The following text is not a historical study. It is a retelling of the witness’s life story based on the memories recorded in the interview. The story was processed by external collaborators of the Memory of Nations. In some cases, the short biography draws on documents made available by the Security Forces Archives, State District Archives, National Archives, or other institutions. These are used merely to complement the witness’s testimony. The referenced pages of such files are saved in the Documents section.

If you have objections or additions to the text, please contact the chief editor of the Memory of Nations. (michal.smid@ustrcr.cz)

Károlyné Moldavszky (* 1939)

• her father committed suicide essentially in the shadow of the World War I

• the reminiscence has memories of both German, Soviet and Romanian soldiers

Suicide in the shadow of war

Mrs. Károlyné M.’s war memory is connected to a sad family memory: her father committed suicide essentially in the shadow of the World War I front, the Red Army, because of a love affair. So she and her mother were left alone, and they were later able to move in with their grandmother to be together.

 

Everyday memories of bombings

The interviewee was 6 years old in 1944. One of his first memories is not what he heard about the war, but what he couldn’t hear: the radio had to be handed in as the front approached.

„Believe me, it’s a feeling (...) I heard it up there, a thousand meters, as the bombers were landing (...) I heard that rumble (...) oh my God, never again (...) that’s a fantastic feeling, for a child.”

The bomb didn’t hit their house in the Zsófialiget settlement, but on the empty plot next to it. There was a cellar on their plot, and they hid there like in an air raid shelter. He also vividly remembers that when he went up to the house from the cellar after the bombing at the age of 6, he was terrified: a soldier was standing there. He was looking for the hospital and got lost.

Soldiers’ everyday lives among local residents

The reminiscence has memories of both German, Soviet and Romanian soldiers.

„First the Germans occupied Zsófialiget. (...) We lived here on Árpád VezérStreet, and right at the first cross street the Germans set up camp. Mom came home in the evening, worked, had very poor eyesight and walked into the Germans’ bunker, tent. The next experience: it was Christmas, and the German officer came and tore up the Christmas tree that grandma had recently planted”, as they like. He remembers Romanian soldiers who sided with the Soviets from the front that reached Budapest, because a Romanian officer moved in with them. The officer’s family had died in the war, so he was constantly drinking and had tantrums. “They killed his family outside and he was half crazy. He drank his brains out.” The speaker’s grandmother asked the soldier to bring her some sugar.

„We were terrified that he would commit suicide and then they would exterminate us, because God forbid that we didn’t shoot him.”

The officers were assigned to them. They had a Russian officer stationed at his grandmother’s. He was so useful to them that he brought firewood, flour, and sugar.

„He was a decent man, we can’t say he wasn’t. (...) Until the war was over, my mother had to be hidden. Because she was a young woman, and God couldn’t have saved her... She was barricaded around the pond at my grandmother’s feet.” (...) “The Tatars came and pounded and made a circus, this Russian officer put them in order, they must have beaten them well.”

 

Life after the war

„A guy named Vörös lived across the street from us. And he was such a fascist or I don’t know what, a Nazi, he was constantly having people executed. The street was afraid of him. Every era always has its own. No matter how you look at it, when the system turned around, the same thing happened. (...) There aren’t many such divisive people. (...) I don’t know what happened to him, I think they spat on him too.”