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Róbert Rátonyi (* 1938)

• Robert Ratonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1938

• He survived the Holocaust even though both his parents were deported, his father in 1942 and his mother in 1944, to different concentration camps.

• Robert left Hungary after the revolution against the soviets in 1956 and emigrated to Canada.

• In the United States he became az engineer

• After his retirement he wrote a book about his life and now he lives in Atlanta with his wife

Introduction, birth and historical background

Róbert was born in Budapest in January 1938, which was a very bad year in the world. Anschluss took place in March of that year, which was the unison of Austria and Germany, furthermore, Nights Of The Broken Glass also took place in November of that year.

Budapest is 125 miles from Vienna, and news of the pogroms that took place there reached the Jews in Budapest. Robert once asked his mother why he had no siblings (he was older at the time) and one time his mother replied: they found out what had happened to the Jews during the crystal night and his father forbade his mother to have more children, you didn‘t want to bring more children into this world. His mother had never forgotten this. That‘s how Robert found out why he was an only child. According to him, the victims of the Holocaust weren’t only those who died, but also those who were not born.

In 1944, the Holocaust had truly arrived to Hungary. According to Yad Vashem, the beginning is 1939. To Robert, it was the Crystal Night. If that hadn’t happened, everything would have happened differently.

The beginning of war, childhood

The first anti-Jewish law came out in 1920, it was the Numerus Clausus.

This had limited the proportion of Jews in universities, among other things. It was truly the first Jewish law, but this was before Hitler. However, the first “real” Jewish law came out in 1942, when his father was called in for labor service, he couldn’t work anymore and had to leave his job. In the beginning they would see him once a month or once every 3 months. This was one of his last encounters with his father, he disappeared after 1944.

Since the age of one, Róbert and his family had been living at 7 Füzér Street in Kőbánya, Budapest. His mother‘s parents lived in an all-comfort apartment at 106 Király Street. There was a maid‘s room, a refrigerator, several bedrooms in that apartment, that is where his mother had grown up. Róbert‘s father wasn’t an educated man, he’d only completed 8 grades and did physical work. After his father was called in, his mother had to go to work, doing factory work for a chemical company. They lived in very difficult conditions at that time. The apartment on Füzér Street was a small two-bedroom apartment, there was no water that came from wires. Róbert had grown up here until he was 18 years old.

Robert knew about the war that was going on, he could hear the adults whispering about it. But he didn’t know what the war was until Budapest had started to be bombed.

In around March or April of 1944, a law came out requiring every Jew over the age of 6 to wear a yellow star in a public place. At the age of 6, Róbert didn’t understand what this yellow star had meant. He had a good friend called Bandi, who was under 6 and had complained to her mother that he wanted a yellow star too. The children didn’t know that the yellow star had meant the difference between life and death.

One day, his mother had told them that they had to go to the Protestant church, which was just around the corner. There, his mother asked the priest to baptise Róbert so he could receive fake papers or a cross letter. His later wife, Eve, also survived the Holocaust with a Christian family. However, the baptism of Róbert was refused by the priest because it was already forbidden to baptise Jews at that time and the priest would have risked his life. This was the first time he had felt that something terrible is going on around him.

The British and the Americans had later started bombing Budapest, sirens were going regularly and they had to go to a protected house. In October 1944, the Hungarians had already seen that the Germans will lose the war, trying to leave the German military alliance. At that time in Hungary, there were still approximately 700,000 Jews. Then Adolf Eichmann had arrived to Pest and his goal was to accomplish a final solution. The Hungarian Holocaust had two phases: in the first phase rural Jews were ghettoised and deported to concentration camps (about 450,000 people in 65 days, 90% to Auschwitz). By this time, Germany was already at a loss.

The Jews of Budapest, on the other hand, had been moved to yellow-star houses.

The house on Füzér street had also become a star house, they had to put a big yellow star on the gate. Several Jewish families moved in, and Christians moved out.

Construction of the ghetto had begun in September, and it was completed and closed on December 10th, with approximately 70,000 people. Róbert‘s mother didn‘t talk about this, but she had already heard the word „Schutz-Pass“ from the conversations.

It was a defense document (safe-pass) issued by embassies (Swedes, Swiss, Portuguese and the Vatican).

The Arrow-Cross take-over

In October 1944, the Arrow Cross came to power, hence the end of the Jews of Budapest. They were especially anti-semites, who wanted to execute the Jews of Budapest.

The deportations had begun again, and by this time women and children were also being deported.

“We woke up at about 3-4 am on October 10th, someone was banging on our door. Everyone had to go out into the yard. It was already quite cold in October, we had to get dressed. My mother told me, and hurried to get dressed.

Then we had to go out into the yard. There were only Jews in the house then. It was a star house. There were soldiers outside, I don‘t know how many, maybe 5-6 soldiers with rifles. They told every Jew to line up. Then they said the adults have to take two steps ahead. We, the kids, stayed back. By then, everyone was crying. One commander who was there said “adults turn left and step forward”. And we kids stayed there. This is how I’d ended up alone. And I had no idea, I didn’t even know what was about to happen.

I just remember that around 8 o‘clock in the morning a very good friend of my mother, Aunt Juci, came into our apartment and said, “Robi, get your clothes, I‘ll take you to your grandparents in Budapest. And that‘s what happened. “

They walked from Kőbánya to the city on foot, to 106 Király street.

There was no public transport anymore, Robi saw the bombed Budapest for the first time. It was a very long walk. When his grandparents saw Robi, they knew right away that their daughter had been taken away. In the apartment stayed the grandparents, two aunts and their 3 children. There was food, he was very happy about it, although at the time Jews weren’t allowed to shop in many places. After two weeks, they had to leave from there too. Her grandmother had put a meat grinder and clothes in a basket and she entrusted Robi with it. They walked to a sheltered house with as much stuff as they could carry.

At times, there were inspections in these sheltered houses, where the Schutz-Pass had to be presented. Those who didn’t have it were either taken to the ghetto or executed on the banks of the Danube. Later, the Schutz-Pass wasn’t enough in itself either, the arrow members had to be bribed. His grandfather was taken away on one of these occasions because they didn‘t have enough Schutz-Passes. He was taken to the brick factory, and then he managed to escape home after 2 days. But they were searching for him and so they had to move every 2-3 days after that.

The end of the war

By December, conditions were so bad that his grandparents were determined they would only be safe if they went to the ghetto, because at least  they would be surrounded by a wall. Róbert only remembers that in the end they got in there and by then he was so weak that he couldn‘t get to his feet. They were very scared, it was cold, they were starving. They lived in the ghetto at 34 Kazinczy street, opposite the Orthodox Synagogue.

“The daily caloric intake we got was maybe 500 calories a day. We got 2 servings of soup  maybe, or a piece of bread. Everyone was dying in the ghetto. And at that time it was that kind of winter, more and more people were dying of starvation or illness, or they froze to death. The dead were being left on the street and you could see heaps of dead bodies lying on the street. And honestly, would it have been a matter of days for us to see how long we would live? And I remember I was already too weak, I couldn’t stand on my feet anymore due to lack of food and I was the youngest. I guess the older ones were in a very bad situation too, but at least they could keep on going. All I remember is that the windows were always broken, so you could constantly hear the noise, people were coming and going, crying, shouting, this and that, and there was bombing in the ghetto too.

Miklós‘s job was to go to the kitchen and bring us the daily ration of soup in a bucket.

He once went to the kitchen with the bucket and just then a Russian plane came and started shooting the people on the streets. When the Russians came, they didn’t see where the ghetto was, where the wall was, they fired at everything that was moving.

Miklós came home with the soup in the bucket, he stood by the gate as he heard the plane, then when the plane left, he looked into the bucket and saw that the soup was gone, a bullet had shot through the bucket and there went their lunch.”

During the liberation, he was taken to the window because he could no longer walk and you could see the arrow cross marching out and the Russians marching in.

People rushed out into the streets and shouted “bread, bread”. This is how they were liberated on January 18th. After that, his grandfather and Miklós went back to 106 Király street, where a Christian had lived already. They moved out, and Róbert and the others moved in. It wasn’t clear what had happened to his mother and the other family members.

They stayed there and waited for the other family members to come back.

By this time everyone was starving, not just the Jews.

The whole of Budapest fled to the countryside because they had hoped to get better access to food there. The trains were so full that they travelled among the luggages with Miklós to Eger where acquaintances were still living. It was then when the news came that his mother had survived the war, so Róbert went back to Pest.

Her mother, as it turned out, was taken to a Jewish women‘s labor camp in Austria and  made her work there. They didn’t get enough food and were in very poor condition.

His mother was with her best friend at this camp, Aunt Manci. She was a very pointful woman and became the servant of the camp leader, so she was able to steal food and gave some to Róbert’s mother as well. Her mother was very ill, had caught various illnesses and was in such a bad condition that she couldn’t travel back from Austria.

They remained in a hospital there after the liberation, she was cared for there and recovered to a point where she was able to go home to Pest. That‘s when they met next.

They went back to Kőbánya for a few months to the old apartment, by which time another Christian family had also moved in there. They gave them their apartment when Róbert returned. Róbert learned after months that his father had died in a concentration camp in Donneskirchen.

Thirteen of his mother’s family died during the Holocaust, including many children, Róbert cousins too. The youngest was 6 months old, one cousin was 10 years old, another 13. They all died in Auschwitz. From the paternal family, three people died.

After the war, 1956, emigration

Róbert had remained in Budapest after the war, many emigrated after the war.

Part of the family moved to Palestine and Australia. Róbert had left Hungary during the 1956 revolution in his first-year as a university student. On December 6th, 1956, he crossed the Hungarian-Austrian border. He had first emigrated to America and then settled in Canada. Her mother had later got married, she didn’t go to America after them.