims that her father did not suffer much under anti-Jewish laws as he was in private practice. She recalls the arrival of a cousin who had fled from Slovakia with false papers. They had a very good relationship. JM always knew what was in store for them based on her cousin's experiences in Slovakia. JM's father was sent to forced labor. He hid valuables before he left, but after the war the family never found them again. The family was forced to move into the ghetto. JM recalls the bombing of Budapest. At first, the children loved watching the raids until a bomb hit a part of their building and from then on she screamed when she heard the siren and did not stop until it ended. Her two pet mice died in the raid and she was devastated. She recalls the homes that were destroyed and the wails of people trapped under the rubble. A few days after they took away her father, her mother was taken. She recalls her mother being taken out of the house and being marched away with other women; everyone crying and screaming. ; Her mother instructed them that her older brother was not to leave the house because it was too dangerous. Her mother managed to escape and hid in the hospital in Maglodi street, She sent word to her children that she was there and her brother insisted on going to her. After he left, the Arrow Cross arrived and rounded up all the people in the house including JM. Children were separated from the adults who were taken to the Danube River and shot (she found out later). A young man from the Arrow Cross was sent by her mother to see if she was okay. JM begged him to take her to her mother and he agreed. He saved her and she was reunited with her mother. After the war she heard that he was famous for saving people and he was shot in 1945. She remembers the hospital being an awful place - a place where the people who committed suicide were brought. They then moved into an apartment with a friend of her father's, a physician who opened a hospital. They remained there until the Russians arrived and liberated the city. Her father returned. He was against the communist regime, and JM was in support of it. She attended Lenin Institute against her father's will. She left after a year, disappointed. She is married and has one child. She lives in Hungary.