March 1944

JS: In March 1944, the Germans came to Hungary and occupied Hungary, and this is a very surprising thing because Hungary was fighting with the Germans. But anyway, they occupied Hungary, and this was the time that things really got worse for the Jews. And this is when we have to put on the yellow stars, and also this is when things had got really very bad. We could not go to public places and people who were very friendly to us before turned their heads when they saw us, and things got very dangerous. Now, most people were taken to the ghettos, but not us. And why not us? That I still don’t understand, but their explanation was that people who were physicians’ families were not taken to the ghettos, and their explanation was physicians are very badly needed in the war and this is why they are leaving the physicians’ families.