Erzsebet Radvaner with her brother Laszlo Gonczi and his son Adam

This is me, my brother Laszlo and his son Adam in 1939 in Budapest. Laci went to the Realschule. There he had his bachelors' exam, but he was not accepted to the university because of the Numerus Clausus, a legal limit on the numbers of Jews allowed into certain institutions and professions. First he worked at my uncle's, in the office, then he had a workshop for small furniture. He wasn't very successful. In the end he had a good job. He was a manager on an estate somewhere in Szilagy County in the reconnected territory. This was already during the war. He earned good money there. They had two sons. My brother converted to the Protestant faith. When his wife became pregnant he changed his religion for her sake. Adam was born as a Protestant. Laci was in a forced labour corps in the summer of 1944 when the carpet bombing of the Ferihegy airport happened. One friend of his died on his right, another died on his left. Laci had his trousers full of holes, like a sieve, but nothing happened to him. Laci ran away. They lived in the Szilagyi alley with fake papers. My brother lived as Sandor Vajk, my sister-in-law as Laszlone Gonczi. Her husband was deported and she did not know where he was. The Soviet soldiers shot Laci dead on the 1st of January, 1945. He had some notes in his pocket on which he had written several Russian words. What probably happened is that he was reaching in his pocket for the notes, and they did not know why was he doing so, and shot him. My sister-in-law knew where her father was. She went there and he found Laci dead in the snow. My sister-in-law buried him there in the Szilagyi Erzsebet alley. My sister-in-law, together with her two sons, emigrated to Sweden.