Andy Sterling was born in Hungary shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Although Hungary was a German ally in the war, Hungarian Jews were not exempt from the Nazi roundups. Sterling’s family finally sent him to safety in a Catholic orphanage in Budapest. This story is excerpted from Hiding to Survive: Stories of Jewish Children Rescued from the Holocaust by Maxine B. Rosenberg. In this personal narrative, Sterling relates his experiences as a Jewish boy being hidden in a Catholic orphanage, where he could never reveal his true identity to anyone.
"...In 1941 Hungary, where I was born, entered the war as a German ally. A year later, when I was six and a half, my father and other Jewish men in our village were sent away to do forced labor. For the next eighteen months I didn’t know where he was.
When he came back in late 1943, he told my family stories about Jews being rounded up throughout Europe and said that we were no longer safe. He thought we should leave our small village of Nagykata where everyone knew we were Jewish and go to Budapest, the capital city, where we might blend in more.
First my parents left and moved in with my aunt. For the next few months they tried to get things in order. Suddenly, in March 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary, and Jews living in and near my village were relocated to a ghetto. My grandmother, my younger sister Judith, and I went there along with my grandmother’s brother and his wife.
Every day Jews from this ghetto were being sent to the camps. We knew that our time was running out. Luckily my uncle’s daughter knew a Christian who had connections and helped us escape. A few weeks later we learned that all the Jews in our ghetto had been shipped to Auschwitz.
Now I was with my parents again. My father had already gotten false identity papers for himself and had become an ambulance driver. I, though, had to wear a star and abide by the curfew.
That September the Germans, with the Hungarian SS as their helpers, began deporting Jews in huge numbers and shooting Jews on the street. At the same time, the Russians were bombing the city. Things got so bad, my parents forbade me to leave the apartment and said I could play only in the garden within the building.
One day I disobeyed and went across the street with a little mirror to see how the sun’s rays reflected off it. Out of nowhere, an SS man holding a leashed German shepherd appeared and grabbed me by the collar. He accused me of giving signals to American flyers and was about to take me away when the superintendent of my apartment came to my rescue. He convinced the SS man to let me go.
At this point my parents realized how much danger we were in and said that my sister and I had to be hidden. When I heard that I’d be separated from my parents, I was very upset.
My parents said I’d be going to a Catholic orphanage in Budapest with Paul, their friend’s child, who was two years older than I. Paul’s parents had found the place, and the priest in charge was willing to hide us. Judith, now five, was being sent to a convent, and my mother was going to live with a Catholic family in town. My father said he’d be moving around in his ambulance trying to get false papers for my aunt and grandmother. Before I left, my parents warned me not to tell anyone at the orphanage I was Jewish. Because I was circumcised, they said I had to be extra careful not to be seen when I undressed or urinated.
In October 1944, my father drove Paul and me to the orphanage. We left at night in the middle of an air raid, when only emergency vehicles were allowed on the street. As soon as we got to the door, my father said good-bye and promised to visit whenever he could. As he drove away, I felt abandoned. It was the first time I was on my own.
The priest and his assistant took Paul and me into an office and told us never to talk about being Jewish, not even to each other. If the orphanage boys asked why we had come a month after school had started, we were to say that our fathers had been killed on the front and that our mothers were too ill to take care of us.
After the priest coached us on some of the morning prayers, he showed us to the dormitory. I lay in bed terrified. Everything was strange. I wanted my parents.
The next morning the priest introduced us to the boys. There were sixty of them, and most had been in the orphanage for years and years and knew one another. I had only met Paul twice before.
That morning I went to services and carefully watched what the others did. When they stood up, I stood up. When they knelt, I knelt. But when they crossed themselves, I got uncomfortable. I had been brought up in a Jewish home and gone to Hebrew school, and I felt awkward. In the end I crossed myself like the rest of the boys, and from then on I did what I was told. I was too afraid to do anything else.
My father visited from time to time. He could only stay for a few minutes, but at least I knew he was alive. Once in a while he came when I wasn’t around, and the priest would give me the message. The priest tried to look after me and make sure I was okay, but with so many boys to take care of he didn’t always have the time. Mostly I fended for myself.
In November, one month after I arrived, the bombing increased and the air raid sirens went off night and day. In a hurry we’d all rush down into the bunker, where the priest would lead us in prayer. In between the bombings the priest and his assistant tried to conduct classes, but when the air raids became too frequent, they gave up.
After that we moved into the bunker full time, running upstairs only to use the bathroom. We’d go in shifts of four or five, with just twenty-five seconds each. For emergencies we kept some buckets downstairs.
By then it was winter, and it was very cold. We had no heat or electricity, and there was a water shortage. That meant we couldn’t bathe or change our clothes. For me it was easier not having to undress in front of the others. But soon we all were infested with lice.
At this time the Russians invaded Budapest, arriving in tanks. They destroyed one building after another until the Germans and the Hungarian SS were trapped and resorted to street fighting. It got so dangerous, my father was afraid to drive his ambulance and stopped coming to see me. Now I felt totally alone.
Worse, we were running out of food. Except for some corn left in the pantry, there was nothing to eat. In desperation the priest ran out on the street to scrounge up something. Once he found a dead horse that had been shot in the front of the orphanage and asked me and some other boys to help chop it up. That night he grilled the meat over some wood, and everyone had a couple of bites. The meat tasted sweet. After not eating for so long, I thought it was an incredible meal.
By late December the bombing had worsened and fires were spreading throughout the city. When a building to the right of ours was shelled, the priest got scared. He thought the Russians were probably targeting the Hungarian Gestapo’s headquarters, which were next to the orphanage. To protect us, he decided to break through the wall of our cellar and tunnel into the adjacent building where it would be safer.
With only a pickax, he and his assistant chipped away at the bunker’s stone wall, shoveling out the debris. Meanwhile bombs and shells whistled overhead. We kids watched, petrified. Eventually they dug out a large enough space for us to crawl through one at a time.
By then I hadn’t seen my father in a month and a half. I didn’t know where he or my mother were or if they were alive or dead. It was tough not having any word from them.
At the same time the firing outside was getting more severe. The older boys in the orphanage tried to act brave, but the younger ones, like Paul and me, couldn’t stop crying. He and I clung to each other while the priest kept telling us to pray.
