STEPHEN D. KERTESZ - Between Russia and the West

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During the few days in the villa we met some strange people. For a short time two Arrow Cross leaders were imprisoned in our room. One of them was an old man, bleeding about the head and ears. He introduced himself as a professor and the national ideological educator of the Arrow Cross party. He contended that Szálasi was not sincerely pro-German and therefore had to be eliminated as a leader. Such doctrines were the cause of his arrest and injuries, but he refused to compromise. The other man, allegedly a candidate of the new regime for a diplomatic post abroad, had had a disagreement and fist-fight with the new deputy foreign minister over some looted Jewish property, and landed in jail. His fantastic stories about his heroic past greatly amused us and provided some necessary comic relief. In our struggle for survival in the face of overwhelming tragedy, a sense of the absurd and a taste for gallows humor were indispensable for morale - a lesson quickly learned by the stubborn and ever resourceful Hungarian population. We were soon separated from the Arrow Cross dignitaries and transported to a sinister-looking military prison in the Margit Kőrút full of ranking army officers, government officials, and political leaders. All of the common criminals had been released from this prison to make room for this strange group. When we told the man who registered us in the "admission office'' that we were innocent, he just waved his hand sadly and whispered: "In this prison everybody is accused of treason." We understood later that he was a fellow prisoner and a Serbian Orthodox priest from southern Hungary. Our barbers were alternately a Serbian partisan and a Ukrainian partisan who had been parachuted into Hungary. They visited us twice a week and brought news about the fate of our fellow prisoners and events of the outside world. They were surprisingly well informed and spoke fairly good Hungarian. During air raids we were not taken to shelters, but the Ukrainian partisan assured us that Soviet fliers had instructions not to bomb the neighborhoodof our prison. Each evening a few prison guards visited the cells and counted the inmates. One evening they repeated the headcount, and when they returned for the third time the count was made in English. We learned later that the numbers were not right, and the guards had asked a member of the Royal Air Force to make the recount. Almost every day we were escorted for a short walk in the prison yard, and during one of these promenades we managed to meet Colonel Julius Kádár, the former head of the counterintelligence section of the general staff. With expert knowledge he explained the factors involved in our case and concluded: "Boys, most probably all of us will be shot before long." His

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matter-of-fact prediction was something of a shock to us, but gradually we got used to the idea. Meanwhile the daily executions in the prison yard created a disheartening atmosphere.

Because Budapest at this time was threatened by encirclement, around November 20, 1944, we were suddenly put into buses and taken to western Hungary. One bus took the civilian prisoners, the other the army officers. On our bus we had a pro-Western former prime minister, Miklós Kállay, our neighbor in the prison, and be cause of his presence we were accompanied by SS guards, in addition to the Hungarian gendarmes and soldiers. During a stop we were able to exchange a few words with General Lajoseress1">LajosVeress, commander in chief of the Second Hungarian Army. I asked him how, with a whole army under his command, the Germans had been able to arrest him. Veress replied that his own chief of staff had betrayed him to the Germans, who had sent a huge armored unit to escort him to Budapest. He posed the question as to whether we should attack our guards and disarm them. The futility of such a plan was obvious, for even if we had succeeded the problem remained of what to do and where to go; Hungary appeared in a state of dissolution, and it was difficult to see any goal that justified fighting against our countrymen.

Our destination was the concentration camp of Sopron-Kőhida, a well-known prison in western Hungary, near Austria. But our small group soon returned to Budapest, since our indictments had been prepared and the advance of the Red Army was temporarily stalled. After our departure the Bishop of Veszprem, Jozsef Mindszenty(later Cardinal Archbishop of Esztergom) and his entourage were brought to Sopron-Kőhida.

Upon our return to Budapest we found that a new category of political prisoners now filled the military jail - members of the anti Arrow Cross committee of liberation under the leadership of the Smallholder Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszkyand military officers including General János Kiss had been arrested. The committee members were tortured for weeks, and their leaders later sentenced to death and executed. In comparison with this important plot of politicians and soldiers aiming at overthrow of the Arrow Cross government by force, our case became much less interesting - a fact that we welcomed. In the early period of our captivity the foreign minister had asked for daily reports about our hearings, but by the end of November we had become figures of the past, overshadowed by recent plots against the Arrow Cross regime. Nonetheless the atmosphere was menacing. Torture was commonly used by investigators in cases not yet before the military prosecutors. Besides electric instruments, there were various

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forms of sophisticated beatings. A few young army officers were arrested because they had wanted to dismantle the explosives from Danube bridges in Budapest. They could hardly walk, because first the soles of their feet were badly beaten, and then, with bleeding feet, they had to jump around in a room on one foot until they collapsed.

Isolation in prison is depressing, and links with the outside world are important; yet we could not have contact with anybody, except our lawyer. We planned to send a message to the papal nuncio or a neutral legation but did not succeed. Fortunately our case soon was in its last stage, and our military prosecutor observed legal formalities and showed understanding toward us. During interrogations he did everything but suggest the best lines for our defense. Still our position was not reassuring. The court-martial consisted of a single professional military judge and four Arrow Cross officers appointed by the Szálasi regime. Our fate depended upon many imponderables under martial law; death sentences could be and were rendered for almost anything. Our counsel sought to reassure us, suggesting that we would not get more than ten to fifteen years at hard labor, which was consolation of a sort. Our main problem was to survive the coming weeks; we did not think in terms of years.

In the winter of 1944-1945 the fury of the Hungarian Nazis as they sensed their doom was unrestrained. When being taken to hear our indictment I saw the corpse of a fellow prisoner, who had been tortured to death, carried by in the corridor. Just below our windows the rifles of the firing squad rattled day and night. At least sixteen prisoners were executed daily, many of them were simple peasants and workers who had deserted from the army. Not knowing when our turn might come, we prepared ourselves for the worst. It was reassuring to see the quiet and determined attitude of my fellow prisoners. In the face of death one discovers much strength in the soul. In this prison uncertainty was the only certainty about the future.

We witnessed many human tragedies. We understood through the grapevine that a former minister of defense, Louis Csatay, and his wife who was visiting him in the prison, had committed suicide. A shy-looking young newspaperman had made the return trip from Sopron-Kőhida with us. He had served in the army and was accused of having designed an anti-Szálasi poster. Experts could not identify his handwriting, but the son of his janitor testified against him, and he was court-martialed on the day we were transported from Buda pest to Sopron-Kőhida. The sentence had not been handed down, and we discussed his case during our journey. None of us expected

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a fatal outcome. When we returned to Budapest he was put into the same prison room with us. Next morning he was escorted to a routine hearing. We never saw him again. A death sentence was imposed, and he was executed immediately.

On December 2, 1944, I stood with my colleagues before a court martial, accused of treason. Although the court consisted of five "judges," only the president, as mentioned, was a professional judge, and it was my feeling that the president and the military prosecutor had tried to save us, but the decision would not be theirs. (I testified after the war in their defense when, in turn, their case was taken to court.) During our trial I stated in defense that Hungary had been a battlefield for many wars in past centuries, and that by our actions we had only tried to save the country from a repetition of this tragic fate. The court reprimanded me for this "foolhardy" statement. I pointed out that we knew, from a report of the Hungarian envoy to Germany, of Japanese mediation and German peace overtures, and we had proposed similar parleys. Before the trial our military prosecutor had encouraged me to emphasize this motive for our action.

Then, at long last, after a rough trial lasting five hours, the court martial released us. We did not attribute this action to any particularly eloquent pleading. The decisive factor in our release probably was the proximity of the Soviet army, for the Arrow Cross officers were fearful of the approaching Russians. During our trial Budapest was almost encircled by the Soviet army, and on such days the Nazis were not anxious to have dead bodies in the prison's yard.

Following our release I went home for a few hours and then took refuge in a private hospital in Buda as a precautionary step, since a new arrest was possible at any time. Nemestóthy joined me in the same hospital room. We acted as strangers and seldom spoke to each other. The third man in the room was a dying Arrow Cross party member. Only the director of the hospital knew our identity and he was most helpful. I feigned colitis and periodically received hypodermic injections, which caused high fever. A few days later our lawyer visited us and explained that the Nazis were again searching for us, with more serious charges: we were accused as representatives of the Hungarian diplomats abroad who had denounced the new Hungarian regime, and they had already been sentenced to death in absentia. A friend visited me from the Foreign Ministry and offered false identity documents. I refused to accept them because the false documents could have become channels to find me. In our precarious situation I preferred to rely on my own wits.

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On the afternoon of December 24 the hospital arranged a Christmas party for the staff and those patients who were not confined to bed. While a young doctor in a solemn Christmas speech vehemently denounced the Russians and Communists, I wondered about his future. Fighting had intensified in our neighborhood and the Russian conquest seemed only a matter of hours. Several months later I received a summons to testify in the case of the hospital director, Gábor Perémy, who had sheltered us during the last stage of Nazi domination. All administrators were investigated after the liquidation of the Arrow Cross regime, and I was glad to take a stand on behalf of our courageous protector. I used the occasion to inquire about the fate of the young anti-Communist doctor, our preacher on Christmas Eve, and to my surprise I was told that he became the all powerful spokesman for the Communist party in the hospital. As noted above, this was not unusual, after the Soviet occupation many Nazis switched with lightning speed to the Communist camp.

On Christmas Day the Soviet troops reached the hospital's garden and a battle began nearby. As a safety measure we were ordered to go down to the basement. I debated with Nemestóthy what to do. We wanted to remain in the hospital because it seemed that the Soviet army would occupy the city in a few days and peace would return. It seemed to us that it would be better to get it over with as soon as possible. But the fight continued around the hospital, and the odor in the basement turned from bad to worse, so we decided to escape through the hospital yard. Amidst whistling bullets we succeeded in reaching a quiet street and made our way home. This was a narrow escape in more than one sense. Shortly after our departure, Soviet troops occupied the hospital, arrested all able-bodied men and shipped them as war prisoners to Russia. Many of them perished.

The Siege and Soviet Occupation

The siege of Buda lasted seven weeks, much longer than anybody expected, and I spent the long ordeal with my family in the basement of our apartment house. More than a hundred persons were crowded into the small basement, which was transformed into a shelter. Conditions were precarious; there was no running water gas, or electricity. The house was about 800 feet from the Russian lines, so we lived in the midst of the fighting. Human nature is elastic, and after the first few days of the siege nobody paid much attention when the

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building was hit by mortar shells or bullets. The apartment house was struck twice by thousand-pound Russian bombs. They pierced three or four floors, but neither bomb exploded. Other huge bombs exploded about twenty feet from the house, and on these frightful occasions the earth shook, and the building moved like a ship on a stormy sea. Each time we thought it meant the end of our suffering. My twelve- and six-year-old daughters were frightened on such occasions, and I jokingly told them "don't stamp, don't stamp, you make terrible noise." They laughed and the tension lessened. Gradually they got used to battlefield noises and took in stride the adversities as the days went by and our predicament became more gruesome and precarious.

Several times a day during the siege I had to climb upstairs to our apartment on the third floor to get articles needed for our daily existence. One of my duties was to prepare candles, which offered at least some light in the darkness of the shelter. Remembering the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, I used shoelaces as wicks and collected all the fat and oil I could find. The wind, snow, and bullets whistled through the apartments, long since without windowpanes. The apartment house was a ghostly castle, inhabited by a few scarcely living shadows. Because no one had prepared for a long siege, food was soon exhausted. Old people, incapable of enduring the hardship, died, and it was difficult to dig their graves in the deeply frozen courtyard. Yet the frost was not without its uses, for it prevented the epidemics that surely would have followed otherwise, when elementary hygienic rules could not be observed. A primitive latrine was constructed in the snow-covered backyard.

People were starving all over the city. When horses were killed in the streets, news spread quickly, and the population of neighboring blocks assailed the frozen bodies with all kinds of knives and axes. We had horse meat twice - a delicacy compared to our usual diet of beans, potatoes, and occasionally, sauerkraut. Even in the early stage of the siege it was difficult to obtain bread. There were impossibly long lines before bakeries. In the early days of the siege, such shopping expeditions were still feasible. It was a fortunate coincidence that our cook was pregnant, and thus she had priority and was not obligated to stand in the bakery line. As weeks went by, supplies ran out, and bakeries and other shops closed. In any case it was risky to leave the shelter. Besides the bombardment, bullets whistled through the area. Yet human inventiveness was a helpful force even under these trying conditions. All sorts of barters took place. My wife

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had special baby cream, for which she obtained a few pounds of potatoes. I was surprised when in early February 1945 the owner of a small, nearby restaurant offered to sell me sauerkraut, a commodity more valuable than gold during the last stages of the siege. I told her that I was not sure about my own survival, so I could not guarantee her the payments she asked for after the siege. She explained that she did not want to keep any supplies because the Russians would seize them when they moved in. She would rather give food to me and ask for a price necessary for buying the same amount of sauerkraut when normal conditions returned. This seemed good thinking. I gladly accepted her proposal. Both of us survived, and some months after the siege, I paid her a more than satisfactory price.

At least once a day I had to go to an empty lot across the street to fetch water from an improvised well. One never knew whether he would return from such an expedition, since there was fighting in the area. We often found dead or wounded people around the well.

During this dismal era we lived on hope, and - alas - we almost lost even that. We knew the Russian occupation was inevitable, and we were waiting in hope that it would bring an end to the Nazi terror and senseless destruction. Even during the last days of the siege, military vehicles with huge loudspeakers spread the news about approaching German army units with miracle weapons that would annihilate instantaneously the Russian army. A few Arrow Cross sympathizers in our midst received the news with great joy. That, of course, was not the sort of hope most people had.

The blatant Nazi propaganda had so often turned out to be untrue that many people did not want to believe the widely publicized stories about Russian atrocities. We had been through so much. During the first days after the siege it was difficult to walk on the streets covered by deep snow and snowdrifts. Here and there hands and feet of dead bodies emerged from the snow, a reminder of the seven-week drama of the siege of Buda. Unfortunately, this time the Nazis told a great amount of truth about what the Soviet occupation would be like. It was far worse than most people anticipated. The siege was followed by wholesale looting, robbery, and rape committed by the "liberators." The frightened population regarded the first misdeeds of the invading Russians as a cruel consequence of the long and bloody fighting. But systematic looting continued for several months. After darkness nobody dared to walk on the streets and the gates were barricaded. People became desperate, but they were helpless, for there was no remedy or protection against Russian action. In

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the midst of these outrages it was good to see occasional signs of human solidarity. Some Russian soldiers gave bread and candy to starving children, and I heard about cases when army officers restrained abuses.

During the occupation Soviet troops rapidly stripped entire factories, without the slightest expert knowledge. Disassembled machinery was loaded on railroad cars and taken to the Soviet Union as war booty. Much of it remained to rust on sidings; few of the disassembled factories could be reconstructed. This senseless vandalism was a loss to Hungary and a sheer waste for the Soviet Union. Later the Foreign Ministry submitted to the Soviet mission in Budapest a list of disassembled factories transported to the Soviet Union and asked that their estimated value be counted in the reparation payments. The request was rejected. Rational discussion of such matters was not possible with Soviet military or diplomatic representatives or with the Moscow-educated Hungarian Communists who automatically accepted the Soviet point of view and supported Soviet denials and claims. The Communist leader, Matyas Rakosi, denied later that the Russians transported disassembled factories to the Soviet Union, although the Foreign Ministry referred to these actions in several notes addressed to MarshallKlementy Voroshilov chairman of the Allied Control Commission.

Soviet patrols asked for personal papers on the streets. At first, on such occasions, the soldiers respected documents, although they could not read our alphabet. For a few days I used a diplomatic card received three years earlier from the Rumanian Foreign Ministry in Bucharest. Then I met a Russian-speaking colleague from the Foreign Ministry who owned a typewriter with Cyrillic letters, and he was able to prepare identity cards in Russian that stated that so-and-so is a member of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry and is in charge of some important duties. Another colleague found a seal in the ruins of the Foreign Ministry, and these documents in Russian were properly sealed and looked almost authentic. In most cases such documents were helpful. In other instances they were torn up and thrown away by Russian patrols. I had experiences with both alternatives. Chance and composure were the important factors those days.

During a walk in Buda I saw many soldiers of a Mongolian type. This encounter, and the abusive excesses of the Soviet forces, re minded me that Gengis Khan's hordes had wrought havoc in Hungary during the thirteenth century, and I wondered how we could survive now and save our country from a similar fate. Were we facing

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a situation comparable to the earlier Tartar and Turkish invasons, or a more sophisticated exploitation? Would the Soviets impose a Communist regime? Would our country survive as an independent state? These were troublesome thoughts and questions without answers.

My first direct contact and "negotiation" with the Russians occurred in a rather peculiar way. One day a Russian captain came to my home with an interpreter and courteously explained that his superiors knew about my resistance to the Nazis and would like to talk over with me the problems of Russian-Hungarian cooperation. I had to spend the following two days at Russian headquarters, where the officers were exclusively concerned with names and whereabouts of Nazi spies and collaborators. I vainly explained that I worked in the political division of the Foreign Ministry, in charge of preparation of the Hungarian case for the peace conference, and knew nothing about spies. Having first been in prison and for the last few months in a shelter, I could have no knowledge about the behavior and whereabouts of the suspected persons. The Russians were convinced I knew much more and was reluctant to tell it. The second day their attitude became threatening, and finally they handed me a register from the cultural section of the Foreign Ministry, containing a list of students who had received scholarships in foreign countries. I was supposed to disclose the spying assignments of these students. I tried to explain that the students had gone abroad to make special studies in such fields as chemistry or modern languages. By this time my interrogators had grown angry and excitedly told me that nobody could go abroad without a spying assignment and that I should cease talking non sense. At that moment I had the same feeling I had experienced with the Nazi interrogators, who could not believe the truth but were pleased and impressed by fantastic stories. So I explained that these fellows might, after all, have been spies, but if so their assignment had been given by the Ministry of Defense, and the Foreign Ministry knew nothing about it. This devious explanation partly satisfied the single-minded Russians, and I got away with a promise that I would try to find out the names and whereabouts of the spies and collaborators. Fortunately this Russian headquarters moved away, and I was not molested by them again.

A few days later our apartment house received a summons from the Russian military police that all men of military age - eighteen to fifty years - should appear the next day at 6:00 A.M. with their personal documents. At headquarters they would get identity cards, which would assure them of free movement in town. The reason for

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the early hour was to enable everybody to get to his job on time. According to the Russians the procedure would not take more than five minutes. The whole thing seemed strange and aroused my suspicion. I decided not to go.

In the morning I left the house with the other men and asked them to tell the Russians that I had to see the Soviet commandant in Pest that morning and therefore would have to present my documents another time. Actually I went to see friends living on the banks of the Danube. There I met two girls who were rowing champions. The day before they had found a derelict light boat on the Danube and hidden it in their own apartment. Although crossing the river was strictly forbidden by the Russians the girls offered to take me to Pest in the boat, along with two other persons, Count Béla Bethlenfrom Transylvania and Francis Durugy from the Foreign Ministry. This was the only way to cross the river, since all bridges had been blown up by the retreating Germans. At this time of the year the crossing was doubly hazardous because of the floating ice. We lifted the boat to our shoulders and headed for the river, but as we approached the bank we noticed four Russian soldiers, apparently under the command of a civilian.

The latter shouted at me in a fluent but hardly understandable Hungarian: "Who are you?"

"I am an official of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry and was asked by the Soviet commandant in Pest to go to see him," I replied. "These girls will take me over to the other side of the river."

The stranger snarled at me "Where is the Hungarian Foreign Ministry? Where is such a country as Hungary? All these are of the past. A new world is here, don't you know this?"

"Of course I know very well that a new and better world will be established after the ordeals of war," I answered. "The Atlantic Charter and the Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe, signed by Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, are a guarantee of that." (After the siege the Declaration on Liberated Europe had been posted in Hungarian all over Budapest.)

We continued our strange conversation in this vein, surrounded by the ruins of a ghost city. In the meantime my companions had disappeared into their house with the boat, and when the Russians began to look for them I gave wrong directions and returned to my friends' house. We waited for about an hour until everything seemed clear and then tried the crossing again. This time no Russians were in sight. Now we would see whether a boat built for three lightly clad sportsmen could carry five persons in heavy winter clothes. As we

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stepped in, the boat settled lower and lower, until the icy water reached within inches of the gunwales. But the boat did not sink, and slowly and precariously we made our way across the Danube to Pest on the far shore.

The building of the Foreign Ministry in Buda had been destroyed, and a new office established in Pest - where, I did not know, but finally in an old apartment building without doors or windowpanes I found it and met a few colleagues who told me about a new national government at Debrecen, the principal town in northeastern Hungary. I was amazed to hear the following message from the new foreign minister, János Gyöngyösi "The officials of the Foreign Ministry should not go to Buda [the part of town where I lived] because they might be deported by the Russians and in this case the Hungarian authorities could not help at all." My originally skeptical outlook changed to deep suspicion. I understood that experiences with the Russians in Pest were the same as in Buda, if not worse. Popular feeling at this time expressed equal contempt for Hitlerand Stalin: scrawled in huge letters on the walls of the city were such slogans as: "Hitleris brown; Stalin is red; both are bastards to us."

On my return later in the day I had to wait two hours in a snow storm on the bank of the Danube; because of Russian patrols my girl friends could not risk the crossing at the agreed time. When I finally arrived home in Buda in the evening, half-frozen and exhausted, I learned that none of those men who had gone to Russian head quarters in the morning for the five-minute interview had returned. We later found out that they had had to march first to a concentration camp installed in Gödollő in the gymnasium (high school) founded and run by the Order of Premontre, and three or four months later those men who survived the starvation ration and other hardships in the camp had been sent as prisoners of war to the Soviet Union. Some of them came home several years later.

That evening after the excursion to Pest I had a high fever, and next morning my wife, accompanied by my father, went to the Russian military police to explain that I was ill and could not submit my documents for a couple of days.

"It does not matter, the MP will go to get him anyhow," was the brusque answer.

After this incident I decided to flee. I did not know that the Russians were not like the Germans, that their method of operation was vasly different and unpredictable. On the street where I lived they made no attempt to get the men who had not gone to headquarters. Whereas we were accustomed to the uniformly enforced German

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system, Russian procedure was a whimsically changing pattern. Even when Soviet troops were marching through the city, we were not sure whether they were coming or going. Unenlightened, I went to the house of a Russian-speaking friend who made arrangements to cross the Danube again by boat the next morning. The same evening, however, three Russian soldiers came to the house and told my friend he must go with them the next day as a translator. My friend gave me a huge Red Cross badge and introduced me as the president of the Red Cross in Buda. He explained to the Russians that I had promised to go to Pest to get milk for the children in Buda, and that he must go with me in the morning. The Russians replied cheerfully that all of us would go together in a truck, over a Russian military bridge built outside the city. We made an appointment for 9:00 A.M.

Next morning the Russians were not to be found. We searched for them and at last found them - dead drunk. It took at least an hour before we succeeded in getting them into the truck. Finally, though the driver was still intoxicated, we miraculously arrived at Pest.

It was dangeros even to walk in the city, for the Russians continued to seize men on the street, and I felt ill and found it necessary to look for an accommodation to take a rest. By chance I went to see a friend who invited me to stay with him in a household typical of those days. The host could hardly move; he had been shot in the left foot by the Germans while escaping through their lines. His brother in-law, a very young man, had been shot in the lung; the boy had gone to the garden to fetch some fresh snow, used instead of water during the siege, and German SS troops in the next house shot him simply for sport. A doctor living in the house took care of both of them. I had a high fever, and the doctor discovered that I had pneumonia, but fortunately he was able to procure sulfa medication - a rarity in those days. I stayed in bed for ten days, in rather serious condition.

There followed an unusual odyssey. While still convalescing I managed to obtain from the only government office in Pest the necessary official papers and recommendations to get me to Debrecen. I realized later that these papers were of no great value since the Soviet army did not respect documents issued by Hungarian authorities. Trucks were operated by the communist party, and the drivers took no interest in official papers. They were willing to take passengers, but only for a huge tip, which I was not able to afford. Three times a week there was an overcrowded train to Debrecen. By train the journey of about 120 miles took at that time from two to five days. It was necessary to change trains at least twice, and on these

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occasions the passengers were often taken by the Russians and put to work for a couple of days or seized as prisoners of war and taken to the Soviet Union.

The fate of civilians kidnapped as war prisoners depended on chance. When shipped by the trainload to Russia, some prisoners in desperation jumped out of the moving train or otherwise escaped. Sometimes goodhearted soldiers released Russian-speaking prisoners who described the agonies of their families. But the convoys had to hand over to the authorities at their destination a certain number of prisoners, so to make up for the losses the guards occasionally encircled railroad stations and picked up the necessary number of persons to replace the missing men. The train then continued on the journey to the USSR. It was merely accidental whether one was kidnapped as war prisoner. Sometimes Jews returning from Nazi concentration camps were intercepted and rerouted to Russia. A young man living in the neighborhoodof a Budapest railroad station left his home to buy matches, and four months later his family received the first news of him from Archangel.

Such prospects were unappealing, but the situation in Pest was intolerable, and I had to risk the journey to Debrecen. Personal safety did not exist, and I was in bad shape after the pneumonia. I had lived for months chiefly on beans and potatoes and was very weak. In Debrecen more food was available, and I hoped to recover strength and be able to send food to my family. Together with a colleague from the Foreign Ministry, I succeeded in getting on a train. The colleague spoke Russian, and at that time such ability was a great advantage. Of course the train consisted only of freight cars. Everybody had to stand, and people were pressed together like sardines. The warmth of the human bodies made up for the lack of heat. For two days we traveled under these conditions, but after some narrow escapes from being taken prisoner of war, we reached Debrecen. I had started the journey weak from pneumonia and arrived emaciated and exhausted.

Meanwhile, a Russian-speaking friend proved a great help to my family in Budapest. Before leaving home I had given my wife my Omega wristwatch in hope that she might barter it for some basic foodstuffs. The Russian soldiers had an obsession with watches, and after the first wave of looting and confiscating, some of them specialized in valuable watches. I had saved this Omega by walking out of our dark shelter when the first Russian patrol demanded that all men deposit their watches in a weather-beaten army cap. (On the street a wristwatch could be saved by hanging it on a long string in one's trousers.) My friend eventually succeeded in finding an Omega

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collecting soldier who gave to my family about 100 pounds of fine white flour for my watch. The flour was a lifesaver, an almost unbelievable treasure in those days.

In Debrecen I got in touch with the new foreign minister, Gyöngyösi and told him about the peace preparatory work done under the old regime. In the course of our conversation I reported that the bulk of the material had been deposited with the Hungarian legation in Bern, while a smaller portion was hidden in Buda. The foreign minister showed little interest in the matter. His lack of interest in all probability was due to mistrust of individuals who had served under the old regime. To some extent his apathy may have stemmed from the realization that to continue peace preparatory work in the face of the Soviet occupation was futile.

I did not make further efforts to see the country's new leaders, but was glad to receive my salary for the past five months and did my best to regain strength and send food to my family. In April 1945, I returned to Budapest, this time traveling under decent conditions on a special government train that took officials back to the capital. I did not begin to go regularly to the Foreign Ministry in Budapest until the end of May when I had to assume new responsibilities.

Index

STEPHEN D. KERTESZ - Between Russia and the West