Anonymous diaries from Hungarian woman
Extent and Medium
folders
4
Creator(s)
- Anonymous
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection. The acquisition of this collection was made possible by the Crown Family.
Funding Note: The accessibility of this collection was made possible by the generous donors to our crowdfunded Save Their Stories campaign.
Funding Note: The acquisition of this artifact was made possible by the Crown Family.
This collection was acquired by the United States Holocuase Memorial Museum in 2014 and 2015. The accessions previously numbered 2014.465.1 and 2015.575.1 have been incorporated into this collection.
Scope and Content
The collection includes three diaries written between 1942 and 1945 by an unidentified Jewish woman, originally from Brno, Czechoslovakia, but living in Budapest and Subotica. She was arrested by the Hungarian and German occupation forces in Serbia, where she sought refuge, and was sent to a succession of concentration camps and forced labor sites between the summer of 1944 and the spring of 1945. In the diary she describes her experiences in exile in Subotica (Szabadka), Serbia; the worsening situation for Jews in the spring of 1944; her arrest and transport to camps at Bácsalmás (Hungary) and Strasshof (Austria); her assignment as a forced laborer at two farms in Lower Austria, near Gmünd and Grosspertholz; and her return to Strasshof and deportation to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In the portions of the diary that are addressed to her fiancée, Jovan "Jovanku," she describes most of these events in retrospect and provides descriptions of daily life at the time of her writings, primarily when she was an agricultural forced laborer in the summer and fall of 1944. Her last entry is dated March 1945 after her transfer to Bergen-Belsen. The collection also includes a synopsis of the third diary in Hebrew as well as a postcard addressed to a Janos Steiner in Subotica from Alfred Weiszmann (?) and two letters sent between January and March 1942, from Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Weiszmann (?) to their children. The second letter and the postcard were sent from Izbica, where they were deported.
System of Arrangement
The collection is arranged as a single series: Folder 1: Diary, April - June 1942 Folder 2: Diary, June - October 1942 Folder 3: Diary and synopsis, July 1944 - March 1945 Folder 4: Correspondence, circa 1942
Corporate Bodies
Subjects
- Jews--Hungary--Budapest.
- Forced labor--Austria.
- Gmünd (Lower Austria, Austria)
- Subotica (Subotica, Serbia)
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
- Grosspertholz (Austria)
- Jews--Persecutions--Serbia--Subotica (Subotica)
Genre
- Document
- Diaries.