My extended family and close relations spent the winter and spring of 1944-45 underground on the shore of Hungary’s Lake Balaton. That is when our family suffered one of its worst tragedies:
My aunt Iça was a sixteen-year brunette with blue eyes. One could describe her as having that attractive Eastern European look. I remember her well. For one thing, it was her job to give me a periodic bath and help me get dressed afterwards. We had a banged-up old metallic tub which we dragged along with our other possessions and occasionally filled with hot water.
Living under hellish conditions, people’s nerves were frayed. There were frequent arguments. One bleak winter morning, my grandmother, Iça and her fiancé Robi were shouting at each other. Iça was crying. She finally said to Robi: I am going to the library in Szekesfehervar. I heard that they are about to burn all their books. Let’s go get books and bring them back while there is still time.”
Robi didn’t like the idea. Szekesfehervar was twenty kilometers away, there was a shooting war going on, unexploded land mines, wild roving soldiers and assorted other dangers. Nevertheless, Iça left, Robi ran after her followed by another young couple.
Suddenly there was a huge explosion, followed by screaming and then deadly silence. My father went outside and walked carefully across the field, following the foursome’s footsteps. All the adults understood instantly what had happened. The group had stepped on a land mine buried in the snow. I did not truly understand, but I began to cry.
Years later, my mother described to me the carnage my dad saw in the snow that day. Iça had been blown to pieces, probably never realizing what hit her. The other couple died a more painful death. Robi was the only lucky one. He lost a leg, but survived.
During most of the bombing raids, I was being carried and protected by my mother and by my grandparents. Both my parents were very active in the resistance and my father was often gone. No one knew when or under what circumstances he would barge in. He would suddenly arrive at noon or at midnight, and there would be a great commotion. He would be carrying a bunch of mysterious packages, the women of the house would alert each other, saying, “Jules is back!” and scurry around the house to help him. My mother would ask him, “How on earth did you manage to get through? Thank God you are alive!” He’d smile and tell a long story about how he had used this or that trick, stories which I could hear, but not understand. I had nothing but admiration for my great, tall, handsome father, a father who never showed anger or fear, always laughed and encouraged those around him by his calm and benevolent demeanor. I didn’t know what my dad was doing out there, but I knew that there was a war and that my heroic father was somehow doing very brave things.
One of the first great Disney classics to which my mother took me after the war was Bambi. I was seven. I thought, after seeing the movie, “Bambi and his dad, they are just like us. A dad is supposed to be away, doing brave things. He is not supposed to be home with his kids. But a dad always loves his son. He teaches him how to become brave and strong.”
Later, when I was a teenager, my mother told me stories about how she and my father had done courageous things during the war to save Jewish lives. She told me that they had been trained professionally as students of the Bortnyk Art Academy in Budapest. They had the skills to create false passports for Jews, changing their names and identities into those of gentiles. They also knew how to make official-looking armbands and badges with the arrow-cross, which was Hungary’s equivalent of the swastika. These armbands could then be worn by members of the resistance as they moved around the country to sabotage the Nazi regime. They used these skills to create false documents for many Jews. They could have been shot for this.
Like many of my age-mates in the 1950s, I didn’t think much about the Holocaust and World War Two. My mom’s stories left me somewhat indifferent.
However, half a century later, the importance and truth of my mother’s words were confirmed:
On November 1, 1998, the government of Israel awarded my mother and my father (posthumously) - the Righteous Among the Nations Award for having done precisely the incredible things which Ata had shared with me in the 1950s:The official award ceremony was held on September 3, 1999 at the Israeli Embassy in London, where my mother was living at that time. The official document states:
RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS: The award of Righteous Among the Nations is rare and is given to non-Jews who put themselves at risk helping save Jewish lives during the Nazi era. It is awarded by Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust Memorial, and the recipient’s name appears on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous Among the
Nations at Yad Vashem.
The following description was published:
From 1943 through 1945, Ata and Jules Kando forged false identity papers for numerous Jewish relatives and acquaintances. In 1944, Jules donned a home-made Nazi armband and traveled to the station in Kassa on the Northern border of Hungary, where deportation trains stopped en route to Auschwitz. He entered one of the trains, packed with Jews being transported to their deaths. Acting as though in a position of authority, he ordered off the train several individuals whom he recognized. In that year, Ata’s best friend, Biro Gaborne, became pregnant. At great personal risk Ata gave Biro original certificates that helped her get into the maternity hospital, where she delivered a baby called Anna. Later on Jules supplied Biro with forged certificates “proving” that she was an Aryan Hungarian. Then the couple took Biro and the baby to their home pretending that Anna was their own daughter and Biro was the wet-nurse. In this way the group survived the Nazi atrocities. These remarkable acts of bravery saved many lives. (see Jewish Chronicle, Sept. 17, 1999; Embassy of Israel Press Release, Aug. 1999; Protocol from the Committee Meeting of Righteous Among the Nations, Jerusalem, Nov. 1, 1998, File No. 8253)
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