One Pillow, One Blanket, And A Doll

Friday, March 1, 2024

Featured Guests: Holocaust Survivor Gyorgyi Rosenthal

Holocaust survivor, Gyorgyi (Farkas) Rosenthal was born on July 4, 1941 in a suburb (Elizobet) of Budapest, Hungary. Her father, Steven Farkas, was a Hungarian freedom fighter, who occasionally listened to a shortwave radio, and learned that a ghetto was to be constructed. Before they established the ghetto, he wasted no time and his family fled to Kazinci St., located in District 7 within Budapest. Meanwhile, in 1943, her dad was forced to work in the Jewish civilian working service in Hungary. He was then transferred to a Yugoslav labor camp where he lost his leg in an explosion. Afterwards, he was able to secure false papers, went back to Kazinci St., where his 9 friends & family were hiding in a 2 bedroom apartment, with awful living conditions, as it was too crowded. Her mom, whose father, Bela Kohn, was upset over the living conditions left the apartment with Gyorgyi’s two aunts and their two children, never to be seen again, as they were murdered at Auschwitz in 1944.

The apartment building on Kazinci St. was marked a yellow Star of David to indicate Jews in the Budapest ghetto, so Gorgyi & mom, Gabriella, ended up leaving ghetto for district 6, on Lazar St., where they were saved a gentile named Ms. Rosmar and stayed for the rest of the war. While in hiding, a pastor provided her mom with more false documentation as a Christian. There were still close calls as well as fear when air raid sirens went off, as they hid with other Christian neighbors within the apartment complex’s bombing shelter. Gyorgyi can still remember liberation in 1945, when the Russian soldiers came to her building and gave her fresh bread & a bag of sugar. Gyorgyi was finally content with her one blanket, one pillow and a doll.