I never knew anyone could be so brave. -Kalli K., 3rd grade

Email your questions or comments for Judy, a former hidden child during the Holocaust. Judy will try to respond to as many emails as possible.  We encourage compiling a list of questions and comments from a class, and emailing them all together.  Below are some questions from students Judy has answered:

 

 

Q.  How did you know the war was over?

A.  The sound of mortars and small firearms stopped.  It was very quiet.  The people hiding in the cellar had mixed emotions.  There was relief that the war was over, but concern about the expected behavior of the Russian soldiers that liberated us.  People whispered about these worries and rumors.

 

Q.  After the war was over, how long was it until you saw your parents?

A.  My parents returned in the fall of 1945.  I was eight.  I remember it was warm and sunny when my mother and I met.  Till then I was shuttled from one family member to another.  I lived with an aunt and uncle in an apartment filled with antiques.  I had to be careful not to bump into anything.  I was sent to a school with a crabby teacher.  I wrote my poem called “The Prisoner,” about wanting to be free like a bird during that time.

 

Q.  Do you remember how you felt when you started living with your parents again after the war was over?

A.   I felt strange and uneasy at first. This happened to many “hidden children.”  I wanted to go to church with Maria on Sundays.  My parents wanted me to take part in a Zionist youth group (Zionism supports Israel being the homeland of Jewish people).  I ended up quitting both.

      
Our apartment had suffered some damage from a mortar which had crashed into the wall of my mother's room leaving a gaping hole. Before it was fixed, someone had even kept chickens in the once elegant room.  When we moved back into our renovated apartment, the familiar spaces and even the restored furniture helped me to feel closer to my parents by recovering some of my pre-war feelings.

 

 

Q.  When did life feel normal again?

A.   Things really started to feel like it did before the war when I was able to return to my old school on Heart Street.  I made a new friend named Veronika, and I finally had a teacher I really liked named Felkay neni, or Aunt Felkay (we had to call all of our teachers “aunt”).  She created a serene classroom atmosphere and taught me all I still remember of Hungarian grammar. 

 

 


Judy reunited with her parents