Book on the Righteous - Jevrejska opština Zemun

Righteous Among The Nations - Serbia
Stories About The Righteous
A WEDDING TO FOLLOW ALL THE
SUFFERING
From 1942 Judit lived in Budapest as a refugee from
Slovakia (Trnava). Jews were relatively safe in the
capital of Hungary up to March 1944 when the Germans
invaded Hungary. Once the Germans instated
their authority, an unprecedented hunt down of Jews
began. Judit, like many other Jews, was linked to Jewish
organizations that chiefly operated underground.
Groups of organized Jews fled before German persecution
toward Romania and then on to Palestine aided by
associations like the HaNoar HaCioni (Zionist Youth)
and the Hashomer Hatzair. A certain number of these
groups were successful in crossing the border and when
the time came for Judit and her 14 friends (a group of
15 in all), they set off for Segedin in the company of a
villager who was well acquainted with the terrain they
were to cover. However, the villager reported the group
to the Hungarian police. Informed that the group was
in the train bound for Segedin gendarmes stood in wait
for them at a nearby station, en route for the Romanian
border. When the group descended from the train, they
were beset by the police, cuffed and taken to Segedin
police station. In the course of the ensuing interrogation,
they were beaten to such a degree that eventually they
revealed where they had been heading for. The Hungarian
police handed the entire group over to the Gestapo.
Subsequently, the Gestapo imprisoned the group in a
small house, an improvised jail, on an agricultural complex.
Under the watchful gaze of the guards the young
people tended to the livestock, swept the house the Gestapo
people were staying in and cleaned the surrounding
yard. Close to the pigsties they also tended to was a
threshing floor bordering onto the next property.
Milan Gligorijević, a refugee from Belgrade, was one
of the guards. Milan was once a member of the under-
ground movement in Belgrade, but when his illegal
activity was exposed, he had had to leave the city forthwith.
In Hungary he had to provide a living for himself,
so he approached the German authorities presenting
himself as a Royalist fleeing from the Communists. He
was given the job of a jail guard. Judit had almost immediately
noticed that Milan’s demeanour stood apart from
that of the other guards. She asked him for a barber’s
razor so that the young men could shave their unkempt
beards. Milan brought the razor not suspecting that the
youths might have any ulterior motives. However, by
then a plan had already been made to escape; aware that
their long beards would be detected immediately, the
prisoners had to see to them first. Initially, only three of
them were to take part in the break-out: Judit, her friend,
Ichak Herbst, and Hans Fogel. To postpone being detected
as long as possible, they had to tend to the pigs
first. Only then did they cross into the next field over
the threshing floor and run as far as possible from the
prison.
Aiming to reach Segedin, from where they planned to
head back for Budapest, they kept to out-of-the way
roads. They needed money to buy train tickets for the
journey back to Budapest. Between them they only had
one fountain pen and a wrist watch which, if sold, could
provide enough money for the tickets. Along the road
they had taken they came upon a German soldier camp.
Judit was chosen among the three of them to enter the
camp and offer the pen and watch for sale. An officer
overseeing the camp soon noticed that there were two
young men waiting for Judit outside the encampment
to rejoin them. He immediately realized where they had
come from. As he started yelling at them to return to the
camp at once, the three young people made their second
mistake. They made a run for it, only to be followed
by a group of soldiers. Ichak Herbst managed to escape
while Judit and Hans were apprehended and returned
to jail.
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