Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Anne Eisenberg - May 11, 1982

Hungarian Annexation

[interruption in interview]

???. Now, my father was a lumber business and I can say he was a good provider. And we had, we had as children some of us a pond, the visiting the water, we lived a block away from the water. And we had a nice home. We had--my mother had help in the house. And life just went on beautiful up until 1940. My father what so happens he was in, in the forest and he had no knowledge of--or was it '38? His business was in Czechoslovakia. He had no knowledge what was taking place in that area. When he came home from the forest to come home and he found the border was closed up. The Hungarians went into Czechoslovakia. So for a whole year the border was closed up and our father couldn't come home. My mother was home with the children. And when I went shopping, the first time I was confronted that they didn't want to give us credit. And my mother sent me back with the groceries, she didn't want to take it. But not long after that she got word to my father. We had our tenant who crossed the water during the night to Czechoslovak...to Hungary I found was still Romania. And he brought back money for us at that time. And we managed very nice. It wasn't easy for my mother for a year. But not long after, after the, uh... It got where the Hungarians are coming in through Romania. We as children, we got so excited. We pulled, pulled flowers and threw it in front of the soldiers. But not far behind the Hungarian soldiers our father was coming home. And he saw how we were throwing the flowers. He said, "Don't waste them because no good will come of that." And it didn't take long. We found out that it was so. Not long after my father's business was taken away. No Jew had a right to own anything. What money he had was taken away. We were really left high and dry. It was to fortunate because we had a cow in the backyard that provided the family with milk. We had some land. It provided us with the necessity of food. We had chicken from the backyard what gave us eggs and gave us poultry. It weren't one of those misfortunate that didn't even have that. It was hard for my father. He was trying to find a job.


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