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Emery Gregus Occupation and
Liberation 1944-1945
Chapter 2 It
was a Sunday. It usually happened on Sundays. Perhaps the Germans favoured
launching their invasions on this particular day, on the assumption
that people were less likely to defend their country’s borders
on a Sunday, when they have other pleasures to absorb themselves with.
Obviously, the Germans also thought that most countries would not be
on "full alert" on Sundays, which was true for Hungary as
well, although a large part of the Hungarian population waited for the
Germans with open arms! We
realized at the time the news was bad, but we couldn’t truly grasp
the tragic significance in its entirety. The unrelenting and totally
pervasive fear under which we lived day after day, year after year,
was so intense that fear such as this is unimaginable and almost impossible
to describe. To fear is possible only until a certain degree, just as
pain can be felt only to a certain degree. After that point the pain
is so intense that it severs itself from the body and the mind seeks
refuge and loses consciousness. This shield is the sole defence mechanism
left. It
was in this desensitized state that we received bulletin after bulletin
over the preceding six years. Each and every official decree tightened
the noose just a little more. Of course, our feelings of desensitization
and detachment were theory only. Is it possible to truly imagine one’s
own doom and destruction? The concept of "not being" is such
a negative notion that one cannot fully grasp the idea. In reality,
what one truly really fears is the road that leads to the end. We are
frightened to lose our freedom and our dignity. We fear the physical
pain, the deprivations, and the loss of our privacy. We fear being terrorized
by the police and the gendarmes, and most of all, we fear the wickedness
of our fellow man. But
for the moment it is only Sunday, March l9th. I
have tickets for the performance of Rigoletto at the opera house
located in the main square of our town. I am excitedly looking forward
to this evening, because I am hoping to meet a girl I have had my eye
on, and I had noticed her when I studied at the Alliance Française.
My friend Peter, who has bought the tickets in advance, is bringing
her along with his girlfriend Medi. It
was Peter’s suggestion that we took weekly classes together at
the Alliance Française which were held in the classrooms
of our old high school which we had attended six or seven years previously.
Our teacher is Monsieur Gouaze, a Frenchman, who had recently arrived
to Kassa as a freed German prisoner of war. The Hungarians had high
regard for prisoners such as a Monsieur Gouaze. They handled them leniently
and often released them from the camps. Monsieur Gouaze was not permitted
to return to France, and he made his home in Kassa where he gave French
lessons at the Alliance. In those classes, Peter and I would
sit behind the girls and try to make small talk. In situations such
as these, everyone is usually a little embarrassed and awkward. If you
like someone, you would approach her cautiously so as not to be exposed
to a rebuff, and most likely the other party feels the same way about
it. The girl who caught my interest is pretty, has vivid eyes and wears
a small hat. She is somewhat better dressed than other girls of her
age. What attracts me most about this girl is her totally natural behaviour
and her uninhibited way of conversing, and this quality is not often
found in the girls whom I knew. Most of them whom I had met in the past
usually spoke and behaved in a very affective and artificial way, and
this artificial behaviour often left me disappointed. Later, when I
took private lessons at Monsieur Gouaze, I bumped into her again. One
of us has just finished the lesson, and the other has just arrived.
I try to postpone my departure so that I may stay and chat with her
just a little longer, but social mores and customs dictate. The lesson
is over. I must be on my way. I
am in some ways more mature than those of my generation and in many
respects also younger. The anti-Jewish laws in the years just before
the outbreak of the war and the constant oppressive atmosphere during
this time, combined with the fact that I never managed to leave my small
town to study and experience the independence afforded a young man in
the big city, made me more uncertain and insecure than my age and maturity
would warrant. This insecurity probably makes me more timid with the
girls as well. When my brothers were at home from university, those
titillating escapades, about which they would render account in the
bedroom we all shared; such adventures as these were denied me in my
youth. The social life of my generation was mainly underscored by boredom
and perpetual apprehension. During the war years, one needed to be very
careful not to make oneself obvious or stand out in any way. One never
knew whether one could provoke a labour camp summons and we lived in
constant fear of this possibility. Those among us, who were by nature
timid or shy, kept an especially low profile. On Sundays, to set this
day apart from the rest of the weekdays, we all dressed a little better
than usual, but apart from a stroll on the town’s Corso
(the Promenade in the center of town), a movie, or sweets in the pastry
shop, there was not much entertainment afforded us. In the earlier peacetime
years, we might go out to the ice rinks or the tennis courts to meet
someone, and on occasion, if we were really lucky, we might meet a girl
who appealed to us. Now, in the shadow of war, these outings were denied
us. We lived the eternal predicament of youth; those girls whom one
would fancy weren’t interested in you, and those who were interested
in you, one didn’t care about. What remained, but always remained
unfulfilling, were the endless and tense card games and bridge tournaments
at the Andrassy coffee house. After
the baccalaureate exams and graduation, I was left with two summer months
of boredom. My only reward was a two-week holiday at the Lake Balaton,
which was a fairly insubstantial reward for all the miseries and hardships
of previous academic life. Even this summer, which I had so looked forward
to, is coloured with varying shades of disenchantment and disappointment.
Then, after this "graduation" holiday, what opportunities
were left open for me? I went to work as an apprentice in my brother-in-law’s
optical shop. It was such a let down after years of ambitious study.
I watched disheartened as my Christian friends were admitted to universities
in Budapest, while I, who graduated with honours in physics, literature,
Latin, etc, stayed behind in Kassa. For myself, all those years of study
and sacrifice had come to no fruitful end. But it is wartime now, and
an official policy of discrimination against the Jews exists, and for
Jewish youth, life’s joys were not about what opportunities lay
ahead, but how best to avoid all the sufferings that lay in wait. But
for now, I am excitedly, looking forward to an evening at the theater.
I arrive a half an hour early. There, in the middle of the street near
the theater, stand Peter, Medi, as well as the girl I have my eye on
and another fellow whom I never met before. "There won’t be
any performance tonight, because of the German invasion of Hungary,"
Peter informs me. I am very disappointed. The much-anticipated evening
in the company of Medi’s girlfriend, was not going to materialize. Although we could suspect at the time, we couldn’t anticipate that the German occupation was a forbearer of our annihilation. Only quite some time later, did I learn that the unknown young man was this young girl’s boyfriend, who had taken a great risk to visit her from Budapest, where at the time he was living in illegality, so this much anticipated evening, would not have been very successful for me anyhow. The little group dispersed and we all went our separate ways. A couple of weeks later, when by now we were quite aware of the danger we were in, I met up with Medi, and I inquired after her friend. Medi told me that her girlfriend managed to cross the border illegally to join her parents and family in Slovakia where by now they lived in relative safety, the deportations in Slovakia being basically over.
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