The Vision: A Candid Autobiography of a Survivor of Nazis and Communists

By T. W. Tibby Weston

A story of a victor - not a victim. A saga of survival interwoven with love, betrayal, catastrophe, grief, rebellion, armed resistance, persecution, chase, self sacrifice, precognition, miracles, discovery, sex and wisdom. It sheds new light on the Holocaust by answering hard questions seldom asked.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 15, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462818976

T. W. Tibby Weston

Tibor.W. Weston and his wife survived the Holocaust but didn't want to become permanent witnesses to it and live the rest of their lives proclaiming their suffering and losses. It would demand a life on an emotional roller coaster. "We don't want to become freaks. As survivors, we are condemned to life. We want to return to the sanity of normal living. Being a continuing witness to the Holocaust is not the way to return to a normal life, but is the way to remain a prisoner of the insane past." Having lived under Nazi and Communist oppression made him appreciate the freedom and culture of the US. He became the first foreign born to receive the coveted "Americanism Medal" awarded by the DAR. His autobiography has won the 1998 AUTHORLINK AWARD for biographies. Mr. Weston is semi retired and lives on his horse ranch near Austin, Texas.

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COPYRIGHT © 2000 BY T. W. TIBBY WESTON.

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This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

LES PRELUDES

SS MARINE MARLIN-JANUARY 1947

THE ENGINEERS-1943-44

THE VISION-JULY 1944

THE MESSENGER OF DEATH-OCTOBER, 1944

THE IDES OF OCTOBER

THE SWISS PAPERS NOVEMBER 1944

UNDERGROUND DECEMBER 1944-JANUARY 1945

BUDAPEST, SPRING 1945-LIBERATION

GERMANY, JUNE 1945-SEARCH FOR THE ORPHAN CAMP

BERGEN-BELSEN, JUNE 1945

VERA’S STORY

RETURN TO HUNGARY-EARLY FALL 1945

QUO VADIS?-WINTER 1945

GREED AND STUPIDITY-SPRING 1946

ESCAPE AGAIN-SPRING 1946

REFUGEE PROGRAM-SUMMER/FALL 1946

WHO IS A SURVIVOR?

THE ESCORT-JANUARY 8-27 1947

NEW YORK-JANUARY, 1947

THE PRICE OF NEW LIFE-1947

NEW YORK HARBOR-1947

STEALING FROM THE DEAD.

EASY MONEY-NEW YORK FALL 1947

FIRST IMPRESSIONS-DECEMBER 1947

LIFE INSURANCE-1948-1951

REFLECTIONS AT THE RAINBOW ROOM-1950

EPILOGUE NEW YORK-PROLOGUE HOUSTON 1951

RETURN TO HUNGARY 1974

REUNION 1988

POST SCRIPT

SHORT SENTENCES BASED ON LONG EXPERIENCE

In memory of the condemned. The faces without names and names without faces. Those who were condemned to die and those who were condemned to live. We are all the same. You were like us; we will be as you are. Only memory is eternal.

LES PRELUDES

The story you are about to read is factual. Life may not be as exciting or rewarding as fiction, but it can be strange and unbelievable. To protect the privacy of the people involved, some names have been changed, and you should assume everything in this book is fiction.

In the beginning it was hard to find the words to translate my thoughts and feelings. Music needs no translation. You can enjoy it and feel it without anyone explaining it to you. I was playing second violin in the symphony orchestra at age 18 and often I was carried into a world of fantasy by the music. As I played and listened to Les Preludes by Ferenc Liszt, the renowned Hungarian composer, I imagined that a story was told by the music. I heard a poem in music describing a lifetime with its idyllic happy moments, tumultuous upheavals, triumphs and tragedies. Little did I know then how much my life would follow the sound and fury of that composition. But also little did I know who I was then and who I would become.

So who am I? If I gave you my name, and all the names I ever used, my height, weight, age, color of my eyes and hair, would you know me? Even if I describe for you my sentiments, my preferences, my affections, my desires and dislikes, my allegiances, attitudes, aversions, fears and weaknesses and all my physical, emotional and intellectual characteristics, would you know me?

You would still want the most important question of life answered: How did you become who you are?

It would be easy to declare that I chose to be who I am after considering alternatives, but it would not be the truth. We are all formed by many outside factors. I was formed by my struggle for survival. Living in the affluent world of today it is hard to imagine a world of struggle. Yet there is a silent struggle for meaning even in this affluent life. In my life the two were closely tied together. There is no struggle justified for survival unless it is for a life with meaning.

I was raised during the worldwide economic crisis, known as the Great Depression and the resulting rise of the Nazi Empire of Germany. My home was in Hungary, a country that was heavily influenced and ultimately occupied by Nazi Germany. I was denied a higher education and had to learn how to get along in a world of systematic oppression, confiscation of property and ultimately physical torture and deportations to death camps.

In this book you’ll see a glimpse of the state of my knowledge; my Socratic questioning to seek the truth; the progress made by hard lessons learned; my beliefs and values and how they were shattered and rebuilt.

As you meet my family you will understand our economic standing; our attitudes towards religion and the Hungarian heritage; the political thinking of the times, and my reaction to my upbringing.

You will see how the conformity to mass culture and herd behavior led to the tragic end of my family and my society.

You will also learn the skills and attributes of a survivor as they are developed in my response to people, friend and foe, to the issues, to the adversity, to the danger and opportunity. Survival of the fittest does not mean survival of the strongest. The fittest are those who are able to adapt, to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable. Adapt to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.

I was buffeted by historical upheavals beyond my control, but I was always looking towards the future, towards a person waiting for me in the future as predicted by a Vision. So it was easy to be courageous when I really had no alternatives, except a belief in my survival. My anxiety was alleviated by the Vision, but my fear was real. You will find that my courage was not the absence of fear, but the resistance to fear.

I started in a world that proclaimed the virtues of self-discipline; self-criticism; the desire to be inconspicuous; hard work leading to achievement and satisfaction. That world was shattered by upheavals of brute force, injustice and bloodbath. I learned how to survive the oppressors and then had to learn how to survive the liberators. The bitter lessons continued when the clay feet of humans in peacetime America became apparent.

As a survivor I share a perceived guilt with other survivors; why did I survive and not the others who were more deserving? If I believed that I would survive regardless of the risks I’d take, why didn’t I take more chances and help others? I learned that to be a human being you must give of yourself to others, serve a cause, save lives or enrich the lives of others. The meaning of life is not what we get out of life, but what we can contribute to humanity, even on the smallest scale. You must first give of yourself and hope to be able to receive. Throughout the years I was not trying to invent a meaning for my life and survival, but to discover it. You are invited to discover it with me on the pages of this book.

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. "

Patrick Henry

American Revolutionary Statesman. March 23, 1775

SS MARINE MARLIN-JANUARY 1947

This may have been the fifth exhausting, distressing day spent in my bunk bed. My strength is sapped. Death would be welcome. Vaguely the irony of all this dawns on me. Through years of the war, starvation, fear and degradation, I wanted to live, and now I just want to die. I am seasick.

A terrifying noise surrounds my bunk. Coke bottles roll from one side of the steel walls to the other. Finally they shatter and new bottles take up the noise. I can’t get out of the bunk except for my horrifying trips to the bathroom. The swinging, swaying row of latrines and urinals are in the nose of the ship, where ocean waves slam against steel plates like explosive cannon fire. The smell of vomit, urine, and stale air makes me think of the Inferno of Dante. I thought I left all the infernos behind me when I boarded the SS Marine Marlin at Bremerhaven. I am angry with myself.

And frustrated. In the infernos of the war, I wanted to live. Now my body betrays me. Demoralized, I drift in and out of consciousness.

In my dreams or delirium the present and past seems to merge.

Cigarette smoke makes me retch or vomit. When a carton of cigarettes would buy diamonds, when two cigarettes would buy any girl, my need was three packs a day. Now being unable to stand the smell is ironic. I swear never to smoke again.

Just a week ago in Bremerhaven, invited by the Captain to join him for dinner, I felt honored as part of the official family. My duties, as escort for some 900 refugees emigrating to the United States, were to interpret for them, to help them with their questions, to make announcements through the P.A. system, and generally to assist the Captain and the crew with handling the refugees.

We were served a lavish dinner. This was the first time I had a dinner where food was piled up, in Swedish style, on long steam tables. We could eat as much as we wanted of the most incredible food I had ever seen. Both Captain Barr, and the First Officer, who had an unpronounceable Swedish name, tried to tell me what smorgasbord meant. Being more interested in eating than learning such peculiar expressions; I ate with my eyes, as my mother used to say. And I ate, and I ate. This also was the first time that the promise of America had been literally fulfilled. For the first time in many years, I felt totally full.

I liked the tall, pleasant Captain, who smoked a pipe with a wonderful, masculine aroma. That both the First Officer and the Purser spoke with a heavy accent, yet they were Americans and important persons, made me feel good

Captain, this date, January 8, 1947, is an important date for me. This is the first time in my life that I have eaten myself full. Just after the liberation in 1945, I also did, but it was not good food, just much food.

The Captain’s weather-beaten face broke into hundreds of wrinkles as he smiled I should have warned you, but now it maybe too late, that when you are on a ship, the first day you should not fill up with too much food. But maybe it is good if you fill up, because when you get seasick, at least you had enough food in you to keep you strong?

There was a hint of concern in his voice. Why do you think I get seasick? What is seasick means?

The Captain’s smile waned and his voice lowered. We are now crossing the Channel and the water is like a mirror. This usually means trouble ahead. We have reports of a bad storm in the Atlantic. Because you are the Escort, I will need you on the bridge to make announcements and take care of problems with the passengers

I started to worry and yet also felt important. After all, my wife and I were getting free passage for two people in exchange for my services.

Captain, can you tell me what it means if there is a storm? This is a big ship. I hope you don’t think it will maybe sink? My laughter was halfhearted.

No, no. She will not sink. These Liberty ships can break in two and still remain floating, but some people may be lost if they do not follow instructions

I forgot about the prospect of seasickness and started to worry about the breaking up of the ship. Maybe we should have waited until summer before sailing. But that couldn’t be done. We had to leave.

My drowsy mind went back to a few weeks earlier—to my birthday party on January 3rd.

Bill Rankin, the U.S. Army intelligence officer with whom I worked, walked in on my birthday party in the dining room of the Funk barracks. Music and laughter filled the air. The low ceilings made the noise louder, and the smoke created an atmosphere of intimacy. A three-man band played: a shiny faced accordionist with a jaunty, much-worn, befeathered Tyrolean hat; a guitar player wearing a brocade vest and a perpetual phony smile; and the emaciated, concave-chested piano player chain-smoking from the tray of strategically placed free cigarettes. Middle-aged Germans entertaining us foreigners. We were in uniforms, but did they know we were Jews? The blue-eyed blonde waitress knew. She was from Lithuania and looked so much better than any of our women. She asked me for my help to get her to the U.S., offering money, gold, and her body. I would not consider her gold or money, but the long blond hair, the startling blue eyes and the hourglass body proved too much to resist. My Lithuanian friend Herman Lurie, who worked with me at the office, told me how the people in Lithuania murdered and tortured the Jews. He said they were worse than the Germans. So I won’t help her. Nor will I feel guilty about her body.

So here we were, listening to the customary Lilly Marlene, feasting on the delicacies prepared by our Hungarian chef, who bounced among us carrying trays and showing off his waxed black mustache and white chef ‘s coat and hat. My birthday party. Surface joy existed here, thanks to the champagne and vodka, but to me everyone looked as though they were wearing masks. All of us, the victims and survivors, and all of them, the former oppressors and now losers.

We were creating a make-believe atmosphere in a theater where the curtain had just fallen on a drama in which we had all played a role. We all seemed to want to forget the play. No one dared to raise the curtain to see who had done what during the play. We each carried secrets of the recent past, and just celebrated together as if we were normal. Sort of learning anew what we must have forgotten, or perhaps never even knew. How did normal people have a birthday party?

Bill was waving his shiny, short-stemmed pipe at me, a frown on his movie-actor handsome face. Instead of joining the celebration and the happy-sounding crowd, he motioned me aside. He used the pipe as a kind of weapon, or tool, pointing with it and making punctuation signs in the air. At six foot tall, I had to look down on Bill, who was short, compact and muscular, and had a razor-thin Manjou mustache. I watched so that the pipe would not do damage to my uniform. His pipes were a nuisance. Dropping tiny embers that tended to burn miniscule holes in one’s clothes, furniture, and the carpet. Bill was oblivious to the caution with which his pipe was watched. He thought admiration, not concern, motivated us. So, carefully, I leaned closer to hear what he had to say.

Tibor, we think that there may be a contract on your life. We are booking you on the next ship to New York. You must get out of here. I just looked at him with my mouth open, not comprehending. What is a contract? I can’t go to New York now. We have lots of work, and my wife made me reservations to go skiing next weekend. This would have been my first attempt to get back on skis and I wanted to know if my ability as a skier had survived. I knew I could still play ice hockey, because I had skated a few days before on a small lake next to our barracks in Munich.

Bill sounded somber. "Tibor, you do remember the Russian major you spotted among the refugees? The one who pretended to be a German peasant? Well, he was not really an escaping refugee. Our investigation suggests that he was planted among the refugees to become a Displaced Person and enter the United States legitimately, perhaps to become a mole. You may have spotted one too many fake refugees and this one was a big one."

I knew what he was talking about. I was administrative assistant to the director of the refugee program for Austria and Germany. I met and talked to hundreds of refugees in Displaced Persons camps, and interviewed them at our office. After a while, I developed an uncanny sense of identifying people by the way they dressed and behaved. This was no accident. It was a survival asset I developed out of necessity. Many obvious things can be seen, yet we do not notice them. What people say and how they say it, the nervous glances and the body language can help you make accurate judgements. I could tell the nationalities just by the way people stood when they spoke to each other, the way they handled utensils. Germans had a certain stiffness of posture and they generally do not have spontaneous body movements. Many Jews trying to hide under assumed German identities were spotted by the Gestapo for their uncontrollable gestures and hand movements. While Germans would obey rules, stand in line and feel that orderly obedience to rules guarantees civilized behavior, most Jews, Poles and Hungarians would flout authority and regulation. I could spot soldiers by the way they subconsciously held their cigarettes inside their palms, as they did in battle to hide the glow from the enemy.

Sometimes people had identification papers contradicting my instincts. After a few such incidents, the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps, (CIC) recruited me as one of their operatives. Bill was my contact man, and I felt I was doing something very important. By spotting potential foreign agents, I was surely doing a patriotic service for the country where my wife and I intended to live for the rest of our lives.

We are concerned that now the Russians may want you out of the refugee program. When they want you out, they may send some people to take you out, by force, if necessary. You have outlived your usefulness, my friend. My wife and I always knew this day would come, but not so soon. We were not scheduled to go to the U.S. yet. My boss had plans for me, and he did not like my involvement with the CIC. Yet, in spite of my surface bravado, I feared the Russian GPU, the secret police. They already wanted me in Budapest in connection with the Underground Railroad affair. The smuggling of tens of thousands of Jews to Italy from Russia, Poland and Hungary under the very noses of the Russian Army must have embarrassed them. My escape from arrest may have angered them. I knew them to be crude and bumbling, but they were also patient, cruel and efficient.

I could not quite understand the misterious relationship between the Americans and the Russians. Was I asking too much by trying to understand such matters? In a confused, chaotic world, looking for logic was perhaps the sign of an immature mind, or a mind eager for truths, for meaning, for explanations; a mind trying to fill in the vast empty spaces of missing memory and reason.

Although I thought the Americans were naive and bungled most cases, I still liked their open, confident attitudes and amazing capacity to talk about everything without hesitation, or fear of authority. I sensed in the Americans the power of rightfulness but couldn’t believe that all this power was based just on freedom of the individual, as they claimed.

Even though we were still on European soil, the ground was vanishing under our feet. I was just a visitor here, from nowhere, belonging to nowhere, in need of a destination, or rather a destiny. Secretly I hoped that someday, somehow I would be just like these fearless Americans. I was willing to earn my right to be an American.

Bill Rankin told me that the CIC could not pay me, but they let me use the PX to buy cigarettes and other goods. I was glad and proud. I did not want their money, just the right to do something, anything, useful for the Americans. Besides that, the PX access was important when I smoked 3 packs a day in a world where a carton of cigarettes could buy diamonds.

Cigarettes. Now, that I cannot tolerate them, I realize how important they were in my life. Everyone is addicted to them. They opened doors, saved lives. They were part of the Holy Trinity: a cup of coffee, the newspaper and the smoke. Cigarettes were the common language that everyone spoke, regardless of race, religion or nationality. Friend, or enemy, the guard, or the guarded, the killers, or the victims.

THE ENGINEERS-1943-44

At daybreak the storm hits. It is one of the worst storms to hit the Atlantic in years. The ship is already bending to a dangerous degree and listing. Destroyers from Portsmouth come to stand by to make sure the passengers will be rescued should there be a breakup of the ship. I don’t see any of this. Vera comes by and stands by my bunk, giving me the news and tries to encourage me. She is not seasick at all. She eats, she smokes, she walks around, and whenever the speaker system calls for me—Mr. Weinberger, to the Purser’s office; Mr. Weinberger, to the bridge.—she goes and attends to my duties. I am glad I am married. We never had a marriage ceremony; we never had a ritual with someone saying things about marriage, commitment, or whatever they must say at marriage ceremonies. I’ve never been at a wedding; I knew not what weddings were. It was just that we didn’t want to be alone anymore. And now is really the first time I realize what marriage is. I am not alone anymore in the world, and she can carry on for me.

She holds my hand as I drift back to sleep. This has to be the strangest marriage the war has produced. I smile to myself. This marriage really started almost a year ago before I even found her and married her. It started with the Vision. It seems now to be many years ago, but it was in July of 1944 when I first imagined that we would be married. When the actual marriage finally took place one year later, there was no surprise, just a matter-of-fact event that was expected to happen—expected by me, but by no one else. Particularly not by Vera.

In order to understand what happened, I have to go back to when all this really started. It all started, perhaps, with my jumpsuit.

During the summer of 1943 I knew that the Hungarian Army would call me into the labor service and there was no sense getting a job other than some training to prepare me for what was coming. My parents and I concluded that perhaps learning about automobile repair would be a smart thing to do. My parents never faced up to the full reality of what was coming. They were not different from the rest of the community. Nobody should have failed to realize the scope of the disaster facing us. There was, however, a conspiracy of silence by the leadership of the Jewish community. The information about mass murder of Jews in other countries was just a rumor, denied or not believed.

My mother apparently knew and understood. Communicating with her family in Vienna gave her indications of the true picture. Perhaps not what was awaiting all of us, but what was waiting for her. I was just a boy of thirteen when one evening she said something at the dinner table that sent shivers up my spine. She had this far-away look in her dark eyes as she watched the candles flicker. I will die in fire. My mother always thought about herself as someone who could see beyond human vision. I had no name for that fearsome capacity. Somehow she always knew things, mysterious things. She never told me that I would not understand. On the contrary. She always said that someday I would. Her hair reminded me of her mysterious powers. It was solid black, but when the sun reflected on it, I could see a red glow like a halo in her hair. The black hair was reality, and the red glow was the mystery shining through.

My father was just like the leaders of the Jewish community. They did not want to know, did not want to see. They wanted just to get along. They resented my talks about resistance, about escape. They wanted to keep everything, as it was, business as usual, and to continue to live in the unreal present and ignore the looming future. They advocated that the Jews maintain law and order. Follow the law and follow the orders as the Nazis issued them. They deluded themselves, and refused to see themselves as the rest of the Hungarians saw them.

Perhaps the approach of the Red Army to Hungary’s eastern borders gave them renewed hope and optimism

We had neither guns nor a desire to possess them. It was against the law. Hitler made sure that German civilians had no weapons. No totalitarian system can exist, or prevail, where the citizenry has weapons to defend themselves against the excesses of the State. The Nazi reign of terror in Germany began with false news reports that the Jews, Bohemians, and Gypsies were arming themselves to overthrow Hitler’s New World Order. Hitler first demanded that all good people register their guns so that they wouldn’t fall into the hands of terrorists and madmen. Right-wing fanatics who protested firearm registration were arrested by the SS and put in jail for fomenting hatred against the Government of the German people. Hitler then declared that for the well being of the German people, all private firearms were to be confiscated. German citizens, who refused to surrender their guns when the Gestapo came calling, were murdered in their homes. When the local police refused to take away guns from townsfolk, they themselves were disarmed and dragged out into the street and shot to death by the S.A. and the SS

How often did we lament in the labor battalions our lack of weapons and the training in weapons usage? At least I had a rare opportunity to learn how to shoot. As part of my high school activities I was part of a para-military training program and had opportunities to participate in target practice. Being the sole, token Jew, our military trainers did not realize, or did not care, that they were teaching a Jew how to use a military weapon. My father was horrified when I mentioned that we ought to have a gun. I never