Morris Irsai

MOTHER – In 1897 just before Pesach (Passover), my mother came to the Yeshiva in Wietzen, which is near Budapest, and asked my brothers and I to come home for the holiday. Only I agreed to it, and I have always thought that because I agreed, I was the only one of us brothers to do well on the final exam that we had that week. When I came home, there was a tremendous celebration, and I remember the happiness that I brought my mother. That's what I was thinking.

FATHER – My father, who was officiating as a Rabbi in a little community, was a strict man, much stricter than my mother. Each week we had to prepare a chapter from the Torah and be examined every Friday morning. He told us to study, that he would be away on official duty, and when he returned he would test us. The moment he left, the older brothers went out and started playing football, and never learned a thing. My father would return and we did not notice immediaiely, but when we did, we all ran back to our room, opened our books, and started learning. But did we get a telling off, and it was only our mother who prevented us from being beaten.

FIRST BROTHER – He was a stepbrother and he was always jealous, and he showed it in words and deeds. He was not very much liked by the rest of the family.

FIRST AND SECOND SISTERS – They were also stepsisters but on my mother's side. The difference between Haim (first brother) and these two girls was so strong in feelings and emotion that we never knew that they were stepsisters. Everyone was so good to them.

SECOND BROTHER – Yossie was my first real brother and he went to the army. He was the first to join up. He always behaved in a nice way, like an elder brother, and would look after us. He left very early for America, and he has a son who is a lawyer in New York.

THIRD BROTHER – Eugene was an exception in the family. He was a coward, a born coward. He was afraid of dogs. In those days, they did not have big ovens at home, and one day my mother sent him off with a huge tray with dough prepared for cookies to the baker. On the way, a dog started to chase him, and he ran, and the whole thing fell, and he fell on top of it and cut up his hands. He came home and said, "Look what a dog did to me." So my mother preferred him and spoiled him because she had pity on him. He was always frightened and became a hypochondriac. When my brother was 17 or 18, he kept saying that he was dying. The Rabbi at his Yeshiva couldn't stand it anymore and said, "Look here, you are going to live to be 100" and, as a matter of fact, he did live 100 years.

THIRD SISTER – Katie had a kind of tragic life. She got married to somebody she did not know and who was already half deaf. It was too late when she discovered it, and the profession he picked (being deaf was out of gear) was being a teacher. He did not hear the children and he shouted all the time. He shouted at home and he shouted at all his own children, and they had many children.

FOURTH BROTHER – Alexander was a very talented and brainy chap but unsettled, not steady. And since there was nothing else for Jews to do but teach, and it was a steady job, he took it up as a profession but he never considered it his calling. Since he wanted a lot of money, he began gambling. All night he was out in the gambling dens and, when the morning came, he fell asleep in his classroom. Once an inspector came into the room. The whole room was in absolute silence. He saw the children writing, reading or eating and the teacher sleeping, and he deduced that this was a common occurrence. This happened twice with the inspector, so they fired my brother.

FOURTH SISTER – Peroschka got married but never had any children. It was very sad, but her husband was quite good to her. In the early '30s they decided to come to Palestine and to settle. They were here for a few years but one of her husband's brothers or sisters died, and they went back to Hungary to settle affairs. Somehow he received an offer and stayed in Hungary, and they perished in the Holocaust.

FIFTH BROTHER – Jules was the real black sheep in the family from the moral point of view of those days. He was a salesman of artificial jewelry. He was not happy with his wife so whenever he sold to the salesgirls who serviced the customers, he "served" the salesgirls as well. Eventually he divorced his wife and then went on the slippery slope. He was picked up somewhere in Hungary and was one of the first to go into the gas chamber.

FIRST SON – Irving decided to go to England in 1936. Because he left and survived, eventually he could help us. In 1945 my wife and I escaped a death march out of Vienna and then walked back to Budapest, about 400 kilometers. Once there, we went to one of Wallenberg's safe houses. My brother was saved by Wallenberg. We met there. When he opened the door, we were both so emaciated. He said, "Who are you and who are you looking for?" We were impossible to recognize, we were both skin and bones. Then they notified my son in England that I was still alive and he sent an affidavit and we arrived in England in 1946. Since then we are together, and he looks after me. I consider him part of my own body.

SECOND SON – I loved Tibi very much, and the two boys were good brothers. The Hungarians took him to forced enlistment service on the Russian front with the German forces as forced labor camp units. He was at Forenash, a terrible battle. They knew the battle would be very severe and important, so they took all the Hungarian Jewish boys and they gave them an order to clear a minefield. They didn't tell them how to do it, just that when they see a ring to tear it out of the ground. Each one was blown up as the mines detonated. They all died, all the boys died.

SELF PAST – When I think about the past, it does not arouse a pure emotion because it was very mixed. Happiness and sadness. I look back on almost a century with very mixed feelings.

SELF HOLOCAUST – I was in the shadow of a terrible terror, a fear not so much of death but of torture. One instance that I was thinking about was in Vienna. Whenever a train arrived with coal carriages, we had to unload it. We put the coal in 25 kilo sacks and had to carry it down to a basement where they stored it. Once, I did not see the next step because it was dark, so I hesitated. An SS man was behind me and when he saw me hesitate, he lifted his foot and kicked me down the stairs. I went with a fall down 23 steps. We were always very frightened during the day. We got nothing to eat and, in the evening, they took us back to the camp and we got something there, like soup. This was stinking. We didn't know what was put in it. We were hungry and we ate it. We were in this camp for one and a half years.

SELF PRESENT – At my age, I have messianic thoughts. According to my reckoning in Daniel, we are reaching late Friday afternoon and the Sabbath of God is at hand. It will be heralded according to my calculation by a gigantic world conflagration – the famous Gog/Megog war – but it will be away from Israel.

SELF FUTURE – I want to live to 120 and I feel that I will. I would like to travel to England, Hungary, and America. I want to see my relatives in Hungary and visit my parents' grave, and then I want to go to New York City where I have nephews.

Otto Hailman

FATHER – In 1950, as he was dying, I said to him, "Father, you are very ill. Don't you think we should get the parson?" Then he looked at me for a long time and said, "Otto, do you think we should get the old man, that he should come over!" I said, "Yes, father, it is for you" and he said, "Yes, Otto. You know, in the fall, the leaves turn yellow and fall off the trees. The inevitable death of every human being is not bad after all. It's a necessity." That is how my father died.

FIRST BROTHER – My brother Hans, well, he had 15 professions. He was an adventurous person who went to sea and went around the world for many years. He was a racing driver, a chess player, a baker, a ship's stoker, this and that in construction. But he could not find anything that brought a unity to his future or that mentally satisfied him.

SISTER – In Germany my sister Sabine was a nurse. One day she said to me that she could see clearly that her future as a nurse would not satisfy her and that she wanted to emigrate. In 1921 she went to America. After working there for some time, she wrote to me that if I were able to send her some money she could then become a medical assistant. I did. She studied, took her exams, and became a laboratory assistant in a madhouse. Our friendship has lasted until today. I have five files of letters from her, about 3,000 letters during these 60 to 65 years.

FIRST SON – Wolfgang was a scientist. He was supposed to take over the farm here, but he didn't become a farmer. During World War II, he was south of Moscow, an artillery observer on the front line. During a calm period they were cleaning their weapons. He had a machine pistol of faulty construction. It tended to go off with the safety on. He left a bullet in it while he was cleaning it, and it went off. The bullet went in one side of his head and out the other. For three months he struggled for his life. The doctor in Leipzig wrote us that if we wanted to see him alive, to come. We went, but when we arrived, he was dead. His brain had been dissected and was sitting there blood red in the glass. That was June 6, 1942.

SECOND SON – We had the greatest hope for Ernst. He was the most talented and kindest of all. They came and took him to the Adolf Hitler School which was in Sondhofen. And, well, in those days you really had to.... I was a public servant ... you could not say no, after all. He was there until he had to report to active duty. In 1944 he was helping to defend the Stettin bridgehead against Russian attacks. He volunteered to go forward on a tank. They succeeded in defending the bridgehead for a while, but they were attacked by "Stalin organs" (rockets), and he was shot in the head. Why he didn't have his steel helmet on, I will never know. But he didn't have it on, and they got him. I wasn't able to find out where he was buried despite all my research. The Russians were, after all, ice cold, and buried everyone in mass graves. They didn't keep records of who was buried, and I still don't know where his grave is.

THIRD SON – Fritz is an engineer today, in the engineering department of Siemens. During the war he was wounded. He got his share. He married and has three children. He lost his first wife and afterwards remarried.

DAUGHTER – My daughter Karina married a master cabinet maker and opened a grocery store which is still doing well today. Economically, they are well off, but, in my opinion, because of all the hard work, she does not find time to live her life, to even read a book. She has two children who are doing fine.

FOURTH SON – Kurt had it best. He didn't go through the war. He was born in 1936 and got his high school diploma in Nuremberg. He studied mathematics and sports, and he recently became a principal in a high school in Munich.

SELF PAST – I am actually thankful that I was able to study and become a teacher. Now, in my old age, I have security through my pension and don't have any reason to complain about my fate, despite all the problems and difficulties which are connected to life.

SELF WAR – During World War II, I was an officer in the Air Force. (He was a soldier and pilot in World War I.) I volunteered for the front line. I had to supply 2,000 aircraft with fuel, and I worked on the telephone until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. every day. This was during the retreat from Stalingrad, and it did not take very long until we were short of fuel, and we could see the disaster coming. It was most horrible. (He begins to weep.) I don't want to recall all the details.

ABOUT JEWS – I didn't know many Jews. One, through my father's store. This Jew sold him some flour and there was sand mixed inside it. Our clients came and asked, "What kind of bread do you have? Sometimes when we bite into it, we bite sand." My father threw him out of the store, the Jew. But then, on the contrary, during World War I – it was November II, 1914 – my company was making an assault southeast of Lille, Belgium. We were storming down a hill and were pinned down at the bottom by artillery shelling. The entire first battalion just hugged the ground. The shelling would have got us but for a Jew named Ottenrofer, second in command, who all of sudden jumped up and shouted, "Everyone follow my command. Get ready to jump. Let's go." And the entire troop from first to fourth company, perhaps 150 men, followed him to safety. And that was a Jew.

ABOUT HITLER – If I want to be honest and open, I consider him a genius of will. In regard to his world outlook, I consider him immature. We Germans made a big mistake. We did not send this man to America for a few years or to East Asia for a few years so he could have experienced world politics first hand. He could have then come up with different politics. We had to endure heavy consequences because of this mistake.

SELF FUTURE – I am not a pessimist and I believe in the intelligence of our leaders, and that they realize that pacifism is a necessity for life.