Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Alexander Karp - June 22, 1983

Were you treated well along the way? Were people willing to help you?

Now, going back? Yes it was--yeah, it wasn't uh, especially in Italy it wasn't too, too bad, you know. It didn't take too long to get back because we took the train. Didn't have to--you may have changed some trains here or there but uh, the trip didn't last too, too long. And after about three or four days, you know, we got back to Budapest and we went to the Jewish Organization. At that time they had a place where, you know, there were information exchanges. There were tablets to show who came back, who didn't come back, and so forth, you know. And there, there I happened to see on one of the plaques that my father was on his way back from Russia, you know, that he was alive. But uh, as far as our family we have lost uh, came back: my uncle, my aunt, and uh, out of about uh, thirty-five to forty of my immediate family, I mean this--what I mean--aunts, cousins, grandparents and so forth, came back only about six.

The aunt that you are talking about, was this your uncle's wife?

No.

Different aunt?

The sister--was my mother's uh, sister. My uncle was my mother's brother.

And of the six you named, your sister, your mother, your father were not survivors?

No, no, no. No, the survivor was--because my dad--I can't consider him as a survivor of the--well, basically because he was in Russia. No. It was from my mother's side survived uh, my uncle...

[interruption in interview]

You indicated there were two other aunts that were still alive. Did you ever get positive proof that your father was deceased?

No.

Did you, did you assume at that time that he was in Russia?

Well we knew that he was lost in Russia. Whether he became a prisoner of war or he, he died, we didn't know after that point.

Did you ever have any thoughts at that point about returning to any of the small towns that, that you lived in when you were a boy? Going back to uh, the place where you were born or the town that you lived in after that?

Uh, we stayed in Hungary until about 1949. Um, when we went to Budapest--now months went by and we waited who would come back, who would not come back. And my unc...my father came back from Russia at the end of August. He did come back, mm-hm. And um, I begged and begged for a short time--he lived in a little town where we--just before the war started where they took us to the ghetto from. We were there--he was there for a short time, then he moved to Kisv&accute;rda.