Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Noemi Engel Ebenstein - July 22, 1996

Let me interrupt you and ask you a question. How large was the family, the extended family? Your grandparents, your mother was one of how many children?

Uh, she was one of four, but she lost one brother to illness. And so she had two brothers. Both of them survived the war. Uh, her father was dead. My grandmother, her mother, was on the same train that we were taken away, 1944. And she was taken to Auschwitz. Now the extended family, um, I don't know if you're familiar with this, with this Hungarian movie The Revolt of Job. Have you ever seen that? I highly recommend. I can even loan it to you. I watched it last night, I guess to get in the mood, I don't know. Uh, it's about, it's a very interesting story, I don't know whether it's a true story. But it shows these Hungarian Jewish peasants who lived in different villages. Uh, they were devout Jews, most of them Hasidish. Um, very religious. But they really intermingled with, uh, the Hungarians and they were spread in all these different villages, small towns. Now my grandparents came from Munkacs. Especially my grandmother came from a very large family. And they were spread all over Hungary. They all were very religious, had large families. And I think the majority of them perished. That extended family, but...

Aunts and uncles?

Aunts and uncles, no. My, one of my father's brothers was killed in the war, but.

And your father?

Hungarian Jews were deported in '44. We were the lucky ones. Everything is relative.

Your aunts and uncles, were they also married when the war started?

One uncle was married. He never had children. And he and his wife, the opera singer, they survived. And, um, my other uncle, who was the oldest brother, he actually married towards the end of the war. They were in hiding, uh, in Budapest. And he married and he, he had two, they had two daughters. But in 1945 and 1946, right after the war. So that's on my mother's side. It's a small family. The, not a really wide extended family, but, uh.