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George Varnai's Life Story
رقم الكائنM1992/009:003
العنوانGeorge Varnai's Life Story
الوصف'Oneletrajzom'. Budapest, 19.08.1955. Three page typed account of George Varnai's life story in Hungarian. (George appears in the famous liberation photograph taken in Buchenwald on 11 April 1945; he is on the top bunk, in the middle, above the number 27)
George Varnai was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1924. During the war he joined the Partisans, but was captured by the Germans in 1944. After spending two months and 15 days in the Forced Labour Camp, he was sent to Germany, in November 1944, to a concentration camp, eventually ending up in Buchenwald. He left Hungary after the uprising of 1956, emigrating to Australia.
George Varnai was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1924. During the war he joined the Partisans, but was captured by the Germans in 1944. After spending two months and 15 days in the Forced Labour Camp, he was sent to Germany, in November 1944, to a concentration camp, eventually ending up in Buchenwald. He left Hungary after the uprising of 1956, emigrating to Australia.
مكان الإنتاجBudapest, Hungary
التاريخ 1955-08-19
الموضوعtestimonies
اسم الكائنtestimonies
مادةpaper
الأبعاد
- width: 295.00 mm
height: 210.00 mm
اللغة
- Hungarian Gyorgy Varnai
Autobiography
I was born in Budapest on October 4, 1924. My father worked as a tanner and later in a warehouse. In 1939 I finished four years of secondary school in Honved street. After finishing school for a short while I worked for Sandor Magyar’s car repair shop (Budapest VI, Vorosmarty street). Later I became an apprentice at the Langer linen factory (18 Veres Palne street), where my Mother also worked. I passed my exam in 1942 and started working on an embroidery machine. In 1944 the business was closed, and I went to work as a machine operator for the armaments division at the Sorosksar street depot of the Arms and Machine Factory. At this factory I got into contact with left-wing colleagues – it was a left-wing worker who helped me to get the job. On a Sunday in April 1944 Police came for me from my temporary accommodation (1st Floor, 16 Akacfa street) and I was taken to the Police Precinct in Pesterzsebet where I was held in custody. When I was taken, my Father followed me, and with the help of illegal comrades managed to free me that very night with a “temporary permit”. My father was in regular contact with illegal party members, he regularly went to Szeged , for instance with Mrs Vida who also went to Szeged regularly to take letters and food for the illegal Communists in the Csillag prison. My brother, Oliver (Wholstein) Varnai was sentenced as an illegal Communist by the Military Court in 1942 and he was also in the Csillag prison.
I was called up to forced labour and started my service on May 15, 1944 in Jolsva. I was nineteen and a half and was enlisted as an extraordinary age group. With my company of 107/302 from Jolsva I was taken to Ozd, Putnok, Sajogaloc, Doveny and Budapest. In Budapest I worked at the military food supply centre (Lehel ut) as well as Ferencvaros and Roskorendezo railway stations. Our company was accommodated in two partially bombed out houses on Reiter Ference and Szeged streets in the XIII. District. On the upper floor of our building we were hiding several men and women who escaped from a military factory or were persecuted.
On October 15, 1944, after the Horthy proclamation, we held a discussion about preparing for resistance with several members of the company. In our platoon I was together with Laszlo Molnar and Weinberger, who, as I was aware, had worked together with my brother in the VI. District Youth Movement. These comrades invited me to their room where I met with Gyorgy Spinner and Steppinger, who also served in my platoon and who were also members of the illegal movement. We extended the circle and also invited Laszlo Szucs, Wolfgang Kobor and Laszlo Bauer. The meeting resolved that Gyorgy Spinner would get in touch with other parts of the illegal movement and would let them know that we were in a position to obtain large quantities of weapons. The task of the other comrades was to disarm, in the first place, the commander of our company and his posse. Further, their task was to take the weapons obtained from the guards and get to the Rakosrendezo railway station to obtain more weapons from the military consignment there. This task was assigned to me and together with my comrade Laszlo Breuer we set out with our company’s two horse-drawn carriages. We extended our numbers with other trustworthy comrades and, at the railway station, with armed back-up we opened the German wagon there and filled our two carriages with various weapons, ammunition and hand grenades to take to our accommodation. We distributed the weapons to about ten people who knew how to use them and set out to check out the neighbourhood. We came across Arrow Cross fighters several times . They were about to abuse people in houses with stars in Szentlaszlo steet and Reiter Ferenc street. I trained a number of my comrades in the use of weapons and I also undertook the technical checking of the weapons we had obtained. On one of the days around 7 at night while I was in the middle of weapons training, we were told that SS and police units had surrounded our block. Our group tried to escape through the back door but there too there was a large number of soldiers.
Our leaders ordered us to give ourselves up as there was no point in resistance against the overwhelming odds in light of the large number of soldiers and even an armoured vehicle opposite the house. The SS and the soldiers told us to give up and they escorted us to a room. From there they took us to the Gestapo’s prison in Mosony street. The interrogation was carried out with the utmost brutality. One by one we were taken to the “torture chamber” and put on a rack. Not one of the about 140 people confessed anything. To end the torture, Laszlo Szucs took on himself to claim being the leader who had convinced the others to join the armed resistance.
On the second day of our imprisonment Laszlo Szucs and another 12 of our comrades were taken to the Gestapo headquarters on Svabhegy and from there they were deported to Auschwitz. Only two returned alive, Laszlo Breaur (currently lives in XIII. 21 Balzac street) and Wolfgang Kobor (currently lives in Berlin). I, together with the other prisoners, was taken to Hegyeshalom in a punitive company .
On November 6, 1944 together with the punitive company that had worked in the factory in Csepel, we were transferred to a Germany-based Gestapo unit in Nickelsdorf . We were put into a wagon and taken to Buchenwald. After we arrived in Buchenwald our group was sought out by several Hungarian political prisoners. We told our story and every day several comrades visited us. We formed small groups and during the visits we were given our tasks while in captivity. I got my information about the possibility of resistance from a Hungarian Communist named Zafir who got to Buchenwald from Belgium.
From Buchenwald I was taken to Stieben and later to Flosberg to work loading wagons. According to the instruction we were given by the comrades, we damaged the ammunition crates before we put them in the wagons and, whenever possible, we pulled the pin of the bazooka or secured it with a string to the door of the wagon so it would blow up when the enemy opened the wagon.
In early April, as the front got closer, the prisoners were progressively taken to the lower parts of the camp. Every prisoner knew that being taken meant a bullet, so they escaped to other barracks through a barbed wire fence. The commander of our barrack, who later became the mayor of Weimar, issued the order for us to quietly accept the refugees and hide them on the upper bunks. Then came the order that our barrack was also earmarked for evacuation. Our joint position was that we would not leave there even if they stopped the supply of food. The following day the SS came telling us to leave our barrack, but we refused to obey. There were about 200 of us. They stopped the food so all we had (to eat) for three days was the little food we had stored.
The following day the SS brigands started to flee the camp. From our barrack 12 people became members of the prisoner guard that had been set up. My task was to be a guard at the gate of the barrack. Soon, our group approached the nearby guard tower where the guards were shot by the weapons we had hidden. I went to the neighbouring Movie barrack and we raised the white flag on its roof. My next assignment was to capture the SS brigands hiding in the various empty barracks and secure them on the Appelplatz. The same day we went out of the camp to the surrounding forest and came back from there successfully. The search for the SS in the barracks of the camp and in the surrounding forest and nearby houses went on for two days. On the third day after liberation I lost my strength and got ill, and I was in the military hospital established next to the camp for three weeks. After my hospital stay I went to Barrack No 47. There I met November (??) Neufeld, Dr Krausz, Dr Neumann, Lenart Fabriczky, Gyongyosi etc. comrades. The only one from my company was Ervin Wohlstein, who died seven years after our liberation of tuberculosis that he suffered from due to his captivity.
At the May Day celebration we, the survivors, marched together and swore the Buchenwald oath. Around the 26th of May the Hungarian Committee let it be known that there was a possibility for a few people to go home with the Czech transport. I managed to get home with this group and I passed on information to the relatives of comrades still in Buchenwald. I also went to the headquarters of the Hungarian Communist Party on Koztarsasag square to inform them about Hungarians still in Buchenwald.
After returning home I worked at the Consumer Cooperative at 43 Szondy utca. Later I was employed in Mrs Karoly Lukacs’s stationery shop but I was hospitalised for six months in the Vas Street hospital due to my serious pleurisy, a result of my captivity. After I recovered I went back to the linen profession and I worked at the Langer linen factory until November 1, 1947. In November 1947 I opened my own linen workshop together with a co-worker. In December 1950 I went to work in a cooperative . From January 1, 1950 to July 10, 1952 I was the operational manager of the Terv (Plan) Apparel Cooperative. From July 11, 1952 OKISZ moved me from the cooperative to the Association’s Supply Directorate and I’ve been working there ever since as a team leader .
I married in 1948. My wife works at the Minta Cooperative as a statistician . In 1952 I was called up to serve in the Army and I demobbed as a sergeant. I am not a Party member. When I worked at the cooperative I was the secretary of the local Trade Union cell. I am currently a member of the Trade Union Committee of OKISZ. I am a member of MӦHOSZ .
My father was captured and executed by the Gestapo in Budapest after he broke out of prison in December 1944. My mother was taken to Auschwitz and she returned home in September 1945. I have two brothers, Oliver Varnai who works at the M.T.H and worked in the illegal Communist movement. My other brother, Miklos Varnai is an officer of the External Affairs desk of the Ministry of Defence.
Based on the above I request that the leadership of MӦHOSZ admit me to the partisan section.
Budapest, August 19, 1955
Gyorgy (Wohlstein) Varnai
4 Alig Street
Budapest XIII
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Mr George Varnai