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Éva Szirtes-Deák (* 1938)

• +Éva Deák-Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1938 +On both sides she comes from a Hungarian Jewish family from the areas of present-day Slovakia +Her father was drafted in labor service in 1940, after 1942 he was not allowed to visit his family. He died in the concentration camp of Mauthausen in April 1944 +Her mother was deported in 1944, but she escaped the forced march +The family moved to the ghetto of Budapest and they lived there till the liberation +After the war in 1948 their cafe was nationalized, from that moment they lived in humble circumstances +She worked as a counselor and as an legal aid lawyer till she retired, she kept her position as a legal aid lawyer at heim Pál hospital even after her retirement +She met her husband, János in 1972 +János died of pneumonia in 2008 +Since her father died in Mauthausen, she participates in commemoration of Mauthausen every year, that’s where she got to know Rita Repper, who is the leader of Shalom club of bálint House, which is a Jewish Community center +Her father died in 2012 at the age of 99 +Éva is currently an active volunteer of Bálint House and she is a respected member of the local Jewish Community

Life story 

Éva Deak-Szirtes was born in 1938 in Budapest, she still lives there.

Her grandfather from her father’s side came from the area of Léva, her grandparents from her mother’s side came from the area of present-day Slovakia. Both sides were Hungarian Jewish families which lived in regions that were attached to Slovakia after the Peace Treaty of Trianon.

Her paternal grandfather comes from a poor family, he had five or six siblings. He was passionate about coffee, so he moved to Budapest to work in cafes. He started his profession as a pot–boy, later he became a waiter, a head waiter, then he opened his own coffee shop in the center of Budapest on one of the bystreets of Arany János street.

His mother came from a wealthy family from Gyönk, she had two siblings. Her parents were butchers. His uncle and grandmother both graduated from high school, which was not a common thing at that time. His grandmother moved to Budapest. After their marriage, her grandmother and grandfather had bought a cafe on the corner of  Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and Arany János street from the money coming from her downy and his savings.The house is at one of the most popular areas of Budapest, currently functions as a bank. The grandparents‘ flat was on the first floor above their cafe. They had three children, three sons, one of them was Éva’s father. After a while the children also started to work at the cafe. Both Éva’s father and his middle brother got to be qualified as waiters, his youngest brother got to be qualified as a cook. 

Her maternal grandfather was a head store-keeper at the Mautner Greed Trading Company, he had seven children, one of them was Éva’s grandfather. He met Éva’s maternal grandmother at the Opera Ball of Vienna where they were both applying to be dancers. They got married in Budapest, they had two children: Éva’s mother and her brother.

The sister of her paternal grandfather had given birth to five children, they were all raised by him, one of them was the classmate of Éva’s mother and they often went over to the grandparents to have lunch there. That‘s where Éva‘s parents met each other.

Éva didn’t have any siblings, cause she was already born after the Anti-Jewish Laws were passed in Hungary, so her parents didn’t feel safe enough to have another child. She lived with her parents in Bajcsy-Zsilinszky street 24 above their cafe, later in a one bedroom apartment in Hajós street.

Her father was drafted into the labor service system in 1940, from 1942 he was not allowed to visit his family.

Her mother graduated from a 4 year long public school and started to work after that, first she worked as a shorthand typist at a law office, later she was employed by a gas and plumbing company  at the Tőzsdepalota (the building of the Hungarian Stock Exchange). Éva was looked after mainly by her grandmother and a young girl. In 1944 when the deportations started in Budapest, her mother was hiding with their neighbor in the gallery of a shoemaker’s shop on the corner of Hajós and Dessewfy street. They both were 23 years old, fit for work so there was a high chance that they would have been taken away.

Maybe they could have been hiding at the shoemaker’s till the end of the war, because he was a reliable and helpful man, but her neighbor really wanted to go home to visit her mother and she managed to convince Éva’s mother to go with her. When they arrived the house was under a raid, so they were taken away, that’s how Éva ended up staying with her grandparents. While her mother was on her way to the border  going in a forced march, her grandparents and Éva moved into a  “safe” house. Somehow her grandfather was informed that the members of the Arrow Cross movement were going into the “safe” houses, taking the people by the Danube and shooting them into the river. They came to the conclusion that it was still safer to hide in their home.  

By that time Budapest was already being bombed,so they had to walk home through the completely dark city. They were hiding at home for a while and luckily they were not found there. Her grandmother got sick, so her grandfather took her and another three boys of the family to the Red Cross‘ children’s home of Perczel Mór street. The grandparents kept living in their own home. In this period Éva’s mother returned home, so fortunately they could find each other again. 

Earlier her mother was taken away into a forced march, she was not travelling in wagons, so she was not put into a concentration camp. They were either going on foot or with a cart in the direction of the Austrian border. While her mother, Rózsika the neighbor and another woman from the neighborhood were carried on a cart close to the city of Győr, a German- Hungarian man got close to the march and told them to jump out while taking the next turn and to hide in the bushes so he can come for them at night. That’s how they escaped from the march.

The neighbor didn’t want to flee, but Éva’s mother wanted to, because she was sure that after crossing the border she wouldn’t be able to find hét way home anymore. She jumped off the cart with the other woman and waited for the man to arrive. He actually came and took them to his home. Since his brother-in-law was a member of the Arrow Cross movement they didn’t have to be afraid of being raided, because he was never checked. They were hiding at his place for a few days, then he took them to Budapest using the papers of his female family members. First they went to the man’s flat, then he checked if it was safe to return to the flat of Bajcsy-Zsilinszky where the grandparents lived. After finding the grandparents there he took Éva’s mother and the other woman home. They didn’t have many assets left but Éva’s grandfather offered him a golden watch to repay his favor. The man didn’t want to accept it at first, but then he took it at the end. He said his name was Károly Németh. 

As Éva’s mother returned she took Éva out of the children’s home. The other three boys stayed there until they were found by her grandfather after the war, since the Red Cross was able to find the children they were taking care of by their names. Éva even got postcards from her father while staying at the children’s home because her grandmother informed him that Éva was there. She got the first card, but since she was taken out from the home the others didn‘t arrive.

On the ground floor of the children’s home the Germans established a hospital also run by the Red Cross. Her mother helped there a lot, she even got a paper that she was working for the Red Cross. They were  relatively safe there because the Arrow Cross members were not allowed to have a raid there. Based on her mother’s stories some of the patients nursed in the hospital were shot into the Danube, but somehow were able to climb out and some helpful people took them into the hospital. Those people were provided fair hospital treatment, those who died were buried at Szabadság square.

Soon they all had to move into the ghetto where they faced famine and cold flats without any heating. They were always able to get some food because her grandmother and mother worked at the kitchen from time to time. So they wouldn’t starve to death till the liberation of the ghetto. At nights children and grown-ups slept together so they wouldn’t freeze to death.

As the soviet army had liberated the ghetto they went back to their home, which they had found unharmed but looted, same as her grandparents’ flat. The family members from Léva were all killed in the Holocaust, just as the siblings of her grandfather, his secod wife and his two younger brothers. Her grandmother’s family emigrated to Detroit in the 1930s, they invited Éva’s parents to stay with them but her father, as an oldest son, didn‘t want to leave his family behind. From the labor service Éva’s father was put into the concentration camp of Mauthausen, he died there in 1944. One of her father’s brother was held in Russian captivity by the Ural mountains from 1942 to 1948 then he returned home, so he was not in danger because of the Holocaust. The other brother of his was shot to death somewhere in Hungary.

Besides her mother, only Éva’s niece and her three children stayed alive from the family. After the war Éva was raised by her grandmother and mother, while her mother was working she was mainly taken care of by her grandmother.

From 1945 she attended a Lutheran school, around one third of the students were Jewish. This school provided a high-quality education, and the students coming from a Jewsih background could learn in an accepting environment.

In 1948 the school was nationalized so she switched to the local public school. Her grandfather had sold his cafe and bought the Opera Café in Andrássy street 24. They had to move so the principal offered them three flats. They chose the one on the ground floor because that was the closest to the café. She continued her studies in Lovag street, in the afternoons she went over to her grandparents‘.

In 1948 the Opera café was nationalized, and her family became really poor, because her grandfather had already paid his yearly taxes. The state promised that this way they could avoid nationalization. Despite this promise the café was still nationalized and  since they paid all of their fortune as a tax they almost didn’t have any money. They didn’t even have food at home, cause they used to eat at the café. From that moment they had to live in humble circumstances. They only had five slices of salami for dinner, which they ate with some bread.  In the beginning of the 1940s they changed the status of their café to an incorporated company so they were not the owners of the place, but employees. This way the grandparents got some money as pension. Éva’s grandmother died of cancer in 1952.

Her mother continued to work at Tőzsdepalota, at the gas-and plumbing company. She was the manager, she answered the phone calls, but actually the whole office was only a small room with one desk and a few chairs. They had a small storage room, Éva’s mother took the order, made out a bill and kept the books. This small company was also nationalized, so her mother started to work at a state company called the General Repair Company, she worked here for many years. There she met the man she married in the 60s. He was a Christian engineer, who got out of captivity in 1948.

Her mother got fired during a reduction because they found a report of her that she wore nail polish and lipstick on the weekends so she was not trustworthy ideology-wise. She requested not to be fired since she was raising a child on her own, but the response was that the child should also work then. After this she found a job at the Budapest Knitting Company, she retired from there. It was a homely company, it was led by Emil Gojten who was a principal at the Jewish Community. They had many workers who made hats and other pieces of clothing by hand knitting. Those who didn’t have a job were considered as social parasites/ public-risk shirkers, many wifes of lawyers and doctors were knitting for the company, so they could be employed on paper. Éva graduated from elementary school, she wanted to become an architect. 

She started the technical school for high-rise building construction, but she couldn‘t finish it because even though she was able to lay bricks, she couldn’t carry the big boxes of mortar at constructions since she was born with a hernia. That’s how she continued her studies in Stephen the first High School for Economic studies, she didn’t have to retake the year, that’s where she graduated from.

Her first job was at Modex in Andrássy street 10, she worked as an accountant. She wanted to get a higher level education so she applied to take night classes at the Law University. Because of her ethnicity she wouldn‘t have been accepted to a regular course, also she wouldn‘t have had the money for that. She worked at many places in the summers while She was doing school, she was also coping knitting patterns for the Budapest Knitting Company.

Besides accounting she started takke night classes in law school, she was studying on the weekends and on holidays. She worked as an intern, then she passed the law exam in October of 1970. Then she started to work as a lead counselor of the vehicle depot of the post, then she worked as a counselor of the local food company of the eighth district  where she worked for almost 30 years. She met her architect husband in 1972, who was the chief technician of the Number 43 State Construction Company and later became the manager of the company, he retired from there. Her husband could speak German at almost native language level, so he was often delegated to German clients. He took a judicial expert of architecture exam, he worked as an expert for Hungaria Insurance Company and he also worked in the jury, at the army and at the thread factory, as a second job.
 

Éva also had a second job, she worked as a legal aid lawyer first at the Tobacco Trade Company, later at Heim Pál Children’s Hospital. She continued this job even after she retired till 2010 when she was made to choose between her salary and her pension. Because of the second jobs and the expert status of János they could afford to travel abroad. János’ mother didn’t work after the war, cause her dress salon  was closed because of the anti-jewish Laws, so they supported her financially as well.

Éva and János don’t have any children, because Éva was already more than 30, and János was more than 40 years old when they got to know each other. Éva’s mother could live off her widow‘s aid, later she got married again and she was also supported by MAZS Fund. Since she married an engineer, the two men had topics to talk about at family gatherings.

Éva’s mother was over 60 when she retired, her second husband started to have problems with his heart, he died in a heart attack in 1993. Éva and her husband could have spent their retirement years in peace, but her husband got diagnosed with Parkinson‘s and that made their life difficult. He liked to drive, they always traveled with a car, he didn’t feel safe because of his attacks and he was afraid that something might happen to him while they were abroad. Because of that they started to spend their holidays at Lake Balaton.

After the change of regime Éva and her niece got a 80-80 thousand Forint compensation for the café which was nationalized. Her husband‘s family got compensation for their parcels and a weekend house at Balatonaliga which were also nationalized back then. These cases were all managed by Éva since she was a lawyer.

Her husband died of pneumonia in 2008 at the age of 78, which couldn’t be not treated properly because of his Parkinson’s.

Her mother died in 2012 at the age of 99. After the war they were informed that her father died in the concentration camp of Mauthausen. He arrived there in the january of 1944, he died on 22 April, his death was witnessed by another man kept in the camp and after that he found Éva’s mother to tell her.

Éva goes to Mauthausen every year to commemorate , that‘s where she met the coordinator of Bálint house, Rita Repper and she started to volunteer in that community. Bálint House became her second home.

If she has to choose a motto, she remembers what her mother used to tell her:you have to try to survive everything and try to get the best out of the situation. You have to go forward, upwards, which takes a lot of work, but you have to show to the ones who tried to oppress you that it’s not that easy- can it be the Nazi’s or the ones who nationalized the whole fortune of the family. You have to show that people have respect.