The Yellow Star

Radio broadcasts unceasingly bawled out anti-Jewish slogans. A shopkeeper once turned the radio on loud when I was the only Jew amongst many Christians. I believe he did so on purpose, to embarrass me. I had to hear the humiliating declarations from the dirty mouth of a member of the Hungarian parliament over and over again. As he yelled with all his strength, I wished the earth would open its mouth and swallow me, my face red from humiliation. I stood numbly, unable to move from this cursed place for quite some time. I so wanted to exit the place with some pride, but was too hurt to hold my head up, and left the place for good, never again to enter it.

April 4, 1944; the Hungarian government introduced a degrading law forcing us to wear a yellow star on the left side of our clothes. Whoever disobeyed would be punished. My father prepared perfect yellow stars for each of us. Sad reflections overtook his face as he worked.

My father's instruction that I put on the yellow star filled me with enormous hatred and depression. We always showed great respect and love to both our parents - especially to our father - but now I had to refuse. "I cannot wear the disgracing badge", I told my father. My father answered that I should wear the star with pride. "Show them that your are proud to be a Jew", he said.

"I am proud to be a Jew", I told my father. "But that pride does not mean that I will let them degrade me and make me a laughing stock". Those barbaric demands deeply hurt my self-dignity. The first day I wore the yellow star fell on my seventeenth birthday. Instead of marking the spring of life, my birthday turned into a dark omen for many more hopeless days that followed shortly.

Living in Nazi occupied Hungary, our already great anxiety intensified with this new law. People pondered if our fate was now sealed like the rest of European Jewry, who faced extermination in Nazi extermination camps. Very few of us believed that we would escape the cruel Nazi clutches.

Parents also worried that brutal Nazi soldiers would harm their unmarried daughters. My father proposed that I fictitiously marry a local boy, but I became suspicious and did not consent. I also told my father that I could not marry this boy, as I already put my eyes on the boy's younger brother. My father thus abandoned his plans to find me a husband. He continued to fear that German soldiers would attack me and suggested I stay indoors. I could not do that - just had to walk about outside and feel the atmosphere.

I promised my father that I would not let anyone harm me so long as I was alive - just over my dead body. Thanks to the Almighty, nobody harmed me this way. I once had a close call when a childhood archenemy of mine came to enjoy the sight of Nazi invaders in our town, and noticed me near an SS soldier who stood guard by city hall. He tried as hard as he could to get the SS soldier to harm me, but being a stupid ignoramus, this teenage boy did not know German. So all he could do was point at me and repeatedly yell, "Juda, Juda". The Nazi soldier completely disregarded the peasant boy as I quietly walked away.

© David Muskal, 2001