Judit Schichtanz photographs

Judit Schichtanz (1935-2011) was born in Budapest, Hungary, to Lorand (b. 1900), and Ella Lichtig (1904-2005). Lorand, an architectural draftsman, and Ella, a piano teacher, married on June 18, 1931. They were assimilated Jews and had a Christmas tree every year for Judit. Ella also taught music at a convent. In 1941, in response to the anti-Semitic racial laws enacted in Hungary, she told the Mother Superior that she was Jewish. The nun suggested that Ella convert to Catholicism; she did and had Judit confirmed as well. In March 1944, the country was occupied by Germany. Thousands of Jews were imprisoned or deported to concentration camps. In May, Judit’s father received an SAS (Storm Soldat) card in the mail drafting him into a forced labor battalion, and in November he was the Schützen am Gebirge forced labor camp in Austria. In June, Judit and her mother moved into her grandparent’s apartment in the Jewish section of the city. On October 9, Ella was told to report for forced labor. She managed to avoid registration but decided that she and Judit must go into hiding. She acquired false identity cards with the names Anna Szabo and Jozsef Ballo. The Mother Superior found a home where Ella could work as a maid and Judit as a babysitter, but it only lasted one month as that family decided to flee Hungary to escape the approaching Soviet Army. Another position was found, but this family suspected that Ella and Judit were Jewish because they knew one of the persons whose name was on the false documents. There was an argument, but when Ella produced photographs of Judit’s first communion, the family let them stay. Around Christmas in December 1944, Judit, her mother, and the family for which they worked moved to an underground bunker to escape the frequent Allied bombing raids. Judit and her mother remained below ground until the city was liberated by the Soviet Army on February 13, 1945. In July 1945, Judit and her mother were visited by two young men who had a message from Judit’s father. Around April 1945, the labor camp in Austria had been evacuated and the inmates marched to Mauthausen, then Gunskirchen, where they were liberated on May 4 by the US Third Army, 71st Division. Lorand had watched his brother die of starvation during the march to Gunskirchen, and wanted only to be alone. He was not returning to his family in Budapest. In 1956, Judit left Hungary to continue studying music at the Academy in Vienna. After graduating in 1960, she immigrated to the United States with the help of aunts and uncles who lived there.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Judit Schichtanz

Judit Schichtanz donated her photographs to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007.