Olga Adler - July 26, 1982
Bombing in Budapest 2
Were, were you at the owner of the sal... of the corset salon now?
No, the lady wasn't there. She was just a very good friend of this lady, so she...
Oh, and she let you stay there.
got the key, she had a key if anything happens...
Oh, I see. I see.
that we should go there because they know that this salon is not owned by a Jew, so we could go there. You know.
Ah, I see.
So, finally it was morning and around nine o'clock there was again bombing and we ran back to the house. They didn't take the Jews. But that's, I'm just telling this little incident that everyday brought something uh, and the papers too, what I had the papers that I told you a few days.
Yeah.
I had a... The houses were in a... in a inner city, the streets were narrow. They were wide boulevards, but there were narrow streets and a balcony here and balcony there. And there was a man and I was a girl and, you know, we were in the house constantly. So, he was in the house constantly and I was in the house constantly. Finally we started waving to each other and everything. And this man, and then we uh, got to know each other and he came over. He was a married man. He took, he sent his wife and his child out to the, to the country someplace. This man, his name was George Krunk uh, hiding and he was in the city.
Was he Jewish also?
Yes, he was Jewish, yeah, mhm. But he, he said he's going to find me some papers, you know. And he found me some papers and then I could go out sometimes without papers. We went out in the evening in a coffeehouse sometimes. But then they were, one day I was coming home and somebody told me that they were looking for me. The police they're looking for me under that name, on, on the paper. So I tore the paper and I gave it to him back and I went someplace for three days to stay, I don't remember where. And I, then I went back. So, that's why I say, I had a paper for a, I don't know, a week or two weeks but then they found out. So, I tore the paper up because it wouldn't have helped me anyway. So.
By the way, why didn't you mention that this woman you stayed with...
Yeah.
they had a place out in the country?
Yes, but they couldn't go there. No, they couldn't, she couldn't uh, I mean, that, that was the house where she had to live, you couldn't leave your residence.
Oh, I see.
You couldn't, you could not. As a matter of fact, that time my husband wrote me a letter. He had a sister who was a pharmacist and her husband was a physician. And she took a job in, very near Budapest. And um, that he, that, because her husband was near in a, in a forced labor camp someplace. So, she took a job as a pharmacist there that her husband should be able to come and visit her sometimes. And then her father came up there and she... he wrote me a letter from the forced labor camp that I should go on that, to this address and try, stay with his father and with his sister and I asked the manager of the house, of the apartment house, the caretaker of the apartment house that he should take me because I couldn't go alone. And we were all set to go that I'm going to leave and I will go there. And then when the bombing came and then the streetcars didn't run, so I couldn't go and that saved my life too because they were taken away and they never came back. And I stayed in that place. Anyways, so all these little incidents, which I don't remember anymore and uh, that the terrible things everyday that they are coming and they are taking us and they are doing this and they are doing that and constantly worrying over, at night if a car stopped... It's, it's terror. It's sheer terror.
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