Manuscript

Held by

Montreal Holocaust Museum via Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (incl. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives)

Creator

Bolgar, Marianne

Dates

1994 (indexed as 1994)

Level

item

Extent

Manuscript : Paper : Printed : ink : Black, White ; Ht: 27,5 cm x W: 19 cm

Scope & content

Manuscript, nine pages in length, account of events by Marianne Bolgar. The manuscript starts with the arrival of the German army in Budapest on 14 March 1944. Narrative: Marianne Bolgar was born on 27 November 1929. In her account of the war, Marianne Bolgar remembers when the Germans arrived in Budapest on 1944-3-19. She lived with her family on Peterdy street and, later that year; they were forced to move across the street into single building with the other Jewish families. It was marked by a yellow star, a 'mini-ghetto, and they were allowed to leave for only two hours a day to buy food. The teenagers of the house would often sneak to the roof during air raids. August 15 1944 saw the destruction of the ghetto in an air raid. The nearest shelter was the Krebs' basement; at the end of the raid "Uncle' Krebs warned Marianne's father not to leave with the rest of the Jews. They remained in Uncle Krebs' store basement at 56b Hernad Street. Through hiding they were able to escape the government’s calls for Jewish men and women, between 16 and 50. In November, Uncle Krebs and Dr. Meister warned them to get out, as death was now the punishment for harboring Jews. They refused to leave and were allowed to remain. The hope was that the Russians would arrive and liberate them soon. Later that year the Allied bombing destroyed electricity and water in the city, and her family was forced to use a can of oil and string for light and jars of water they had collected from a dripping tap. In December they heard from the conversations upstairs that their hiding place had been hit by a bomb which did not explode. 23 December 1944 saw the Russians advancing towards Budapest, and the increased presence of Germans and Panzer Platoons in the city. Her father, who was a loud snorer, had to sleep during the day when moving tanks would mask the sound. A few days later they were freed by a Russian soldier. Marianne remarks that their old neighbors, who had neither harmed nor helped them, seemed to wish them to hell for returning. She decided to leave Hungary as soon as she could.

Location

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Genre / form

textual record

In the picture

DocumentHandwrittenImmigrationTitle PageTypewrittenWarTagged automatically by a vision model; may contain mistakes.

Text in the image

BUDAPEST 1944by Marianne Bolgarcjhn.caRead automatically; may contain mistakes.

Language

English

Harvested

2026-10-19T03:21:16Z · source datestamp n/a · andornot

Digital objects at the source

• imageOpen original at source ↗1994_2_1.jpg
• imageOpen original at source ↗1994_2_1b.jpg