Treasured ‘Teddy’ tells the story of Shoah survivor in Imperial War Museum exhibition

With John’s father, Gyorgy, forced into one of Hungary’s twenty labour camps, John and his mother Livia were confined to a designated “yellow star” house, from which one family member could emerge for two hours daily to buy food. Besides Teddy, John was deprived of toys, books or companionship.

John Hajdu's father, Gyorgy (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

“I could not meet other children,” he said. “I was completely isolated. We were not allowed to visit parks, swimming pools, cafés or cinemas. The gates were locked at night. Jewish bank accounts were frozen.”

That October, Livia was deported to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. John’s Aunt Iby rushed him - and his pocketed Teddy - into a non-Jewish neighbour’s cupboard.

“I was in total darkness and was told to keep completely quiet,” he said. “It was very confusing, frightening and unusual for a seven-year-old. I realised at this stage I was losing my mother and father.”

John Hajdu's mother, Livia (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

As searches escalated, John and Iby moved into a flat of over 20 people in the Budapest Ghetto. Inhabitants lived without basic amenities and were tortured or shot at random. The dead lay in the streets.

“We had to survive on horse meat and bread. I was always hungry,” he said. “It was not advisable to go outside because around 80 people died every day.”

John Hajdu's Aunt Iby (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

The ghetto was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945, just minutes before retreating German forces intended to detonate it with mines. The Hajdus reunited in Romania, after Livia – ribs broken, teeth smashed and scarred with lifelong trauma – was freed by US troops, alongside only 5,000 surviving inmates. Her “return from the dead” was as joyful as it was unexpected, but “also created confusion”.

“My father believed that my mother died in the camp and was planning to marry a lady he met locally,” John said. “Can you imagine the feeling?”

Livia took John and Teddy to live in a single room in Budapest. As the new communist dictatorship did not take kindly to middle-class Jews, his sole university option was the Railway Technical College, where he secured a place thanks to a connection and, in 1951, graduated to work in the railway workers’ union.

John Hajdu's beloved Teddy (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

“Of course, antisemitism was still rife, and the Holocaust was a forbidden subject,” he said.

It was the bloody suppression of the Hungarian Uprising’s foreshocks, occurring some minutes’ walk from the Hajdu residency, that pushed John, Livia and a friend to flee for Austria. Aunt Iby salvaged documents from their abandoned flat, many of which formed the basis of Hajdu’s memoir, Life in Two Countries.

They dodged border guards for 25 miles, crossed a frozen river, and arrived in Britain via a Red Cross train. There, antisemitism was unthinkable, John found. “Hungarians, never mind Jews or non-Jews, were treated amazingly well. Not like refugees arriving today. Later, I may have picked up one or two antisemitic comments, but in 1957, there was no question of not being welcomed.”

He added: “Who would have thought that I would live through the Hungarian Revolution, that we would have to leave our flat and everything behind, and escape from under barbaric communist regime with nothing but a small bag of food and my teddy in my pocket, which is now sitting on my desk.”

With support from the Hungarian Jewish Refugees Committee, John began a long and successful career in the hotel business.

Livia died in 2006, aged 97, having never spoken of her time at Mauthausen.

“I'm very sad that I never found out how she survived,” John said. “I blame myself, I suppose, for not trying to get more out of her, but she lived a very strange life here. She was never really happy, and therefore, she wouldn't talk about what happened to her because that would have made it even worse.”

John Hajdu (left) with his family (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

John’s four grandchildren are still “a bit too small” to understand his history. This, he stresses, is what makes the Childhood in War exhibition so important – its accessibility to young children. Addressing thousands of schoolchildren every year, John is adamant to pass the torch on.

“I'm afraid we will never get rid of antisemitism,” he said. “But we have got to fight it with what we've got, and that is why we've got to spread the message as wide as possible.

“This is what I suggest to anybody reading this article: Speak to your grandparents. Everybody has a story. Please make sure that you know what it is. Make sure your parents write it down. There are very few survivors left,” John said. “You will be the people to carry on the message.”

Childhood in War is at the Imperial War Museum until February 28, 2027. The exhibition is free. Click here for more information