Mommy, What’s That Number on Your Arm?: A-6374

Copyright © 2016 by Gloria Hollander Lyon.

Cover photo courtesy of Paul Chinn, San Francisco Chronicle photographer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/18/2016

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CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

In Memoriam

Introduction

PART I—MY NAME IS ZORA,

BUT EVERYBODY CALLS ME HANCI

Chapter 1    Childhood and Community

Chapter 2    The Family House and Family Store

Chapter 3    The End of Paradise

Chapter 4    The Mysterious Store

Chapter 5    The Story of Sylvia

Chapter 6    Leech Lessons

Chapter 7    A Stork Town

Chapter 8    Milestones

Chapter 9    The Love of Bábi

Chapter 10    Changes

PART II—MY PRISONER NUMBER IS A-6374

Chapter 11    Auschwitz-Birkenau, Hellhole Number One

Chapter 12    The Dehumanization Process Continues

Chapter 13    The Minyan Singers

Chapter 14    The Daily Schedule

Chapter 15    Kanada Work Detail

Chapter 16    Gas Chamber and Krematorium Number Four

Chapter 17    A Secret and Sad Operation

Chapter 18    The Weberei

Chapter 19    Escape from the Abyss

Chapter 20    Bergen-Belsen, Hellhole Number Two

Chapter 21    The Braunschweig Reitschule, Hellhole Number Three

Chapter 22    Hannover-Limmer, Hellhole Number Four

Chapter 23    Hamburg, Hellhole Number Five

Chapter 24    Beendorf, Hellhole Number Six

Chapter 25    Ravensbrück, Hellhole Number Seven

Chapter 26    The Journey Out of Hell

PART III—I SURVIVE AS HANCI

Chapter 27    A Danish Doorstep to Freedom

Chapter 28    Freedom in Sweden

Chapter 29    In Quarantine

Chapter 30    In Convalescence

Chapter 31    An Exciting Visit

Chapter 32    Life at Ekeborg Pensionat

Chapter 33    Becoming Part of the Berglund Family

Chapter 34    The Mysteries and Delights of Swedish Culture

Chapter 35    An Astonishing Discovery

Chapter 36    A Fateful Dream

Chapter 37    Language, Love, and Stefan

Chapter 38    An Official American Connection

Chapter 39    Letters from the USSR

Chapter 40    Farewell to Sweden

PART IV—I LIVE AS GLORIA

Chapter 41    A New Life

Chapter 42    Americanization

Chapter 43    Meeting Karl

Chapter 44    Summer of ’48

Chapter 45    Going West

Chapter 46    August 17, 1949

Chapter 47    New Family, Old Echoes

Chapter 48    It’s a Small World after All

Chapter 49    Starting a Family

Chapter 50    The Invitation

PART V—I RETURN AS MRS. LYON

Chapter 51    Hopeful Preparations

Chapter 52    The Reunion

Chapter 53    Getting Reacquainted

Chapter 54    Behind the Iron Curtain

Chapter 55    Precious Time Together

Chapter 56    Saying Good-Bye in Lvov

Chapter 57    Reunion with My Swedish Family

Chapter 58    Returning Home

Chapter 59    Piecing Together the Story

Chapter 60    The Survivor Community

PART VI—AS GLORIA HOLLANDER LYON,

THE WIDE CIRCLE CLOSES

Chapter 61    Becoming a Witness

Chapter 62    A Survivor Remembers

Chapter 63    The Give and Take of Speaking

Chapter 64    Speaking at the Source

Chapter 65    Bridge to the Past

Chapter 66    Return to Auschwitz

Chapter 67    Revisiting

Chapter 68    Along the Way

Chapter 69    Aftermath

Epilogue

Afterword

Acknowledgments

My Descendants

Endnotes

PREFACE

This book has its genesis in the 1950s, when my first son, David, was very small and casually asked me, Mommy, what’s that number on your arm? That was when I first realized the importance of recording my painful memories. Writing them down at that time, however, was out of the question, as I tended to break down and cry at the slightest remembrance.

I did my best to explain my tattoo to David, in a language that was comprehensible to a young child. Then later, after my second son, Jonathan, had been born, both my sons began to convey anxiety about the tattoo on my left forearm and to ask difficult questions about my background. So I gradually started to preserve my memories for a time when it would be easier to verbalize them. I definitely did not want my sons to see me cry. They were still too young to hear about the Holocaust, and furthermore, I was not ready to tell them. Those were emotionally difficult years for me. In the decade following the Holocaust, I was still plagued by nightmares and migraines. Eventually, I was able to answer my sons’ questions but no one else’s.

It wasn’t until the mid-1970s when a life-altering incident occurred in the research department of a large financial institution where I was an analyst that I found the strength to speak publicly. In a pile of mail that had been routed from desk to desk until it reached mine, I came across a brochure that featured a black Star of David and a red Nazi swastika. It bore the stunning title A ZIONIST HOAX: THE HOLOCAUST NEVER HAPPENED.

I was shaken to the core. Here I was, still alive, and the Holocaust was already being denied. According to the author of the brochure, the Holocaust had never happened. This rude awakening reconfigured the priorities in my life. I asked myself, What am I doing here spending most of my energies on feasibility research for future branch locations, on various internal studies for senior management, and on creating charts, financial indicators, budgetary control, and the like? Then and there, I determined that I must speak out.

The first opportunity came in 1977, when Rabbi Jack Frankel asked me to speak at the first Holocaust commemoration at my synagogue, Congregation Ner Tamid in San Francisco. This first talk was followed by an appearance at Berkeley High School, where the community theater was filled with several thousand young people. The respect of my congregants at the synagogue and, soon after, the rapt attention of the high school students gave me the necessary courage to go on. If my testimony succeeded in this particular high school, it would succeed in other schools, I reasoned.

To date, I have spoken publicly close to a thousand times—in schools, universities, churches, and synagogues. And my words have been recorded on radio and TV and in numerous newspapers, magazines, and books. I always end my eyewitness account with the following message:

Here is my word of warning for all time and for all humanity: Today we talk about racism and often too lightly. The Holocaust, which annihilated the Jewish communities of Europe, epitomized brutal bigotry in its most horrible and catastrophic form. The tragedy cannot be dismissed merely as the brainchild of that madman Hitler. Rather, it was the climax of many centuries of hatred, prejudice, and discrimination against the Jewish people, who had contributed so much to civilization.

In some way, to some degree, it can happen again—anywhere, anytime, and to any people of any ethnicity, race, color, or religion unless we are constantly on guard to eradicate hatred, prejudice, and discrimination among all human beings. Even as I speak, genocide is occurring, most notably in Africa.

Every one of us must do our part; we must treat others with respect, kindness, dignity, and compassion. The human cost of racism is too high, and the pain it causes is too deep. That is why the Holocaust must never simply become a dry page in a history book, easy to skip and forget.

FOREWORD

In Response to My Mother’s Tattoo

A-6374, the number tattooed on my mother’s arm, would come to signify her Holocaust experience. It was not limited to her physical and internal battles for survival during the Holocaust. It incorporated the totality of her experiences: the preservation of her own life and humanity, the reunification with what remained of her once tightly knit family, never getting to see her mother again, and the restarting of a new life in Sweden and the United States of America. It signified life’s recontextualization within the new realities of marriage and children, the rebirth of the Jewish homeland Israel, and the continued resurgence of anti-Semitism in bloody Europe. My mother would say, If you have ever been in Auschwitz, you can never completely leave it. Within our family, everything was colored by, shaped by, and a part of my mother’s Holocaust experience. This gave me multiple Holocausts to deal with as I grew up.

As far back as I can remember, the stories of forced separation, slave labor, sadistic punishments, escape, and family reunification have always been the source of powerful metaphors in my life. The fantastic stories my mother told me were the stuff of legends, only my mother’s stories were true—part of my own history and heritage. For me, growing up included the process of moving from Holocaust as an abstraction to an engulfing nightmare and ultimately as a rich source to draw on.

As I grew, I would revisit my mother’s Holocaust experiences with repeating nightmares and new eyes. Maturity brought greater horror, deeper pain, anger, and sadness. At some point, I realized not only metaphorically but also in a very real sense that a part of me survived Auschwitz, just feet away from the crematoria, as my mother was carrying my unfertilized egg within her. The Nazis were trying to murder me along with her. This knowledge was confounding and distressing. My mother made me feel I was precious. Was there really that much evil in the world?

Most of my mother’s relatives didn’t survive the camps, while almost all the others remained trapped in the USSR. As a child, my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins were not flesh and blood family members whom I could visit and come to know personally and love. They were pictures frozen under glass. My relatives were, at first, an abstraction to me—faces frozen in time, bare like the bones in Elijah’s vision, stripped of the fleshy substance and sinew of their lives. As they emerged from behind the Iron Curtain to live with or near us, I realized that these were my relatives. My nightmares became filled with the horrors I heard, as their new frightful stories meshed with my mother’s.

The most fundamental question I asked growing up was based on a story I first heard as a young boy from my mother, a story that continues to profoundly affect me. Astonishingly, Mother had been saved on the way to the gas chamber by the heroic act of a single guard. If that guard in the midst of Auschwitz had the courage to risk his own life and allow her to escape the gas chamber, does it not then become not only imperative but also essential for me, in my relatively safe and free existence, to allow the highest Jewish ethical standards to inform my own decisions and to show the same courage in their implementation?

I was fortunate that, at a very early age, my mother and father had inculcated within me this ethical foundation: humans cannot successfully be counted, pigeonholed, or ultimately defined by others. One’s humanity surpasses any such attempt because the sum of a person transcends the sum of one’s being and experiences. It gives one the ability to search for meaning despite the situation and the ability to listen, observe, reflect, ask, learn, and change—to change one’s attitude, paradigm, and opinion and respond to and even alter the language of a discussion about an experience in order to transcend it.

Words and actions that bring dignity to life became my way of responding to the growing realization and internalization of the horror that the Nazis inflicted on my very own mother, starting with the branding. It is not by coincidence that my brother and I went into the healing professions. Nor is it a coincidence that the two of us are unafraid to be so openly and actively Jewish. Our professions and observance indicate our determination to do what it takes to thrive in its fullest sense, both physically and spiritually. As a speech pathologist, artist, and observant Jew, I believe that my responsibility begins with becoming aware of and discarding my own stereotypes and provincialisms that limit my expectations of what I and others are able to achieve. I am driven to play with life to see it through others’ eyes, as well as my own, and to make myself the target of all there is to achieve in the world. It is why I go into each situation hoping to grow and change in some way.

I now understand some of what drives my mother to tell and retell her story. Rather than becoming a dry page in the history books, a face under glass staring out from a photograph, or bones without flesh, she testifies—she warns. This is almost enough, for if you’ve never been in Auschwitz, you can never completely go there. For me, never forget is insufficient. Always remember is closer. Make sure the Holocaust helps you contextualize your current experiences and inform your important decisions.

This is why I stay near my mother and maintain a very real continuity through my six children, our Jewish community, and our political institutions—all in front of my parents—for my mother’s story, together with the sensation of familial and Jewish continuity, is the truest and sweetest defeat over the Nazis and what they stood for. Just as we tell and retell and delve for new meaning within the story of our exodus from Egypt 3,500 years ago, the stories within my mother’s book will be passed down from generation to generation and applied in new ways, keeping her story alive and vital.

Jonathan V. Lyon

My route took me from Ghetto Beregszász to:

1. Auschwitz-Birkenau

2. Bergen-Belsen

3. Braunschweig Reitschule

4. Hannover-Limmer,

5. Hamburg

6. Beendorf

7. Ravensbrück

and finally to freedom in Malmö, Sweden.

IN MEMORIAM

Zachor!

The family of Gloria Hollander Lyon murdered in the Holocaust

Viktor Hollender, brother

Helén Gelb Hollender, mother (liberated by the Soviet Army but died later from Holocaust-related causes)

Jenö Hollender, uncle

Hencsö Hollender, aunt

József Hollender, first cousin

Lajos Hollender, first cousin (liberated but died soon after from Holocaust-related causes)

Sámuel Hollender, uncle

Giza Hollender, aunt

Farkas Hollender, uncle

Piroska Gotteszman Hollender, aunt

Jákob, Tamás, and Margaréta, first cousins

Sarolta Hollender Scharf, aunt

Jenö Scharf, uncle

Hadassah and Sorika, first cousins

The family of Karl D. Lyon murdered in the Holocaust

Rosa Mayer-Murr, grandmother (mother of stepmother, Joan) (survived Gurs and other camps in Southern France, liberated in 1944, and died in 1945)

Hedwig Weil, aunt (father’s oldest sister) (deported to Theresienstadt and murdered, probably in Auschwitz)

Fanny Lion, aunt (father’s sister) (survived Gurs and other camps in Southern France, liberated in 1944, and died in 1945)

Luise Schwab, aunt (father’s sister) (committed suicide just before being deported)

INTRODUCTION

Dear reader, permit me to invite you to come along with me on a journey, which begins at a time when the world around me was whole and when life was pleasant and wholesome. In fact, my story has its origins a century ago, prior to the First World War, at a time when my mother’s three siblings emigrated from their home within the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the United States of America. My mother stayed behind and married my father, and together, they oversaw the razing of the small house they had inherited so as to direct the construction of a seven-room home, in preparation for a large family. Happy times ensued as time went by, and my parents’ six children were born, and relatives from America returned home for visits. This was a period of harmony, when my family cherished a life of peace in Czechoslovakia, when skies were blue with relatively few clouds.

Then in 1938, when I was about eight years old, a disturbing new geopolitical atmosphere created unforeseen changes in our lives. Hungarian soldiers occupied our land, and we became part of another country without even moving from our home. We became, in fact, a region of Hungary. During the next six years, storm clouds kept gathering, as the Nuremberg laws, adopted by the Hungarian authorities, were unleashed upon an unsuspecting and trusting people, and the realization of dreadful consequences came too late. In the spring of 1944, when the conquering German Army arrived, we were trapped and soon led into captivity.

During World War II, I was a prisoner of war but of an entirely different war from the one the American Army was fighting. This was a war of annihilation and of extinction, a total war without mercy by the mightiest power in Europe to exterminate a defenseless, peaceful, and religious people. I was a prisoner in that war without the protection of any Geneva convention, without any of the minimal rights of a POW, without hope, without any expectation to survive. I was a prisoner not because I was a fighter but because I was a child who was born to Jewish parents.

There were six million dead on our side in that war—an astronomical figure impossible to imagine. Six million would compare to annihilating the entire population of the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties (6,059,077 in 1990)—murdering every single man, woman, and child—or every fifth person in all of California. To bring this enormous tragedy down to an understandable dimension, to begin to fathom the atrocities that happened to millions, let me tell you my own story.

It is important to note that this story chronicles not only my misfortune but also the sunny side of my life. It tells of the loving family I was born into and of the caring human beings I met along the way—those good people who lifted me from the mire and rescued me from the clasp of evildoers. It tells of my struggles and my joys, of the man who became my husband in 1949, and of the loving family we created—our precious sons and the promise of the future, our nine beautiful and gifted grandchildren, and the little ones, our great-grandchildren.

By the grace of God, my journey continues.

PART I

My Name is Zora, but

Everybody Calls Me Hanci

I began life as Zora, with Hannah as my Hebrew name. When I was only eight years old, my small Czechoslovakian town came under Hungarian rule, and I was assigned the Hungarian name Hajnal. This imposition of a new name was indicative of the beginning of the turbulent political changes that unfolded in my early years.

CHAPTER 1

Childhood and Community

We were a farming family, close to the land and close to each other. As the first girl after four boys, I felt special. Some of my warmest early memories included many busy hours playing in our sandbox with my little sister, Anna, or Annuska as we called her. Our youngest brother, Viktor, often joined us. Being three years my senior, he was responsible for carrying the buckets of water with which to wet the sand down for creative tunneling and building. As the youngest boy, he was often left out of the rambunctious games of our older brothers, József, Michael, and Sándor, whose nicknames were Józsi, Miksa, and Sanyi. But Viktor was gentle and sharing, and Annuska and I looked up to him. In time, they all added much pleasure to my life, and ultimately, our four brothers became our protectors against the anti-Semites.

During my early years, our rural Czechoslovakian town of Velky Berehi was small enough for the residents to form a close-knit community; my family, the large Hollender clan, knew just about everyone, and my immediate family had many good friends, both Jewish and Christian.

Józsi, Miksa, and eventually Viktor commuted to school in the provincial capital, Berehovo, about five miles away. They took the train during winter and rode their bikes the rest of the year. After Viktor taught me how to ride and gave me his bike, I proudly rode it to school every day. Besides school, where all three brothers were excellent students, Józsi and Miksa also had part-time jobs in the city. Because his two oldest sons were studying and working away from home, my father, David (Yakov) Hollender—whom I always called Apu, Hungarian for dad—came to depend on his third son, Sanyi, especially during the harvest. Sanyi loved working on the land, helping with the animals, farm, fields, and vineyards. Because they worked together so much and shared a love of nature, Apu and Sanyi developed a particularly strong bond.

In our town, the Jews were neighbors and friends with the non-Jews. We were good friends with many, especially those who lived near us. But it was a small enough town that we knew just about everyone. My parents had close Jewish and non-Jewish friends, and so did my four brothers. My brothers enjoyed many social events—playing chess and soccer, dancing, and going to movies, theatres, concerts, and picnics—on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings with their Jewish and non-Jewish friends. Among Annuska’s young friends, her closest playmate was Mester Magdus, who lived next door. Her grandparents were our immediate neighbors on our south side.

My aunt Sarolta, Apu’s only sister, lived across the street with her six daughters. They were girls close to our own ages. Although they were our first cousins, they were also intimate friends, who often came to our house. They were always welcome. Of course, we all had our own close friends. I was especially fond of my cousins Csilla and Bözsike. But often, Csilla resented sharing me with her younger sister. Although Bözsike and I were only a few months apart in age, I had more in common with Csilla, who was a year or two older than I was. This could have been because of my starting school a year earlier.

Grandpa Herman Gelb, whose family had lived in Nagy Bereg for several generations.

Also living with us was my grandmother Róza Roth Gelb, whom I adored and called Bábi (Hungarian for grandma). My mother was her youngest child, and she helped raise us, her grandchildren. Her husband, my grandpa Herman Gelb, died when I was six months old, in 1930. Their son, my Uncle Adolf Gerö, came home from the United States of America with his wife, my Aunt Violet, with their only child, Judy, for the unveiling of Grandpa’s gravestone, which by Jewish tradition happened one year after death. The family photograph of the service at the cemetery survived the Holocaust in our American family’s album. In the photo, Judy and I sit on the ledge of the newly set up tombstone. We are twenty days apart in age. Also in that picture are my mother and father, my Bábi, and three of my four brothers, Michael, Sándor, and Viktor.

Left to right standing: Bábi, Violet, Adolf, Anyu, Apu; Sitting in front: Sándor, Viktor, Michael; sitting in back: Hanci (Gloria) and Judith.

As a farming family, we co-owned a threshing machine, which had a separate motor connected to the machine by a long, wide leather strap. Apu’s two co-owners and partners, both of the Christian faith, were childhood friends of his. The three of them had stayed close and became volunteer firemen together. Apu called them by their nicknames, Károly and Beni, while they, in turn, addressed Apu by his nickname, Dezsö. I called them Bácsi, the Hungarian word for uncle. In our culture, as a sign of respect, it was customary to address adults as aunt or uncle, whether they were blood relatives or not. All three men worked closely together and rented out the threshing machine during the harvest season, which brought in some income for our household and theirs.

The volunteer firemen of Nagy Bereg. My father is on the far right in the second row, his business partners are in the first row, and our Jewish neighbor in the back row.

One of the favorite sounds I remember from my childhood was the lovely sound of the cowbells worn by our cows, which were milked by the strong hands of my mom, Helén Gelb Hollender, to me always Anyu—Hungarian for mom. The cows and our two beautiful horses and their colts sheltered in our large barn, where our wagons, sleigh, and machines were kept, along with straw, hay, oats, and other grains for the animals. Alongside the barn was an area that held my swing—sent to me from St. Louis, Missouri, in America—by my Uncle Adolf. This area was also used for the horses as they pulled the wagons, sleigh, or other vehicles, depending on the purpose and the time of year, toward the turning area, beyond the barn by the hay shelter. Also, near the barn, fruit trees flourished, as well as Anyu’s vegetable garden; then there was the chicken coop, the duck pond, and the long yard, where geese and turkeys thrived.

Uncle Adolf, my mother’s older brother, in Budapest, where he studied and worked before leaving for America.

Besides relying on Sanyi, Apu employed White Russian migrants, who returned twice a year, looking for work in the fields. They fertilized the earth and planted potatoes, corn, wheat, oats, and so forth in the spring and helped with the harvest in the autumn. We had vineyards too, and their upkeep was mostly a family affair. At the vineyard’s entrance, tall quince bushes (bisalma in Hungarian) yielded lovely blossoms in the spring and provided fruit in the autumn and when cooked added delicate flavoring to pastries.

Whenever we went to work in the vineyards, Anyu would prepare a delicious picnic, which included freshly picked currants, cherries, or grapes for dessert, depending on the time of the year. There also were peach, cherry, nectarine, and walnut trees in the lower part of the vineyard, where, in the far distance, the Carpathian Mountains were quite visible. Throughout our workday there, we always sang and, in turn, heard the lovely voices of other distant workers echoing over the gentle rolling hills, which were covered with vineyards as far as the eyes could see.

We were a singing family, and often my brothers learned new songs in Beregszász and eagerly and patiently taught them to their two little sisters, Annuska and me. With our arms around our brothers, Annuska and I listened to them sing while Anyu kneaded dough in a big wooden trough, and Bábi stirred the soup on the stove with a large wooden spoon.

The songs were about the blue Danube, the nearby Carpathian Mountains, the chirping of the many beautiful birds, which the famous Hungarian composer Béla Bartók captured so eloquently. They taught us so many songs. I particularly recall one about a poor man picking up a cigarette butt, Aranyvégü Cigaretta, (The Cigarette with the Golden Butt). There were songs about Gypsy violin music, which made us feel like crying. There were songs that included the moon, the sun, the pipe smoker, the Fonó (the embroidery and yarn-spinning group), and the Csárdás (the Hungarian dances). There were songs from practically all phases of life. The pleasure of this activity was evident on all our faces.

My oldest brother, Józsi, studied hard and eventually became an electrical engineer. He was particularly talented in art, especially in drawing industrial designs, much desired at the time, as photography was not yet widely used. I well recall one particular year, during the weeklong Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which celebrated the gathering of the harvest, Józsi’s award-winning pictures decorated a full wall of our sukkah, the temporary structure through which one could see the stars at night and nature during the day and which we embellished with fruits, vegetables, and art. Artworks by my other three brothers adorned the remaining wall space. Annuska and I did not show any special talent in this area and were content to enjoy the creativity of our brothers.

Each year during Sukkot, the local Cigányok, or Gypsies, came to visit us, bringing their empty baskets, which we filled with nature’s bounty of the season. Sadly, they had no rights, were denied education and were consequently illiterate. They lived on the periphery of society, next to the town’s graveyard in igloo-shaped mud huts. Yet they were so vibrant and were marvelous musicians, singers, and dancers, often hired by the townspeople to entertain at various events. I recollect being fascinated with their culture and making friends with a Cigány girl called Rózi, who was close to my age. I’m not sure if any of the other children in the town did the same, but I went to visit the Cigányok, curious to learn about their way of life. I loved it when Rózi—with her long colorful skirt, hoop earrings, and black curly hair worn in two thick braids—taught me how to dance like a Cigány.

Observance of the Jewish faith was part of our family life. The day began very early, especially for the men in the family, who did as their ancestors had done for thousands of years. Each workday began with ritualized self-cleansing, followed by a morning prayer, when the men put on the tefillin. This was the small black leather box traditionally worn on the head and kept in place by black leather strips, containing scriptural passages acknowledging the one G-d¹.

There were also rituals and prayers throughout the day. My favorite prayers were those in which the whole family participated. To me, the most beautiful celebration was the Havdalah at the end of the Sabbath day, when my brothers were home for the weekend. How lovely to end the week by thanking G-d for His blessings for the week gone by and welcoming the coming week with wine, sweet-smelling spices, and candles. We thanked G-d for showing us the difference between light and darkness, the holy and the profane. We ended with a hug and a kiss as we wished each other a happy and good week. We always seemed renewed after Havdalah and ready to meet the week ahead. How meaningful it was to experience the beauty of life through our senses. And sometimes I thought how much easier it was to be female than male, having only to recite the short morning prayer, which I learned by heart as soon as I could talk.

On workdays, after morning prayers, next on the agenda for the men was cleaning the barn and caring for the horses and cows, giving them clean straw, feeding them, and grooming them with special brushes. When there was a pregnancy among the animals, the men paid special attention to it while doing their chores, keeping a sharp eye on the pregnant animal for any sign of restlessness, which meant delivery time, because the animal needed special attention both preceding and during the birth. Once the birth was over, before the newborn could stand up, the new mothers neatly cleaned their babies. For me, this was the most touching time. During family mealtimes, we received a special report about the new arrivals; and often, family members would go to observe the suckling colt or calf, bringing us closer to these sweet animals.

I especially enjoyed watching the mother horse Bella and the cow Manci lick their young ones clean and nuzzle them; the mothers were very attentive to their needs and were also quite protective. As soon as they managed to straighten their spindly legs and stand up, the newborn animals became playful. But we knew we mustn’t disturb them unnecessarily, or we would risk getting kicked by their mothers. At such times, we were eager to show off the new members of our animal families to our neighbors and friends, the Neufelds, and to our seven Scharf cousins, who lived across the street from us in the tallest building in town. Neither the Neufelds nor the Scharfs farmed or kept cows and horses and so were eager to visit ours, especially my friends Marika and Laci Neufeld. They loved to come and watch Bella and Manci patiently feed their babies. Later, both girls were murdered in Auschwitz, as was their mother. Of the Scharf family—which consisted of Apu’s sister, my Aunt Sarolta; her husband, Jenö Scharf; and their six children, who were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau—only the four older children survived the Holocaust. Uncle Jenö perished in the Munka Tábor (Hungarian forced labor).

Sunday mornings were special in our town. I have always remembered the beautiful sound of the church bells, which reminded the populace, mostly Protestant Christians, of their religious duty. When they went to church, they dressed in their special Sabbath clothing. Many of the women covered their heads with black shawls, causing the younger ones to look much older than they actually were. During the week, they wore their hair in long braids; but on Sundays, their hair was pinned up in neat buns on top of their heads. The older women dressed entirely in black, their long skirts reaching to the ankle, and some of the men donned traditional Hungarian linen shirts with wide puffed sleeves.

Sometimes I attended the Christian services with my school class and observed the congregants filing in and taking their seats in neat rows of pews. During the course of the service, the kindly reverend delivered a sermon with a message that would spread through the town like lightning. The townsfolk believed in all kinds of superstitions, and the good reverend was continually urging them to resist the false beliefs. And the musically talented organist, who was also the bell-ringer, enthusiastically pumped the organ pedals, his nimble fingers creating the music for the melodious hymns sung by the worshippers; I will always remember that beautiful sound floating through the church.