As she fought for survival, Yehudit Spatz never stopped seeking truth

As told to Ester Katz Silvers by Rabbi Yitzchak Spatz

1944.

My late wife, Yehudit, was three months old when her father was arrested in Nazi-occupied Hungary for possessing forged papers. She and her mother, Bluma, never saw him again.

Soon after, the Germans requisitioned their lovely Budapest home. Homeless, my mother-in-law wandered the streets of the city, Yehudit in her arms, and the required yellow star on her chest.

When Allied bombs began to fall, my mother-in-law, fearing for their lives, knocked on the first door she saw. It was opened by a Nazi officer. Thinking quickly, my mother-in-law held Yehudit over her star, and speaking perfect German — for she’d been a native of Vienna until her marriage — asked for shelter. The soldiers treated her graciously, and she remained there until the raid ended. Then she was back out on the streets, dodging both arrest and bombs.

My mother-in-law was cowering on the famous Széchenyi Chain Bridge, trying to protect her precious child from the elements, when she felt a presence behind her.

“Excuse me. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?” a kind voice asked.

My mother-in-law was too terrified to answer.

“Don’t be afraid,” the voice continued. “I’m from Sweden. Come with me.”

He showed her his identification, proving he was Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, later famous for his heroism. My mother-in-law followed him to the Swedish embassy. There, she and Yehudit were given certificates of protection and a place to live in one of Wallenberg’s “safe houses.”

The Germans respected the Swedish protection papers, but the Arrow Cross, the cruel anti-Semitic ruling fascist party, didn’t. My mother-in-law overheard a rumor that their officers were planning to besiege her safe house. She was one of the few to believe the report, and she took Yehudit and fled. This spared them the fate of being shot into the Danube River, like so many other Hungarian Jews.

Through a number of other miraculous incidences, my mother-in-law and Yehudit managed to survive the last months of the war. Peace came, and with it, Communist rule. My mother-in-law made ends meet by continuing her late husband’s business on a smaller scale, and by taking in boarders, namely, a young nun.

Growing up in postwar Communist Hungary, the extent of Yehudit’s connection to her Jewish heritage were her mother’s Shabbos candles and the anti-Semitic slurs she heard from classmates. That was it.

One afternoon, when her mother was still at work, the nun boarding in their home invited Yehudit to go for a walk with her. She led her to a nearby church in time for Mass. My mother-in-law, arriving home early and finding both her daughter and boarder missing, suspected what the nun was up to.

She found Yehudit hand in hand with the nun inside the church, by the altar. My mother-in-law grabbed Yehudit’s other hand and commanded her not to bow down at the same time the nun instructed her to do so. Yehudit was torn between the two women, but she chose to listen to her mother.

Life wasn’t easy in Communist Hungary. In 1956, my mother-in-law contacted friends from Vienna who’d moved to Israel before the war. With their support, she and Yehudit left Hungary for Israel and joined those friends on Kibbutz Sde Nechemiah in the north of the country. There, Yehudit was surrounded by Jews, but she still had little understanding of what being Jewish meant.