Eva Serdy

Eva Serdy (F / Hungary, 1932), Holocuast survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Hungary> <Budapest> <Portuguese House>

Biography (USHMM)

Eva Serdy, born August 25, 1932 in Debrecen, Hungary, discusses her father’s job, her family, and growing up in Budapest; her father being taken as a forced laborer in 1940; her schooling; antisemitic incidents; attending a Jewish high school; the beginning of the German occupation in March 1944; her relatives getting deported shortly after the start of the occupation; her father being called up in June 1944 to a labor battalion; moving next door to a Jewish house; fleeing the house and moving around using fake papers; paying to stay at a policeman’s house for some time; living in hiding at a tailor’s house with 16 other Jews; the tailor, Foldvari, fleeing in mid-October when things got worse; obtaining a Portuguese Schutzpass and moving into a Portuguese house with her mother and grandmother; her father moving to a labor unit with other “Portuguese” and came back on weekends; her father being deported on November 27th; her grandmother being killed during the siege of Budapest when their flat was directly hit; fleeing the Portuguese house with her mother when police started taking people from it to the ghetto; going to another Portuguese house; escaping from that house when the Arrow Cross came to clear it out; returning to the first Portuguese house; liberation on January 16, 1945; returning to her own flat on January 18th; her father returning from Mauthausen and Gunskirchen on August 10th; returning to school; being rejected from university and facing problems finding employment because of her middle class background; and departing Hungary and immigrating to Australia in 1957.