Olga Adler - July 26, 1982
Russians in Budapest
Okay.
Uh...
Street by street, they were fighting.
Yeah, street by street, yeah. So uh, I went to, to look for this lady and I had to, you see, there, as I told you, there was the Danube and there was Buda and there was Pest. And Pest was already liberated and Buda wasn't liberated yet. And I went here and I wanted to cross the street to go. And then I saw that the, the bullets were coming from there hitting the, the building. So, I was afraid to cross the street.
Mhm.
So, I went into a strange house and I went down in the basement and I laid down because everybody, every basement was with bedding and everything because lived down in the basement for months. So, I went down in the basement and I slept in the basement and when I got up in the morning, everybody was raped in the house because people already went up from the basement. You see, that time they went up already, the war was supposed to be over. They were just accidentally sometimes these uh, these bullets.
Yeah.
But, so they went up in their houses. I couldn't, I didn't know nobody, I couldn't go up there. And I was afraid to, I was standing on the corner, and I couldn't... I told myself, oh my God, how am I going to cross the street? I lived through this, now I will cross the street. I'd never know when this bullet will come. I'm going to go down in the basement here and I'm going to sleep in the basement. And I slept through the whole night. Everybody was raped in that house by the Russians. So, even that time you have to, had to be afraid even that time to walk on the streets ??? One thing you had to tell those Russians that you have VD.
Uh-huh.
If you told that Russian that you had VD then they were, they were so afraid of it, they left you alone, but they were barbarians. Complete barbarians. Every army who comes back after a fight like that, will do things like that, but they were...
Was this after the war already?
Yeah. But they were very primitive anyway, they were washing dishes in the toilets, they didn't know. You'd see those, the trucks full of oriental rugs, paintings, pianos. Whatever they could put their hands on they were taking into Russian, robbing everything, robbing and raping. And it didn't matter if the woman is eighty or eighteen, it didn't make any difference. But you see you, you just had to be afraid even that time. And...
Even after the war.
Oh yes, after the war.
Didn't you have your, any men folk to protect you?
Well, I... At the, in the, in the ghetto where I was, when I said that they came back those hundred and thirteen uh, young men came back by the name of Dr. Sebany, that was his name. And we became very good friends. As a matter of fact, not just friends, but we fell in love with each other. And when the war was over he took me to his parents and he was a, a lawyer and he was a... After the war they established the government and unfortunately he was stupid enough because that was a communistic government already, he became a, a big shot there and, uh... But before that, when we, when the Russians came in, he said I wouldn't have where to go, I mean, I wouldn't have where to go before I found this, this uh, when I came up from the basement, from the ghetto, I mean, this lady wasn't from the ghetto. He took me to his parents' home and the parents were very nice to me, so I lived with, with his parents. And then the government, there wasn't one building in Budapest where the gov... government could establish something, so they went down to Deblitz and that was a smaller town, which wasn't hit so hard with bombing. So, they had that government there. And he was killed after the war, which I found out later. He was killed by, by the Russians. He was put... taken in jail. Remember in Yu... Yugoslavia didn't want to, people didn't want to belong to this communistic... And he went to Budapest and this young man was uh, waiting for him with red carpet and giving the treatment and the, the communistic government didn't like that and they put a lot of them in jail. This government ??? and he was killed after the war. So, I was there, but I still, I mean, I couldn't be, I, I wanted to find this, this lady, I wanted to know if she's alive.
Yeah.
She was the only thing who belonged to me that time, so I went out daily to look for her. Fi... I found her, you know. As a matter of fact, when I didn't go back that night they almost went crazy worrying over me, what happened to me. But then I went next morning, I told them what happened to me. And then I found out that my husband is—he wasn't my husband, but—I, I went home and uh, I wanted to find out who I belonged more to, to my husband or to this young man. But my heart somehow told me that he knew my parents, and he told my mother that he's going to marry me and going to take good care of me. And I thought that this is a piece of some... something in my life that my mother knew and my mother was associated with. If I would have married this other young man there would be no connection to my family, no nothing. And anyways, he was killed. Maybe I would have been killed with him too.
Right.
So, that's what happened.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn