Research in HungaryLegacy of Rescue:

A Daughter’s Tributeby Marta Fuchs

Our house today

• Built when my Dad’s father got married, mid 1890s

• Dad and Henry both born there

Marta and Henry early 1950s

With mom in our backyard (plum trees, corn, potatoes, berries)

My father,

Miksa Fuchs (1911-2000)

before the war, 1931

Tokaj, Hungary (pop 5,000)

My father’s first forced labor battalion, 1940

• Hungarian Jewish men of military age • drafted into labor battalions attached to the Hungarian

army to fulfill required military duty• anti-Jews laws prevented them from serving in regular

army

Zoltán Kubinyi (1901-1946)

• Became Dad’s Commanding Officer in 1944 after predecessor had accident going to headquarters to get authorization for decimation

• Seventh Day Adventist, kind, respectful, Conscientious Objector, no gun in his holster

• Rescued 100 Jewish men by defying Nazi/Hungarian orders to march them to concentration camp

as Germany losing war

• Captured as POW by liberating Russians, died in captivity, Siberia

Research in Balassagyarmát where labor battalion with town liberated and Kubinyi captured

• Poured through Hungarian Reference and history books re the town and WW II

• Hoped to find eyewitness accounts (none)

Town’s historian (non-Jewish) with son came to meet us at the Library

He had his own agenda! - to show us his life work documenting and keeping alive the history of the town’s Jews (gave us his book)

Took us to the Jewish cemetery and the little Holocaust Museum they created in the little chapel at the cemetery

Béla Majdán

Zoltán Kubinyi and his wife(received photo from son when met him in 1994, Holocaust Commemoration,

Tokaj)

Márton Kubinyi (1944 -) 6 months old when his father went off to war

His mother refused to

believe word of his father’s death in Siberia and prayed ‘til the end of her days for his return

Márton had to drop out of school at age 14 to work in order to support them

Son, Márton Kubinyi (right) -- Budapest 1994receiving Yad Vashem commendation on behalf of his father

 Ending of Dad’s February 1988 testimony to Yad Vashem

requesting Righteous Among the Nations recognition for Kubinyi:

Zoltán Kubinyi was a true human being in the deepest sense of the word. During this catastrophic event, when civilized, intelligent people were blinded with irrational hatred, and innocent people, mothers with babies in their arms were slaughtered, HE WAS A MAN. Risking his own life, he stood up for and defended the innocent, persecuted people.

The memory of Zoltán Kubinyi deserves the highest honor that a person could possibly deserve for his altruistic, heroic, and self-sacrificing activities.

 (my translation of Dad’s letter in Hungarian)

Visiting Márton Kubinyi and his family, Komjáti

Samuel Helm and wife Lilly

He painted my father’s store in 1948

We discovered it in 1990

My father’s grocery store(discovered photo on Facebook after our trip!)

Building now houses the town’s museum

(once was home of a rich relative, most of them perished; learned this on visit with Dad and Henry in 1991 as I was admiring the frescoes)

Tokaj, view from Synagogue window

Tokaj Synagogue and stork in nest(nest there since my childhood)

(restored Synagogue is now part of Cultural Center, concerts held there)

Stork nest from Synagogue porthole

When I spoke about Kubinyi in 1994 at Holocaust Commemoration, I saw baby storks in the nest for the first time

Watercolor by friend Cili to illustrate children’s book I started writing on last visit

• Family of storks tell story of the Jews of Tokaj, witnessing them being ghettoized on the temple grounds, then disappear (shipped off to Auschwitz)

• Painting and draft of book were on display in the Synagogue unbeknownst to me until this visit

Mom today age 93

Mom and Dad, 1996 (married 50 years then)

Dad under his lemon tree with Torah and flower crown for Shavuot(Mom’s family tradition to make)