Felix Gluck - a Hungarian Jew who died in a forced labor company in Ukraine

Literary Review, Fall, 1993 by Ervin C. Brody

After this experience I grew increasingly apprehensive about my next visit to Felix's parents. I was afraid that, behind their outward gratitude for remembering them and bringing them some news about Felix's life in the camp, there would still lurk an unspoken accusation: "Why did you come back? Why not our son?" Indeed, what could I tell them? I had to admit that, facing such a situation, I would be terribly embarrassed. I would feel the guilt of the survivor. I shuddered at the thought.

I will never forget the day of my visit - March 19, 1944 - because this was the day the German army occupied Hungary as Hitler decided to punish Horthy, governor of Hungary, for his equivocal attitude on the Jewish question. Hitler wanted to destroy all the Jews in Hungary, the only country in his sphere of interest which had so far eluded his clutch, but Horthy, although no friend of the Jews, had several Jewish bankers and financiers among his advisers, and was reluctant to follow Hitler's request. Of course when I boarded the train, I had no idea of the imminent German invasion.

My visit to the Glucks turned out to be a friendly affair after all, and my anxiety was absolutely unjustified. The parents were genuinely happy to see me, thanked me for my loyalty to their son, and recalled the memories of a happier past. Religion somewhat helped them to shape the meaning of their son's tragedy. Their Hasidic faith exemplified a Weltanschauung, a pantheism, a certain mystical belief, a joyous side of life, and this combination gave them, even in the face of this terrible loss, a kind of brave optimism. "God is omnipresent," they said as they embraced me warmly. "We will meet again." They hoped that Richard, their other son, who was also in a labor company somewhere in the Ukraine, would return. We spent several pleasant hours of a quiet afternoon in their cheerful little garden, bright in the late winter sun, in Ujpest, an industrial suburb of Budapest when suddenly the radio, interrupting its program of sentimental Gypsy music, made a terse announcement that the German troops had invaded Hungary. At first the news did not make sense to me: Germany and Hungary were allies in the war, why would Germany invade the country of an ally? Then the commander of the German troops spoke on the radio, trying to assure the Hungarian population that they had only come for a "friendly" visit, mainly to protect "our Hungarian comrades" from the threat of a Bolshevik invasion and the machination of the Jews. A curfew was announced which immediately gave the lie to this "friendly" visit and I had to take a hurried leave to return to Budapest. The German occupation brought down a swift-steel curtain on this bustling capital. Cafes closed, nightlife vanished and the radio stations lost their voices. Budapest suddenly became a tense, subdued city where commuters rode buses in silence, occasional conversations were reduced to whispers, most residents chose to stay at home, and the Jewish community froze in terror. It was a terrible blow to the Hungarian Jews who had hoped that the war would soon end and they would escape the fate of their coreligionists in the neighboring countries. Unfortunately shortly thereafter Eichmann arrived, and the deportations to the extermination camps began. As the dreadful statistics later showed, some four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews perished in Auschwitz and the other camps in the summer of 1944.