Tom Szelenyi (M / Hungary, 1928-2015), Holocaust survivor
Tom Szelenyi (M / Hungary, 1928-2015), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Hungary> <Buchenwald> <Death March> <Theresienstadt> <Liberation of Theresienstadt>
Biography
After the Nazis took control of Hungary, he found temporary refuge in one of the "safe houses that Swedish diplomat and humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg designated as "Swedish Legation Property throughout Budapest. But he was captured in Fall 1944 and sent to Buchenwald. He was not in Block 66 or any other Kinderblock at Buchenwald, but treated as an adult. He was not present at the liberation of Buchenwald, as he was evacuated shortly before. He ended up in Theresienstadt where he was liberated after a few days. After the war he was temporarily reunited with his mother in Budapest. After spending some time in Germany and Canada, in 1952 he emigrated to the United States.
East Bay Times (10 May 2005)
TOM Szelenyi was born into a moderately well-off Jewish family in Budapest. He lived with his father, a businessman, and mother, a housewife, in a spacious apartment. Anti-Semitism existed, but that was part of life in Hungary. In 1944 he was 16. That was the year the Nazis came.
Hungary was the last country to be invaded by the Nazis, on March 19, 1944. The Nazis quickly began imposing their laws on Hungary. Szelenyi’s father was forced out of his job. Universities closed their doors to Jews.
The next step was the rounding up of the Jews. The Nazis began by forcing the Szelenyi family to move to a different, all-Jewish apartment building. Then, in October 1944, the Nazis ordered all young men to assemble in the lobby of the apartment building. By this point, Szelenyi’s father had been taken, so young Tom left his mother and grandmother, promising he would be back soon.
Instead, he and his group were marched to a brick factory outside of the city. They were soon divided into groups of 1,000, whichmarched from Budapest to the Austrian border during the cold European winter, a distance comparable with that between San Francisco and Los Angeles. During this march, his mother managed to have a coat as well as some papers delivered to him. Unfortunately, he never discovered what these papers were due to the constant marching. Possibly, they were papers granting him Swedish citizenship; Sweden was neutral during World War II.
Of Szelenyi’s group, only 11 would survive.
They were poorly fed once a day. Even this was luxury compared to what they endured on the cattle cars they were loaded on at the border. During their four-day journey they had no food or water. They used a bucket for their bodily waste. Few slept and some died, while some resorted to drinking their own urine. Their destination was Buchenwald, a concentration camp.
Once there, they were forced into hard labor. Sleep was impossible due to the crowding, with three or four people to a bunk. They were fed bread and soup once a day, while roll call was twice a day and involved standing for hours in the cold while the guards made sure all were present. At Buchenwald, Szelenyi met Dr. Feldman, an elderly man who was extremely sick and walked with a cane due to his illness. He and Szelenyi formed a team, combining his intelligence with Szelenyi’s strength.
Discipline at the camp was strict. Tobacco was the currency of the camp and could be traded for food. At one point, while cleaning an officer’s quarters, Szelenyi found a packet of tobacco and stole it. He traded it for food but was ratted out. Originally he was to be shot, but his knowledge of German enabled him to talk himself out of the situation. He was instead whipped 21 times a day for the next month. By the end of the war, Szelenyi could not sit without pain; he was literally skin and bones. Another popular form of discipline was throwing him into the latrine.
As the end of the war approached, the Nazi guards gathered the prisoners and began the Death March, which lasted a week or two. There was no food, and prisoners who fell were immediately shot. Eventually, as it became clear that they would not be able to evade the Allied soldiers, the guards abandoned the prisoners. At this point, Dr. Feldman suspected they were at the Czech border and could make a run for it. They fled to another camp called Theresienstadt. They stayed there only a few days until the end of the war.
The end of the war, however, was not the end of the suffering. The Russian soldiers liberating the camp released the stores of food to the prisoners and allowed them to eat as much as they wanted. But the underfed stomachs of the prisoners could not handle the sudden influx of food, which caused severe cases of diarrhea that often led to death.
Szelenyi proceeded to Budapest, using any type of vehicle he could find, including German army tanks. There he discovered his mother and grandmother still living. His father, he later found out, had been killed in the camp. Upon arriving he resumed a somewhat normal life. In 1946, unwilling to live under the Communist regime, he fled to Germany. There he stayed in a Displaced Persons camp and became an interpreter for Americans. The next year he received a visa to come to America. He lived in New York City for several years before moving to the Bay Area, where he has lived since.