Sharing a legacy of rescue - commanding officer Zoltan Kubinyi, who helped rescue Jewish men during World War II

Christian Century, Nov 13, 1996 by Marta Fuchs Winik

"Some of the men knew he had a wife and child living in Budapest. We took turns sending her packages of food, for life was hard for everyone after the war. These monthly packages went on for a year or more, and I remember that each time it was my turn she wrote me a nice thankyou note. With one of these she included a picture of him. In response to the last package, she said not to send any more because she had found a good job and could now provide for herself and the child. At the same time, she wrote that she had received word from Russia that her husband had died in a labor camp in Siberia."

WHEN MY father first recounted these events almost ten years ago, he was embarrassed and ashamed that he could not remember his commanding officer's name. "It was over 40 years ago," I said, but that was little comfort to him. "But here is his picture," he said, pulling from his files an old envelope with the black-and-white photograph he had received decades earlier and which he had packed along with the barest of essentials when we escaped from Hungary in the wake of the '56 uprising. Never had I seen this picture before. Never before had we discussed in detail what had happened to my father during the Holocaust.

I turned to him with resolve. "We must find out his name. We must have him honored at Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile."

My father began writing. Perhaps one of his labor camp friends might remember. Perhaps the one in New York or the other in Budapest. A few months later both wrote back. Unfortunately, neither could remember the name, but both sent their own recollections testifying to the officer's goodness. One also mentioned that he had written to another labor camp friend in Hungary. Perhaps he would remember. Several months later my father called to say he had received a letter that day informing him that the commanding officer's name was Zoltan Kubinyi.

We quickly prepared the documentation and included the testimony of my father's friend Isaac Guttman as a required witness. In his letter to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, my father summed up his testimony with the following words: "Zoltan Kubinyi was a true human being in the deepest sense of the word. During this catastrophic event, when civilized, intelligent people were blinded with irrational hatred, and innocent people, mothers with babies in their arms were slaughtered, HE WAS A MAN. Risking his own life, he stood up for and defended the innocent persecuted people. The memory of Zoltan Kubinyi deserves the highest honor that a person could possibly receive for his altruistic, heroic, and self-sacrificing activities."

Over the years, we tried searching for Kubinyi's wife and son. I wanted to meet them and thank them for my father's life, and therefore my own. Because of people like Kubinyi, Hitler's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was at least partly thwarted.

The last my father heard, Kubinyi's wife and son had moved from Budapest to Miskolc. On trips back to Hungary, I looked in phone books and would call the Kubinyis listed. I asked our friends Miki and Judit in our hometown of Tokaj for help. Months later I received a letter from Judit. She had found the family and spoken with the son's wife. Unfortunately, his mother had passed away a year or so before. The daughter-in-law said, "She never believed her husband had died and spent her days praying and waiting for him to come back."