Agnesa Langová

When we were invaded (I say invaded) by the Warsaw Pact troops, it happened that I was in the very last weeks of pregnancy with my son Juraj. The troops arrived on August 21 and my son was born on September 12. And I was in my last year of medical school, and I had my state exams coming up. The way we were going through '68, it was amazingly difficult for us as a family, but also in terms of organizing all of this that was ahead of me. And when the troops came, we were living in this parental home and it was from the square right on. What they used to call Main Street. And that bunk house, that's where we stayed with my parents. We got married in '66. So in front of our windows, it was such a narrow street and it was a horrible noise. Terrible, unimaginable in the morning at five o'clock. And the noise and at that, both my husband and I woke up and I said, 'For God's sake, what's going on?' But at that time the Warsaw Pact troops were in our country on exercises and it was such a time that they were sort of leaving. So we didn't know what was going on, my husband as he was, in his pyjamas, ran downstairs and went out into the street and saw these tanks and all sorts of their stuff moving and soldiers. And he came upstairs and I said, 'Well, for God's sake, what's going on?' So was anybody in our generation thinking about the war or anything? We prayed that there wouldn't be. Well, and he says, 'But go on sleeping, it's only Warsaw Pact troops.' That was at five o'clock. At seven o'clock, my mother had already gone to work across the square and came back. And the only word she said, already with tears in her eyes, in Hungarian, that we are occupied.

Brother Šaninko's survival in the Budapest ghetto And he saw those daily murders and shootings of those Nyilash, those rampages, he saw his little brother dying, he starved terribly and this remained with him for his whole life, that he just avoided starvation and he liked to eat a lot. So that starvation it was really terrible. But one memory of my mother, when she said that you know how hard it could have been for my mother, when she said that (in Hungarian they were talking, I am translating): you have this food but you don't want to give me. That was something terrible and when they got somehow to eat, once in a while somebody would sneak them some food from their acquaintances. And once they got some almonds, that is such an episode. And now that's very nutritious. Or cocoa beans, I'm confusing it now - cocoa beans. And my mom divided it up for everybody, one piece for everybody every day. And she caught her mother rationing her grandson's her own portion as well. And terribly, this is what they said to me, this was such a shock to her as well, and they scolded that poor grandmother terribly, that, you know, it's your life that's on the line. 'No, that child takes priority.' So to the extent that even at the cost of their own existence, they were trying to provide that food for him as well. And it was even harder for him because by the time he was five, he was the only grandchild and they loved him very much - the first and only one. And those grandparents, the Sterns, who were in daily contact with him, and those relatives there in those New Chateaus, those Adlers, well, he was Shaninka, he was the flower, and they spoiled him terribly, with love. And then he got into these cruel conditions.