Vogel family swims and ice skates before the Holocaust in Hungary

Vogel family swims and ice skates before the Holocaust in Hungary 

Steven Vogel is a survivor of Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps. Eva Cooper (born Eva Brust) is the daughter of Elek Brust (b. 1899) and Livia (Lilly) Schwarcz Brust. Eva was born on March 18, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary where her father owned a wholesale paper box company. The family attended the Dohány Street Synagogue. After voyaging to America to attend the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, Eva’s maternal grandparents remained in New York and reestablished their prosperous watch business. In 1942 Lilly's younger brother Leslie Schwartz joined them in New York, enlisted in the US Army and participated in the Normandy invasion. In 1941 Elek was taken to a labor camp with other Hungarian Jewish men. Through the black market, Lilly obtained papers to release him from the camp. Then on March 18, 1944, Eva’s tenth birthday, Nazi troops entered Budapest. The Nazis soon designated special buildings for Jews to live, so Elek used his connections to designate their building as a Jewish residence. Elek was forbidden to work, but Eva and a friend generated money by selling cigarettes they made using the unsmoked tobacco left in cigarette butts. Eva's father was very active in the Jewish community and assisted in the negotiations with Adolf Eichmann to delay the deportations from Budapest. He also applied for Swedish papers from Raoul Wallenberg, and each member of the family received a Schutzpass. In mid-October 1944 the Brust’s decided to leave their home, finding refuge at an abandoned apartment where they hid with the help of the superintendent. During the winter of 1944-45, they fled into the countryside. At one point they were stopped by Nazi soldiers on the road, and lined up in a firing line. They narrowly escaped thanks to the distraction of a bomb dropping nearby which caused everyone to run. Eva and her parents ended up at a family friend's house in the country where many others were hiding as well. Eventually they left the country and walked to the small town of Erd where they hid in a basement. In 1945 they returned to Budapest, where their home had been looted but remained in relatively good shape. Soviet troops liberated Budapest in January 1945. That spring, Elek restarted his business; however, by late 1946 Soviets occupying Hungary instituted a Communist regime. Using the money they had managed to collect in the year after the war, her family applied for visitor’s visas to America. They sailed from London to America on May 21, 1947. They settled in New York City where her father went to work with her grandfather’s watch business. Her family's belongings were sent from Budapest, although the Soviets confiscated many of their valuables such as paintings and books. Though Eva and her parents survived the Holocaust, two members of their family who had stayed with them from March to October of 1944 had perished along the Danube. Her father had to identify their bodies using their teeth. Most of their other family members had been sent to Auschwitz, where one of her cousins had been used in human experiments by Dr. Mengele. He survived and recuperated in a hospital in Switzerland. 

Vogel family swims and ice skates before the Holocaust in Hungary