At my batmitzvah I gave a d’var Torah, I felt honoured to remember Victoria Adler who wasn’t as lucky as me because cruelly, at the age of nine years old, she had been murdered by the Nazis.
This wasn’t the end of my batmitzvah journey; in many respects it was the beginning. My parents and I decided to go to Budapest to trace a little of Victoria’s history. In preparation for the trip, about 18 months after my batmitzvah, I took out the folder from Yad Vashem again to review the information. My father noticed that at the bottom of the testimonial page someone had written in small letters “Kansas City, USA”.
My Dad typed into Google, “Victoria Adler, Kansas City” but nothing came back. But for Victoria’s parents’ names, Piroska and Jeno Adler and Kansas City, incredibly, there was a mention, a yahrzeit memorial at the Kehilath Israel Synagogue in Kansas City with a message reading “Piroska and Jeno Adler remembered by children and grandchildren”. This was a very exciting possible connection.
My Mum immediately emailed the shul in Kansas telling them about the twinning and saying that we were looking for any relatives. The shul got back to us within the hour to say they had a member who they believed had lost a sister called Victoria in the Holocaust. The lady was Erika Adler Clayman and she was Victoria Adler’s sister.
Erika, over many emails with Mum, gave us as much history as she knew. The week we contacted her, it happened to be the yahrzeit for her mother and she felt her mother had a hand in this from on high.
She was born two years after the end of the war. Miraculously, her parents Piroska and Jeno had both survived Auschwitz and its labour camp respectively and, incredibly, found eachother after the war. They later had three more children; Erika, her sister Zsuzsi and a brother called Gabor. Jeno had eight siblings and he was the only one to survive Auschwitz.
Back to Viki as she was known to her family. She also had a younger brother called Gyurika who was born in Nyirmada but tragically perished before even getting to Aushwitz-Berkenau.
Viki’s father, Jeno, was from a nearby town called Kisvarda, from a family which owned land and cattle. He spoke five languages. He was conscripted into the Hungarian army and then was put in a labour camp during the war. Viki’s mother Piroska moved back home to Nyirmada to be with all her family and younger siblings. When she heard the Nazis were invading Hungary, Piroska travelled to Budapest to speak to some relatives to see if they could move there.
Whilst she was away, for such a short time, all the Jews in Nyirmada, including her daughter Viki, son Gyurika and her entire extended family were rounded up into the town’s synagogue and then transported by train to Auschwitz. All the family knows is that Gyurika did not survive to reach Auschwitz and that Viki was sent to Auschwitz 2, Aushwitz-Berkenau, where she perished.
Following the liberation of Auschwitz their mother was taken to a ghetto and stayed there until her husband found her, having gone from ghetto to ghetto looking for her. They moved to Budapest and that was where Erika was born in 1947 and then Zsuzsi and Gabor.
After the war the family lived in Budapest and with the onset of revolution in 1956 they realised they had to escape. They managed to get on a boat to America and came via Ellis Island.
What of her other relatives? Her uncle, Rabbi Andrew Klein had been deported from Hungary in 1944 to Auschwitz-Bergen Belsen and was liberated after the war and in 1947 made his way to the USA and settled in New Haven. Her uncle Tibor, also a veteran of a Nazi slave labour camp, was liberated from the Nazis only to find himself a Russian captive and he spent the next six years in Russian prisons and coal mines. It was 1950 before Tibor was freed and retuned to Hungary, to learn that his wife and baby had been killed by the Nazis. In 1951 he remarried. His new wife Lenke, had also lost her husband and son who had been around nine years old.
Viki’s other uncle, Dr Bela Klein (her mother’s brother) survived and travelled after the war to the USA and on arrival in America changed his name to Dr Bela Kent. He became a doctor in Kansas. Erika, her siblings and her parents settled in Kansas to be near Dr Bela Kent.
After many hardships and struggles Jeno, was able to realise his dream of opening a kosher butcher’s shop. Erika went to Israel a number of times with her mother to see if they could find out any more details about Viki but unfortunately there was nothing.
Last summer my family and I went to Budapest. We visited the only Orthodox shul in Budapest, where Erika and her family were members and we went to the two villages Kisvarda and Nyirmada which were over three and a half hours by car from Budapest, near the Romanian border.
My feeling when visiting the towns were great sadness at what happened there during the war and the loss of the Jewish culture. We did not experience any warmth or friendliness from anyone and I wondered if the people living there now even knew what happened previously. It felt sanitised. We also visited the area’s Jewish cemeteries where my father said Kaddish.
The saddest but most strengthening visit was to the site of the old synagogue in Nyirmada which is now a civic centre. There was a plaque recognising the site and Dad not only said Kaddish but also a memorial prayer (from the Yizkor service) for the victims of the Holocaust. It was poignant and uplifting, as the Nazis wanted to destroy the Jewish people and here we were remembering those who perished but celebrating our lives and bringing to life the memory of Victoria Adler and her family.
I am so grateful to my parents for allowing me to take part in the amazing Yad Vashem twinning programme. To have shined the light on Viki and her brother Gyurika and to bring their memory back has been so moving and I hope it has made Erika and her family happy to remember them even though I am sure it must be incredibly emotional. This year Mum visited Erika in America, they have become close friends.
The twinning of my batmitzvah to Viki AdIer has been a privilege and underlines how important it is to remember not only the history of the Holocaust but also those individual and family stories who tragically make that history.
Victoria Caplin is a pupil at Hasmonean High School
