Zurich, 1949 III
[Fathers handwriting:]
My Dear Mici and Bandi,
You have no doubt received my telegram in which I told you that we have arrived. Thank God, we successfully left our liberators behind on the 25th, these liberators, who are no better than the Nazi hordes. We had one more very anxious moment at the very last minute, just before the British airport, because the Russians stopped the bus, but fortunately IDs were not checked. The flight was uneventful; only Bábi disgraced me... [I threw up as we were coming in to land].
I am going to Bern tomorrow to see the Canadians, and hope that there will be no problem with getting visas. If everything goes smoothly, we board the ship in Le Havre on April 23rd, straight to Quebec.
We got two-week residency permits for Switzerland and our main headquarters will be here in Zurich at the Touring Hotel.
I sent three suitcases out here in December so that both Lacis family and we have basic underwear, bed-linen, coats, etc. We dont care at all about what was left back home; the main thing is that we have gotten this far. The fear and trembling with which we lived is almost unimaginable. I believe that you know that I was put under police surveillance. I had to report three times a week, I couldnt use the phone, I couldnt leave the house between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., etc., etc. It is also quite certain that I would have been taken away soon to a concentration camp. I was constantly trying all kinds of ways to get a passport but nothing worked. The reason eventually became clear, namely that the political police wanted to extort money from me. They demanded 1,100,000 forints (even at black-market rates, that is $25,000), for the exit permit. First,
[Mummys handwriting apparently written some days/weeks later:]
two women turned up with the letter from S. Szabolcs and a plan using a rail-car. Gyuri got very excited right away and said that he would just as soon leave right away. I said yes after thinking for a day. Laci and family hesitated for a week and decided not to. From then until the end of January, these touts turned up every 10 days, on the average, and sometimes they gave a different date, sometimes we said 6, 12 or 13 people. Szabolcs put an end to this splendid parlour-game when two beefy young men whom I did not dare to let in, taking them to be police[...] and showing the fear natural to former capitalists turned up at noon on Sunday, January 31 [error Sunday was the 30th], with his [signature/code] and photo, saying that the departure was at 5 p.m. Laci happened to be there and after a brief mental struggle, he also agreed to the plan. We left in three taxis, from three different parts of town and were supposed to transfer to the truck outside town. After a wait of 1½ hours, the truck arrived, with of course Russian papers and escorts and when they found out that it involved eight children, they wanted nothing to do with helping with this escape. After a brief debate, they drove off and there we were, at 8:30 p.m., 25 km from Budapest and with at least partly burned bridges behind us because no matter how careful one is, organizing such a departure with this many children cannot be done inconspicuously, especially if there is also some simple baggage, such as shopping bags, briefcase ... Back to the cold house, Bábi is crying, Dedette gossiping to the caretaker in the building that we went far away. I didnt know whose mouth or whose ear to bandage, should I serve food or turn on the heating. Meanwhile, Gyuri is running around the house, saying that along the way he had lost the couple of diamonds that he wanted to bring along and which he most definitely had in the pocket of his winter coat and which, after he had even searched for up and down the street, he found in the inside pocket of his jacket. This was at our house.
At Lacis: Laci decided that he didnt like this, that his inclination was to do something else, not escape and then, to the astonishment of the whole family, it was Mimi who was again willing to embark on the escape, stating that there was no other way, and that this was the last chance because if we escaped and they stayed behind, there would be no other opportunity for them and there might even be unpleasantness.
Another week of phone calls and anxiety went by when we finally left on Saturday, February 7 [error - Saturday was actually the 6th], again in three taxis, for a small village along the border where the above-mentioned truck was supposed to come for us at 7 p.m. We arrived there at the exact time, but the partner did not come. We listened for the noise of the car from the small room of the farmhouse until midnight, when we came to the reluctant conclusion that [...] something must have come up or they were caught the more frightening thought so we should lie down on the beds of uncertain cleanliness or on the ground, since the floor was earth. Our hosts sometimes comforted us by saying that the fellow was a very correct, reputable smuggler, that he can be counted on, that he will definitely come for us; sometimes they terrified us by saying that some people waited for two weeks. This went on for two days. Our poor children were not allowed to step outside the door or speak out loud so that no one would notice and tattle to the border guards. By Monday morning we were very desperate. There was no way back to Pest and even the men could not escape on foot because no one would be willing to serve as guides, which had been a flourishing cottage industry along the border until the beginning of December. Finally, a telegram arrived around noon, that they were coming at night. [The telegram said something to the effect that We are coming for the pigs].
Once it turned dark, we listened with renewed anxiety for the noise of the car until it finally arrived around 10 oclock. We dressed the children and ourselves hastily, the Russians hurrying us along, davaj, davaj. The scene was very evocative: the moon shining brightly, the dogs barking, the Russians, with their light machine-guns, urging us to hurry and to be quiet. Only one remarked when he saw the many children, that this was not a family, it was a skola, a school. In fact, our escort and driver was a very decent Hungarian tough; there was no way that he could get Russians if he told them that it involved eight children because they all became terrified. He eventually convinced them by saying that there were two families, with perhaps a child or two. They pitched our children and small parcels up, pulled the canvas up, threw boards and tires, etc. over it all, so that it would not seem possible that there were living people underneath. This took less than two minutes and then we were driven like mad over hedge and ditch, on side-roads and, knocking down the barrier at the Hungarian border, we arrived at the Russian check-point, where we waited [for] 3 [hours]. Our children made not a sound, not even when a half hour later our escort pulled everything off our heads and told us that we could go ahead and whistle without a care since we were in Austria. We arrived in a small Austrian city at 11:45 and spent the night there. There was only a single injury: the canvas rubbed the skin off Lacis nose.
Looking back on it seven weeks later, we can say that it all went off very smoothly. God was with us. One dangerous part was from Budapest to the border on the highway toward Györ. We were ready to be stopped along there to have our papers checked and we did indeed meet a police car but perhaps they let us go on because of the bad weather there was a horribly cold wind-storm and they did not pull over to check our papers. After that, the Russian highway police could also check cars with Russian plates. Our escort told us later that he was a bit nervous too, not for himself, because he had strong knuckles, and the Russians also had the davaj-guitar, the machine-guns hanging from their necks, but for us and the children because it would not have been pleasant to have shots fired. Well, no... Our children behaved most irreproachably but [...] medication [was useless]. On Saturday, when it seemed that we would reach the border around 8 oclock, around 6 oclock I started giving them chloral-hydrate in the car so that they would fall asleep by then, at least the two little ones. The effect was the complete opposite, they became cheerful, lively and unmanageable as never before + they fell down three times a minute.
This is how our escape happened. Given my matchless cowardice, it really counts as heroism. We carried it off, no fainting-spell, no nervous breakdown, and it was only once [or twice] that I whispered into Gyuris ear asking if he really needed a tannery in Hungary in 1948, and I didnt [beat him up] even once. So it was with understandable anger that I heard a few days later in Vienna that the rumour that was spread about us officially was that we had paid the 1,[0]00,000 forints and left with passports, thereby casting a shadow over the brilliance of our heroic deed and covering up the disgrace of the national security authorities for the fact that 13 of us escaped a police state at the same time.
We did not say goodbye to our parents or brothers and sisters. It seemed so unlikely beforehand that it would succeed and the departure was so nerve-racking that I couldnt really say goodbye. The thought was always in the back of my mind that we would arrive back the next day under police escort and also that my parents were so old and so sickly that the goodbyes themselves would not be good for them. And it was also better that they be completely innocent in case there was an interrogation. That is why we left everything in the house and did not take anything to the relatives so that if the police came, they would find it all together, pictures, carpets, clothes or [...] so that the relatives would not be harassed. The child of a real peoples democracy is very cautious and has many fears, which we still have not discarded, as you can see, since I still havent put peoples or place names down on paper.
I hope that you can form a small picture of our escape and that the writer and the reader can rest.
Many kisses,
Stefi.
).
