The Kallos Family Book 2022

22 • THE KALLOS FAMILY
were very hostile, they appreciated that Zoltan
and Lili spoke fluent German. One officer came
to Zoltan and said, ‘Herr Kallos, you have such
a nice family. Save them’. In the Mt Neresen
forest of Romania near the Tisa River, Zoltan
had a bunker fitted out by trustworthy Hungarians
to accommodate his six immediate family
members, but he abandoned his plan to use
it when his younger brother Elek asked what
would happen to the rest of the family, which
was more than twenty people.
Reports were filtering into the small isolated
country town about Polish Jews being murdered.
Biri recalls overhearing her mother tell
her father: ‘Zoltan I want you to kill the family’.
He replied, ‘I have not got the right to do that’.
A ghetto was formed in Técső on 16 April 1944
but because they were needed to run the hotel,
Kallos family members were the last to enter.
On 1 May 1944 Zoltan, Lili, Biri, Laci, Marta and
Babi moved to Zoltan’s mother’s home on Fő
utca, which was inside the first ghetto. Zoltan’s
widowed mother, Fanny Kallos, lived in a large
house; Zoltan managed to arrange for his family
to stay there in familiar surroundings. To mark
the occasion Zoltan shaved off his moustache. It
was the first time Biri had seen her father clean
shaven.
Zoltan, always the loving husband, wanted
to ensure that Lili was comfortable in the ghetto
so he arranged for their matrimonial bed to be
moved by horse drawn cart to his mother’s
home. However, this situation lasted only a few
days, after which Zoltan’s family was sent to
the second ghetto, which, due to overcrowding
in the first, had been established near the Tisa
River.
The family was accommodated in the former
Pilcher Hotel, a small building whose last use in
Técső was as a bordello. In Técső, prostitution
was legal, licensed and regulated. Altogether
about twenty Kallos family members stayed
there. They included
§ Fanny Kallos, the Kallos family matriarch
§ Zoltan’s brother Elek, his wife Helen and their
two children, Gaby and a very young Judith
§ Zoltan’s sister Hermine, her husband
Benjamin Herskovits and their two children,
Olga and Marta
§ Zoltan’s sister Berta Kallos, her husband
David Abraham and their two children, Erzsi
and Jiří
§ Zoltan’s nephew Irvin (nicknamed Petu)
Stephanski, whose mother Blanka Kallos was
in Budapest and her husband Leo Stephanski
was in the Hungarian Labour Service
§ Lili’s parents Sarah and Samuel Lazarovics
§ Lili’s younger sister Ilonka Lazarovics.
The four members of the Roth family also
stayed in the Pilcher Hotel.
The Kallos and Roth families were very close.
Jeno Roth was head of the Judenrat, the Jewish
council appointed by the occupying Germans
to be responsible for enforcing Nazi orders that
affected Técső’s Jews. Zoltan was also a member;
this was to be his final community position. Jeno
Roth, his wife Adele Auslander, and their two
young children, Harry and Judith, all perished.
One day, not long after they moved into the
hotel, Biri and Babi went for a walk in the ghetto.
While they were walking a Hungarian barber
arrived with orders from an especially antisemitic
Hungarian officer to cut both cousins’ hair
short like a boy’s and ‘make Babi ugly’. When it
was Biri’s turn, tears streamed down her face as
the barber cut off her beautiful hair and ‘made
them into a nothing’. Soon enough, once they
arrived in Birkenau, their hair would be
completely shorn off.
Special Hungarian gendarmerie investigative