Budapest, Hungary
March 1944
Dear Mother and Father Mendel,
I am standing at the very edge of despair. The Nazis have invaded Budapest. All hope is gone, and my heart is as empty as our cupboards. The Hungarian government is no more. Our leaders have been ousted. The Nazis control us now – the very thing we feared the most. Their troops have seized all of the railroads and taken over the government buildings. We no longer know what is happening in the rest of the world, because the Nazis control the radio broadcasts, the post office, the telegraph.
Before the invasion, it seemed from all the news we heard that Hungary might stop fighting in this war and make peace with the Allies. We learned that American troops were in Italy and that the German army had surrendered to the Soviets in Stalingrad. With so many other battles to fight, why would Hitler bother to invade Hungary now and deport the Jews?
But that is exactly what he has begun to do. As soon as the Nazis arrived they began to persecute us the way that they persecuted Jews in Germany and Poland. A man named Adolph Eichmann is in charge of us. He has ordered all Jewish businesses to close and all Jews must register and wear a yellow star. Here in Budapest, we have been rounded up and forced to move to a ghetto. A Jewish council has been set up to assign living quarters to everyone and to ration our food and water. The council members are Jewish but they must take their instructions from the Nazis. Anyone who disobeys is arrested.
We still live in Uncle Baruch’s apartment in the ghetto, but nearly two dozen people now crowd into it along with us. Aunt Hannah, her two cousins, and other relatives have been separated from us and forced to live in another apartment, but I am still with my mother and Fredeleh. Aunt Hannah is very sick with coughing and a fever, but there is no medicine or doctors, and we are banned from the hospitals.
We all know what is coming next. The Jews who escaped into Hungary from Poland told us what the Nazis did to them there. The Nazis have condemned us to death, like our enemy Haman of old. What we don’t understand is why they hate us so much. And why the world stands by and allows it. Why doesn’t someone come to our rescue? And the biggest question of all is why does Hashem allow it?
A few people who have fled to Budapest from the countryside have told us that the Nazis have rounded up all the Jews in the provinces and small villages like the one we came from. Long trains of boxcars are arriving in Hungary every day, but they aren’t bringing the food and supplies we so desperately need. They are arriving empty. They have come to deport us all to labor camps in Poland.
If the reports are true, our families back home in the village may already be gone. My sister and three brothers and their families, my aunts and uncles, Avi’s relatives, your relatives, all of them gone. I cannot stop weeping for them. If only they had come to Budapest with us when Avi begged them to. We have heard terrible rumors from those who have escaped, saying that these are not labor camps at all but extermination camps. I don’t want to believe that it’s true. And so I worry and pray and wonder what has become of my family and my Avraham and if I will ever see them again. If help doesn’t arrive soon, we fear that when the Nazis finish deporting everyone from the provinces, they will come for us here in the city. The horror and fear are too much for me, as they are for everyone. No one knows what will happen tomorrow.
If only I had hidden little Fredeleh in the Christian orphanage months ago. I should have brought her there right after Avraham was taken from us. Now it has become too dangerous to go out into the streets with so many Nazi soldiers. We are not supposed to leave the ghetto. The Nazis can stop us and ask where we are going and demand to see our identification papers. And so I am begging Hashem to forgive me for not hiding her there sooner and pleading with Him for a way to take her there now. I can’t bear the thought of the Nazis coming for her.
I know you are praying for us back home in America, and that Avraham is praying, too, wherever he is. I find it harder and harder to pray when my prayers seem to go unanswered. Once again, the book of Tehillim is my only comfort:
“Hear my prayer, O Hashem; let my cry for help come to you. Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress . . .”
May He deliver us from our enemies and bring all of us together soon.
With love,
Sarah Rivkah and Fredeleh