The Budapest Protocol, page 9
Alex swallowed hard, got up and walked to the bathroom. He stared into the mirror at his stubbled cheeks and bleary eyes. His mouth tasted sour from the whisky he had drunk alone at home the previous evening. “The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates had written, but there was also a point when the examination became an excuse for not doing anything, he thought. This was not any kind of crisis, but maudlin selfindulgence, he decided. It was time for the hot and cold cure. He sat in the bath, yanking the lever on the mixer tap back and forth as the near scalding then freezing water coursed over him, yelping at the sudden change in temperature. His skin tingled as the pores opened and closed and he willed the gloom away. He would finish with Zsofi. More importantly, he would find out who had killed Miklos, and why.
He shaved, dressed in clean clothes and stood in his kitchen, considering the breakfast possibilities. The pizza slice was still on the work surface. He threw it in the bin, rolled up his sleeves and blitzed the grimy space, scrubbing the dishes, wiping down the surfaces, brushing and sweeping the floor. His reward was a packet of Mubarak’s Turkish coffee, a bag of pistachio nuts and some digestive biscuits he had brought from England, discovered at the back of a dusty shelf. He boiled the coffee in a small brass pot Mubarak had given him and watched the water rise slowly up, ready to foam over. He would spend the day reading Miklos’ testimony. He sat at his desk and reached for the thin grey papers, covered with his grandfather’s elegant, copperplate handwriting.
THE GHETTO DIARY OF MIKLOS FARKAS
November 2 1944
I have decided to keep a diary. I will write of how we live and die, but I am going to start with a question. One I have been thinking about for a long time. What did we do to these Hungarians to make them hate us so much? We are – were – good loyal citizens. We paid our taxes, built factories, schools, hospitals. We wrote books, plays, films, newspaper articles, poems, founded literary journals. We fought in their wars, died in their revolutions, built up the economy, provided jobs and work. We even made shells and bullets for the Germans and uniforms for the Hungarian army.
What was our reward? That the Hungarians watched and cheered as the Germans rounded us up and send us to Poland, for work supposedly, but none return. And what kind of work can children and the elderly do? No, let me correct myself. The Germans did not round us up. The Hungarians did. Hungarian clerks drew up the lists of Jews for deportation. Hungarian Gendarmes cleared the towns and villages of their Jews, and forced them into ghettos. Hungarian Gendarmes tortured the young and old to find where they have hidden their gold. Jewish gold, of course we have it, even when we don’t, and we collapse bloody in front of them, and still they seek and seek. And still they kill us, even now. Why? Everyone knows the Germans have lost the war. The western Allies are halfway through Europe, on the road to Berlin. The Russians are advancing from the east and have Budapest surrounded. Even the Romanians have changed sides. But not us. No, we have a new government, of the true believers, even worse than the Nazis: the Arrow Cross who murder us for pleasure.
November 5 1944
I am writing this in an apartment on Dohany Street, not far from the Great Synagogue, by the gate to the main Budapest ghetto. We live twelve Jews in one room, sometimes more, sometimes less, as people die off and others take their places. Nobody is buried any more, and the frozen corpses pile up in the synagogue courtyard. For light and heat we have a few candles. The walls shake when the American planes drop their bombs, but we cheer inside to hear the sound of the explosions and the thunder of the Russian artillery as the shells fall into the city. My wife Ruth is here with me, working at the communal kitchen – if such is the word for a place from where comes very little food – trying to help as best she can.
We huddle together at night for warmth, young and old, men and women, it doesn’t matter anymore. A few have blankets, but most only their clothes. The air is thick and fetid with the smell of unwashed bodies. When the detonations sound too loud, we hide in the cellar with the rats. There at least we are safe from bullets and shrapnel. A fire burns inside me, that somehow helps keep me alive. I rage against this war, the stupidity of this country’s leaders, and the passivity of its people. Where are the partisans? Where is the resistance? Where are the police and the army while the Arrow Cross runs wild? They have surrendered our homeland to butchers and do nothing to stop them. So much anger, but what do I actually do? I could buy a gun and start shooting. But I do not. I want to live. Does that make me a coward? Perhaps.
November 6 1944
I feel calmer today. Perhaps I should still count myself lucky. I am alive, after all, when so many are not. So is Ruth. And some of us at least are resisting. The Zionist youth groups can move across the city between this ghetto, and the so-called International Ghetto, in District XIII, by the Margaret Bridge, using neutral papers. Help came from a most unlikely quarter: the Swedish and Swiss embassies. The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and his Swiss colleague Carl Lutz are issuing papers placing Hungarian Jews under their protection. They use these papers to move around the city, and print their own forgeries. I even go to work when I can, thanks to our former family butler. Aladar Nagy is now head waiter at the Hotel Savoy, favoured billet of the SS, one of the last places in the city where food, alcohol and tobacco are still available. And he is a member of the resistance. Nagy recruited me as a waiter and arranged something even better than a Wallenberg paper – a laissez-passer from the SS itself. Ironic that I know how to serve the Nazis – precisely how lunch or a cup of coffee should be presented: only a few months ago my needs were still met by servants. Now I live on the Nazis’ leftovers. How the world turns, not just around but also upside down.
November 7 1944
Today I again brought coffee to Adolf Eichmann at the café of the Hotel Savoy. He is a strange figure, quite softly spoken. He speaks some Hebrew, which he learnt when he visited Palestine before the war, and knows all the Jewish festivals and customs well. He looks much more like a civil servant than a hate-filled fanatic. Because I am quite skilled in my new occupation, Eichmann asks for me by name, or rather, by the name on my false papers: Miklos Kovacs. “Kovacs,” he announces at 11.00pm, as he strides into the café, expecting me, naturally enough, to jump to his attention, “Coffee! Strong and black!” I would rather pour the boiling liquid over his head. But of course I do not. Instead I try to eavesdrop on Eichmann’s conversations as much as I can, although it is a delicate task, for if he suspected my intentions he would surely have me shot. He was sitting with SS Colonel Friedrich Vautker, and I am sure that Vautker knows I have false papers, for he takes a dark amusement in being friendly with me. He even saved my life once, from the Arrow Cross. Eichmann and Vautker spend much time meeting with businessmen. Considering that the Russians are advancing on the city day by day, they do not seem unduly concerned about the military situation.
November 9 1944
The bombardment is getting worse. Corpses lie in the street of the ghetto, sometimes for days, before they are taken away. The Arrow Cross launch drunken raiding parties, and drag out whomever they please, before marching them down Rakoczi Street to the Danube. They are running out of bullets, and tie the Jews together three at a time before shooting one, who topples into the water, taking the others down as well. There are rumours that Wallenberg’s people hide on the riverbank, and then dive into the river to try and untie some of those still alive and bring them out. Not just Jews, but all of Budapest now lives underground most of the time. Tonight I have been summoned to work at the Savoy for a ‘special gala dinner’.
November 10 1944
The ‘gala dinner’ was indeed a special occasion. I had not seen such food for months. True to his word, Aladar Nagy gave me a substantial package. I shared the food with Ruth and the others in our flat, and gave some potatoes to a child crying from hunger. There were several men in civilian clothes at the dinner. I looked at the hotel’s guest book – even in the inferno of war bureaucracy still turns – and saw that businessmen from Zurich were registered, together with many German industrialists, the barons of the steel, chemical and car industries. Halfway through the dinner there was a power cut and the only light came from candles. Eichmann was not there, but Vautker, the “friendly” SS Colonel, was. His bony, shadowed face, illuminated by the flickering Flame of a nearby candle, looked as though it contained a terrible secret hidden under the surface, a premonition of a dark and terrible future for mankind.
December 25 1944
Christmas Day. I have neglected my diary, but there is little new to report. The Hotel Savoy has closed, and most of the SS have fled. The Russians are advancing steadily, driving the Arrow Cross into a frenzy. They have killed everyone at the Jewish hospital, shooting the doctors and nurses and murdering the patients in their beds. Yesterday I met a young boy, fourteen at most, who had somehow made his way here with his sister from the Jewish childrens’ home on Maros Street on the Buda side. They had hidden in the cellar while the Arrow Cross raided the place and marched the youngsters down to the riverbank where they had set up machine-guns. He had pulled off his yellow star and his sister’s, and walked across the city at dawn to find his parents. Incredibly, he succeeded.
Here everyone is sick, feverish, and the doctors can do nothing. Still our communal kitchens keep operating, and distribute meagre food supplies: bread made of flour and sawdust and sometimes a thin stew of peas or beans. But our teeth are loose in our mouths and we cough and spit blood. They call this illness the Ukrainian disease, but its name doesn’t matter. There is no medicine to cure us. The only cure is the Red Army.
January 1 1945
The start of a new year. I heard today that a gold watch will buy a lump of rotten horsemeat. A man with a packet of cigarettes is a millionaire. The rats are becoming fatter and no longer fear us. A few brave ones amongst us still venture out under the ghetto gates through the sewers into the city, and bring us back news of how Budapest is slowly dying. I too used to sneak out by bribing the Arrow Cross guards, but they have been sent to the front. Their replacements are even worse, political commissars, true believers in their leader Ferenc Szalasi’s madness and there is no dealing with them. So now I sit and wait. We know not what terrible fate they have planned for us when the Russians advance into the city. There are rumours that the Arrow Cross will torch the whole ghetto, with us trapped inside. We have a few weapons, guns, stolen pistols and a rifle or two. We have pledged to die fighting, as our fellow Jews fought in Warsaw. At least now we all shelter and starve together, Jew and gentile.
January 3 1945
Today I received a present: a piece of bread. It arrived courtesy of the SS, in a roundabout way. Someone knocked on the cellar door, quite politely, about 11.00am. In the doorway stood a man in SS uniform, smart black jacket and trousers, even a cap perched on his head with the twin flashes, holding three loaves. Then a strange thing happened. The SS officer smiled. The woman next to me jumped up, sobbing and laughing with joy. “Don’t worry, don’t worry everybody. It’s my husband, my husband.” They embraced, and she kept saying his name, “Laszlo, Laszlo.” She had last heard from him six months before when he was serving with the Hungarian army in Romania.
Our great generals have lost whole armies, but he had survived. He walked back, travelling by night, sleeping by day, for six weeks, and somehow crossed the Russian front-lines. A friendly SS officer – can such a creature exist – had drafted him as his driver, and even given him, a Jew, a Nazi uniform. A privilege to wear such fine clothes, and the Arrow Cross does not bother him. But then, as I know myself, strange things happen in war. I made the bread last as long as possible, for it was a taste from another world, a reminder of breakfasts served on Meissen china, of fresh pastries and strong, hot coffee in our dining room at home on Andrassy Avenue. I have heard that the SS has requisitioned it. Antal Noludi too is quartered there, the former manager of the Farkas steel works on Csepel Island, to whom my father gave trusteeship. The mills and factory are gone from us forever, that much I know. But I would surrender them willingly just to know the fate of my parents.
Alex sat back trying to digest what he had read, leafing through his grandfather’s testimony with a kind of awe. The faded ink, the thin wartime paper only served to highlight the power of Miklos’ words. He walked over to the window and stepped out onto the balcony. It was a cold and blustery winter day, pedestrians wrapped up in hats and scarves against the wind blowing in off the Danube. He felt the air buffet him, as he watched a well-dressed family emerge from a Ford estate car, mother and father in their Sunday best, two young children in hand. The mother carried a bunch of flowers, and a parcel of cakes, carefully wrapped in dark green paper and topped with a ribbon. A Budapest Sunday lunchtime, a Mittel-European snapshot, following family rituals established over a century ago. Take away the new cars and modern shop signs, and the street must have looked exactly the same then. He felt as though he had somehow travelled back in time.
Who knew what had happened here, in front of his apartment building, or a few yards away, down by the river? A powerful longing surged through him. Alex’s grandfather had rarely spoken of the war, and then only in general, vague terms. If only he had sat him down with a tape recorder. But now it was too late. Yet perhaps Miklos was telling him more with his diary than he ever would have said in person. Alex tapped idly on the keys of the antique typewriter on his desk. Black and gold lettering on the carriage, a faint smell of ink. It was a present from Zsofi, dating from the 1930s, and still worked. Outside the grey sky darkened and thunder rumbled. A sudden gust of wind rattled the windows, and rain began beating down on the pavement. He turned up the heating and returned to his grandfather’s testimony.
* * *
Natasha looked around the audience at Frank Sanzlermann’s campaign rally at Budapest’s central sports arena. She was surprised at how many young people there were, almost all fashionably dressed and clearly prospering. The atmosphere was electric. Sanzlermann was a masterful speaker, thoroughly briefed, never patronising, asking and answering rhetorical questions. He frequently used phrases in Hungarian, and made repeated reference to points of Hungarian culture and history. He spoke in English, while German and Hungarian subtitles flashed up along the bottom of the two video monitors flanking his lectern. A giant banner behind him proclaimed: “Family, Work and Unity: Forward to a Christian Europe.”
He was halfway through his speech. “I’m sure that by now, many of you are thinking there is a paradox here. How can a federal Europe, with a common currency, political and legal institutions, protect Hungary’s national interests? I know what you are asking: for the first time in its proud 1000 year history, Hungary is finally free, sovereign and independent of foreign rule. We Magyars can decide our own destiny. Why should we give that up?”
The audience sat still and attentive. “It is a good question, and here is the answer. Because you are not giving up anything. You are gaining, not losing. In the new Europe Hungary can protect its national interests as never before. Hungary’s interests are Europe’s interests, and Europe’s interests are Hungary’s. You will no longer be a Magyar island in a Slav sea, no longer be isolated, misunderstood, unappreciated. You will be surrounded by friends and allies, at the very centre of a strong, united Europe.”
He paused, while the cheers echoed around the stadium. “But enough of politics. Let me turn to an even more important theme. And that is family. I never knew my parents. I was raised in a children’s home in the mountains of Carinthia. My father was killed in a car crash on an icy mountain road when I was four. My mother died soon after. She just faded away. Friends of my father paid for my stay at the home,” he said, with a faraway look in his eyes.
Natasha felt the sympathy ripple around the auditorium. There was a press box, with a good view, and copious supplies of refreshments and food, but she preferred to sit among the public, to better take its mood. Which was hugely enthusiastic. The young woman on her right, a heavily-made up tall brunette with a copy of Ébredjetek Magyarok! poking from her black mini-rucksack, kept turning to Natasha, nodding enthusiastically. On her left a pale young man with a long ponytail of blond hair stared as Sanzlermann spoke, yelping his approval. Both wore plastic wristwatches emblazoned with a picture of Sanzlermann.
Sanzlermann waited, as though gathering his strength before recalling the poignant memories. “It is family that gives us a sense of self, of who we are and what our values are. I am now blessed with a family of my own,” he said, gesturing at the screen over the stage. A picture flashed up of Sanzlermann, flanked by his German wife Dagmar, and their three children. “I believe in family, work and unity, for all Europeans, no matter what their ethnic origin. For some of our fellow citizens desperately need our support.”
The picture of Sanzlermann’s family was replaced by a picture of a Romany settlement. A mother breastfed a baby in the doorway of a flimsy shack, children played barefoot in the mud. There was muttering in the audience. Sanzlermann continued: “My friends, I see some of you are uncomfortable with this picture. But we can, we must, help the Roma, to overcome prejudice and misconceptions, to overcome unemployment, and lack of education, or we will continue to pay a high price for our neglect. We will pay in crime, in delinquency and lawlessness.”
