Suzi Ated
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Suzi Ated
Last name: Ated
First name: Suzi
Father’s name: Emil
Mother’s name: Erena
Date of birth: 1.8.1942
Place of birth: Budapest, Hungary
Current address: Kfar Saba
places
Before the war:
Budapest, Hungary
During the war:
Budapest, Hungary
Bergen Belsen (Today: Lower Saxony)
Switzerland
After the war:
Switzerland
Slovakia
Budapest, Hungary
Austria
Palestine
Background Information
Budapest
Before the war
Budapest is the capital of Hungary.
In 1849 the Chain Bridge linking Buda with Pest was opened as the first permanent bridge across the Danube and in 1873 Buda and Pest were officially merged with the third part, Óbuda (Old Buda).
In 1867 Austria-Hungary formally established as a result of a Reconciliation which made Budapest the twin capital of a dual monarchy and started the second development in the history of Budapest, lasting until World War I.
Before Budapest was unified there were Jews in every part - Buda, Pest and Obuda.
In Buda the Jews were expelled a few times and after a short time they were allowed to return to their community. During The Ottoman Empire rule the Jews had a hard time, they were deported to different areas in the Empire. Two years later, Jews began resettling Buda once again. until 1686 Jews were heavily taxed, yet their community continued to grow. In 1660, the Jews population numbered 1,000 and was the largest in Hungary.
In Pest only Jews that lived there before were allowed to settle. The country decided on a special tax for the Jews to pay.
Obuda, was the only city where Jews were free to carry out certain trades.
The proportion of Jews in Hungary peaked in 1900 with 23.6%. Due to the prosperity and the large Jewish community of the city at the start of the 20th century, Budapest was often called the "Jewish Mecca" or "Judapest".
1919-1921 was the period of The White Terror in Hungary. After the fall of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, the new regime of Admiral Miklos Horthy organized army gangs to suppress and destroy any lingering communist elements in the country. Because a number of the communist leaders were Jewish, Hungarian Jews became the main victims of this “purification."
Throughout the years there were many Zionist leader and groups of hungarian Jews in Budapest, which worked hard to achieve their goal and also spread their ideas.
In spite of government-endorsed anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic violence, by 1935 there were 201,069 Jews living in Budapest making it one of the largest Jewish communities in the world.
*Budapest was the birthplace of Theodore (Binyamin Ze'ev) Herzl (1860-1904), the father of modern Zionism.
Geography
Budapest, strategically placed at the centre of the Carpathian Basin, lies on an ancient route linking the hills of Transdanubia with the Great Plain. By road it is 545 kilometres (339 mi) south of Warsaw.
During the war
On November 20, 1940, Hungary signed a treaty with Italy and Japan, thereby officially joining the Axis Powers led by Nazi Germany.
In March 1944, Jews were forced to wear the yellow badge. Freedom of movement was restricted and many buildings were seized. The licenses of Jewish lawyers and newspapers were suspended. On June 30, 1944, the Germans started to concentrate the Jews in certain parts of the city and plans were made to begin their deportation.
The anti-Semitic Arrow Cross Party, led by Ferenc Szalasi, came to power in October 1944. The new government immediately began carrying out attacks against the Jews, killing 600 people during the first days.
50,000 men marched on that Death March. Three days later the women and children were forced to join the men. These Jews were later transferred by the Germans at the border station at Hegyeshalom. The remaining Jews were concentrated into two ghettos.
By the time the Soviet army entered and occupied the city on January 17th, 1945, 76,000 Jews were handed over to the Germans, a number which includes victims of deportation and death marches. At the end of World War II there were approximately 90,000 Jews in Budapest. Meanwhile, over 100,000 Jews from Budapest, a majority of the population, perished.
Despite its being the end of the war, between May and July 1944 - in a period of 56 days – the Germans and Hungarians deported close to 500,000 Jews from the Hungarian provinces to Auschwitz.
the Arrow Cross took as many as 20,000 Jews from the ghetto, shot them along the banks of the Danube, and threw their bodies into the river.
After the war
On 13 February 1945 when the Red Army liberated Budapest, there were 100,000 Jewish survivors in the city.
Close to 80-90,000 Jews stayed in Budapest after the war and another 20-25,000 Jews left the city in 1956. By 1967, about 60-70,000 Jews lived in Budapest. Today, the figure is 80,000 and Budapest has the largest Jewish population in Eastern Europe.
On April 16, 2005, Holocaust Memorial Day in Hungary, commemorating the date on which the ghettoization of Jews in the countryside began in 1944, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany inaugurated a new memorial to Holocaust victims in Budapest.
Vienna
Vienna is the capital city of Austria.
On 4 April, the Soviet Red Army attacked the Nazis forces in order to occupy the city. The occupation ended in September 1945. until 1955 Vienna was under the Soviet union, US, UK and Frances control.
At that time (April 1945), 150 Jews came out of hiding. Another 150 had survived as workers in the warehouses of confiscated Jewish possessions, or as laborers in homes of SS leaders.
On 15 of May the Austrian state Treaty was signed and the four power control ended.
Close to 50,000 Austrian Jews were deported to the East during the war. As a result of that, between the years 1945 - 2000 the Jewish population in Vienna went through a lot of changes:
1945/46 - 4,000
1950 - 12,450
2000 - 9,000
Suzi’s Story -
Before the war
Suzi was born in 1942 in Budapest, Hungary to Emil and Erena, who had a big part in the jewish community and outside of it, they were always involved in zionist activities whether it was in youth movements or activities and groups for adults. Also they had a lot of friends, some of them were jewish and some were christian.
While Suzis mother stayed at home and took care of their family, her father worked in a lightbulb factory owned by a christian. This shows how good their relationship was with the people in their community.
Suzi tells that before the Natzis invaded Budapest they didn't experience any anti semitism from the non jewish people around them.
When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944 Suzi was around the age of 5.
During the war
The first thing the Nazis did with their invasion into Budapest, was ordering all the jews to leave their houses and move to different areas of Budapest, part of them were moved to the ghetto and the others were placed in specific houses that the Nazis chose and marked with a special star which represented that there were jews in this house.
Suzis' family was sent to a “Star House” that was located in a really good location in the heart of the city.
Every apartment had around 2 rooms in it which contained 30 people.
Before they were relocated to the “Star House” Suzi’s father took care of their important belongings and distributed them between their non jewish friends so they could keep them from the Natzis.
After a while, when the Nazis started deporting the jews to the concentration camps, Suzis' family was supposed to transfer to one of the camps, but instead was saved by Rudolf Israel Kastner.
Kastner was a jewish lawyer and journalist in Hungary, during the war he managed to organize a train that will gather a group of jews and will save them from being sent to Auschwitz or other camps by sending them to Switzerland.
Suzi and her family were able to get on Kastners train because a family of three didn’t show up. The minute Suzis dad heard about it he ran home, took Suzi and her mother and they drove to the train station and were able to board the train.
The ride was supposed to take a couple hours but instead took 11 days, because throughout the ride the Nazis tried to change the course of the train a couple of times in order to take them to Auschwitz; Although their attempts the Nazis failed and instead the train arrived at Bergen-Belsen.
Suzi described the ride as unpleasant, there were a lot of people on the train, and most of them were sick.
When they arrived to Bergen-Belsen her family was separated, at first Suzi was sent with her mother to the women section. After a while a Tiffus plague broke out in the camp, and when it reached the section where Suzi was located she transferred to her father in the men section.
Suzi tells about the days during their stay in the camp; Everyday the Natzis used to gather all the jews that were in the camp and arrange daily roll calls in order to keep everything under control.
While suzis family stayed at the camp the seasons changed and winter had come. Suzi describes the winter in Hungary as extremely cold, but she had luck. Before they got on the train to Bergen-Belsen (it was still summer time), her father succeeded to get home and take Suzis sleeping bag because he understood that they will be far from home for a long time and winter will come during that time. This sleeping bag was used to keep Suzi warm many times throughout the time they were in the camp.
After two month the Natzis gave permission to let 300 jews, that were part of Kastners group, get out from the camp, go to Switzerland and from there make an ‘Aliyah’ to Palestine.
Suzis' family wasn’t included in this group so they stayed in Bergen-Belsen for a couple more months; In January/February 1945 they were freed and sent to Switzerland.
When they got there and tried to get approval to make an ‘Aliyah’ they were rejected, and were forced to stay in a refugee camp; During their stay there, on March 15th 1945 Suzis father, Emil, started to write a journal where he wrote everything they've been through.
The original journal was written in Hungarian, but Suzis sister, Ariella, translated everything to Hebrew. Today the original copy is located in the museum of ‘Yad Vashem’.
After the war
When the war ended Suzi and her family moved back to Budapest, on their way there they stopped in Slovakia, her mothers birthplace, where they found out that all of her family were murdered except for one sister.
In Budapest. in 1947 her sister, Ariella was born.
In 1948 they moved illegally to Austria and stayed there 3 years. During their time there they helped survivors make an “Aliyah” . In 1951 they were able to get to Israel, where her father who got there half a year earlier, and already arranged a house for them in Herzliya’ waited for them.
When her father first got to Israel he started working at the Security Department, two years later near Bnei Brak a neighborhood was built especially for the Security Department employees, so Suzi and her family moved there.
Because their family moved a lot Suzi was required to study in multiple schools here in Israel.
After she graduated Suzi served in the IDF as a medic. Afterwards she decided that she wanted to be a flight attendant.
Suzi worked at EL-AL for 7 years where she also met her husband Zvi. After they got married the newlyweds moved to Givatayim and from there to Herzliya where she worked at a pharmacy for 36 years.
After her parents passed away Suzi and her sister started talking and researching about the Holocaust according to her fathers journal, 4 years ago they flew to Budapest and visited all the addresses that were written in the journal.
In 2006 Suzi started telling her story in ‘Zikaron BaSalon’ and she does that every year until today.
In 1969 her oldest son, Ben, was born. Today he’s a psychology lecturer and has a son who’s one and a half years old.
Suzi also has a daughter, Adi, who was born in 1973. Today she has three kids ages 16, 18 and 21.
In 2019 Suzi moved to ‘Bait BaKfar’ in Kfar Saba.
Pictures of Suzi and her sister at the monument that was built in Dunaszerdahely, Slovakia as a memorial site for all the local jews that were murdered during the war in Auschwitz.
The monument was built to mark the 70 years that passed since the war ended.
Suzis mother was from that little town, and most of her family was taken and murdered by the Nazis.
