Theresa Dulgov (F / Hungary, 1944), Holocaust survivor

Theresa Dulgov (F / Hungary, 1944), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Hidden Children>

Biography

My name is Theresa Dulgov, and I am a Hungarian Holocaust survivor. I am one of the youngest Holocaust survivors since I was born June 1944.

My parents lived in a small town in northeast Hungary close to the Czechoslovakia border. Hungary was spared Hitler’s wrath for a long time Since the government sided with Hitler and they were willing to do whatever Hitler and his cronies wanted. The Hungarian men who were between the ages of 16 to 60 were called into “forced labor” (munka szolgalatba). The men worked usually 6 to 9 months and returned to their homes for 2 or 3 months. My father was one of these men and went back to his unit shortly after he found out mother was with child. Mother was at this time on their farm with no family members nearby. In March 1944 German’s invaded Hungary and wanted to murder all Jews. The German’s were very systematic and wanted to make sure they do not miss a single Jew and therefore they started with the outskirt of Hungary in the small hamlets collecting them and marching them onto next ones and so on until they were at one of the strain stations where they were put on cattle cars and on to the camps. My mother wanted to avoid this at all cost. And she prepared herself to leave the farm/ranch and try to get to Budapest where her mother was staying at that time.

It was a long difficult trip. Jew were not allowed to travel. They had curfews so that there, were time she could not be seen on the roads. She made this trip late in May she wanted to be near her mother, who was living in Budapest. By this time her grand parents and other relative living in the country in small town/villages were already taken (to Auschwitz) at the time she did not know where they were taken. She arrived in Budapest almost 9 months pregnant. She went to the star house where her mother was staying with an Aunt who was blind and needed care. The apartment was my mother’s aunt and her apartment was filled with other Jewish people who were forced to live in that apartment. When the tenants in the apartment saw my very pregnant mother they all wanted her out of there.

There were so many people that they did not want a crying new born baby to share the very full quarters.

She stayed there until she was ready to give birth. Then she went to a hospital where her best friend was a nurse and her husband was a doctor to deliver the baby. It is now June 20th and I am ready to be born. I was just crowning when an air raid sounded and the doctor and nurses told my mother stop pushing and they helped me go back inside the uterus. Then they told my mother to walk down to the basement where the shelter was. After the whistle sounded that the air raid is over they told mother to go back upstairs. Now however I decided that I did not want to come where I am not wanted. The doctors decided they had to do a C-section because my heart was slowing down too much. Now you have to remember that there was no pain relive for civilians since all the medications were sent to the front for the soldiers fighting. Therefore, my mother had a healthy baby girl weighing about 6 pounds. After the surgery mother stayed in the hospital for little over 3 weeks.

My grandmother (my mother’s mom) came to visit her almost everyday when she could. Early part of July there were rumors that they are picking more and more people from the “star houses” and were taken to the trains. My mother begged her mom “Mother please don’t leave me here with this baby I don’t know how to survive with this child. O am only 26 and my husband is so far away that we don’t even hear news of him Please, she asked, stay with me, I need you now!” My grandmother went back to take care of the blind aunt and that night she was picked up and take to Auschwitz . My mother and I never saw her again.

When they let my mother out of the hospital, her friend arranged for us to stay in some kind of red cross facility where they took us in for a few weeks. While there, mother found out about, Raul Wallenberg, who was giving letters of safety to Hungarian Jews. Mother completed an application that took time since there were so many people applying. After completing they had to return to get the papers and be placed into a safe house.

Unfortunately, she never did get to pick up the forms. On her way to the embassy, she was detained, when she met up with some Germans taking a group of Jews to the train station. She was put among the marching people with me in her arms. There was a disturbance on the road ahead, and the soldiers were figuring out what is going on. While they had their eye off the group, while my mother snuck out of line.

She went under a bridge they were passing and hid under the bridge while the line went on to the train station. She was very lucky, none of the Jews in line followed her or gave her away. While she was standing under the bridge she kept talking to me to be quiet and not make a sound.

She waited there until it got a little darker and fewer people were on the road due to the curfew. She looked carefully around, but it was unfamiliar to her. There was a church or something a few blocks away. When she got closer she was hoping it may be a convent. As she knocked on the wooden gate a nun opened the gate. Mother asked if they could hide her. The nun said, “If you let us baptize the baby and you promise to raise her catholic we might be able to help out.”

My mother said oh yes go ahead. The nuns baptized me and mother was allowed to hide with me in the attic. She was able to stay and hide there with me. Unfortunately, there was a window that had broken glass that broke during one of the bombings. This made the room during the winter pretty cold, wet and difficult to stay warm and dry. There was one small round stove that mother kept a pot of water boiling. Whenever she found some food item she would add it into the pot. She put beans, potatoes peel, apple peel, a piece of dry bread or other such items. This would be our meal. For me since I was a baby she put it in a clean diaper and I sucked the contents all day. This also kept me quiet.

While in the convent we were safe, but food was not something they could share food was very hard to come by. Food was rationed and not everyone was given a ration. Jews usually did not get an allotted food. Whatever they could. We were always hungry.

Mother told me about a time that she was so hungry that she stole a jar of mustard in a store. Then when she was in the room and got very hungry she would dip her finger in the jar and lick her finger. She said it helped her fight the hunger like this.

She had no way of finding out where my father was or if he was even alive. In March the Russian Army reached all of Budapest. We were “liberated” unfortunately it did not mean we were free. We just went under a different occupation.

When The Russians first got to the area we were, they were in a large camp near the Danube River. There my mother met a young soldier who felt sorry for this little baby with big eyes, big belly and sticks for arms and legs. I was 9 (nine) months old weighed about 2 ½ to 3 lbs. This young soldier gave for me half his cup of soup and half his ration of bread. He told my mother to come every day with me and he will have food for the baby. After that mother made it her business to go there every day around lunch time to get the food for me. This Russian young man really liked me and wanted to play with me.

As we got on our feet mother went back to the farm that she left in her haste to get away. When she got back all her things were gone. Our Hungarian neighbors took whatever the Germans left behind. My father eventually returned. He was captured by the Russians and was held as a prisoner. The Russians took the rest of our land that was left after the Germans took most and put my father in jail as a “kulak” (land owner and a Jew) He was in Jail for almost 2 years.

In September 1956, the Hungarian Revolution broke out and my father died on November 28th during the revolution.

My mother wanted a better future for her 2 daughters and decided to leave Hungary. We left on December 6, 1956. We walked across the border into Austria. We wanted to emigrate to the United States. After long wait and miss steps we were finally allowed to enter USA We were lucky to arrive on December 16, 1958 in New York City.