As part of my work for the Moshe Kraus Project, I have been researching the Holocaust in Hungary and have come to appreciate more and more my late Mother’s saying that “anyone who survived the Shoah is a miracle!”

1. Budapest ’44: Rescue and Resistance, 1944-1945 by Moshe Holczler

“The young Slovakian businessman planned to join his wife in London, but the Nazis marched into Austria, and life would never be the same. Mandated by his illustrious father to remain in Europe to help his people, R’ Shmuel Binyomin (Wolf) Frey embarked on a saga of rescue and relief that had reverberations beyond his wildest dreams. Who was the mysterious Raoul Wallenberg, and how did R’ Wolf come to work with him? Why did the Hungarian Minister of Defense have such a startling change of heart? Did the gypsies have any redeemable qualities? Would his fellow Jews turn him over to the Germans? Where was the safest place for a street child to be at night? What were those Nazis doing in that building across the street? A house made entirely of glass? How long could they fool the communists? Were those nuns to be trusted…? Let us follow R’ Wolf to Hungary, and marvel at the incredible Hashgacha Pratis – Divine Providence – that followed him from one threatening situation yo another. With unshakeable faith, remarkable foresight and bravery and against impossible odds, he resisted evil incarnate. He never thought of himself as a hero, but his courage and ingenuity will remain with you forever.” (from the blurb of Budapest 44)

Budapest ’44 gives a vast panorama of all of the rescue efforts organized within Budapest during the Nazi invasion of Hungary in 1944, including the actions of Wallenberg and countless Jewish and non-Jewish undercover volunteers. It is a remarkable story that few people are aware of. Much of the detail is astounding, and it is a first-person account by Moshe Holczler, who is not just the narrator but also a participant. It was fantastic and a must-read to understand what happened in Budapest in 1944.

2. Deadly Carousel: A Singer’s Story of the Second World War

A memoir about Vali Racz, the Hungarian Marlene Dietrich, who during WWII harboured a Jewish family, a Hungarian fascist escapee, and Russian military brass in her spacious home in Pest, as told to her daughter, Monica Porter. It’s also an excellent recounting of social and political events in Hungary for Jews and gentiles from before the war up to the Hungarian revolution in 1956.

3. Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust edited by Yaffa Eliach

Eighty-nine original testimonies of first-person accounts by Orthodox Jews, as they attempt to flee, are sometimes entrapped, and sometimes miraculously saved, all over Europe.

4. Miracle in the Ashes by Maurice Lowinger

Miracle in the Ashes is a first-person memoir by Maurice Lowinger, a Hungarian-born Jew from Mezotur in central Hungary. It is about Lowinger’s valiant efforts to support his family and the Budapest Jewish community. Towards the end of the war, and through Budapest’s siege, he took over his father-in-law’s position on the committee whose mission was to feed the impoverished remnants of Hungarian Jewry via the soup kitchen daily at the Dohany Synagogue/ghetto in Budapest. He, along with the committee, managed to keep it up until the end of the war – the arrival of the Russian army in 1945.

5. Surviving the Hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: A Teenage Struggle Toward Freedom from Hatred, by Leslie Schwartz

Leslie Schwartz’s memoir of survival as an under-age, under-size, 12-year-old. Schwartz tells of the individuals who came out of the blue to help him, sometimes with a single glass of milk or a sandwich. He recounts how he tracked them down after the war, one by one, to thank them. He continues to speak about his experiences in Germany and the rest of the world.