Hiding in a Red Cross Orphanage

[Text: Fearing for the safety of her only child, Peter’s mother arranged for him to be smuggled into an International Red Cross orphanage.] 

Peter Suedfeld: I don’t know how my, as I said, I don’t know how my family found out about this, but they decided to smuggle me into one of those orphanages. And the woman who had been the maid of my grandparents, as the equivalent to the one we had, who was very devoted to them, she also felt like part of the family, volunteered to try to take me across Budapest, across the bridge, across to Buda, and take me to that orphanage. It was very brave of her. She was really risking her life. If we had been caught, she would have been gone, and so would I. So, in order to do that, she had to take off my yellow star, which was a capital offence right there. But I couldn’t go out with a yellow star because it was not curfew hours. The streetcars by then were not running on schedule. Just once in a while, there was a streetcar. And most of the bridges had been bombed. So that you were walking on planks laid across the holes where the bombs had hit. So, she took me, and I don’t remember how long it took, but it took a long time. And we went up to the hills of Buda, it was a hilly place. Pest is relatively flat. She found the orphanage, she took me there, and she explained the situation. And the women in charge, they’re all female, took me to a site, to another room, asked me questions, which I answered. And then they sent her away. She was done. She had done what she needed to do. And then they eventually, within the next few days, got me false papers, with a false Christian-type name. Because Suedfeld wasn’t a Jewish name, but it wasn’t a real Magyar name either. It wasn’t really Hungarian. So, they gave me a Hungarianized name, which was Sugár Peter. S-U-G-A with an accent mark-R, which means a ray, like a sunray. So, they gave me papers with that name. And they gave me a whole story to memorize about how my father was in the army, my mother couldn’t take care of me ... all that kind of stuff. And Christian, of course, and taught me how to behave in a Catholic church, because the orphanage went to church every Sunday, so that nobody would suspect that there was anything not quite appropriate with us. So, I learned when to kneel and when to cross myself and all that sort of stuff. And I was warned never to let anybody know what my real name was or that I was Jewish or that anything about my story was not true. Especially not to let anybody see me in the bathroom because I was circumcised and that was a dead giveaway in those days. And there I was, with about maybe 25 or 30 other kids. From then on until the Soviet army liberated us, I knew nothing about what was going on outside. There was no radio, there were no newspapers. Nobody came with news. I didn’t know what happened to my family. I didn’t know what was happening at all.