Esther Jungreis

Esther was still young when National Socialism arrived on her doorstep, but she was not without exposure to the ever-spreading ideology that was revealing itself across Europe. Her childhood was marked by major events for Hungarian Jews, coming in the form of discriminatory laws passed in 1938 which aimed to restrict the economic, social, and political movement of the Jewish population (Merey, 2) and the eventual formation of the ghettos facilitated by Nazi officials in April 1944 (Cornelius, 296). The Szeged Ghetto was centered around 'Market Street 28' where Esther and her family lived; her explanation for the choice of the ghetto's location pointed towards her father's role as Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox community, and the influence he held in Szeged at the time. Esther described her family home as a 'Grand Central Station' for Szeged Jews, describing the days when neighbors would stay for dinner or travelers would sleep on their living room floor. Once, she stated, during the years just before the occupation, their home would average 40-50 people a night, fleeing from places all over Hungary and greater Europe. Many of those escaping brought with them stories about what the Nazi's were doing to Jews, the tactics they had set in place and the horrors they'd heard coming from the camps. Esther and her family were hesitant to believe them, it sounded too terrible, too frightening. "It's impossible. This is the 20th century, it cannot be. The Germans are a civilized people," Esther recounts from discussions that took place around her family table. "And the Hungarians are civilized. The world is civilized. Every rationale was utilized to deny the truth" (Segment 7, 7:20-7:35). It was early enough in the German march eastward that they could abstain from belief, but time was catching up and soon the Germans would point their troops towards Hungary.

When the German Army marched into Hungary on March 19, 1944, they were preparing for the systematic removal of 750,000 Hungarian Jews, the last major population of Jews in Europe (Merey, 2). Budapest was the first city to fall into German hands, the residents taken completely by surprise as the Army paraded through the streets (Cornelius, 277). Transfer of governmental power went smoothly for the Germans, as the Prime Minister Miklós Kállay gave his resignation within days and was subsequently replaced by Döme Sztójay on March 22 (Cornelius, 285). The new Sztójay government was a puppet government, made up of Nazi-sympathizing Hungarians and German military governors like Edmund Veesenmayer. The days after March 19 saw a complete upheaval in the command of the Hungarian Army with the Germans continually replacing or arresting military leaders they deemed unfit for service, installing new German leadership in their place (Cornelius, 288).

With the stage set, Adolf Eichmann arrived in Hungary to oversee deportations. Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, sent word to Eichmann to "sweep out the Jews from the country in the direction from east to west, and deport every Jew to Auschwitz as quickly as possible" (Cornelius, 292). The Germans under Eichmann's control, with cooperation from Hungarian authorities, carried out the deportations with relative ease, following the typical model used in other countries:

1. Isolation laws;
2. Confiscation of Jewish wealth;
3. Gathering Jews into Ghettos;
4. Deportation;
5. Annihilation (Cornelius, 292).

In the weeks after the occupation and Eichmann's arrival, houses in ghettos were starred and deportations began in earnest. Esther remembers the starring of the houses as an enormous shift for those living in the Szeged Ghetto, the reality of the German occupation coming to their front door, and the numerous ways in which their world was drastically changing.

Eichmann divided Hungary into six zones of deportation, leaving Budapest to be cleared last (Merey, 4). From May 16, 1944, to July 8, 1944, the entire population of 437,402 Jews from the Hungarian countryside were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, with the exception of 15,000 who were taken to Strasshof, Austria (Cornelius, 292). Esther vividly recounts the night they came for the Jungreis family. Their removal was primarily facilitated by the Arrow Cross, a far-right Hungarian party, with the aid of several German Nazi's. The Jungreis family was awoken, without warning, in the middle of the night and given only a few minutes to get ready. They were not allowed to bring anything with them, but Esther notes that she defied the order and walked out of the house with her favorite doll tucked in her arms. Once outside, the Jungreis' were gaped at by non-Jewish neighbors from their windows and the superintendent of the building, another non-Jewish Hungarian, who had let the Arrow Cross into their home. The superintendent had brought his daughter that night, a girl Esther had played with before and known well; Esther remembers the girl taking the doll from her without a word. Esther said, "What are you doing? That's my doll" (Segment 4, 21:20). In response, the superintendent spat in Esther's face. It was her last memory of home.

Several weeks after Esther Jungreis and her family were taken from their home in the Szeged Ghetto to a nearby brick factory, they were moved to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. The Jungreis’ arrived in June 1944 after a brief stop in Linz, Austria where they were shaved and showered. Bergen-Belsen camp was established in the spring of 1943 and functioned as a transit camp for specific groups of Jewish prisoners who were excluded from deportation into extermination camps (Megargee, 278). The Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) published protocols on the relocation of Jewish prisoners to Bergen-Belsen and the necessary criteria they had to meet in order to be admitted, including:

1. Jews who are either related to or have other relations with influential people in hostile overseas countries;

2. Jews who are key to an exchange of Germans either interned overseas or held prisoner overseas;

3. Jews who as hostages can be used to exert either political or economic pressure;

4. Key Jewish personalities (Megargee, 278).

It is unclear which of these criteria the Jungreis family met, though Esther was clear about her father’s position as Chief Rabbi to the Orthodox community in Szeged, and their family may have been sent to Bergen-Belsen for this reason. Several branch camps were established in Bergen-Belsen, including ones for Polish Jews (Sonderlager) and one for Hungarian Jews (Ungarnlager). The Hungarian camp was established in July 1944 for the 1,683 Hungarian Jews comprising the so-called Kasztner Group (Megargee, 278). Esther and her family were members of the Kasztner Group, though she does not identify the group by name in the interview, she does remember their release from Bergen-Belsen in December 1944 as part of the deal between Reszö Kasztner and Heinrich Himmler.

Bergen-Belsen primarily served as an camp for individual prisoners, but it also acted as a family camp. In Bergen-Belsen, the number of imprisoned children was estimated around 3,000, Jewish children made up the largest percentage with a small grouping of Sinti and Roma, and non-Jewish Polish children (Megargee, 280). Evacuation transports of pregnant women from other camps were routed to Bergen-Belsen, where they would give birth, though the movement of the mothers past that point is unclear (Megargee, 280). Esther described the horrors of the camp, in the lack of food, the violence from German soldiers, the easily spreading disease, and the near constant threat of death. But she also spoke in length about the humanity shown between the prisoners and the continuing faith that buoyed Esther and her family through those eight months at Bergen-Belsen. Rabbi Abraham Jungreis, Esther's father, made Shabbos every week by counting the days. "On Shabbos, he would gather us in the middle of the night because no one should find out. And he would start to sing very softly, Shalom Aleichem, and he would make kiddush" (Segment 9, 19:39-19:59). Every day, he would save pieces of his ration of bread for Shabbos, so, in the words of Esther: "we would know it was Shabbos" (Segment 9, 20:14). One of the only reasons the Jungreis family could share in Shabbos every Friday was their placement in the family camp, otherwise it would've been impossible to travel between the men and women's barracks.

Though Esther's father attempted to continue faith and celebrate Shabbos, and ultimately give his children something to hang onto, Bergen-Belsen was no better off than any other concentration camps. The conditions slowly worsened during late 1944 and into 1945. The Jungreis family were fortunate enough to be placed on the Kasztner Train in December 1944 but most other prisoners would stay in Bergen-Belsen until British soldier liberated the camp on April 15, 1945. The estimated number of the murdered sits around 50,000 (Megargee, 280). The British were too late to save many of the 55,000 left behind, more than 13,000 died after liberation from the effects of imprisonment (Megargee, 280).

The Kasztner Train was pivotal to the survival of the Jungreis family and thousands of other Hungarian Jews. Reszö Kasztner, a Hungarian lawyer and journalist, was a founding member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee and the namesake of the Kasztner train. As the war dragged on into 1944, the Germans began to realize their desperately growing need for resources, and began to bargain for supplies, equipment, money in exchange for Jewish lives (Goldman, 81). Heinrich Himmler delegated negotiations in Hungary to Adolf Eichmann and Kurt Becher, both of whom negotiated separately with Kasztner for the release of Hungarian Jews (Goldman, 82). Eichmann initially proposed $1,000 per passenger while Becher proposed $2,000, later dropping it to an agreed upon $1,000, which was paid by Kasztner from funds given by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (Goldman, 83). The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee or the "Joint" became vitally important for funding after refusals from Western governments to pay for Jewish refugees. Once the deal was finalized in July 1944, 1,683 Hungarian Jews originally meant to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau were placed on trains bound for Portugal and Spain, but were ultimately delivered to Bergen-Belsen (Goldman, 84). Esther and her family were not in this original group, or at least she never indicated she was, as there was no mention of connections with Kasztner prior to their release in December 1944. Two releases of prisoners were made, one in August 1944 and one in December 1944, both of these releases came from additional payments by Kasztner (Goldman, 84). In December, when the Jungreis family was released, the parents were boarded onto trains first while the children stayed behind for another convoy of trucks to bring them to the train station. The trucks never came for the children, instead they were forced to march at least 10 miles from Bergen-Belsen to the train station, where they were greeted by their parents. The German trains took Esther, her family, and the other Hungarian Jews to Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Switzerland.

Esther is unclear exactly which city in Switzerland she was placed in but she was far more focused on the separation from her family. Both of her brothers were sent to separate camps, Esther too, and the only family members who remained together for the next two years were her parents. Separation did not mean complete absence as Esther's parents visited as frequently as they could while trying to obtain passage to America.

Esther's journey, which began in Szeged, ended in Brooklyn, New York in 1947. After reuniting with her parents and brothers in Switzerland, the family traveled to Italy and boarded a freighter ship bound for Norfolk, Virginia. It took four weeks to cross the Atlantic and Esther recalled the strangeness of finally landing on American shores; how their family of five were left at the docks, alone and abandoned until they were picked up by Norfolk police officers, and taken to the home of the president of the local congregation. Esther spoke about the feeling of fullness as they were fed dozens of scrambled eggs, a sign of change, a tangible difference between the world from which the Jungreis family had escaped and the world they had entered.

Eventually, the Jungreis' arrived in East Flatbush, at the home of her aunt and an entirely new life began. Abraham Jungreis went on to build both a shul and a yeshiva in Brooklyn, his mission, as Esther stated, was to teach others and spread the word, "so the Jewish people should live again" (Segment 14, 20:36). Esther herself attended Bais Yaakov, an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva for girls, beginning in the first grade at eleven-years-old and within the year skipped ahead to the eighth grade. She continued at Bais Yaakov in Williamsburg until her graduation in 1954. Later in the same year, Esther traveled to Israel for her studies in seminary school but was sent home early due to a case of chicken pox.

Following her return from Israel, Esther went on to marry her husband, Rabbi Theodore Meshulem Jungreis. Together they founded the Hineni movement in 1973 with the aim of encouraging Jews to transition to Orthodox Judaism. Hineni became a lifelong project for Esther and she continued to speak, teach and host services at the Hineni Heritage Center and across the world until her death.

Esther Jungreis passed away on August 23, 2016.

May her memory be a blessing.

She is survived by her daughters, Chayasora and Slava, and her sons, Osher and Yisroel.