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'If you can't leave your home, it's a prison'

Hungary is struggling to meet the needs of Shoah survivors

October 13, 2016 09:56
Neglected: survivor Vera Varga

ByAnonymous, Anonymous

3 min read

Each weekday, Laszlo Zobel, 98, a retired textile maker fond of colourful jokes, leaves his fin-de-siècle apartment in the company of a nurse, and visits a specialist to treat the chronic osteosclerosis he suffers from.

"If it wasn't for these treatments and nurse, I don't know what I'd do," said Mr Zobel, reclining on a sofa in his home. "I wouldn't be able to walk or leave my flat.

"You can have a nice apartment, but if you can't leave it, it is a prison."

If there is anything that Mr Zobel knows intimately, it is prison. In 1941, he was pressed into forced labour in the Ukraine, where he slaved, starved and, ultimately, survived.