us-005578-irn90331-irn3018
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn90331-irn3018/alternateIDs/1
identifier: irn3018
type: RecordSet
record resource extent: overall: Height: 6.875 inches (17.463 cm) | Width: 8.250 inches (20.955 cm)
has or had holder: us-005578
is or was included in: us-005578-irn90331
scope and content: Design drawing, perhaps for a brooch, made by Janos Mezei, 17, a student in Budapest, Hungary, in 1939. Hungary adopted anti-Jewish laws similar to those of their close ally, Nazi Germany. By 1940, all able bodied Jewish males were required to perform forced labor. Janos was sent to Kaschau labor camp in Hungarian occupied Slovakia in 1943. After Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, Janos was forced marched to Gunskirchen concentration camp, a Mauthausen subcamp in Austria. He was liberated by US troops on May 5, 1945. He was hospitalized, but passed away on September 2, 1945. The drawing was saved by his younger sister Magda, then 21, who obtained Spanish protective passes for herself, her mother Berta, and younger brother Gyorgy. During the forced move from a Jews only yellow star house to the ghetto in Budapest, Magda persuaded a Hungarian policeman to help them get to the Spanish safe house in St. Stephens Park, where all three survived the war. Her father died in a forced labor camp and most of her other family members were killed during the war.
history: The drawing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1990 by Magda Lapedus, the sister of Janos Mezei.
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
physical characterisitics and technical requirements: Drawing in pencil with colored pencil on worn graph paper of a rectangular, symmetrical design of leaf, tendrils, and vines with jagged, veined leaves shaded in blue/green pencil. There are scribbled shapes and an inscription on the back. At some point, it was covered with plastic laminate. back, handwritten, purple colored pencil : B VY / ?UOTP / XO / POU?
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn90331-irn3018/acquisitions/1
has record set type: Item
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
date: 1939 June
title: Design drawing by a young man who did not survive the Holocaust
history: Janos Mezei was born on March 14, 1922, in Budapest, Hungary, to Henrik and Berta Neumann Mezei. Henrik was born on October 25, 1891, in Munkacs, Austro-Hungary (now Mukacheve, Ukraine) to Maurice and Julia Altman Feldman. Henrik was a decorated veteran of World War I (1914-1918), wounded twice during his four years of wartime service with the Hungarian Army. He changed his name in 1915 to Mezei, a more Hungarian sounding name, and settled in Budapest. Henrik had a brother who immigrated to Argentina during the interwar years. Janos's mother Berta was born February 22, 1897, in Temesvar (now Lugoj, Romania), but grew up in Budapest. Henrik had worked his way up to director of the Goldberg textile factory, one of the largest producers of textiles in Hungary. Janos had two younger siblings, Magda, born on July 18, 1923, and Gyorgy, born April 15, 1936. An older sister, Klara, had died in infancy (April-May, 1921.) The family had a very comfortable life with a live-in maid and a car. They were moderately assimilated, celebrating both Jewish and Christian holidays, often with parties in their music room, where her mother played the piano and her father, the harp. The children attended a Dutch reform primary school. Janos continued at Koelcsey Ferenc Gymnasium for eight years, while Magda attended a Jewish lyceum and then the Commercial Academy of Budapest where she learned business skills. By the mid-1930s, Hungary had anti-Jewish laws similar to those of its close ally, Nazi Germany. After graduating high school in 1940, Janos got a position as a civil servant. That year, the Hungarian government made forced labor service mandatory for all able bodied Jewish males. In summer 1941, Hungary joined in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and the labor battalions were placed under army control. In 1943, Janos was sent to a forced labor camp in Kaschau (Kosice, Slovakia) a region of Czechoslovakia ceded to Hungary by the German mediated First Vienna Award in 1938. The f…