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BILL BENSON:
Good afternoon and welcome to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. My name is Bill Benson and I am the host of the Museum’s public program, First Person. We are in our tenth year of the First Person program. Thanks for joining us today. Our first person today is Mr. George Pick. We shall meet George shortly.
This 2009 season of First Person is made possible though the generosity of the Louis and Doris Smith Foundation, to whom we are grateful for again sponsoring First Person. Before I go further, I’d like to let you know that Mr. Louis Smith is with us in the audience today. Louis.
[Applause]
First Person is a series of weekly conversations with survivors of the Holocaust who share with us their first hand accounts of their experience during the Holocaust. Each First Person guest serves as a volunteer here with this Museum.
We will have a First Person program each Wednesday until August 26, and we also have First Person programs on Tuesdays until the end of July. The Museum’s website at www.ushmm.org, that’s www.ushmm.org, provides a list of our upcoming First Person guests.
This year we are offering a new feature associated with First Person. Excerpts of our conversations with survivors are now available as podcasts through the Museum’s website. A number for this year have already been posted, and George’s will be posted over the next several weeks. The First Person podcasts join two other Museum podcast series that are also available online. One is Voices on Antisemitism and the second is Voices on Genocide Prevention. The podcasts are also available through iTunes, and for those of you who know iTunes, you know what that means, and the rest of us are learning.
As most of you know, on June 10th, a man came to this museum and tragically took the life of Officer Stephen Johns. Officer Johns, in giving his life, along with his fellow officers, prevented more harm to people in this Museum and more horror to all involved. We ask you to join us in a moment of silence in honor of Officer Johns and his family.
Our first person today, Mr. George Pick, will his first person account of his experience during the Holocaust and as a survivor. For somewhere around 45 minutes, depending on time, we hope we’ll have an opportunity for you to ask George a few questions. We may not have the time to do that, because we only have one hour with George today. If we don’t, we will ask George and George will, has agreed to stay behind for a little while after we finish our program. So if any of you want to ask him a question directly, you’ll be able to do that after we finish.
Before you are formally introduced to George, I have a couple of requests of you and a couple of announcements. First we ask if it is at all possible, please stay with us throughout our one-hour program; that way we minimize any disruptions for George as he’s speaking and particularly, as you can see we have a very full house today, so that’s even more important in that case. If we do have time for question and answers, and you have a question, we ask that you make your question as brief as you can. I will repeat it so everyone in the room, including George, hears the question, and then he’ll answer it.
If you have a cell phone or a phone, or a pager that has not yet been turned off, we ask that you do that at this time. If you who have passes to the Permanent Exhibition today, please know they are good until the end of the day, so you can stay comfortably with us before going on to the Permanent Exhibition.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims; six million were murdered. Roma and Sinti, or Gypsies, people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany.
More than 60 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world, as we so dramatically saw on June 10th. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens, to stop injustice, prejudice and hatred wherever and whenever it occurs.
What you are about to hear from George Pick is one individual’s account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with George’s introduction.
And we begin with this photo of George Pick and his two cousins in a park in Budapest in 1941. George is seen seated at the front of the carriage. George was born on March 28th, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary to Istvan and Margit Pick. The arrow points to Hungary on this map of Europe in 1933. Istvan was an engineer, and Margit was a legal secretary. Here we see Istvan and Margit with their newborn son, George. George attended school in Budapest. Here we see George, and he is circled there, second from the top of the row, with classmates on a seesaw at his nursery school.
This is a Mother’s Day card that George made when he was in the first grade. Inside the card her wrote, “My wish can be written in a few words. ‘God bless you with both of his hands. Love, Uri’,” which was his nickname. Here we see George with his non-Jewish neighbors in 1943. After Hungary allied itself with Nazi Germany, new laws severely restricted the participation of Jews in the economy. And Istvan and Margit lost their jobs. Istvan was then conscripted, forced, into the Hungarian labor battalions. German troops occupied Hungary in March, 1944 and the Pick family was forced to move into buildings marked with the yellow star as you can see in the upper hand, left hand corner of the doorway.
That fall, the family went into hiding. But the Pick family would be discovered. The children were taken from their hiding place and George was placed in a home with 500 other children. George and another boy escaped and went back to their hiding place where George was reunited with his parents. Two weeks later, the entire family was sent to the ghetto. They were liberated from the ghetto by the Soviets in January 1945. In this photograph taken in January 1946, we see George with a group of survivors, all of whom the Pick family had been in hiding with. And we close our slide presentation with this contemporary photograph of George Pick.
Following the war, George lived in Hungary, where he earned a degree in engineering, until late 1956, when he escaped from Communist Hungary and made his way to the United States to live with his uncle in New Jersey. After working as a laborer, George got a scholarship for an intensive English language course at Temple University in Philadelphia. He then went to work for Westinghouse as an engineer. George would later teach Engineering at the Catholic University of America here in the District of Columbia. After earning his Ph.D., he worked for the U.S. Navy as an aerospace engineer from 1966 to 1995, retiring from federal service as a Technical Director at Navy headquarters in Crystal City, Virginia.
While George continues to do consulting work, a great deal of time is spent on writing two books. The first is his auto-biography, which he will soon complete, and the second is a scholarly work about 70 to 80 Jewish communities from a particular region in Hungary. George and his wife Leticia Flores Pick, who retired from the Mexican Foreign Service, live in Arlington, Virginia, and I’m pleased to let you know that Leticia is with us today. Leticia, if you wouldn’t mind, letting people know you’re here?
[Applause]
George performs several roles as a volunteer here at the Museum. He speaks frequently, especially at local highs schools and university, for the Museum’s Speakers Bureau. He also recently spoke at the National Defense University, and next month he will speak to the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General. George also works for the Education Department and Visitor Services. You’ll find George here on a regular basis, every other Sunday, when he serves as the Survivor “on call” to speak with Museum visitors. And he also leads tours of Museum exhibits such as last year’s exhibit on the Lodz Ghetto. And with that, I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our first person, Mr. George Pick.
[Applause]
GEORGE PICK:
Thank you, Bill, for your kind introduction.
BILL BENSON:
Thank You, George, for joining us and for your willingness to be our first person. In fact, George was our First Person guest exactly one year ago today, July 15, 2008. So, welcome for a repeat visit with us. We’re very excited about having you here. We have so much to cover George, let’s start.
You were nearly 4 ½ years old when Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939 and World War II began. Let’s begin with you telling us about your family and your community in the years that led up to the War and the Holocaust.
GEORGE PICK:
Well, I have documentation that my family had lived in Hungary, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for at least 230 years. All of my grandparents came from huge families, between 9 and 12 children. And, of course, they had families every averaging about four per couple.
BILL BENSON:
Which meant you had just immense numbers of cousins…
GEORGE PICK:
Right, the extended family was roughly 250 people. My grandparents’ and parents’ family were emancipated Jews. They were secular, mostly in the professions. They were lawyers, doctors, engineers. My grandparents moved to Budapest, which is the capital of Hungary, at the turn of the 20th century. My mother was born there and my father was born in another part of Hungary.
During the First World War, both of my grandparents and many of their siblings served in the Austro-Hungarian Army with distinction as Senior Officers. This did not help their children. Hungary was in an unfortunate position after the catastrophic war between the Allies, the Entente and the Central Powers which causes the German and Austro-Hungary, well, they lost the War.
And, ironically enough, Hungary was the first country in the whole of Europe which had the first anti-Jewish laws in 1921. This was called the numerus clausus which in English means that you have a certain quota of students in the universities. Most of my uncles and aunts at that time were students, and the quota was that only 5% of the Jewish students were allowed to continue their studies. And roughly 40% of the students were Jewish. Which means that most of them were, essentially, thrown out.
BILL BENSON:
So to reduce, with 40% of the student population being Jewish, they were reducing that to 5% with those new laws?
GEORGE PICK:
Correct. And some of these reductions were also violent. My uncle, for example, who was a medical student, was beaten up. And many of my uncle’s friends, including my uncle, was forced to leave the country in order to continue their studies. My uncle went to Padua, which is in Italy, and it took him 8 years to complete his medical doctorate.
Some other people went to the Netherlands some in Canada. My mother, after completing her commercial school, was forced to join the work force because my grandfather, who had 4 children, didn’t have enough money to support the higher education of his two sons. And so my mother was a bread winner and she gave her salary to support her brothers.
BILL BENSON:
Her cousins in effect, right?
GEORGE PICK:
Her brothers.
BILL BENSON:
Her brothers?
GEORGE PICK:
Her two brothers. One became a medical doctor, and one became an optician, actually. The depression in the early 1930s hit Hungary very hard. The economy faltered. My father was unemployed for a long period of time, and finally, my grandfather helped him find a job. He found a job in 1936, but unfortunately, he lost it in January of ’39. And the reason why he lost his job was the first anti-Jewish law, which was passed in 1938, which specified that only 20% of the work force can be Jewish. So, everybody who was above that quota lost their jobs. So, that’s roughly the background leading up to the war.
BILL BENSON:
While the full brunt of the War would not come to Hungary until quite late, in fact 1944 the lives of Jews in Hungary, including in Budapest, changed significantly even as the War begin in 1939. Tell us what life was like, how it changed with the advent of the war in September of 1939 even though you would not get the direct impact of warfare for several years.
GEORGE PICK:
Yes, well, following the first Jewish law, anti-Jewish law in 1938, there was a much more severe law in 1939. And in 1941, a third law passed which was very similar to the Nazi law of Nuremburg of 1935 which essentially declared the Jews a race and a religion. The first thing, as I mentioned, was an economic impact on my family.
My father lost his job and many others, of course, in the family and outside the family. The first thing which happened was that part of the first anti-Jewish law, there was an addendum to it, a fairly secret addendum which essentially said that the people who are untrustworthy, that included the socialists, the communists and, of course the Jews, would not be allowed to serve in the armed services…
BILL BENSON:
So, just across the board, untrustworthy.
GEORGE PICK:
Untrustworthy, correct. They would, instead, serve in forced labor brigades. This impacted my father in 1940, because he was, although Hungary was not in the war yet, the labor brigades became activated in 1940 and he was sent to what is now Ukraine. At that time it was the northeast end part of Hungary, and he was involved in building the roads. Now it was very, very heavy work for people who were in their 40s, late 30s, and who were not really physically able to do eight hours of work with a big hammer breaking up big rocks into small rocks.
BILL BENSON:
People that in today’s language we would call “white collar workers;” professionals, doctors, lawyers are now building roads…
GEORGE PICK:
Correct.
BILL BENSON:
…in harsh environments, too.
GEORGE PICK:
Harsh environments….My father was lucky. In these Jewish brigades, the people who were over seeing them were armed forces people, but they were pretty humane. They were, of course, Christian. My father, besides the heavy labor didn’t suffer any kind of hardship. He was deactivated in three months. In 1941-42, some relatives from Austria and Slovakia were able to escape into Hungary. We, the family, were able to hide them for two years with false papers. Their stories of the ghettos—which they went through and escaped from and concentration camp, particularly one of my grandfather’s cousins who was in Dachau for 3 months—seemed fantastic to us. We were absolutely sure that it could not happen to us.
BILL BENSON:
So even if you knew it was happening there, you felt somewhat safe from that?
GEORGE PICK:
Yes, because the Hungarian government though antisemitic, was not violent against the Jews. In fact in 1942, the Regent of Hungary was asked by Hitler, actually not asked but demanded, by Hitler to allow the Hungarian Jews to be deported, and he refused. The only concession he made was that in 1942, which was roughly 6 months after Hungary joined Germany in the war, Hungary had fielded an army, the 2nd army, and with that army, 50,000 Jewish men between the age of 20 and 40 were also sent to Ukraine. This, this included several of my uncles.
However, my father was lucky. He was a year older than the oldest who were, who were going to be sent there. Unfortunately, the people who went then, the army soldiers, were not as humane any more as they were in 1940 and as a result of beatings and horrors which were committed against them, out of the 50,000, 42,000 died, between April of 1942 and January of ’43.
BILL BENSON:
And these were the younger Jewish men from Hungary?
GEORGE PICK:
Right, these were the between 20 and 40.
BILL BENSON:
20 and 40.
GEORGE PICK:
Now, one of the things which happened which then accelerated this thing is that in January of 1943—which was a very memorable month, because this was the first German defeat in Stalingrad—the Hungarian Second Army, which was north of Stalingrad also suffered a catastrophic defeat. In 5 days, 150,000 Hungarian army personnel were wiped out. So, this was this, was really a black day for both the Hungarians and the Jews. Black five days, I should say.
BILL BENSON:
George let me ask you just a couple of questions about you personally during that time. You told me about an incident where in the building where you lived, you were slapped by a man. Would you share that with us?
GEORGE PICK:
Yes, sure. In 1940, I was enrolled in the first elementary school. You saw a picture of me on Mother’s Day. Our building was a mixed building. A few Jews lived there, mostly non-Jews. Some of them are extremely antisemitic, but some of them are just regularly antisemitic. There was a man…
BILL BENSON:
Kind of “normal” versus “extreme,” okay.
GEORGE PICK:
Normal versus…Let me explain what that means. There was a famous Hungarian Prime Minister who said, a person is an antisemite who doesn’t hate the Jews more than necessary. So, one of these persons lived in our building. He was a teacher, if I remember correctly. I was 6, 7 years old, and I had a mouth on me. So, I said something one to him, and he slapped me. I was shocked, I mean, my mother and father never slapped me, and he did. I told my mother this, and nothing happened for a day. But then, the man came up to us and apologized, and that was as surprising as his physical violence against me. So, this gives you some sort of a picture of a sort of a dualistic type situation where the Jews were not quite easy, but there was very little and they had some culture left in particularly the Hungarian intelligentsia, to recognized a Jewish kid is just as much of a kid as a non-Jewish kid.
BILL BENSON:
So some sliver of remorse over having done that in his case.
GEORGE PICK:
Correct, correct.
BILL BENSON:
George, you mentioned, of course, that, I think it was 1942, that Hitler demanded that the Hungarians give up Jews. You were able to hear Hitler’s voice on the radio. Do you remember that?
GEORGE PICK:
Yes, I remember it very well. I have remembered Hitler’s voice since 1938. I did not speak German, but I heard this horrible voice, his yelling and… Even if you don’t understand a word of this language, you could hear the hatred which came out, and I was very frightened. My father and mother told me, though that, “Well, Hitler is a big talker, but he’s in Germany and it will never happen to us here.” And as I said, until 1944, until the Germans came in, nothing happened.
In fact, one of the interesting parts which I should mention, that between 1941 and ’44, many Jewish men who were forced to be unemployed or lost their jobs, had hired Christians—we called them “straw men” —and these Christians were taking out licenses for business licenses, and the Jews worked on these nominal business licenses and paid stipends to those Christians who were willing to do this. In my case, we had a super in our building, Mr. Dudek, who did that for my father. And so, my father illegally, but well, was able to do business, and so we were not completely poor.
BILL BENSON:
So, to be sure we understand that “straw man” notion; the Christian would be the person who officially held the job.
GEORGE PICK:
Had the license to run a business.
BILL BENSON:
But, a Jew like your father was actually doing the work.
GEORGE PICK:
Correct.
BILL BENSON:
And could make some, some bit of a living doing that.
GEORGE PICK:
Correct. But, he would have to pay a certain amount of money for this privilege.
BILL BENSON:
And officially he’s got the license to do the work.
GEORGE PICK:
Yea, he got the license and my father did the work, and then he got money for that.
BILL BENSON:
George, during that time, was there thought given by the family, by your father, to leave Hungary? Was that something that was even on your minds?
GEORGE PICK:
Yes. What had happened is in 1938, one of my uncles—the one who graduated from Padua—was able to get out of Hungary, just in time, before the war, and came to the United States. In 1940, Hungary was still neutral. He sent us papers, affidavits, to come to the United States. So, we went to the embassy, and the embassy said, “Well, that’s very nice. You need to wait 3 years before you can get admission to the United States.”
BILL BENSON:
The wait list was that long?
GEORGE PICK:
The wait list was 3 years long at the time, yes. Because of this bureaucratic problem, we were stuck there. We couldn’t move but, yes, we tried to do that.
BILL BENSON:
George, for you personally and your family, you really did experience the first real threat, as I remember in 1943 while you were on vacation.
GEORGE PICK:
Yes. Well, ironically enough, while the rest of the Jews of Europe were already—many millions of them were—already dead, the Hungarian Jewish community was still able to live like human beings, so much so that we took a vacation in the summer of 1943. My mother and I went, it’s a nice place, it’s called Matra Mountains. They have some nice hotels there, and quite a number of places where you could walk around, and we did. The first frightening thing which we found out was a gathering of black uniformed people whom we knew as the Arrow Cross. At that time this party was illegal, but many thousands of people joined. Their program was extremely pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish.
BILL BENSON:
So, a fascist organization?
GEORGE PICK:
They were a fascist organization who later on took power, actually, took the power in Hungary. But at that time they were just yelling and screaming anti-Jewish you know, “Death to the Jews,” etc. My mother and I were very frightened, because we were right in the middle of this crowd and tried to be as invisible as possible so we could get out as soon as we could.
BILL BENSON:
1943 was also a year in which, I believe, your father was again called up for a labor battalion.
GEORGE PICK:
Yes, in the summer of 1943, shortly before our vacation, actually. He came back and went on vacation with us. He went to Transylvania, near what is now called Cluj, because it is part of Romania. At that time it was part of Hungary, and he also was involved in building roads. Again, he was lucky, because his commanding officer was a very, very decent man. So, aside from the heavy work, they didn’t suffer anything other, no other deprivations.
BILL BENSON:
And at that point, though, his age was no longer a way for him to not be forced to go into a labor battalion.
GEORGE PICK:
That is correct.
BILL BENSON:
Yea.
GEORGE PICK:
Yea. They increased the age from 1942 on to include essentially everybody below 45. Then in 1944, which we will talk about, that age limit went to 60. So, he was 42 at the time, so he went in.
BILL BENSON:
George, you were able to, at that time, still continue some schooling.
GEORGE PICK:
Correct.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about the schooling during your time, and also about the Jewish Boys’ Orphanage School that you attended.
GEORGE PICK:
As I mentioned, I started school in elementary school in 1940. This was a Jewish school, a secular Jewish school, where girls and boys were in coed classes. Of course, we were somehow shielded from these things 6, 8, 9 years old people. We got Jewish teachers. We learned a little bit of Hebrew, some German--not very much-- and the regular classes which we had. It was a very nice school, and I have very fond memories of it.
I have a picture you didn’t show, but it was a class picture. Every year you just got the class picture. One of the saddest things when I look at these class pictures is that half of our class were orphans. Remember this is the Jewish Orphanage School. We were the day students but half of them were orphans. They wore a very bleak, black uniform. Their hair was cut very short. The reason why I am sad when I look at this picture is because only about a year or so later, when everything broke apart in Hungary, these children, my classmates, were taken to the Danube and shot, because there was a raid in school, in orphanage school, and these orphans were taken and shot together with their teacher. But of course in 1943 we didn’t know.
BILL BENSON:
They were classmates, yea.
GEORGE PICK:
They were my classmates, correct.
BILL BENSON:
At that time, George, in the building that you lived in, one of your neighbors was, I believe, actually in the German Army. Say a little bit about that.
GEORGE PICK:
Yes, he was not in the German Army. He was in the SS.
BILL BENSON:
SS.
GEORGE PICK:
A doctor, and his sister and mother lived in our building. He was one of these ethnic Germans. He joined the SS some times in the late 30s. In April of 1944, shortly after the German invasion of Hungary there was a raid, a minor air raid on Budapest. My grandparents and one of my aunts lived in a little house not too far from where we were. Very close to their house there was a bomb. A bomb which fell near and their house itself was fairly severely damaged.
With this, one of my aunts—the aunt who lived there, a young woman—also was, because of flying glass, she got all bloodied. So, after the raid was over, my father went over to see how his parents and his sisters were doing, and his sisters were bleeding so she, he took her to our building. Being naïve and knowing that there is a doctor in the house…
BILL BENSON:
One of your neighbors.
GEORGE PICK:
One of our neighbors. [My father] knocked on the door and asked if he could help, if he could give her first aid. The man had a black uniform on, and he looked at us with a hatred which I have never experienced before. He said, “Look, see my right arm? I killed 20 Jews with them. You think I’m going to help another dirty Jew? You will all end up in the same place as those.” And so, he refused. And that was my first, I would say, brush with this kind of hatred. It was not just a general one, but a personal…
BILL BENSON:
Very personal.
GEORGE PICK:
Very personal hatred.
BILL BENSON:
George that was April 1944, just as you just said. The month before is when Germany invaded Hungary, March 1944. What caused the Germans to invade Hungary that late in the war? And then besides the incident you just described, what did that mean for you?
GEORGE PICK:
Well, in 1944, you mentioned 19th of March, was the time when Germany already—and some of the higher Germany authorities already—knew that they lost the war. Hungary was a, not a very, very good ally. I mean the Hungarian army was wiped out in 5 days. There were secret negotiations between the Hungarian government authorities and the Soviets already about talking—Soviets and the British—talking about getting out of the war.
Unfortunately, the intelligence and diplomatic community both were infiltrated by German intelligence officers, so they knew precisely what was going on. They knew that if Hungary would get out, or would fall, then they would essentially have a couple of million German soldiers in Ukraine which would be trapped. So, they no longer trusted the government and they invaded us. Now, the problem was that in the highest level of authorities in the army, they were all pro-German. So, when the…
BILL BENSON:
In the Hungarian army?
GEORGE PICK:
In the Hungarian army…
BILL BENSON:
—pro-German.
GEORGE PICK:
—pro-German, right. What happened while the regent was out of the country to talk to Hitler, the army—the German army—came in and without a shot, in 24 hours essentially they invaded Hungary. With them came Eichmann and his small commando of about 120 SS officers, and their only mission was to now, essentially, do what they wanted to do 2 years earlier, which is to do the “Final Solution” on the largest Jewish community in Europe, which was still relatively untouched.
BILL BENSON:
So here it’s so late in the war, 1944. As you said, the Germans were really losing the war. And yet, at that time, they now are occupying Hungary and they’re focused on killing all the Jews there.
GEORGE PICK:
—deporting the Jews from Hungary.
BILL BENSON:
—to death camps.
GEORGE PICK:
—to death camps, and then of course, killing them. What had happened is, was almost amazing. There were 825,000 Jews living in Hungary, a huge community. Everything was so well organized, in advance, obviously. And not, 120 SS officers would be incapable of doing this. What they got is the enthusiastic support of roughly 32,000 of the Hungarian Gendarmes who were in the provinces, small towns, and villages.
BILL BENSON:
Probably members of the Arrow Cross in many cases …
GEORGE PICK:
Probably members of the Arrow Cross, but they were rabid antisemites and looking forward to get rid of the Jews. So, what happened is between May and July the 7th, specifically, they were able to ghettoize—put them in ghettos—and deport 430,000 Jews in 6 weeks.
BILL BENSON:
In 6 weeks.
GEORGE PICK:
In 147 trains. Most of these trains went to Auschwitz. Ninety percent of the people were dead within 2-3 hours of arrival. Over 100 of my extended family members, included. By mid-July, or 7th of July, there were no Jews in Hungary except in Budapest. What happened then is up until then, of course, my father was inducted into the labor brigades again, and this time he was sent to the west. They were building fortifications, cause as I said, they knew that the war was over and they were trying to slow down the advance of the Soviets as much as they could. So, they used the Jewish labor. We, at that point, were still living in our apartment until the end of June. But then the, and of course, between April and June we were decorated with the six…with the Star of David, decorated is very much in a…
BILL BENSON:
Ironic sense.
GEORGE PICK:
Ironic sense…We were taken, everything which was worth of any value such as radios, bicycles, jewelry, rugs, everything, was taken. Then we were, we got the order that our building was not qualified as a Jewish building, and so we had to move. We moved to, with aunts and cousins--actually 2 of my mother’s grandmother’s sisters and several of her cousins--lived in the same building. So, eight of us lived in two rooms. This was at the end of June. On the 2nd of July, which was a very memorable day for me and everybody in Budapest who lived there, was the first saturation bombing raid. Thirty percent…
BILL BENSON:
—By, by the Allies.
GEORGE PICK:
—By the Allies.
BILL BENSON:
—By the Allies.
GEORGE PICK:
Correct. At that point, if you remember, in June, from June, the Allies were already back in Europe.
BILL BENSON:
D-Day and…
GEORGE PICK:
Right. After D-Day, they had already the, the reach of the airplanes, so they could bomb Budapest massively, and they did that. It was a very, it was a Sunday, and three bombs fell within about 300 yards of the building we were in. So, we did not have much of a hope that we could survive this bombing raid, but we did. A lot of people around us did not. Some of these buildings were completely demolished, lots of dead.
BILL BENSON:
In fact, the superintendent that you talked about…
GEORGE PICK:
Right.
BILL BENSON:
You told me about him calling you outside as the raid was beginning…
GEORGE PICK:
Right.
BILL BENSON:
…to look. What did you see?
GEORGE PICK:
Okay, now we lived in a Jewish building, and one Christian family lived in the same place, by name of Varga. It was very decent man. He was a super there for many years, and knew my great aunts, and my cousins, second cousins. So, he was a very decent guy. He knew that I was afraid, so he just pulled me out and he said, “Well look up, look up into the sky,” and I saw these hundreds of huge airplanes, sliding slowly over the sky. He said, “Well, do they look dangerous to you?” I said, “I don’t know, but I want to go back.” I went back to the bunker and he did too, and then we found out in a few minutes that yea, indeed, they were dangerous. We lived through this. This was the 2nd of July, important.
At the same time, two things happened, unbeknownst to us. One is that Roosevelt and several other politicians of the world had sent a letter to Horthy, the Regent, saying that unless Horthy will stop the deportations this is just a first taste of what it means to destroy Budapest. There was one thing.
The second thing was that the Nazis, the Hungarian Nazis, at that point felt that they were strong enough to put a…to essentially arrest the Regent and have a coup in Budapest. So, the 3,000 of these Gendarmes, who had deported Jews in between May and July, were sent up to Budapest to essentially do two things. One is to have the coup against the Regent and replace the government and two is to start deporting the 160,000 Budapest Jews.
Well, fortunately, there was a courageous colonel, if I remember who had some word about this attempted coup. He was the C.O., the commanding officer of an armored division, and he immediately brought the armored division up to Budapest and gave the order to these Gendarmes to dissolve. Otherwise they would shoot them, and get out of the city. That happened in, on the 6th of July, so there were four days of, which we didn’t know, because the Jewish houses were closed. They were more like jails. We only had two hours a day to get out and buy food for ourselves. Otherwise, we were locked in and Mr. Varga was responsible for this. So, and we had no radio, no telephone, we didn’t know what happened in the world. We were really, really in an isolated situation. But, on the 6th of July, when the attempted coup failed Horthy gave out an order to stop deportations. There was one train which they, the last train which went on the morning of the 7th with 1,200 people from a suburb of Budapest. But it stopped.
BILL BENSON:
So the, as you explained earlier, that intensive period of deportation over six weeks began in early May, and that’s why it stopped on the 7th of July.
GEORGE PICK:
That is correct.
BILL BENSON:
And I believe you told me that the rate that you described of the Jews that were sent to Auschwitz and other places was somewhat like 12,000 a day?
GEORGE PICK:
Correct. Actually, it was 12,000 a day. This is gruesome, but I have to tell you. The gas chambers and mostly the crematoria which were designed for a certain number of thousands of people per day were overloaded and one crematoria blew up, because it was overheated. Imagine 12,000 people per day being gassed and burned. It went on day after day after day. Very, very few people survived. I have had some friends who did. I visited Auschwitz, actually in 1994. I saw this with my own eyes, how this crematoria looked and how the gas chambers looked. You know, you see pictures but the pictures don’t really tell precisely what it was; how vast that the camp was, how people lived there. I had two friends who were both survivors and who explained to me very, very vividly what had happened to them and their families. Although I have seen many pictures, many films, many books, it was an entirely different experience for me to see.
BILL BENSON:
George, to grasp the enormity of it, that war is coming to a close for the Germans, but they’ve in effect perfected their craft of deportation and killing to the point where they could pull that off, as you say, with 120 officers in six weeks at a frenzied pace to complete this “Final Solution.” But it stopped the deportations formally in July 7th.
For you and your family and the remaining Jews, there still was a long way to go in that war. What I’d, if you don’t mind, what I’d like you to do now, because our time is growing short, tell us about what happened then over the next seven months. You know, and I know you don’t have a lot of time to do it but not only did you live in fear of deportations, these endless bombings, a city ravaged.
GEORGE PICK:
Right. Yes, we had bombings twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. I was absolutely terrified. My mother, every time there was an air raid, we went down to a bunker and my mother put a big pillow over my head. That traumatized me so much, the noise, just the pure noise that until my mid-thirties I always had to sleep with a pillow over my head. And even today, I use ear plugs at night.
The summer went relatively uneventfully. My father came back from where he was. His unit was in Budapest. Until October 15, we had a moderate government comprised of generals. Then on October 15, the Regent had done a, something which I thought he was brave about, and that is he made a declaration on the radio that Hungary is out of the war.
This was a foolish declaration, essentially, because it was immediately squashed. Extreme Nazis took over. I should say that Eichmann left Budapest in much frustration at the end of July. He figured he couldn’t do what he wanted to do, but on October 18, he was back. The deportation of the Jews of Budapest then started with a vengeance. 10,000 women were deported five days after this take over. The Nazis were rampaging in the streets.
My father came home about ten days after this and said that he’s going to be deported. He had a commanding officer who gave everybody 24 hours as a furlough, and he was not going back. Hopefully, a lot of other people did the same thing. He went to a Christian friend of his by name of Gyékis and in a panic said, “Well, you know, I’m going to be deported next morning. Can you do something for me?” He sent him into a place which was camouflaged as an army uniform factory but in fact, it was a hiding place for roughly 60 or 70 Jews. About ten days later, my father sent a messenger to us with a very short note to immediately come to this particular address.
My mother was very traumatized, because she--her mother and several of her aunts were living there—and the note says distinctly, “You and George come. Don’t tell anybody anything.” So, we went and after the war we found out that just the very next day, the whole building was raided and they took them to the brick factory and from the brick factory walking, this was now beginning of November, there were no transportation anymore. So they walked these people—50,000 of them—to the Austrian border. That raid was roughly 50%.
So, here are three old ladies, including my grandmother. Mr. Varga at that point, who knew my uncle who was under the protection of Raoul Wallenberg called that house where he was, the building, and my uncle called Wallenberg’s office. They went and they pulled out my grandmother and her two sisters and one daughter. Nobody survived in the building. Then we were already in hiding with my father. Most of the families came in, roughly 170 people were hiding there, and then we were raided.
BILL BENSON:
And up to that point, to the outside world including the Germans, they thought this was a functioning factory making uniforms. In reality, your father was making uniforms but posing as a worker.
GEORGE PICK:
Yes, my father, actually I have his working permit. We didn’t make uniforms. We had a bunch of uniforms and if you walked in you thought it was a uniform factory.
BILL BENSON:
But, completely a fabrication.
GEORGE PICK:
It was a complete fabrication. It was a fantastic idea of not one, but many people, Jewish and non-Jewish. When you tried to hide—and it turned out we were only one of four of these “factories” —1,100 people, the logistics is fantastic. I mean, you have to feed these people. You have to have something for these people. This was all organized by a bunch of people who were, obviously, very brave and took their lives into their hands. They helped and they were Communist, and Zionists, and Christian and non-Christian.
I never, I made some research, but I never knew how many people were involved. I found out who was the head of this whole thing, but I didn’t find out who were all the helpers. It had to be many. So, this was a really a heroic story which I found. Until December the 2nd, when we were raided, and the raid was I found out later on, was because the head of this organization was betrayed. The head of the organization was moving around. He never slept in one place within two nights, for example. They knew three addresses, but not the fourth one and so they raided us as one of the three. We thought that we were finished because they came in, three of the Hungarian Gestapo detectives, with sub-machine guns and they already separated the men from the women and the children. Fortunately enough, they knew us so that in December, 2nd of December the war was really just a matter of days or weeks maybe. So they were receptive to be bribed, and bribed they were. They went away and they said we are under their protection now.
But after this, a few days later the committee of the people who were in this group decided that the 22 children are not safe enough here. So, I was one of the oldest ones, and they took me to a Red Cross orphanage home which was under the protection of the International Red Cross. I didn’t like that place at all. It was 500 children, very few adults, everybody was hungry, and crying. My friend who was my age and myself decided to, that we would get out.
The next morning we asked one of the employees who came in—this was a locked down building—one of the employees to please let us out because we want to buy some food, and she did. Then we ran away and ran back through the gauntlet of Nazis. The streets were all protected and they were walking and they were trying to get as many Jews and other people. We were sort of sliding in and out of alleys until we got back to our parents. Then about two weeks after that, the police—who was a little more sympathetic—came and took us to the ghetto. My father decided we had nowhere to hide, so we ended up in the ghetto, just a few days before Christmas.
BILL BENSON:
1944.
GEORGE PICK:
In1944.
BILL BENSON:
George, let me just stop for a second. We’re right at the time we should normally end, but if you will, if you will stay with us for just a few more minutes, if you wouldn’t mind. George, before you tell us about what happened when you were in the ghetto now, mid-December right before Christmas 1944, tell us what happened at the orphanage you ran away from.
GEORGE PICK:
Well…
BILL BENSON:
…Red Cross orphanage.
GEORGE PICK:
Yes, of course, I found this out after the war. It is a blessing when you don’t really know how much danger you are in. But I found out that 4-5 days after I left, and my friend, the orphans were taken to the Danube and they were all shot, 500 children. My friend and I, if you remember the last picture there are only two children there and those were the two. So the other 20 of our children in the hiding place were also murdered.
So, in a ghetto we, we were put in a building which was full of old people. It was an old age home which they brought in. We got two rooms, only 22 of us, 65 of us eventually ended up in the ghetto. The other ones were able to escape and go into some other hiding place, but we couldn’t. These 65 were divided into three groups. Twenty-two went into this one place. It was just a few days before the siege of Budapest began.
BILL BENSON:
By the Russians?
GEORGE PICK:
By the Russians, yea. By then the Russians completely surrounded the city with a huge force. The siege began on Christmas day. After that we went down to the bunker. The food supply was almost non-existent. The food was available except nobody wanted to go to the streets, because it was 95% sure that they would be shot. You know, every building had sharpshooters on the top of them, and anti-air guns, and everything else, and anything which moved on the streets were shot.
BILL BENSON:
And the Russians are shelling…
GEORGE PICK:
And the Russians were shelling as well. So it was becoming very unbearable; no water, no electricity. We had a bunker where we were in the basement which had just a dirt floor. So, imagine that we had a hole on the floor, in the middle, that was used for our bathroom. The whole place was stinking, of course. The old people started to die. We lived, the building where we lived was fronting a square, the central square of the ghetto. When there was a lull in the fighting, these old, dead bodies were taken to the square. I went there once, and there were thousands of people. I mean,…
BILL BENSON:
Thousands of bodies?
GEORGE PICK:
Thousands of bodies, yea. It was a very cold winter so they were frozen. We all thought that we’d all end up there. We got weaker and weaker, my father and mother both. Well, by the time it was all over, we thought we would not make it for several reasons. One was that an SS soldier came in and said that they were going to blow up the ghetto. There was another plan, which I found out after the war. That they were going to bring in a massive force and they would bring in machine guns and would machine gun everybody down. But as things turn out, and this is probably history as well as, as some, some fable, is that at the very last day practically before this mass murder would take place…There were 70,000 people in the ghettos. Wallenberg’s people had intervened with the SS general and said, “Stop this, because if you don’t we will get you personally and we will hang you.” Whether the SS general was a decent man or not, whether he got an initiative, or whether he got orders from above we will never know. Reason why not is because the SS general later on with his forces, moved to Buda, blew up all the bridges, and hung on for another month. Then they tried to break out and this SS general was the leader of the break out and he died. We never know from him. We only know from people who were with him, second hand, of what had happened. But the point is that they wanted to destroy us, and they couldn’t and then the Soviets walked in at night on the 18th and by the daytime…
BILL BENSON:
On the 18th of January?
GEORGE PICK:
The 18th of January of 1945.
BILL BENSON:
How did you know, before we conclude, how did you know you were liberated?
GEORGE PICK:
Well, you know we, we lived in this constant noise, 24/7. All of a sudden it was quiet. You couldn’t hear anything. Our basement was pretty deep but we had a few slit windows up there. A few people, after this noise, you know when you all of a sudden know that something had happened, something different. You don’t hear it. Somebody snuck up and looked out on the window and they saw not the soldiers but just the boots.
We know how the SS boots and the Hungarians boots looked like, and they were not Hungarian or SS boots. So, we figured that these were Russian boots and indeed. So, we, nobody was very ecstatic. We were sitting there, lots of people were. We didn’t know whether they were dead or alive. Around noon time, people started to leave. My father and my mother and I did and then it took us four hours to go back to where we used to live before we were thrown out. The siege was on I mean we had, as we were walking, you know, the artillery fire above our heads went…
BILL BENSON:
Because as you said, the SS had retreated over into another part of the city and were still hold…
GEORGE PICK:
Holding out, yea, for a month actually.
BILL BENSON:
Yea.
GEORGE PICK:
We went, it was still very dangerous. We saw many dead people, dead horses, half destroyed buildings but somehow we got out and we went home. Our neighbors looked at us, incredulously. They didn’t think we would come home. In fact, some of the more antisemitic ones lost all colors because they figured that now we are going, this is retribution time. We didn’t do anything. We were just physically very weak.
Mr. Dudek did something which very few people have. Before we left we left him with a big suitcase full of food and he gave us that back and he squeezed us into the bunker there because as I said, the siege was on for another month. We didn’t see daylight again until the middle of February.
BILL BENSON:
Wow. George, I am, I mean obviously, there would be so much for George to tell us about what happened, to be able to get back on their feet, and then of course, the Soviets now took over and George would be under Soviet control and lived there in Hungary until 1956 when he escaped. I mentioned in the very beginning that George is almost done with his autobiography. I don’t know about you, but I gotta read it. I have to read it.
I want to thank George for being our first person. I’m gonna turn back to George in just a moment to close our program. I want to thank all of you for being here with us very much, remind you that we’ll have a First Person program each Tuesday ‘til the end of July and each Wednesday until the end of August, invite you back this year to one of our programs or next year if you’re back in Washington.
Our next program is Tuesday the 21st of July when our first person will be Mrs. Estelle Laughlin who was born in Poland. After the Nazis invaded Poland, Estelle and her family were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. In early 1943 the family went into hiding but was forced out when the ghetto was liquidated. They were sent to Majdanek where her father was killed. After enduring forced labor in two concentration camps, Estelle, her mother, and her sister were liberated by the Russians. Please remember that a podcast of our conversation today will be available on the Museum’s website in a few weeks and others are already there and you’ll be able to access them through iTunes as well. It’s our tradition at First Person that our first person gets the last word. And so with that, I’d like to turn back to George to close today’s program.
GEORGE PICK:
You heard that I am here because of others. People who were taking chances with their lives but also others who were doing seemingly small things; gestures, opening a door, letting us out, letting us going somewhere. And I want to put this into your minds that you don’t have to be heroic, necessarily, to be life savers or to help others. You can do small things and you would never even know what the consequences of those small actions are.
Secondly, I want to tell you something which happened in just a lunch prior to our interview here. Somebody asked me about stereotyping. We all have a tendency to stereotype. You know, “These people are different,” whatever they are. Whether their skin color is different or their language is different, whatever. My answer was when they said, “What do you think of stereotyping?” I said, “As a scientist, stereotyping of any sort, not just for the human species, but any species, is unscientific because our DNA, all of us individually are different from each other. And that includes the whales and the chickens and the elephants. You cannot say that these are ‘bad’ or these are ‘good,’ because they are all individuals—all of nature and all of the human species." I like to leave you with that thought.
[Applause]
