Tamás was an international traveler who had circled the globe many times, but the greatest journey he ever took covered a distance of less than two meters, or about six feet.
It happened during the waning days of 1944, after Tamás was arrested in Budapest. He was taken to Józsefvárosi pályaudrar, a railway station north of the city, where the Germans intended to put him on a train to Auschwitz. The station was crowded with people, nearly all of them wearing yellow stars and carrying little bundles of clothing under their arms. Tamás was shoved into the crowd.
He felt the press of bodies around him. He inhaled the sweaty smell of desperation and fear. He was trying to collect himself when he noticed a queue of people on the opposite side of the platform.
Hungarian Jews like himself, they were gathered around a tall blond man in a black fedora and dark overcoat who was hastily scribbling their names onto official-looking pieces of paper. The papers were printed in blue and yellow ink, and the man in the dark overcoat, who seemed to be an official of some kind, was furiously signing them. The papers appeared to confer an exemption of some sort because each of those who received one quietly removed the yellow star of David from his cloak while SS men looked on impassively.
The papers were schutzpasses, so-called “protection passports,” emblazoned with the Swedish triple crown and carrying the presumptive authority of the Swedish government. Only Hungarian Jews with personal or business ties to Sweden were entitled to have them, but the man in the dark overcoat was handing them out to as many people as he could.
Tamás shouldered his way through the crowd toward the tall fedoraed man. A German guard shoved him back.
Across from him on the platform, another German was ordering the man to stop handing out any more passes. “Anhalten!” Enough! he said. The two men engaged in a heated argument until the German took the man by the arm and led him inside the station to wrangle out-of-sight. After the man was gone, SS men assembled those with schutzpasses into a smaller line to await transportation back to the city.
Tamás wanted desperately to be in that line.
From where he stood, the distance was about his height – six feet from head to toe – if he laid himself down on the platform.
Too far to crawl unnoticed, but only a couple of steps away.
A cordon of German guards with whips, clubs, and guns stood between Tamás and the relative safety of the city-bound line.
Tamás watched the Germans warily. The Germans eyed him back. He did not know how long he stood there and watched the SS men watching him watch them back. Hell is circular, repetitious, and interminable, he told himself as he watched and waited.
The train was arriving, the death train that would carry him to Auschwitz.
Tamás felt his pulse thump; a vein in his forehead started to jump, and he feared he might pass out. As the people on the platform surged forward, prodded by weapons at their backs, he willed himself invisible and crossed over unseen.
***
Hours later, Tamás found himself in a safe house in the international ghetto in Pest. For the next several months, he stayed there, sharing the house with more than a hundred people. They dared not go outside. The house overlooked the shores of the Danube, where Arrow Cross militiamen had taken several thousand Hungarian Jews, ordered them to remove their shoes, and stand facing the water. The shoeless men, women, and children were shot in the back, their bodies slipping into the Danube and being swept away by its currents.
Every morning that winter, Tamás stared out a window of the safe house at the snow piled high on the river walk. The snow was stained with blood.
One morning in February 1945, he awoke to find a dirty Russian soldier standing over him. The Russian grinned. He offered Tamás a cigarette and a snort of vodka. The war was over.
After the soldier left and he finished his smoke, Tamás stepped out of the safe house and strolled the waterfront. He stopped to take a deep breath of fresh Danube air, filling his lungs completely. He slowly exhaled in relief before turning his back to the river and the murmuring memories coming like waves.
Michael Zimecki is the author of a novel, Death Sentences, published by Crime Wave Press. His work has appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Susan.
