This is an interview in two voices. That of Eva Leitman-Bohrer (Budapest, June 29, 1944), a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor, who is telling the story. And that of Panamanian journalist Alexandra Ciniglio, author of the 'The Secret Papers of Pape' (Nagrela publishers), who helped to Eva Leitman-Bohrer to learn about her past and that of her family, between Budapest and Madrid, passing through Tangier and the Mauthausen concentration camp.
They are also the voice of the victims of the Shoah (catastrophe in Hebrew, Holocaust), the murder of six million European Jews by the Nazis in World War II.
Now, the Hungarian ambassador to Spain, Katalin Tóth, and the director of Centro Sefarad-Israel, Jaime Moreno Bau, have presented the Hungarian edition of the book, accompanied by the Hungarian version of the book. by Leitman-Bohrer, Alexandra Ciniglio and relatives of the Angel of Budapest, the Aragonese diplomat Ángel Sanz Briz, who saved more than 5,000 Jews from death in Hungary, the interviewees explain.
Eva, the book in Hungarian is titled 'Pápe titkos iratai'. Tell us about Pape and your last name, Leitman-Bohrer.
- Leitman is the name of my biological father who I have never met, and who died in 'the death marches', because he was Jewish. Bohrer (Pape) is the person who married for my mother when I was four years old, who has lived 98 years, and who died 8 years ago: he is the father I have had all my life. My name is the name of two fathers, Leitman-Bohrer.
Alexandra, what has been your goal with the book?
- What I have tried to do in the book is not only to tell Eva's story, but through her story, to tell the story of millions of families, of millions of Jews who died in the same circumstances. Therefore, I not only tell anecdotes that may be familiar, but I have made an effort to situate the historical context. So that the reader, if he or she knows nothing about World War II or the Holocaust, can understand why this or that situation was important at that time.
What were the 'death marches'?
- (Alexandra) Eva knew that Pape was her adoptive father, because her biological father, whom she never met, died in the so-called 'death marches' that occurred towards the end of the war, when the German military forces were collapsing. The Germans, in desperation, began moving prisoners from camps near the front and using them for forced labor in camps in the German hinterland.
Hundreds of thousands of men, women and even children were forced to walk for miles and miles across borders, without proper clothing and footwear in winter, and without food. They were taken to labor camps, concentration camps or extermination camps, and many died on the way, and the bodies were left lying around.
Did a baby from a Jewish family have a chance of survival in 1944 in Hungary?
- (Eva) Practically none. I was born on June 29, 1944, and my mother always said it was the worst time to be born, because at that time Budapest was under Allied bombing raids coming down from the sky; and on the ground there were the Hungarian Nazi party's 'crossed arrows' looking for Jews to kill us; and on the other hand, since March 19, 1944, Hungary was invaded by the Germans. Hitler had sent to Hungary his best specialist in deportations to the death camps, and he was in Budapest at that time, it was Adolf Eichmann. At that time, my mother, poor thing, was already a widow and didn't know it yet.
My grandfather had a little bit of gold left and he was able to put my mother in a clinic, but after an hour they threw her out on the street, and she was looking for a shelter underground, because of the bombings. My mother had nothing to give me because she was skeletal, and I think they gave me boiled potato peelings and carrots.
You have referred to the Budapest Angel and a Swedish Angel.
When the bombing stopped, my mother heard from the doorman of her old house that letters were arriving from Spain from my grandmother, who had gone to Tangier in 1939, and then to Madrid. The doorman told her about some protected houses of the Spanish government. There was our savior Angel, Ambassador Angel Sanz Briz, who at the time was a young man of 30 years old, brave, generous, who could not see those massacres in the streets of Jewish people, like other righteous people of various nations, such as the great Raoul Wallemberg, Swedish and also a diplomat, and who saved the lives of some 5,200 Jews.
How did you do it?
- (Eva) The Angel of Budapest saved us from certain deportation. He put the Spanish flag on apartments and houses, so that they would be under Spanish protection. There was no food, but it was already the end of '44, and in '45 the Russians arrived. I have a great admiration and a duty of memory and gratitude towards Ángel Sanz Briz and his family, with whom I have a great friendship. With my children, I often give talks in schools and institutions.
We arrived in Spain in 1954. We were stateless, because Hungary had been occupied by the Soviets, who went from being allies to liberate Europe to occupying Hungary and closing the borders.
How did Eva and her family fare in the aftermath of this Jewish Holocaust?
- (Alexandra) The family managed to escape from Hungary under Soviet rule, and upon escaping are registered as stateless. For many years, she and her family suffered from the fact that they did not have a nationality. This is why this reunion with Hungary is important for Eva. Publishing the book in Hungarian is a matter of historical justice. It is nice to highlight it, because I feel that this publication is a way for Hungary to reconcile with its own past. In the book, Hungary does not look good, obviously, because it is a historical fact that collaborated with the Nazis, and in our research we highlight the figure of the 'Arrow Crosses', the Hungarian Nazis, who were equal or sometimes even worse than the Germans.
It is not a nice book for Hungary, and that is why I emphasize the value of not denying its past. In Budapest you can visit the House of Terror, a museum where they show how they made interrogations to Jews, torture places, etc., and they expose it there. The most curious thing is that the same place was later used by the Soviets to do the same.
They are reconstructing the memory...
- (Eva) For many years I have been a Hungarian without being Hungarian, that is, without caring much about it. At home I spoke Hungarian with my father and mother, it is my mother tongue, and suddenly an ambassador asked me to help her to reconstruct the memory, because in Spain there have been many Hungarian Jewish refugees.
Then, with the current ambassador, who is a friend of mine, I was taught to appreciate the country, which is the country of my parents, with 10 Nobel prizes, about 10 million inhabitants, which has had artists, musicians, intellectuals... I went several times to Budapest and I got hooked on the country, my father never came back because he was in three labor camps, and he survived because he was an accountant and was in the kitchens.
Hungary's initiative to translate this book is commendable.
- (Eva) I am deeply grateful. I was awarded the Grand Gold Cross of the Hungarian National Merit, for the work of memory of the Hungarian Holocaust, of the Hungarians in Spain. I am very grateful for the translation of the book into Hungarian, in which I did not participate. My level of Hungarian is familiar, from home, not for translating a book. I am also very grateful to Alexandra, who has managed to give me a voice in the book.
(Alexandra) Hopefully now, being in Hungarian, the story can reach younger people, who don't know about these issues. Today, Eva is one of the few Holocaust survivors living in Spain, and she is doing a very nice job of telling the story, with the book, and I wish she could do the same in Hungary. It is to put a face to history, and to be able to understand that yes, six million Jews died, but each one of them had a story, a family, it is to humanize history so that we can connect with what happened, and learn.
What is the most striking thing about your work with Eva Leitman-Bohrer?
- (Alexandra) When I met Eva she was not able to tell me her story. Like many other Holocaust survivors, her parents didn't talk about it: "clean slate". She also lived with her grandparents, and neither her parents nor her grandparents talked about it, and she didn't ask them. It was like a shared code: it was better not to talk about painful subjects.
Imagine a person who, after seventy years of age, begins to discover her own story. The day we presented the book in its Spanish version was very exciting for me because it was the first time I was able to listen to Eva tell her story in a coherent way, after the research she had done, and to be able to leave it documented for her children and grandchildren.
How many people died in Mauthausen near Linz?
- (Alexandra) Personally, I traveled to Budapest, to Tangier, to Mauthausen, the concentration camp located about 20 kilometers from Linz and about 150 from Vienna (between 1938 and 1945 some 190,000 people were deported to that camp, maybe more, and more than a hundred thousand of them were beaten to death, shot, or killed by injections or lethal gas: most were Poles, Soviets and Hungarians), and to other places, to be as rigorous as possible with the research.
From the book, I would underline the documentary value of reconstructing historical facts from real documents such as certificates, letters and photographs, offering a valuable testimony about the experiences of the victims of the Holocaust and the actions of this family. On the other hand, I tried to keep the writing simple and emotional, making a complex story accessible to a wide audience. It was three years in the making and we are very proud of what we have achieved with the book.
