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Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000

Was he in the War? Was he in the First World War?

Sure.

Your father?

Sure. He was fighting.

He was in the Haps...Hapsburg Army?

Yeah, right, right. He was in the war. He was in the war.

Where did, do you know, was he discharged with an honorabledischarge?

He had a lot of medals.

He did, so he was decorated.

Oh, a lot of medals! You know, he always ??? but it didn't helphim.

Didn't help.

Of the medals. And I remember there was another Jew uh, haveforgot his name, I see his face. He had the highest medal of Hungary, highest.The, the, the, the uh, Golden Cross, something like that, I, I don't, don'tknow, the highest, highest. So those people, temporarily, they got some uh,some exemption from the Jewish, a...against the Jewish laws. But it was temporary.But when they, they took-in '44 they put us in a ghetto and these people,those who have uh, not my father, who had this one-they were treated muchworse.

Worse than the others.

Much worse. Like you know, in The Sunshine you saw thathe wanted to prove..

Yeah.

that he...

Yeah, he was a...

Olympic, you know.

Didn't matter.

No. Even worse. You know, even worse with the rabbis, if you.It's interesting. Uh, when we came, when we arrived to-from the ghetto tothe brick factories you know, they, they gathered for a couple of days, wewere ghetto. Then from the ghettos, brick factory-and from brick factory wasabout three, four days and they took us and put on the train. So in the brickfactories they were shouting-the Hungarian police and gen...the gendarmes-theywere very few Germans-they all- the dirty work they did the Hungarians. Andhe says, "Rabbis, rabbis. Come, come out!" Okay. And stupid Jews, they thought-notthe rabbis, rabbis were smart enough. But somebody else. They, they, theymight have better treatment. And they showed, you know. And all the rabbisthey, they, they killed them uh, immediately. And they, that they, in thebrick factories. I know that they beat them up and most of them killed. Oneof my teacher, he was...

They beat them.

Beat them. I, I heard later the whole story because I-at thattime you, when they took away and they beat, didn't beat them in front ofus. He was a so-called Dr. Rabina. He was a, a very educated-he had uh, rabbinicaluh, but he didn't work A lot of, he tea...taught us Hebrew language and, andTanách and the Bible. And he, he was smart enough not to show that he, hehas some rabbinic uh, uh, background. But somebody pointed out and they tookhim in and I know that they told me that they beat him to death. That, inMunkacs in the brick factory.

In the brick factory. They didn't shoot him, they, they beat,they beat him to death.

Pardon me?

They didn't shoot him, they beat him to death.

They all beat them. There, there was the gendarmes, the Hungarianthere. Maybe they shoot them, we don't know. But mostly they beat them.