Les Hajnal, Holocaust Survivor—Won! Part II

Note: Dear reader,

This article was written in two parts. Les Hajnal, Holocaust Survivor—Won! Part I  and this being Part II. Why? I felt it would be disrespectful to leave any part out of this courageous Holocaust survivor’s story that he took the time to share. It’s an account that deserves to be heard. If you haven’t read Part I first, click here.

When we left off in Part I, Les had just been reunited with his father. He was eight years old. Les’ mother had left him at the Zionist camp so he would have food to eat. He did not know where his father was, or what had happened to him after the Gestapo believing he was a British spy, took him away. Les’ father astonishingly appeared at the Zionist camp to take him back to be with his family.

Before the war, Les learned German in school. Much later, growing up under communism, Les learned Russian. But his mother had bigger dreams for him and told him that he must learn English. She told him, “Someday you will go to America.”

His father was well-off and had his business before the communists took over and forced him into a collective. He could afford tutors, one hour sessions twice per week and Les and Judy learned English. Like most children, Les would have preferred to be outside playing with his friends. In Les’ opinion, English was a poor substitute for soccer.

When Les grew older he understood how resourceful both of his parents were. While his father was missing during WWII, and his mother was on her own to try and find food for herself and her 4 year old daughter, (Les was at the Zionist camp), she had been taking all the remnants of what she owned, such as his father’s clothes, and bartering for food in the countryside—a chicken one time, or a half a dozen eggs the next.

As for his father, he had survived both the horrors of the forced labor camps and multiple concentration camps.

Les said, “When dad came back things changed for the better.” He wanted to leave Hungary as soon as possible.

One day he said to my mother, “Sweetheart, I have been offered a job as an electrical researcher by Philips in Eindhoven, Holland. They said if you want to go to Palestine, you can go there if you prefer. We have a factory there too. If you want to go to Palestine we can go, but we have to go now.”

Les’ mother said, “No. I’m not going anywhere until my father and brother come back home!”

His father sadly told her, “No one is coming back, Sweetheart. Not my mother, not your father, and not your brother. No one.”

Unfortunately, they stayed. After two months as his mother still held out hope to see her family again and refused to leave, the communists closed the borders and no one could leave. Hungary was surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards in towers. They learned what it meant to live behind the Iron Curtain. It was a capital offense to leave. Instead of Nazis, now they were ruled by the communists.

His mother blamed herself for having waited too long to leave. To add more pain to her guilt by insisting on staying, as eyewitnesses came back home, Les’ family learned that indeed, her relatives were not coming back.

Les said, “The Hungarians conscripted my grandfather to forced labor camps and my uncle decided to go with him because his father was 61 and he knew that he would need his help. At that time, 61 was the equivalent of 90 years old today.”

His uncle understood it was likely that they both would be killed, and they were.

The Hungarians took his grandfather and uncle on a forced death march, walking from Budapest, scrambling to go toward Germany. Those who couldn’t walk anymore, were butchered to death with their bayonets.

Les told us, “My grandmother was carted away. She was my sister’s favorite grandmother, but my sister was so young, she doesn’t remember her face except from pictures. Only some precious photos remain. The Nazis put her in a cattle car on the way to Auschwitz and she suffocated in the wagon. She was dead before they had the opportunity to kill her in the gas chambers.”

Les explained, Aliyah Bet stopped operating. They closed down when Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovakian foreign minister died. Masaryk had been helpful in using Czechoslovakia as part of the route to get refugees to Palestine.

In 1947, Masaryk had said that Czechoslovakia was interested in participating in the United States led Marshall Plan. When he discussed this with the Soviets, who had occupied Czechoslovakia during WWII, they vehemently refused to agree for Czechoslovakia to participate and in February 1948, a communist coup in Czechoslovakia followed. President Benes was forced to accept a communist-dominated government. Masaryk was one of the few non-communists left in place. On March 10, 1948, it was strongly believed that the communists threw him out the third floor window and told the world it was a suicide.¹

After the war Les’ father rebuilt his business until the Communists took over. He was told that now his business “belongs to the people.”  If he wanted to continue his business, he had to join a cooperative. His father became the head of a group of small business owners.

In October 1956, after ten years of oppressive Soviet rule, whereby freely elected Hungarian officials had been replaced by appointed Communist leaders, Hungarians had had enough.²

The Hungarian Revolution started by 200,000 protestors, mostly students.³ The revolt was encouraged by Radio Free Europe, suggesting that if they did attempt freedom from Russian rule, that the West would support them. Eventually it became clear that help from the West would not materialize.⁴

Les was a student at the university and it was a dangerous time. He said, “If you were caught on the street ‘wearing the wrong uniform’ you could be hanged from a lamppost right then and there.”

The Hungarians took back their country from the communists for a short period of time before the Soviets put an end to it with overwhelming force.⁵

At this point, Les was about twenty years old. He said to his parents, “This is it, this is what we have been waiting for! It’s time to get out of this hell hole.”

But now Les’ father didn’t want to leave. His father argued, “How could I leave? You want us to leave our belongings? We rebuilt our apartment after it was destroyed during the bombing in WWII. We have an orchard and summer house. We have a book collection, grand piano, and beautiful heirloom furniture. I don’t want to go.”

Les said, “O.K., I’m still going to leave.” It was November 1956. But he said, “I’ll be back.” He left with his best friend John who he remains friends with today.

They were two of the first three thousand people who left Hungary after the Hungarian Revolution. The border fences had been torn down. They had taken a train as close as possible to the Austro-Hungarian border, but then they heard that the Russians were coming.

They ended up hiking in the dark through the fields of freshly tilled soil across Vienna. The two countries were separated by a field. The Russians were looking for people who left. They were stopped a couple of times by Hungarian soldiers along the way. At first the Hungarian soldiers weren’t as serious as the Russians about stopping their fellow Hungarian citizens from leaving. When the two young men were stopped, money or a watch could be exchanged for safe passage. They stayed in Vienna for two weeks.

They set up a safe house with the peasants who lived by the border between Hungary and Austria. They told them that they would be coming back with people periodically and that they needed the villagers to help them and in exchange they would pay them money.

Their names were broadcast on Radio Free Europe to Hungary which let his parents know that they had made it safely to Vienna.

When Les first arrived in Vienna, the refugees were a novelty. The American Consulate offered them a free trip to the United States, room and board in America, free university education and they were ready for them to leave that same day. But Les told them that he wasn’t leaving and he was going back to Budapest.

Les’ goal was to return to Austria again, but not alone. First he would return to Budapest to try and convince his family that they should leave.

When they approached Budapest, it was late in the evening and a curfew had been imposed. There was a Russian tank blocking the road with its turret aimed in the direction that they were going.

Thankfully, Les could speak enough Russian and he explained to the soldier manning the tank, “We were in the country and we’re just going home. Are you going to shoot us if we walk down the road?”

The soldier replied, “No, just go.” Gratefully the Russian soldier was true to his word.

Both he and his friend headed to their homes. It was dark when he arrived at his apartment building and knocked on the door. When his dad answered the door he was shocked. After the hugs, kisses and tears subsided, Les’ father asked, “Les what happened? We heard on Radio Free Europe that you were O.K. We heard about shootings and you were already safe. What are you doing here?”

I said, “Dad I told you I would come back. O.K. Dad, now you are coming with me!”

His Dad said, “No we can’t go yet. Give us one-two weeks and we will meet you in Vienna.

His son said, “No, but I’m coming back again.”

Then his father said, “Then take your sister to Vienna.”

Les agreed, “Yes I’ll take Judy, but I’m coming back. I’m not going to let you go by yourself. I set up safe houses and I’m coming back for you. Get rid of everything you own and when we arrive in America, it will be a better day.”

Les took Judy with him and his friend took his fiancé. They traveled through the safe houses that he had set up and went back to Vienna.

As soon as they arrived in Vienna, he left Judy with his buddy’s mom and fiancé and headed back toward Budapest. He had made new arrangements with his parents to meet them about halfway back to Budapest.

Les said, “My dad sold all of life’s possessions for bubkas (nothing). It was worth a lot of money but he was only paid less than $200 that the person who paid him dug the money up from the ground from where he had buried it. The money was frayed and falling apart.”

They could only bring what they could carry in their hands. Les acknowledged, “We were coming only with our bare behinds.” What they chose to bring revealed their hearts.

Les’ mother brought the four machzorim (prayer books) that had been her father’s. They had also been used in Les’ bar mitzvah. Today Les’ daughter, who is a cantor, was given these sacred family texts as a precious gift. She also brought some family photographs.

Les brought his tallit (prayer shawl) from his bar mitzvah.

Regardless of his Dad’s previous concerns about his possessions, he didn’t bring anything, except surprise guests—a young woman with her new baby. During the revolution, she had been alone in Budapest.

The young mother’s husband was a news reporter for the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. He was covering the Hungarian Olympic team. As it turned out, about half of the Olympic team defected to Australia. She was the daughter of Les’ father’s good friend. His friend pleaded with him to take her with his grandson because he said they wouldn’t survive if she stayed there.

His dad told Les and his wife, “We have to bring her.”

Les asked, “Dad, how do we get across the border with a baby?”

His mom said, “If God wants us to go through, we will. Let’s go.”

Once again Les, but this time with his family and friends, went through the safe houses. They gave the baby a little schnapps to make her quiet. After a number of scary stops by Russian troops near the Hungarian and Austrian border, they gratefully made it back again to Vienna.

At this time you no longer could quickly go to the United States. There was a six-month waiting list.

Les’ dad said, “We can’t wait. We have to leave now. WWIII is around the corner!”

The options of where they could go quickly was Australia or Canada. Closest was Canada. They contemplated what they knew about Canada—they have good hockey teams and make good bikes.

Their choice was Canada. And for the only time in the interview we saw Les smile. He acknowledged to his daughter who had commented that he had found someone special there,“Yes, we went to Canada and that is where I met this beautiful woman, the love of my life,” as his wife smiled and cuddled against his shoulder. Amen.

And that takes me back to the title of these articles: “Les Hajnal, Holocaust Survivor—Won!” Why did I choose this title? After all, he had been through unimaginable horrors, some of which he’s never been able to express because it’s too painful and he’d prefer to block them out.

Today, at 84, Les still owns his own engineering firm with no intentions of retiring, COVID-19 be damned. But in life I don’t think there is anything more valuable than love, and he is surrounded by that daily. Hashem (God) has been good to him. He will tell you, even though he went through these horrible times, he never lost his faith.

I knew members of his family before I met Les. His daughter and his wife are loving, talented people. His daughter is a cantor, and of course a gifted singer. His wife is an artist and uniquely creative art teacher, that I took an art class from a couple years ago. Strangely, I ended up selling my first painting. I wrote an article about how that happened, If You Don’t Try You’ll Never Know the Story’s Ending .

I don’t know Les’ son, but I do know he loves his parents and he’s generous. Last year he won a trip. Guess where? Of all places to Hungary for a cruise on the Danube. He gave it to his parents. Their daughter met them there after the cruise and they were able to revisit his hometown and make some new positive memories and hopefully heal some of the pain.

As I listened and saw their family’s loving interactions on the virtual screen the one thing I was sure of was that they all, parents, kids and grandkids love each other. No more needs to be said. Les Hajnal, Holocaust Survivor—Won! L’Chaim!

May you be blessed with Peace, שלום, سلام

As always, I invite you to Join Me on My Journey…

¹History.com Editors, “Czech diplomat Jan Masaryk dies under strange circumstances,” History, A&E Television Networks, March 9, 2020, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/strange-death-of-jan-masaryk
²By Derick Handley, “Broadcasting a Revolution: Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian Revolution,” June 7, 2007, https://wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Derick-Handley.pdf
³By Derick Handley, “Broadcasting a Revolution: Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian Revolution,” June 7, 2007, https://wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Derick-Handley.pdf
⁴ By Derick Handley, “Broadcasting a Revolution: Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian Revolution,” June 7, 2007, https://wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Derick-Handley.pdf
⁵ By Derick Handley, “Broadcasting a Revolution: Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian Revolution,” June 7, 2007, https://wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Derick-Handley.pdf