I was eight years old when they took my mother. Just like that: two thugs in green shirts came with a list of young women, gave them 10 minutes to dress, and herded them to a brick factory. From there they were taken by foot to a concentration camp in Austria. Along their 400-mile trek they were beaten, abused, spat upon, and starved.

My mother was everything to me. She was young, beautiful, feminine, with large brown eyes – and she was my mother. They took my father much earlier, first in 1940 for forced labor and again in 1942, when he was sent to a “Punishment Company,” which meant he wouldn’t return. The men who were in charge of the Jewish “work servicemen” were told that they would get a leave from the Army as soon as they managed to “de-Jew” their units; i.e., murder all the people under their command.

When this became clear to her, my mother went to see Ferenc Herczeg. He was the most famous official writer of Admiral Horthy’s regime. My father worked in the Great Writer’s print shop and set all his novels and magazines by hand. The Great Writer liked my father; he autographed all his novels to “Mr. Szilágyi, the master of letters.” He agreed to see my mother, who begged him to save her husband. The Great Writer looked at her in disbelief: “Madame, but your husband is a Jew!”

I will never forget the night my father had to go. After he left, I lay in bed close to my mother and couldn’t sleep. I watched her breathing: “Oh G-d, I’m only six years old, at least keep my mother with me!” Six months later the wives of all “work servicemen” from my father’s unit received official notification: “Your husband has disappeared during military action.” The good soldiers managed to completely “de-Jew” their units—they had earned a vacation.

On March 19, 1944, the Germans formally occupied Hungary. Their first – and seemingly most important – task was to eliminate the Jews. They immediately sent Adolf Eichmann to Hungary, and established a puppet government with a special secretary for the “solution to the Jewish problem.” They ordered all Jews to wear yellow stars on their clothes. At this point we became prey to anyone. We were treated like rats. It is very painful to remember how eagerly the Hungarian people cooperated with the Germans in rounding up all the Jews who lived outside Budapest, concentrating them first in ghettos, then packing them into boxcars designed to transport cattle (a hundred people in each car without food or water) and taking them to Auschwitz. Altogether, about 600,000 Hungarian Jews perished, including dozens of my relatives.

In June 1944, we were concentrated in specially designated houses all over the city. Each Jewish family was allowed to use one room. As most of the apartments in Budapest had more than one room each, the extra rooms were used to house those families who were evacuated from their homes. Designated Jewish houses were marked with huge yellow stars. The list of inhabitants was posted at the entrance to each house. The caretakers of these houses were personally responsible for “their yids.” They went out of their way to comply. We could leave the house only during specially determined hours and had to report to the caretaker each time we left and when we returned. The caretaker’s son served on the Russian front as a noncommissioned officer, and the proud father took every opportunity to express his dismay that while his son was occupied with the honored task of saving Hungary from the Bolsheviks, he had to deal with “you lousy, filthy yids.”

The remaining days of school were torture. The kids now openly enjoyed themselves at our expense. They subjected us to constant abuse. Then we went home to the yellow-star house where the forced concentration of old people, women, and children led to a barrage of quarrels and arguments. We were allowed neither to visit anyone nor to have visitors. We were not allowed to enter public parks, and could use only the back coaches of the streetcars. We continued to spend our nights in the underground shelter, scared to death of the carpet bombings.

I badly needed a haircut, and we knew the nearby barber quite well; he had always cut my hair, and used to greet my mother with a great smile: “Let me kiss your hand, Madame Szilágyi!” This time he was a different man. When I entered his shop, he started to yell: “Filthy little yid, haven’t you learned your Kol Nidrei yet? Get out of here before I tear your long ears off!”

Time went by. On the evening of October 15, the radio suddenly stopped its regular programming. “We shall now broadcast the special proclamation of our Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy of Nagybánya,” said the announcer. We all froze in awe; we knew history was being made at this moment. In his proclamation the Admiral declared that Germany was losing the war and he had decided to break with Hitler and join the allies to finish the war as soon as possible. We were sitting in front of the radio, hardly believing what we were hearing. Then suddenly, the joy of freedom overwhelmed us, and we started to remove the yellow stars from our clothes. “Wait,” said my grandfather, “it’s not over yet.” Unfortunately, as always, he was right.

A couple of hours later the radio broadcast a new announcement. The Admiral was deposed by the Germans, taken into custody, and the Arrow Cross Party took over leadership of the country. This was the most terrible thing that could possibly happen to Hungary, and especially to us. The Arrow Cross Party was a bunch of failed people. Their leader, Ferenc Szálasi, was a failed army officer who later also failed as a journalist. Their second-in-command made his living as a corn-cutter because he failed in everything else. These people called each other “Brothers”.

The “Brothers” decided to deport as many of the remaining Jews from Budapest as they could to the death camps, but they must have realized, as the Soviet Red Army was approaching the capital, that they had to find a solution within the city. They decided to designate a ghetto in the middle of the city and eliminate the leftover Jewish population right there.

My teeth chattered in horror. That night I begged my mother: “Please, please mommy, tuck me into bed and stay with me. Please, don’t go to sleep, I’m so scared!”

They came to take my mother a few days later. She just looked at me with her beautiful big eyes . . . and went away. I couldn’t even cry.

My grandfather and I were now alone. My grandfather was a respected man who used to work for the Hungarian State Railroad, but as a young man he was an elementary school teacher. My grandmother died early, and my grandfather raised his four children alone. His youngest son was lucky to die of pneumonia at the age of 16 in 1939, but his other two sons, and now his daughter, were taken away from him by force. He couldn’t cope with all of this. He was a broken man, a mere shadow of his former self. But he still had to take care of me, and this gave him some strength.

The “Brothers” came for us on November 27, 1944. First they ordered us to collect all our belongings, except glassware and furniture, and throw everything down from the staircase onto the inner courtyard of the house.

The “Brothers” were supposed to decide who to take to the brick factory and who to take to the ghetto. It seemed obvious to everyone that the ghetto was a better choice: we thought that it was only a matter of days before the Red Army would enter Budapest and save our lives. The brick factory meant a death walk to the gas chamber at a remote concentration camp far from the front. Therefore, when my grandfather and I were both ordered to stand with the group designated for the brick factory, we knew our days were numbered. A little discussion among the “Brothers,” however, occurred: the brick factory was far away and none of them wanted to go there. After some ten minutes of quarreling, the chief “Brother” announced his decision: “We’ll take the whole rabble of filthy yids to the ghetto.”

We were allowed to take as much as we could carry. All our belongings that we’d previously thrown down were taken away in a big truck, and we never saw them again. We were ordered to form a double line and walk toward the inner city. We joined groups of Jews from other yellow-star houses who were also marched in the same direction. Finally, the small streams formed a big river of people all marching toward the ghetto. As we marched, the “Brothers” yelled at us, kicked us, spat at us, and shot randomly into the crowd. They immensely enjoyed being the unquestioned masters of so many innocent people (as it turned out later, approximately 80,000 people were taken to the ghetto that day). The people on the street looked at us, laughed, and made rude comments such as “Look how upset the stinking yids are,” and “Finally they’ll find the place where they belong.” I did not see a single sympathetic or concerned face in the crowd.

One old man from our house had terminal cancer, and could not walk any longer. They shot him a couple of feet from me, and kicked his body aside. His wife tried to stay with him, but they forced her back into the marching column. As we approached the inner city, the shootings became increasingly frequent. Finally, we were walking in a thick mess of blood. “What is this under our feet?” I asked my grandfather. “Oil,” he answered after some hesitation.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at a big square named Klauzál tér. The square was full of Jews. We were surrounded by the Arrow Cross “Brothers,” who by now had lost every trace of humanity that they might have had left. “Brother, don’t you see how difficult it is for this Jewish woman to carry her bag?” asked one of them. “Indeed,” replied the other, “I must help her!” And he shot the Jewish woman twice in the head. Another came to an old man and said: “Why do you carry your bag? Don’t you understand that you won’t need anything in a very short time?”

As if to confirm this statement, the loudspeaker announced: “At this time you are ordered to drop into the designated containers all money, jewelry, watches, and any other valuable items you might have. You will be searched afterwards. If any valuables are found on you, you will be hacked to pieces on the spot.” My grandfather went to one of the containers and dropped all his money and valuables into it . . . except for one thing. He carried my grandmother’s old golden pocket watch, his only tangible memory from his deceased wife. The watch was a masterpiece. My grandmother received it from her grandmother as a wedding present in 1909. I saw that my grandfather “forgot” about the watch and whispered into his ear not to risk his life, but he had evidently made up his mind.

My blood froze when I saw an Arrow Cross “Brother” approaching my grandfather. He was about fourteen years old, with an automatic weapon in his hand. The lust for blood was evident in his colorless eyes. I wanted to ask him, “How many people have you killed today?” but I was too scared to open my mouth. He searched my grandfather and immediately found the watch. He took him aside to shoot him. I was crying desperately and praying for my grandfather’s life. Then something unexpected happened. The young lad evidently recognized that the watch was valuable, and changed his mind. “You will be hacked to pieces on the spot!” he hissed at my grandfather, and dropped the watch into his own pocket as he walked away.

It was already late evening when we arrived in the ghetto. It was a relatively small area of the inner city, previously inhabited mostly by Jews. The Arrow Cross Party ordered all non-Jewish tenants out of their homes with the promise that after the yids were taken care of, they could return and would be rewarded. Several hundred of us were distributed to each building. Inside the house, we were divided into apartments. The apartment we were ordered into formerly belonged to a religious Jewish family. There was nothing left in it except for furniture, glassware, and some old photographs. 21 of us had to sleep in each room. Of course, there were only a couple of beds in the room, and no sheets. We lay down on the floor, exhausted, depressed, and without hope. Nobody slept that night.

There was nothing for us to eat. They didn’t bring us there to eat. The only source of food was that organized by the so-called Jewish Council, which tried to take care of the internal matters of the ghetto. They were somehow able to smuggle some food in; occasionally, they could get some soup for the children. The most frequent cause of death was starvation. After December 10, 1944, when the gates of the ghetto were sealed, there was no more food from the outside. Then dying of hunger became a commonplace event. It started with diarrhea, and mental disorder followed. In their final days the victims talked only about food. They died imagining themselves sitting in a fashionable café in sunlit pre-war Budapest and eating the best strudels in Central Europe.

As the front was approaching Budapest, the Arrow Cross Party decided to seal the ghetto off. Before the gates were closed, they allowed the non-Jewish former inhabitants to visit for the last time. I then experienced a most unexpected encounter. I had already witnessed people being shot and dying of hunger, but the following little conversation surpassed everything. It remains vivid to this day, and took place between the former janitor of the house and my grandfather. The middle-aged woman suddenly burst into tears, and became hysterical. My grandfather tried to comfort her, but she was desperate. She said: “they have ruined my life! Don’t you understand, they will blow you up, and I’ll lose all my furniture!”

After a rumor was spread that everybody over 60 would be shot, my grandfather had a strange idea. He declared that he would walk out of the ghetto and visit the Pension Office of the Hungarian Railroads to complain that they’d failed to deliver his pension for the past two months. I remembered the incident of my grandmother’s watch too well; I tried to persuade my grandfather that this was the equivalent to suicide, but, again, he had already made up his mind. It was a cold morning; he put on his warm coat and fur hat and walked towards the gate. I followed him, crying. “You lousy old yid, where do you think you are going?” asked the Arrow Cross guard at the gate. “I am going to get my pension,” said my grandfather. The guard burst into laughter: “Did you hear the old yid, Brothers? He’s gonna get his pension!” With this, he raised his rifle high in the air and crashed it down on my grandfather’s head with the stock of his rifle, using all his strength. The old man’s body spun around several times before falling down. I tried to drag him back as fast as I could. I pulled him inside a house. People came to help, and it turned out that G-d had saved him a second time: the fur hat took most of the blow, and he escaped with bruises and a temporary loss of consciousness.

On Christmas Eve the ring was closed around the city. The siege of Budapest began. The whistles of bombs and shells became the music of the day: they brought destruction and fear, but also the hope that the end of our sufferings was near. Now we permanently moved underground. The cellar was overcrowded, there was absolutely nothing to eat, and water was scarce. People were dying like flies, and soon everyone was covered with lice.

It was forbidden to practice our religion “by penalty of dismemberment.” Nevertheless, when the time of Hanukkah came, an old Rabbi climbed through the underground cellars from house to house and delivered the holiday service. We were sitting there, starving, lousy Jews and when we cried out “Yevareheho Adonai eleiho,” the whole shelter became a monolithic sobbing mass of doomed people who were finally at peace with themselves and ready to die.

Many of us did die. I will never forget the eyes of the middle-aged lady who died of hunger one day before the liberation of the ghetto. Then I was already delirious; I’d eaten absolutely nothing for the last nine days. The next morning, on January 18, 1945, the Russians were suddenly there. No more Arrow Cross, no more Germans, just tired, dirty, and drunken Russian soldiers who smiled at us and tore the yellow stars off our clothes.

And they gave us food. A truck came with bread, and a huge crowd of starving people surrounded it immediately. A Russian soldier stood on top of the truck and threw loaves of bread into the crowd. My grandfather came back, barely alive, with two loaves of fresh bread wrapped in his old white scarf, which was covered with lice.

Then people started to eat. They ate like animals, stuffing the fresh bread into their mouths, swallowing without chewing, filling their empty stomachs. Many of them paid with their lives for their hunger reflex: their exhausted intestines couldn’t deal with so much food in such a short time, and they died. Fortunately, my grandfather knew this: he cut one piece of bread for me and one for himself. I happily ate the bread and was grateful to G-d that I was alive.

At about 10 o’clock in the morning my grandfather told me: “Although we are both very weak, we must leave this place immediately.” We left and headed home. The one-mile walk took us the whole day. There were no streets, just ruins. The bodies of dead people and dead horses covered the whole city. But the war was far from over. The Germans still held Buda (the hilly part of the city on the western side of the Danube), and they were shooting over the river with their artillery. One of my grandfather’s sisters and her daughter were killed several days later by these shells.

We finally arrived home. Our neighbors greeted us as if we were just back from a short vacation. No apologies, no shame, nothing. They gave us some food, however, and we climbed the stairs to find our apartment empty. There was some furniture left but no clothes and no windows and it was a very cold winter. My grandfather found some blankets and some paper to light fire in the stove. We went down to the street and brought a couple of bricks to heat up and keep us warm for the night.

The next day we found out that not all of our problems had been solved by staying alive. The Russians did not come to save the lives of the Jews (although they did save ours!) but to establish their empire. Accordingly, they were seeking men to take them “for a little work,” which meant dozens of years in the Gulag. The Arrow Cross brothers quickly understood how to avoid this and use it for new opportunities at the same time. The other side of their armbands happened to be red, so they turned the bands inside out and immediately became activists of the newly formed Hungarian Communist Party.

There were still no utilities and little food in the city. Although surrounded by the Red Army, the Germans continued to hold Buda for almost a month. They even managed to push the front back, and almost took the whole capital again. They mercilessly destroyed this beautiful city, “the pearl of the Danube,” and blew up all of our bridges when they retreated to Buda.

We had no money, nothing. My grandfather found two small tin bowls and two canteens, took me by the hand, and we went around panhandling. Wherever we found a place where some food was being sold, the old man swallowed his pride and begged: “Please, give something to this child.” And they did. Sometimes they even gave my grandfather something to eat, but he always shared his part with me.

As my grandfather’s health began to deteriorate, we both came to the conclusion that I could not remain with him much longer. There was a new organization called National Salvation that had a program to take the hungry children of Budapest to the villages and have them work there for food. So I bid farewell to my grandfather and went to Orosháza, a small town approximately 150 miles southeast of Budapest. The peasants already knew about our arrival and were eagerly looking forward to the free labor force. Since I was so skinny – all my bones could be seen through my skin – nobody wanted to take me. Finally, the officials of the National Salvation virtually forced an old, poor, and blind couple to take me in. They reluctantly agreed on the condition that I help them all the time, and not attend school.

It was already March and I hadn’t been to school since the previous summer. I was thirsty for knowledge, and couldn’t accept that condition. A couple of days later I escaped. I was nine-years old and alone in the world. But this is another story.