doc. PhDr. MUDr. CSc. Oliver Rácz

We knew little about what was happening somewhere in Germany in 1953. But the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 was a few kilometers from us. So we watched it. Even the teachers, even though it was against the official regime, listened to Budapest radio, which was anti-communist in the early days. At that time, the first year of graduates at the Hungarian grammar school was already in preparation and they wrote poems against the Russian tanks that are killing Hungarians. And they gave it to the director. They trusted my father so much. Dad said he would hide it. Because if it happens to be revealed, they will get 15 years and there will be no college. But I remember those poems. I don't know where they are. I hope to find them again.

Grandma's sister Marta was Catholic and married the founder of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Bela Kiss, who had a wood store.Such a strange relationship, but that is typical for Košice. Béla Kiss and his son were communists and did not hide it. Marta used to go to Father Lexman's church and knew it was bad. That's how she found out that it was possible to hide there. So the first ones who were there were from Béla and Tomi Kiss. Apparently they let the father know. Otherwise, Lexman is being talked about a lot now. Covid prevented us from properly celebrating his merits in Košice. And I hope he will be blessed. He was also technically very skilled, he was not just a good priest. Together with his friends, a Hungarian priest who then went to America, they installed water and electricity in the crypt. So it was also technically secured. Aunt Marta then brought food to the family and my father. So she went to confession with a basket of groceries. She handed it over to the priests and they could eat then. There were not many people there first days. The last few days there were 20 people in that small space. But they survived the war. No one looked at who was a communist, who was a Jew or a right-winger. Everyone hoped that a post-liberation democratic era would come after the war. They were very wrong.

I don't know exactly what the Nyiszi - Schiler family did in those years. We do not have accurate records of this. But that was when they were already taking people to the brickyard, to the ghetto. At that time, the father forced the mother to go to Budapest with false documents.But he could not convince other family members. That was their disaster. So only sister Marta was saved. Mom worked for acquaintances. They were merchants from Spiš, the Čordáš family, who had some kind of fake ID from a girl who committed suicide. She jumped into the Danube, but she left behind her ID in the name of Júlia Bergu. With these papers, my mother also survived the war in Budapest, but it was not easy there either.

It was very serious, because they found out that someone was issuing fake papers there and people disappeared. For example, it was better to make a call-up papers for the army, where a person could survive, than to get into a concentration camp. That is the example of General Šimek. He was the founder of the Department of Burns and Reconstructive Surgery at that time in Košice. He received, not quite a call-up order. But they made up that he had a broken arm. He was already a doctor then. He received a message from the South Slovak partisans that they were waiting for him in an apartment because they needed surgeons. So it was also a fake paper to get someone to Budapest. They plastered his healthy left hand, because he said he needed the right one. The left hand was plastered and a piece of sausage also fell there.