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ב״ח

During the World War II, beside the well-known big concentration camps, there were hundreds of small working camps existing too – the so-called KZ-Aussenlagers. One of them was the

AUSSENLAGER WALLDORF

at the

Frankfurt Airport in Germany.

It became also part of the Hungarian history. You´d like to know how?

Let me tell you my true story.....full of pain, remembering and hope...... to think about it and learn.....

„BUT THOSE WHO KEEP THEIR EYES CLOSED NOT WILLING TO SEE THE PAST, THEY WILL BE ALL BLIND TO UNDERSTAND THE PRESENT“

(Joschka Fischer, Minister for Foreign Affairs in Germany, May 2002)

HUNGARIAN JEWISH WOMEN IN WALLDORF

August – November 1944

The runway of the Frankfurt Airport was built by 1700 Hungarian-Jewish

women in slave labour

PERSONAL FOREWORD – ABOUT SOME SURVIVORS

I never believed in coincidences in a man’s (woman’s) life)…but let’s go back in the history exactly 120 years…. Because this is where my story starts ….

My grandfather was born in Eastern-Slovakia in 1876. After many years of studying-working in several western-European cities, being on the highest technical level in the car industry of those times (in 1902 in Berlin too), he arrived to Budapest to make his dreams come true. With his freshly signed German diploma he went to the Ministry and asked for a job, where he could plan cars and buses. They all thought the man is crazy and tried to convince him that it would be a type of luxury and there is no need for such kind of modern, unusual products like these in Hungary at all. So he took an alternative job as chief engineer in Budapest at the famous big factory of Manfred Weiss, married and settled there. But soon he saw that it was not exactly the dream-job he always wanted. Therefore he decided to move to a small town called Jászberény (ca 1 hour south-east from Budapest), to be independent and to start with a new project there: to plan and build buses of his own. He chose this place because it was no other transportation method in that town except horse-carriages and a complicated, rare train connection between two larger cities called Hatvan and Szolnok (laying exactly in-between, in the middle of nowhere), with possibility to change train there for Budapest. The inhabitants made their living mostly from agriculture, making and selling fresh milk products and having small vineyards on the sandy grounds and wine cellars. It was more than necessary for these people to bring their products early in the morning to Budapest, to the big Market Halls, to sell. To it came a significant Jewish population of busy selling merchants and creative industrials with small factories, a large and lively community in those peaceful years, with strong travel needs.

(There is a wonderful homepage on the Internet about Jewish life before 1945 in Jászberény in Swedish: …. hopefully soon in English too, with lots of beautiful old pictures. The leading power of the project is a friend of mine, Tomas Kertész, living in Stockholm and his family originates also from Jászberény).

Needless to say, this place was ideal for a dreamer, for my grandfather… he started there with an own bus company and gave daily direct bus connection for this small town to other cities, even to Budapest and Vienna.

He chose his workers from the sons of the local families, giving them good job and education. It was never an easy job to convince the head of the family, because it was simply unimaginable that the son will be not a farmer or a craftsman like the father. But Grandpa took his time, visited all the families during the evenings and explained to the parents how important is in the “modern” times to have a good profession.

Grandpa had a wonderful young secretary, Lenke Vértes …she started to work for him at the age of 16 and she was the “good soul” of the company: a real all-round lady manager taking care of financials, paperwork, organization, legal matters, PR etc… ...until the flames of the Holocaust burned up everything (I found her in Hungary 4 years ago...she is already 90, survived Auschwitz and still fresh and brilliant in thinking and telling stories, showing pictures about the old “Strompf-empire”).

Her son (same age with me, a good childhood friend) became also a transportation engineer and works for a big transport company in leading position.

A very close friend of my Tate was the 3 year younger Lajos Deutsch…..they were even related….His house and small shoe factory was exactly on the opposite corner to the Strompf-offices. As the flimmering lights in his factory were still on, Tate closed his office and came over to him....They discussed the big questions of the world until the late night hours and asked themselves, what will still happen in this crazy world.....They hoped, that at least their grandchildren will be able to change the world.....if they will be having ones in this dark world at all.....Lajos Deutsch and his big family with his many children disappeared in the flames of the Holocaust....except 3 sons...... These sons died in the meantime too......

But today, 60 years later, their 2 Wish-Grandchildren work together hand in hand since January 2003 in Frankfurtand want to change the world…… surely, it is also a coincidence, or?.....

On the 6th of July 2003 we three (the grandson, his sister from Austria and me) were in Jászberény in order to participate on the Shoah Remembrance Day in the jewish cemetery. The grandson and his sister were the first time as adults there and it was a very moving moment as they found the names of their grandparents on the cemetery list. After this we went to the town center……as we arrived to the neigbouring houses of our grandparents, still standing there, we were unable to move for minutes, just holding each others hands……in those moments the whole world around seemed for us to stop...... we felt as everything would be without time and borders.....and we knew that alone for this moment, that we found everything here, was worth to live...... this day will stay unforgettable for us all......

We met in the cemetery with the 82 years old ex-girlfriend of their father....they nearly married each other after the war.....she invited us together with her daughter to her house and she told us so many stories about their father as he was young...... she showed us also, where the grandfathers house was standing. A real chain of coincidences…….

My father was born in 1911 in Budapest, worked together with my grandfather until the war and they lost everything…

I was born in 1949 in that small town, after my father returned to Hungary in 1948 and married my mother. After finishing schools/studies and several professional educational courses in Eastern-Germany (the former German Democratic Republic),

I married also and left Hungary with my husband in 1977 to work and live in London/UK, with our 2 years old son, Gabriel (Gabor). Our second son, Tomi (Tamas) was born already in London in 1979. End of 1981 we returned to Hungary and I started to work with a famous 5* hotel chain in Budapest as sales manager.

On the 15th of November 1985, exactly at 11.00 am, I arrived at Frankfurt Airport together with my family (please make a note of this date!). In my pocket I had a 2-years contract from that international hotel chain. It was the very first time for me to stay in Germany for longer and my father was not happy at all about it – I never forget his words in my life, before I left.

My German colleagues helped me a lot to find a suitable apartment and they all suggested me to choose Walldorf (. Why? The Frankfurt airport and the motorway are just around the corner. It is a very quiet small town, Frankfurt is only 15 minutes drive by car and the “Wohnpark”, a nice settlement with 10-12 storey houses, with green parks and playgrounds, grill places and many American families around (it was close to the Frankfurt American Air Base too)…to cut it short, it would be the ideal place for us and for our children, everybody said.

They were right….we liked the area very much – it was like love at first sight – my children voted for the Wohnpark too, so I ´ve let myself to be convinced and we decided to choose Walldorf. During our first days already, arriving from Frankfurt by car to the north entrance of the town – as we drive down from the bridge - I saw a sign on the road (“Gedenkstätte” – memorial place) showing the direction to the industrial area of Walldorf – but, to be honest, I wasn’t interested too much, what it is (I thought, it is only a tree under which some never-heard German poet took a rest for an hour 250 years ago or something similar).

My office was in Frankfurt, so I always left Walldorf early in the morning and returned home late evening. Contacts with people I had first of all in Frankfurt (of course many Hungarian speakings too).

As one of our new friends Gábor Goldman heard, that we live in Walldorf, his face turned white. He was the one who told me the first time about, what I didn’t knew: his mother arrived to Walldorf in August 1944 directly from Auschwitz with a group of women. It was a working concentration camp here and 1.700 Hungarian Jewishwomen had to work in that camp in slave labour to build the runway for the new Messerschmidt Me 262 jetplane until the late autumn of 1944, under conditionswe cannot even imagine in our wildest dreams. (The old planes started

and landed on the grassy ground of the airport, there wasn´t any concrete runway yet).

The stations of Gabor´s mother way were Cluj (Kolozsvár in Transsylvania, today Romania) –Auschwitz –Walldorf – Ravensbrück –Cluj – Israel and finally, she returned with her son back to Frankfurt;. she wanted to be closer to her earlier place of pains. Until the 90 years old woman was still healthy, she came with her son everyweekend to Walldorf to visit thememorial stone of the camp. The stone was raised by the Town of Walldorf in 1980. His mother was also invited to the ceremony – but since then, it seems it was slowly forgotten in Walldorf again, said Gabor.

As I heard this, my first reaction was, just to run away from here, so far away and so fast as we can. It was like a cold shower, like a horror scene for me. How can I look out of my window from the 5th floor from now on every day, seeing the former KZ area and knowing what happened here? On the streets of Walldorf I had the feeling like walking in a big cemetery with blood and tears....

But my thoughts were forced to take another direction: I lost my father in 1987 and even until today, I am not able to find my inner peace completely. Exactly one year after, my (hungarian/transsylvanian) doctors in Frankfurt told me I was seriously ill …..the dragon with the seven heads….when you cut one, 2 new ones will grow after ……Cancer…..My doctor told me only a few weeks ago, after so many years, that they gave me less than 10 % chance for surviving it.....

To look back now after 14 years, I know it was a miracle that I survived and that today I’m healthy again, working actively as earlier, which I can´t thank HIM often enough. If HE wanted it so that I ´m still here around (can this be a coincidence?), HE had some kind of intention with it. Perhaps there is something somewhere I have to find out and follow up, to write about it, to communicate, to help other people in their work. ...maybe I am the small missing part of the chain somewhere.... Despite of all, it was only a nice idea stored in my head precisely, until September 1996 (I love to play with numbers....this is an interesting number too: it was exactly 120 years after my grandfather was born…. and it was the Jewish calendar year of 5757….).

MEETINGS WITH HUNGARY

Autumn 1996 – the residents of Mörfelden-Walldorf found a small program brochure in their letterboxes: “Meetings with Hungary”. This program promised colour slide presentations, Hungarian literature evenings, a big Hungarian gala evening, book – and pottery exhibitions, wine tasting, economical and political presentations, Hungarian films and photo exhibitions for all those who were interested.

On the last page I found the following text:

“Hungarian Jewish Women in Walldorf. Picture exhibition from November 25 – 30 at the Town Hall in Walldorf. Pictures and documents about the KZ- Aussenlager Natzweiler at the airport boarder/North-Walldorf, where 1.700 Hungarian Jewish women worked in slave labour during a few month in 1944…

The Town Hall of Mörfelden-Walldorf published a documentation brochure called “NOTHING AND NOBODY WILL BE FORGOTTEN” to this exhibition.”

Until this point I had only the usual and necessary contacts to the Town Hall: visiting regularly the office hours during the first few years to get the stamps for our resident permits, that was all.

Now I contacted the Mayors Office of the Town Hall by fax. Informed them I was born in Hungary too, working for a hotel chain with a beautiful hotel in Budapest and we would like to sponsor the Gala evening with a voucher for the lucky winner of the prize draw, to stay in Budapest for a weekend. Same time I asked to be introduced to the person in charge for the KZ-exhibition, because I know somebody very well, being in this camp in Walldorf in 1944, surviving it and living today in Frankfurt.

Just a few minutes passed and I heard my telephone ringing: it was Cornelia Rühlig, the director of the local Town History Museum (this is where our co-operation and a true friendship started…two women at a quasi similar age, but with a totally different family background….and the history brought us together).

After our first telephone call everything went like a rapid film. First time we three met in the apartment of Margit Rácz (mother of Gabriel Goldman), followed by long discussions and stories, family photos were shown. She lost a family of 74 members and she was the only one who survived.

We made also original sound-recordings with her, long-long hours, with translation from Hungarian to German. The discussion started very slowly, but after a few hours the brain, the soul opened it´s gates for release....all the deeply surpressed thoughts and painful pictures of remembering from the last 54 years started to flow like waterfall. The rich material containing lot of new information and pictures was completed after one week and finally it gave new dimensions to the whole exhibition.

Cornelia Rühlig, the director of the museum, is still around 40 years old, but she is fully engaged with the history of the former Jewish residents of Mörfelden-Walldorf and the Groß-Gerau area already since 20 years. She wrote several books and organised exhibitions about it. In her person I found a very engaged, tireless and helpful young German woman of the new generation; a personality giving us all the hope for the future, that it never happens again….she is not only a very motivated person, but she is able to motivate other people and bring them in move too: school classes, teachers, parents, political parties, parliaments and ministries, the whole

board of directors of the Frankfurt Airport, company directors, union leaders, journalists, TV and broadcast editors, book authors, film crews, name it….she is the engine of this project, a constantly burning fire…I asked myself often since I decided to help her in this project: from where does she take all of her driving power, what moves her, what is the reason for her tremendous engagement? Even until today, I just have feelings and thoughts, but still cannot answer this question for myself properly. Because such kind of people are like rarity today....”a mentsh...” But I could tell the same about Mr Bernhard Brehl, the Mayor of the town, Mr Hans-Jürgen Vorndran, the “Erste Stadtrat” and many other helpful people…reading this, you can think that such a place like Walldorf in Germany exists only in fairy tales....and this changed my thinking also in great deals during the last 6 years….

I had to go my very long way alone to be a “bridge-builder” what I am today, but this woman has played a tremendous role in it. She succeeded to convince me during these 6 years that it is worth to invest energy and emotions to bring Jews and Germans together and keep continous proactive dialogues with each other. I learned from her, that healing the souls and wounds, talking about surpressed thoughts in our minds on both sides and both in first and second generations would help for everybody (inclusive her and myself) who is ready to communicate with the other part.

We are lucky that there are a still good few people around in Germany (but still not enough), those for whom the german past is painful and a disgrace...they want to do something actively, to show the world: “ we are already not the same!”

To cooperate with these helpful people is very important, because on the other side, those who think the other way, their voice starts to be louder.....strongly attacking the present politics of Israel (or better said using it as tool), many of them gained new power and energy. It seems the good old LP can be played again....the music is modern but the tunes are the same...... and not only in Germany....