Flee from the Shadows

By Geoff Baldwin

It is the early months of 1944 and with the looming spectre of a nazi occupation of Hungary imminent, members of the Jewish community in Budapest are faced with the horrific prospect of losing everything including their lives.
Aron Kaszas realises that the only option for him and his family is to disappear and in the few weeks they have left before the Germans arrive they make preparations to go into hiding.
Thereafter follows a story of a desperate fight-back against overwhelming odds, horrific loss, discovery and escape.
As Hitler’s dream of a thousand year Reich begins to crumble the nazis become increasingly desperate to destroy all remaining evidence of the Jewish race across Europe.
Will Arons family manage to survive the final months of the war as the nazi brutality increases?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geoff Baldwin
• Release date: May 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310056468

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Mauthausen Austria March 1945

The bitter Siberian winter brings with it a polar blast which comes down from the heart of the Arctic, tearing across the Russian Steppes; rising as it hits the Carpathian mountains where even more chill air is lifted in its wake before crashing down across the eastern fringes of Europe where it combines with the warmer, southern, air to fall as deep destructive snow. Everything in its path is mercilessly pushed aside; it has no respect for age, wealth or position. It eats into the soul, twisting like a knife into your guts, blinding your eyes; your head feels like it is caught between the jaws of a giant vice which is slowly, inexorably, crushing your skull until the unending pain drives you to the ground, huddled like a ragged dog waiting for the cold mercy of death.

The ragged remnants of humanity huddled together in the grey railhead yard desperate to get away from the biting wind swirling round the low prison buildings of the Mauthausen camp. All around me echoed the constant wheezing from destroyed lungs interrupted continuously by pathetic groans of pain and a hacking, death rattle, cough’ This was all that remained of a once proud people against whom the Nazis had vented their rage and hatred in the name of racial purity.

Any semblance of care for their fellow man had long disappeared and each and every one of us gave no thought for their neighbour. We continually pushed and kicked, cursed and spat at each other; trying to move in closer to the centre of the mass of people, trying to get away from the outer edge where the blast of wind cut through the filthy ragged clothes hanging from our skeletal frames. We knew that too long exposed in that way would lead to an early, painful, death. Some had already succumbed and lay on the frozen mud. Others deliberately stood on the outside, they had finally given up and just wanted to end the treatment they had suffered for countless years, yearning for the endless peace death would bring.

Around us stood the guards glaring harshly, itching to mete out punishment, either a clubbing from a rifle butt or a crack from a bull whip carried by one of the kapos who, while they wore similar uniforms to the other inmates had sold their dignity and their racial history for an extra supply of our meagre rations. We hated them with a vengeance but in some ways I felt that each and every one of us could easily give ourselves over to have some relief from the harsh conditions in which we existed. Several of the guards held back snarling dogs straining on their leashes trying to reach towards us, aching to sink their slavering jaws into our pathetic bodies. We would have given them little sustenance but would have provided entertainment for the jeering arrogant men and women, wrapped in their grey knee-length greatcoats, standing there with bored looks waiting for the next influx of human detritus coming in from the eastern camps.

My feet were sore and blistered from the hard wooden clogs, two sizes too big for me, which had been thrown at me by the kapo when we had arrived at the camp on what felt like a lifetime ago but in reality was only a matter of 4 weeks. They were scuffed and worn down, how many others had worn them? Where had they gone? Were they the victims of the gas chambers which we knew, by now, existed in many camps? Mauthausen itself had despatched many thousands of Jews, gypsies and other victims considered by the Nazis as non-Aryan undesirables.

A distant whistle brought an instant burst of screamed orders from the guards and kapos. Ferocious barking by the dogs helped to push forward the ragged groups of men toward the waiting ramps that stood next to the railway line. Some grabbed wooden carts and struggled forward with them to stand just behind and to the side of the ramps. The sudden noise of the locomotive blinded out the shouting and screaming from the guards as it approached the railhead. Great gouts of steam issued from beneath and around the wheels and the long line of trucks behind rattled and jerked together against their buffers as the train shuddered to a halt. The armed guards who had ridden with the train on its journey leaped to the ground and began running along the length of the train battering the sides of the trucks with their rifle butts. Cries of fear were heard from inside amid pleas for help and water; hands could be seen waving frantically from the small openings, fringed with razor wire, high up on the sides of the wagons

Move came the shout from the kapo in charge of our group and three of our number struggled up the ramp, grabbed the locking bolt securing the door to the wagon swung it over and the three of them then slid the door open revealing the cowering remnants of humanity inside.

Over the past weeks many similar transports had arrived bringing with them their human cargo but no matter how many times I had witnessed it nothing ever prepared me for what I would see as the door slid open. Of probably eighty or so people who had been crushed into the confines of the filthy cattle truck almost half had succumbed to the unbearable cold and the lack of food and water over nearly ten days of their journey from the camps in eastern Poland. The bodies of those who had finally given up their fight for life had been stripped naked by their companions and lay across the door in heaps almost as high as a mans head. The grey skin stretched tightly across their skeletons, the eyes wide and staring and the mouths gaping open revealing broken and rotten teeth, all signs of acute starvation and ill-treatment suffered over countless months and even years. The lucky ones, if they could ever be called that, who had survived the terrible journey to our camp were almost relieved to be able to escape the foul conditions they had suffered on their journey and pushed past the gruesome remains of their former travelling companions and stumbled down the ramps only to be greeted by the harsh guttural shouts of the guards and kapos pushing them into some semblance of order ready to be processed.

As the trucks were emptied of their pathetic living cargo those of us who had stood around at the base of the ramps were pushed forward by the capos, jeering at us and cracking their whips across backs; it was now our turn to empty each truck of its gruesome cargo. We struggled up the steep ramp, slipping on the rough wooden pallets. My foot slipped out of the clog and it tumbled back down to the base of the ramp; I hesitated, should I try to get back down and recover the shoe or carry on moving upwards? I knew that to go back would risk a beating but I also knew that not to would surely lose the clog permanently and that would result in a similar punishment. I turned and looked into the eyes of a fellow inmate who shared a simple pallet with me in our filthy barrack. His name was Uri, formerly a professor of biology from Budapest University; he looked at me with a kindly smile and I saw in his hand my lost clog. He held it out to me and whispered Take it my friend; we don’t want to risk the fury of Davos do we? I muttered my thanks and quickly slipped the clog back on and continued to the top of the ramp.

Davos was the brutal Ukrainian guard charged with maintaining order in our barrack. We were always subdued but this didn’t stop him from finding fault wherever he could; the slightest delay in rising from our pallets at the start of each day or spotting lice in our heads would be enough for him to swipe his cudgel across an unlucky prisoner’s mouth, breaking teeth and shattering jaws. When Germany declared war on Soviet Russia Ukrainians were conscripted into the Red Army, among them Davos. In the early months of the conflict German troops made vast territorial gains resulting in thousands of Red Army troops being killed or captured. Davos was one of those captured and as a Ukrainian conscripted by the Soviets was given the option between dying of starvation and exposure in the ill-equipped POW camps reserved for the Red Army or working for the Germans as a ‘Hiwi’, or volunteer, which included duty in the concentration camps and ghettos primarily as a guard. As a Jew Davos understood the risks he was taking but was able to gain the admiration of his German masters by his brutal behaviour toward the ghetto inmates. He was eventually selected for training in the Trawniki concentration camp and from there was transferred to Auschwitz as part of the battalion charged with implementing the Final Solution. There he remained until the camp was closed ahead of the invading Red Army.

As I reached the head of the ramp I stared into the truck. Along the sides and back were the remains of the human content; naked, grey with wide staring, dead eyes; the bodies of the men hardly distinguishable from those of the women. I moved forward and pulled on an arm, I would drag the body to the entrance of the truck while another would then roll it down the ramp where the bodies would be loaded onto the carts to be taken to the crematoria. As I bent down to grab another body I heard a pathetic whimper just to the side of the body I was reaching for. I caught my breath, there in front of me, wrapped in a pile of filthy rags, barely breathing, lay a young girl, her matted wispy hair barely disguising the suppurating scabs on her scalp, she looked up at me with wide staring eyes, filled with fear and horror, she looked to be only minutes away from death. I stared down at her with shock and horror, I had hardened myself to dealing with the countless bodies I was forced to carry but to see one so close to death unnerved me. I saw in her eyes the desperation of one who had suffered unspeakable cruelty at the hands of her captors over so many months. My mind was immediately dragged back to that day just after the Germans entered Budapest when I held my dying sister in my arms, the victim of the cowardly bully who had found her alone in our home, raped and abused her, leaving her for dead. I knew who it was and it was on that day I had vowed my revenge.

Help me gasped the girl, barely able to breathe, help me.

I knew without needing to question what she was asking but could I do it, did I have the moral strength to help her, to make her last mortal moments a little more peaceful. I couldn’t ignore her; I knew that if I did nothing she would be thrown, alive, with the other bodies straight into the greedy furnace. I looked at Uri and he nodded Let her go Stefan, let her go.

He moved between me and the eyes of the others standing at the entrance of the truck, I quickly removed my clog, turned the girl over revealing her bare back and brought the heavy wooden heel down onto her exposed neck. I heard the bones crack and knew she would never wake or suffer again. I pulled at her body and within seconds she was just another carcass ready to be devoured by flames of the waiting ovens.

As the last of the bodies were thrown down to be loaded onto the waiting hand carts I carefully climbed down the ramp ready to line up with those who had just arrived on the transport. One of the new arrivals, probably not many more years older than me but showing a lifetime of unbearable suffering looked deep into my eyes and muttered where have they brought us, what is this place?

Welcome to Hell. I replied

Chapter 1

Budapest - November 1943

The school bell rang it was one o’clock; we waited impatiently for Miss Bako, our teacher, to nod her head permitting us to leave the classroom. She looked up, smiled, and, amid a flurry of chair legs scraping on the hard wooden floor and a sudden crescendo of excited voices, the classroom emptied in a matter of seconds leaving her alone to collect books and clean the board ready for the afternoon lessons. For those of us from the Jewish quarter lessons in the elementary school were over for the day. My three friends Domotor, Janos, Edvard and I spent nearly five hours each day, from three in the afternoon, at the Jewish school learning religious laws and philosophy from the Talmud.

We walked together to the school gate where we parted company with cries of farewell and promise’s to see each other in a couple of hours. I hurried off alone from the relative safety of the school along Kiraly Avenue staying close to the wall. I pulled the dark grey cap down over my eyes and tried to make myself as small as possible to protect myself from the cold of the approaching winter and the unwelcome stares from so many of the small gangs that roamed the streets close to the Jewish quarter. I knew that being alone was always to run a risk, we were considered to be easy targets even though so many of us considered ourselves as native Hungarian first and Jewish second. But no matter how we felt this was to be our downfall in the months to come.

As I turned the corner I saw, there ahead of me, Stani Lovas along with two of his brutish friends. Stani, the nineteen year old son of Ludwig Lovas, an arrogant bully and senior member of the military wing of the Arrow Cross Party, spent his days lurking around the streets bordering the Jewish Seventh District of the city looking for any likely and unfortunate kid on whom he could vent his hatred.

The Arrow Cross party was founded by Ferenc Szálasi in 1935 as the Party of National Will. It had its origins in the political philosophy of pro-German extremists such as Gyula Gömbös, who famously coined the term national socialism in 1929. The party was outlawed in 1937 but was reconstituted in 1939 as the Arrow Cross Party, and was said to be modeled explicitly on the Nazi Party. Its military wing was made up of any sadistic thug capable of heartless cruelty to man or beast with no thought of compassion for their age, race or gender. Never would they be seen alone, they reveled in force of numbers and delighted in acts of humiliation especially toward the Jewish minority in the city. Many times they had enjoyed rounding up old men and women forcing them to their knees to clean the filth from the streets with their bare hands, kicking them for no reason and then pushing further onto the ground to kiss their boots. Ludvig could always be found in the centre of such events goading on his compatriots and spitting and jeering at his victims. He was always happy to encourage Stani to take part and enjoyed seeing his son brutalize adult and child alike.

Before I had a chance to turn back to try and find another way home Stani turned and spotted me. A hateful grin spread across his face and he nudged his two compatriots. Well look who we have here, he sneered it’s that little shit Jew-boy off home to his bitch mother.

I was faced with little choice; to change direction once I had been seen would only mean that I would be followed, kicked to the ground and humiliated in front of anyone who cared to watch; no one would come to my aid. I determined not to cower in front of the bullies so continued on. As I came level with them Stani blocked me, he was several inches taller and a lot broader. I tried to move out of his way but his friend had moved to my side and I was hemmed in. I kicked out at him and caught his shin.

You bastard! he spat and punched me hard in the side of my head, the pain seared through my head and my vision blurred. I felt my face pushed hard against the gritty brickwork; I could feel the pain as my temple grazed and a minute drop of blood began to flow. He punched me hard in the stomach and I bent over double, tears welling up; my cap was torn from my head and ground into the dirt at my feet.

You were lucky this time Jew boy, we’re off to a rally so don’t have time to entertain you more. laughed Stani, But look out because we will be looking out for you and your kind. And with that they were gone laughing and pushing each other jovially as they headed off down the road. I picked up my cap and, tried to catch my breath, before heading home where I knew my mother would want to know the reason for my disheveled state.

Home was a rambling house on Rambach Avenue in the Jewish district but favoured by Jew and Gentile alike. Most who lived on the Avenue had managed to successfully carve out a comfortable living for themselves through hard work and determination, despite the prejudices which in the past few years had become more pronounced and frequent. My father, Aron Kaszas, owned a factory building enamel ovens and, together with his brother Umi, also owned a factory making candles in Timisoara, a town just over the border in Romania. They were both considered wealthy and successful in the Jewish district and enjoyed the trappings of their success, demonstrated by the size of the houses in which they and their families lived.

My father was born in Timisoara in 1899, the eldest of four children. At the age of eighteen he was conscripted into the army and it was during this time, while based in Oradea a town close to the Hungarian border that he met mother, the eldest daughter of a Slovakian doctor who had moved from Prague at the start of the First World War. They married in 1920 and moved in with my grandparents in Timisoara as father was working for grandfather as a salesman. Grandfather owned a factory making asbestos sheets for roofing and because of the location being close to the Hungarian border, many of father’s customers were Hungarian and he found himself spending more time there than in his home country. Eventually, and with the encouragement of my mother, father decided that it was time that he branched out on his own and so, together with his brother, Umi, bought a small rundown factory originally used for making enamel ovens close to the centre of Budapest.

Grandfather was obviously unhappy to be losing not just one, but both, of his sons to the Hungarian capital but realized the importance of them making their way in the world. It was also very important for both father and uncle to be seen to have made a success of the factory and knew their father would be watching their progress carefully. They eventually decided to continue using the factory for what it had originally been intended and over the following few years managed to establish a successful business which enabled them to both buy adjoining houses in Rambach Avenue. It was there in March 1927 that I entered into the world the youngest of three children.

As I stumbled toward the house, my stomach burned from the blows I had received and I had to keep wiping the blood from my eye. I would try to get inside without my mother seeing me. She would want to know what had happened and would continually question and fuss over me, not wanting to leave any stone unturned. I knew mother only wanted to protect me, her youngest child, but I was angry and frustrated at my impotence at the hands of Stani and his friends.

I mounted the steps leading to the front door and clasped my hand firmly around the handle before slowly and carefully turning it; the door opened a fraction and I squeezed into the large and imposing hall. I was moving toward the stair when the door at the far end of the hall suddenly burst open and my sister Alex dashed through

Stefi! she cried and rushed forwards, Oh Stefi what’s happened, what’s wrong?

Barely ten seconds before she had been in the kitchen telling our mother her news about being accepted into the Budapest Academy of Music and now, on seeing the state of me, her youngest brother, her natural gaiety had been replaced by absolute fear and concern at what she had seen.

Mum, quick, come here, Stefi’s been hurt!

My mother rushed into the hall, her housecoat billowing behind her, tears already welling up in her eyes.

Oh dear god what has happened to you? she screamed. I was still angry and frustrated and shrugged away their ministrations;

Please leave me. I hissed, it’s nothing and I put my hand out, pushing them away and dashed toward and up the stair.

Have you been fighting? cried out mother,

No said Alex, It’s worse than that, I can tell, He’s been set on by the brutes that are always hanging around near the school; that’s it, isn’t it? It’s Stani Lovas and his damned cowardly friends, they’ve done this, god I hate them so.

She began to cry, she knew all about Stani, he was continuously following her shouting insults, especially when he was with his fellow gang members. But when she had encountered him on the infrequent times when he was alone she would see a different side of him, his quiet, sullen and sly behaviour fuelled partly by hatred and part by desire; it was at these times when she felt most vulnerable and he was at his most dangerous.

I reached the top of the stairs, headed for my room, slammed the door shut behind me and threw myself on the bed pushing my face deep into the soft pillows. I lay there frustrated, angry with what had happened to me and with myself for not doing more to defend myself. But then what could I do; Stani always ensured that his young victims were alone and the odds stacked firmly in his favour, he was not stupid, he knew that to tackle anyone alone was running a risk of losing the fight and his reputation amongst his friends and, even worse, in his father’s eyes. Ludwig’s embarrassment at the loss of face, should his son be seen to fail, would be translated into a beating for Stani so, for him strength in numbers was the only option.

I heard the door open and the soft press of my mother as she sat on the bed next to me, the heady scent of her perfume invading my senses. So was it Ludwig Lovas’ son again then? I knew that I couldn’t deceive her and I didn’t want to vent my anger toward her and nodded, my head still pushed into the pillow. Oh Stefi she murmured and stroked my hair, let me look at you.

I turned my head slowly; my face was streaked with blood and tears; she took her handkerchief and gently wiped my face and hands and then pulled me toward her and hugged me tightly.

It won’t always be like this darling, we will get through this, you’ll see, remember god is on our side. She left silently.

I stayed in