Tragic Fate of a Righteous Gentile Family

Most of our Christian neighbors gladly obeyed these barbaric laws, while very few remained friendly. Some continued to sell us milk and butter, bringing us the goods by the dark of night so that our Jew-hating neighbors would not report them to the authorities. The Pap family even brought us butter when we were imprisoned in the ghetto, throwing it over the high fence into the yard and risking being caught by the anti-Semitic patrol.

In a twist of fate, the Pap family tragically lost their only son, Elek, a handsome lad with bad morals, as the war neared its end. While engaged to a prominent young girl, Elek seduced another young girl, hardly sixteen years old. She became pregnant and hanged herself in a barn, as it was unforgivable for small town girls from good families to behave like this those days. Elek felt guilty and swallowed a large dose of aspirin, although he probably did not really wish to die. Elek's parents called the Jewish doctor, Oskar Szuks, who administered a gastric lavage and saved Elek's life. After this degrading event, Elek's fiance broke off the engagement.

Less than two years later, Elek found a new victim for his fiery desires, a good looking and intelligent girl who was studying agronomy. This eighteen-year-old girl was engaged to a handsome young man who was also studying agronomy, in a different town. While her parents went for an overnight vacation, Elek visited her, and she, too, became pregnant with Elek's child. Back at school, her shame grew obvious, and she hanged herself on a tree on the school premises.

Eighteen months later Elek's was traveling with his army regiment on a freight train from Germany to Sweden. It was so crowded that soldiers went on top of the cars. Elek stood erect on the top, as the train suddenly passed through a dark tunnel. The collision instantly cut Elek's head off from his body. When Elek's best friend came home after the war, he didn't have the heart to tell his parents how he witnessed their only son's death. So they hoped for his return until the end of their own lives.

© David Muskal, 2001