Alice Wolf

This is a belated Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) message that I
intended to send then, but I had to confirm the details with our neighbor
who lives across the landing from us. She is a delightful octogenarian.
Nevertheless such memories are timeless.

Alice (Aliza) Wolf was born in Czechoslovakia but grew up in Senta, northern
Serbia, then Yugoslavia, about 25 km from the Hungarian border. This region
was Hungarian-speaking, and her first language was Hungarian, but she also
spoke German and Serbian.
When WWII started she and her husband moved to Budapest, thinking that they
would be safer in a large city. He had a job in a hospital there, but since
he was a Jew they were not allowed to pay him. Nevertheless, the Head
doctor divided the total staff salary out between the doctors and ensured
that he received pay.
In 1944, under German control, the Hungarians started to deport the Jews to
Auschwitz and other camps. Alice and her husband at one point were
arrested, but luckily they had genuine papers. In the Police station one of
the Hungarian policemen treated them decently and actually shared his dinner
with them, and told her to go home. But she waited for her husband until
they released him. However, his papers counted for nothing when he was
rounded up later in the street and deported. She was unable to find him and
only found out much later that he had been sent to Dachau, considered the
worst possible place, where he died in about a month.
Alice went to see her close friend who had also moved to Budapest, but her
friend had forged papers and told her to stay away. Luckily she knew a
non-Jewish Hungarian woman who had been married to a Jewish man, who had a
room where she could stay. But, she had to hide the fact that she was
Jewish because anyone might give her away. There were other Jews staying
there with forged papers pretending to be non-Jews.
After about a month she had to leave this location and returned to her
friend, who helped her to find a room to hide out in. But, she was only
there for a week when she was arrested and taken to the police station. In
a way this proved providential, because nuns came around in the morning
asking if anyone wanted to convert to Catholicism. Having found out that
she was pregnant Alice jumped at the chance, although it was only pretense,
as the nun's probably knew. She was given work in the kitchen, which was
very lucky since she had enough food and warmth. She stayed there for about
a month until the Russians arrived and everyone was freed.
However, it was not as simple as that, since the Russians were taking women
off the street and raping them. She had to hide during the day and could
not travel at night. Eventually a group of people from Yugoslavia got
together and went to the Embassy and received armbands that identified them
and protected them from the Russians. Then they started the journey back to
their homes. On this journey she met her future second husband, although
they did not marry for 2 years.
It was still dangerous to travel around and in one place a friendly couple
hid this group of Jews in a sugar factory where he worked. When she got to
her home her parent's apartment was completely gutted, everything had been
stolen. But, the Yugoslavian communists were friendly to the Jews and they
were treated well. However, only 300 out of 3,000 Jews from her hometown
returned, and so with her new husband and daughter, and her father's parents
and her brother, they decided to emigrate to Israel, where they arrived in
1950.
Quite coincidentally, on a trip to Mt. Gilboa form our Hebrew Ulpan, we sat
next to a couple from Hungary and their friend also from Hungary. When her
parents were taken away she was 8 years old, and had no-one else. The
mother of her two friends, a non-Jew, took her in and treated her as a third
child. She was coached in how to behave as a Christian, and although most
of the neighbors knew about her, she managed to survive the war with them.
On one occasion because of the danger she was sent to the country, but then
brought back. She said the reason for her survival was "pure luck." The
other lady is in Naomi's Hebrew class. She is a very lively person, but
spent time in Auschwitz and did not want to talk about it. None of these
people have given their memories to Yad Vashem.