Ilona Havas

"I hope that it never, never happens again. It’s a shame for the whole wide world that it happened. I also blame the American government because they closed their eyes. They let us go to Auschwitz and go to the gas chamber. They did not come to help us"

Name at birth

Ilona Fischer

Date of birth

10/17/1927

Where were you born?

Sajopetri, Hungary

Name of father, occupation

Jozsef Fischer, Hardware store owner

Maiden name of mother, occupation

Borbalo (Esther) Szasz, Homemaker

Immediate family (names, birth order)

Parents and three daughters: Piroska, me and Magda

How many in entire extended family?

49: uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, and great-grandmother

Who survived the Holocaust?

Me, my father and two uncles

In April 1944, I heard on radio that all Jews were to report to the ghetto. We were surrounded by German and Hungarian Nazis. Two Hungarian Nazis came to our house to take us away to the ghetto.

While in the ghetto, they did horrible things. They rounded up women including my mother and took them to a building to look for jewelry. They took the women into rooms where with a gynecologist they would inspect the women. My sister and I went with our mother. We could hear the women screaming in pain. Afterwards, my mother said she was all right but we saw that she was not.

I was in Auschwitz from June 13, 1944 until the first day of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year), September 18, 1944. I remember my grandmother trying to help my great-grandmother onto the boxcar, a Nazi said this old lady’s not worth it. He took her off and shot her. Her son right away said Kaddish (memorial prayer) for her

At a stop on the way to Auschwitz, my aunt called out to civilians for water for her two small children who were crying for water. I heard the civilians say, “She has the nerve to ask for water, give her poison not water”

My older sister Piroska and I were together for two months after surviving the first Selection. Mengele separated us; I ran after Piroska and was severely beaten. I woke up the next day in my barracks with black and blue stripes from the whip and blood all over my body.

I was at Bergen-Belsen from September 1944 to December 1944, Markleberg for six or seven weeks during the winter with no coats. We dug ditches and they would hit us if we stopped for even a second. I was at an airplane factory and then was marched for sixteen days, starving and freezing and then was at Theresienstadt for two months till Liberation.

I came back to my home, no one was there. Three weeks later, my father came home.

Two books have been written about many of the experiences Ilona went through, published in Hungarian: “Es nem verik felre a harangot” (They Did Not Ring the Bell) by Rab Erzseber and “Nincs Irgalon” (No Mercy) about her father’s life

Name of Ghetto(s)

Diosgyor

Name of Concentration / Labor Camp(s)

Auschwitz Birkenau / Bergen Belsen / Markleberg / Theresienstadt

When did you come to the United States?

January 15, 1957 after the Hungarian Revolution

Spouse

Barna Groszman Havas, A Holocaust survivor. We met in 1949 in Miskolc, Hungary. Later he was a Chrysler auto worker.

Children

Edith Rome, office worker

Grandchildren

Two: Rozzie who is an engineer and Erica who is a buyer and Four Great-grandchildren

What do you think helped you to survive?

Just to see my parents. I knew deep inside it was not going to happen, but I was hoping. How could I hope when I heard Mengele say, pointing to the crematorium, “see that door, people go in there and go out through the chimney.” To this day, I have difficulties taking showers

What message would you like to leave for future generations?

I hope that it never, never happens again. It’s a shame for the whole wide world that it happened. I also blame the American government because they closed their eyes. They let us go to Auschwitz and go to the gas chamber. They did not come to help us