United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Erzsébeth Steiner (nicknamed Bözsi, 1910-1945) was born in 1910 to Margit (née Katona, nicknamed Anyi, 1886-1944) and Simon Steiner (nicknamed Api, 1869-1944). She had one sister, Ágnes, and the family grew up in Pécs, Hungary where her father owned a tailor shop. She married Tibor Tarjan in 1931 and they moved to Budapest. Tibor Tarjan (1904-1945?) was born in 1904 in Szekszárd, Hungary to Mor Friedman (later Mor Tarjan, 1860-1920) and Fáni Löbl (ca. 1867-1910). He had three siblings, Aranka (1888-1944), Kornel (1893-1978), and Erzsébet (1898-1986). Tibor worked as a manager of the office of a leather factory and Erzsébet was a music teacher. Their son, Peter, was born in 1936. Ágnes (later Ágnes Steiner Takács, 1906-1992) married Miklós Takács. They ran a custom-tailor lingerie shop in Budapest. In 1939 she and her husband converted to Catholics in order to continue operating their business. Ágnes and Miklós divorced in 1943. Prior to the German occupation of Hungary, Tibor was periodically sent to work camps as a forced-laborer. After the German occupation of Budapest in March 1944, he kept in sporadic contact with his family. He was deported to Buchenwald and presumably perished there. Erzsébeth’s parents were both deported from Pécs in July 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau where they were murdered. Erzsébeth and Peter moved into a Swiss protected building in November 1944. Erzsébeth and her sister Ágnes were deported in December 1944, and likely sent on a death march toward the Austrian border. Erzsébeth perished, but Ágnes escaped and received a letter of protection issued by the Portuguese consulate in Budapest. She survived in the Budapest ghetto until liberation by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. Peter’s mother’s friend Panni Kertesz assisted in his survival as a hidden child in a safe building aided by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. After liberation, Peter moved to Bonyhád, Hungary to live with his mother’s sister Ágnes. In 1947 he went to live with his father’s sister, Aunt Böske, in Pécs. She was a survivor of Auschwitz. He studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Budapest. In 1956 he fled Budapest to Austria following the 1956 Uprising. Peter immigrated to the United States in January 1957 aboard the USS General LeRoy Eltinge. He received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University and settled in Miami, Florida.
Copyright Holder: Peter P. Tarjan
folders book enclosure 6 1
The collection is arranged as a single series. Folder 1 of 6. Correspondence, 1941-1945 Folder 2 of 6. Translations and transcriptions, 1989, 1998 Folder 3 of 6. Personal narrative, circa 1993 Folder 4 of 6. Family correspondence, 1942-1945 Folder 5 of 6. Documents of Ágnes Takács, 1924-1945 Book Enclosure 1. Address book of Ágnes Takács, circa 1930-circa 1934 Folder 6 of 6. Photographs, 1904-circa 1930
The collection primarily consists of wartime family correspondence between sisters Erzsébeth Steiner and Ágnes Steiner Takács in Budapest, Hungary and their parents Margit and Simon Steiner in Pécs, Hungary from 1941-1944. Some letters include transcriptions and translations provided by Erzsébeth and Tibor’s son Peter Tarjan. Also included in the collection are a personal narrative by Peter regarding his family’s Holocaust experiences, prewar family photographs, and a small amount of documents related to Ágnes. Included in the documents are a prewar address book related to Ágnes’s salon clientele, and a letter of protection issued to Ágnes by the Portuguese consulate in Budapest, 1944. Photographs include depictions of Ágnes, her sister Erzsébeth, and their parents.
Tarjan family papers