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| Andrew Romay (Andor Friedmann, b. 1922), high school graduation, 1940 |
The interviews were conducted at Romay's apartment in New York on February 18 and 25, 2014. Special thanks go to Ph.D. candidate in History at Cornell University, Máté Rigó, for his assistance in cataloging the interviews. To download the interviews, click here.
FIRST INTERVIEW
February 18, 2014
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| Romay's parents, Margit Simon (1885 [Miskolc]-1958), and Jenő Friedmann (1884-1976) |
0:00 Birth and Family
1:30 Family business, father is wholesale
salesman
3:10 Splendid childhood in Hungary
3:40 Mother
5:40 Father was
more religious, kosher household
6:30 Miskolc
Jewish community, numerus clausus, Jewish
students in Catholic high school
8:30
Antisemitism, Hungarian identity
9:30 Yiddish
13:30 Family
home
15:00 Brother,
trip to Paris, bother accepted to the Sorbonne, Paris
17:30 WWII
18:40 Politics
at home, Horthy
20:50 lack of
WWI memory, Trianon
23:50 relatives
in Oradea
27:50 WWII,
Hungary’s participation
30:50 Accepted
to the University to Economics in 1940. Family moves to Budapest 1940.
32:50 Studies
economics in 1940s. School of economics similar to current classics. Initially
wanted to study medicine
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|
From right: Romay's paternal grandfather, József Friedmann,
cousin Lilian Friedmann (killed during the Holocaust),
young cousin, Andor Friedmann (Romay), cousin Károly
Friedmann, and brother Zoltán Friedmann in Sátorjaújhely
(1935 or 1936)
|
33:50 Readings
at university
39:50 politicized daily life, friendships,
42:50 Jewish-non-Jewish relations
44:50 1945 as a
radical break
45:50 saved by
university student status, deferred labor service till 1944
47:10 student
status saved him from labor service for years
53:05 forced
labor camp conditions, labor batallions
57:50
Protected houses
59:50 Rescue
efforts by the Catholic church; refuses to convert to Catholicism, friend
converts in his stead in summer 1944.
1:04:50 Arrow
crossmen deport him to Mauthausen
1:05:50 Escapes
from Mauthausen
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| The Minorita templom and Catholic high school (gimnázium) Romay attended in Miskolc |
1:10:55 concentration camp memoir of Romay [published as
1:14:00 liberation
of the camp by US soldiers; encounter
of US soldiers with camp inmates, “apocalyptic scene.” Inmates naked for weeks
before liberation.
1:17:50 US troops
put him in a rehabilitation camp, on the site of the previous camp
1:18:15 health
problems after liberation: couldn’t swallow as a result of starvation; many
former inmates died after liberation
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| From left: Romay's father (Jenő Friedmann), maternal uncle (Dr. Simon Miksa), and cousin Károly in Gorombolytapolca in 1936 or 1937 |
1:19:40 Could
speak English with US soldiers
1:24:10 Anomalous
relationship between camp inmates and survivors.
1:26:45 One-month
recovery, then taken back by train to Budapest. Family survived in the ghetto.
Brother survived in Miskolc
1:28:40 Encounter
with parents. They didn’t talk about his camp experience.
1:31:10 Experience
of returning to Budapest in 1945. Stayed in bed for months. Rumors about the
total destruction of Budapest.
1:33:30 Parents
returned to the same apartment as they lived in before
1:34:15 Shortages
in Budapest.
To access the interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/36337
SECOND INTERVIEW
February 25, 2014
00:00 Labor
service in Western Hungary
04:20 Forced
march into Germany, infections, chaotic march, saved by luck
08:00 SS
killings of forced laborers in Eastern Austria
13:20 Massive
death toll among laborers, starvation
19:00 Jewish
forced laborers forced in a crammed barge in winter 1945
23:00 Liberation
by US troops, sent home after a month of recovery
28:00 Reuniting
with family members in Budapest; everyone survived
33:00 Learns
that luck saves him in 1945, as the SS kills sick laborers who stayed behind
35:30 Meets
George Soros’ father Tivadar through the Hungarian Esperanto Society, presided
over by Tivadar Soros
40:00 Tivadar
Soros’ escape from Siberia in 1917
44:40 Tivadar
Soros’ rescue efforts in 1944
45:00 Emigration
decisions at the Soros family, 1945, 1956
48:00 Lack of a
homogenous holocaust experience
55:00 Communist
turn of most of Romay’s friends after 1945
1:00:00 Failed escape attempt from Hungary during Rákosi period
in 1949. Captured
at the same place where he did forced labor in 1945
1:01:00 Greeted at the Hungarian secret service headquarters
as „stinking fascist” at 60 Andrássy út
in Budapest.
1:05:00 Former inmates and Jewish survivors of Nazism who
became communist did not help him when in prison
1:07:00 In prison for eight months as enemy of the people
1:08:00 Impossibility of finding a job as a ”capitalist”
economist; gets job by denying his university education
1:09:00 Finds job at a foreign trade company
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| Young Romay with his girlfriend of the time, Marian Lőwy (c. 1940) |
1:10:00 New
director of the company is fully informed of Romay past that he wanted to hide,
as the director was working for the secret service (Á.V.H.) before. Director
and Romay shared the same social background, both issued from Hungarian-Jewish
middle class families. New director was hostile to Romay and suggests that he
confesses everything to the party secretary about his past as “enemy of the
people.”
1:17:00 No further
discrimination against him at the company; directors of the company were fully
incompetent, without education
1:18:00 Hungarian
foreign trade handled badly and ineffectively due to the appointment of
trustworthy party members
1:20:00 Works at
the company till 1956
1:21:00 Former
college friend becomes communist minister, who gets him a job as a laborer;
experience of being deceived by Hungarian Jewish friends, once again
1:23:00 Appointed
to work at a factory outside of Budapest before he got the foreign trading job;
worked as a physical laborer at an aniline factory.
1:24:00 Works with
a wheelbarrows
1:26:00 Gives up
job at the factory due to health reasons
1:28:00 When
visiting Hungary in 1970s, he questions former college friend who appoints him
to a factory job why he did so.
To access the interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/36337
