The Men of the Frank Family, Part II: Survival in a crazy world
- Mattan Segev-Frank
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
The second part of this trilogy tells the stories of the Frank family members during World War II and how they split and tried to each survive a world that became strange and insane, and turned on them as Jews. To keep the focus and the length of each part, many other intertwining stories of other branches of the family will be posted separately eventually.
I would like to thank my father and his three cousins, children of Tamás Frank, who have all helped me (from all around the world) with whatever information they knew and remembered, and with sharing photos from their albums to turn this Kaleidoscope of events into a clear story.
As WW2 broke out, Arnold and Terezia Frank realized they need to take measures to survive despite the restrictions on Jews in Slovakia. Their first son Juraj left to Israel with the “Youth Aliyah” project. Their younger son Tamás was too young for the project and stayed behind, but they found where to send him for safety as well: he was sent to Szombathely, Hungary, where he was hidden in the farm of Arnold’s Niece Lily Hirschenhauser née Reich and her husband Gyula, as Hungary was still much safer for Jews in the early days of the war.
Arnold and Terezia stayed behind, and according to Elisabeth Falk née Reich (Arnold’s niece and Lily’s sister), were hidden in or around Prešov. Coincidentally, or not, it is known that a timber company based in Prešov, which was logging in the area, was employing racially persecuted citizens and Soviet refugees with false papers in a forest camp above Matiaška. As it is the exact same job Arnold previously did in the exact same place not long before – so it is very likely that the forementioned racially persecuted citizens included Arnold & Terezia.
However, no place remained safe for Jews for long during these times. At some point, Arnold and Terezia succeeded escaping from Eastern Slovakia and arrived safely to Budapest, Hungary. Arnold’s older brother, Artur Frank, lived in Budapest and was a textile engineer who owned a textile factory as well as the apartment building. He lived in, at Alig Utca (“Barely a street”) No. 3 in the 13th district of Budapest. Arnold and Terezia were hoping that Artur would be able to help them, but by the time they arrived - Artur and his wife Adele née Szidon were living in one of Raoul Wallenberg’s ‘Safe Houses’ (according to niece Elisabeth Falk, who was divorced from Adele’s brother Alexander Sidon), and were in no position to provide much help, so they had to get by on their own.
Arnold found work in a brick factory in one of Budapest’s suburbs, which also had stables for horses, and Tamás joined his parents in Budapest. They lived in the factory, where they were joined by Arnold’s younger sister Josefina Szidon née Frank, with her husband Maximilian Szidon (brother of Adele and Alexander) and their daughter Gerta, and by Arnold’s brother Viliam with his wife Aranka and their daughters Erika & Judita (as described in the book “Trust and Deceit” by Prof. Gerta Vrbova née Szidon, Tamás’ first cousin, and clarified in my personal conversations with her).
The Frank siblings enjoyed a period which was safe and quite enjoyable, considering the state most of Europe was in by then. While the war was raging all over the continent – they were having daily sessions of card games, playing Bridge and passing time, in hope that the war would skip them in Budapest.
When the German army invaded Hungary on the 18th of March 1944, they were all still in the factory in Budapest. On the 1st of April 1944, Arnold Frank was arrested in Budapest together with his brother-in-law Max Szidon. They were held at a school yard and Arnold was sent to wait in one of the classrooms. As he entered, he quickly noticed that the room was empty and no soldiers were there to guard, and there was a second door on the other side of the room, towards the street. He quickly sneaked out the door and succeeded escaping unnoticed, but his brother-in-law was sent from there to a labor camp, where he later perished.
After Arnold returned home and warned the rest of the family that things were getting more dangerous, the family decided to split and each branch went into hiding in different places. Arnold’s sister Josefine and her daughter Greta hid in one place, brother Viliam and Aranka and their daughters went somewhere else and then disappeared (A story I told in the post “Palárikovo part 3: Viliam & Aranka Frank, Štefánikova Street's ״New״ Residents”).
Arnold and Terezia remained hidden in the brick factory with their son Tamás, and the men would sometimes walk into the city, to fetch necessary items. On one of the times Támás went alone, he was captured and sent in a death march from Budapest to KZ Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria. Tamás later said that he survived the death march thanks to a Nazi soldier who saved his life. He was exhausted and could barely walk, when a soldier gave him his water tank and encouraged him to hold on and keep walking. He explained that if he sits down or stop walking – he would have no choice but to shoot him. Instead, he helped Tamás make it to their destination.
In Mauthausen, Támás became ill with Tiphus and was near death when the American forces arrived and liberated the camp. He was 20 years old and at that point weighed 30kg only. According to the International Tracing Service (ITS), Tamás Frank was liberated on the 5th of May 1945 from Concentration Camp Mauthausen/Commando Gunskirchen in Austria, by the American army. In a letter from the ITS, dated 16 May 2008, they noted that Hungarian Jews from the Special Camps for Jews in the area of Vienna, respectively Hungarian Jews from the work companies and the work service, were admitted on the 12th of March 1945 to Concentration Camp Mauthausen/Commando Gunskirchen (Assembly Camp) and liberated on the 5th of May 1945. These prisoners were not registered in the camp records and did not receive any prisoner’s numbers.
Following Tamás' disappearance, Arnold and Terezia remained alone in the brick factory. When the Russian forces arrived to the outskirts of Budapest in winter 1944, they were bombing the city. The people in the Brick factory went down to the underground cellars and hid there, but the horses in the stables died one by one. Arnold would carve parts from the dead horses, which was preserved by the snow, and Terezia would cook them with spices Arnold brought from the city (he would walk a great distance every day into the city and bargain for things).
One day, a Russian soldier passed by and got to eat with them some of the Horse meat Terezia cooked. She was immediately appointed as a cook for the Russian soldiers, which protected her and Arnold until the Russians left. As the war ended, they went back to Slovakia and took over the farm and houses of the Frank family in Palárikovo, where Arnold was born. They lived in the house which Arnold’s brother Viliam owned before the war (more on their story after the war in my previous post “Palárikovo Part 2: The house on Štefánikova Street”).
While his parents went back to Slovakia, Tamás did not return there. On the Yad Vashem website, he appears on a list of survivors who were waiting in 1945 in the displaced persons camp in Melk, Austria (a sub-camp of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria, which operated until the 19th of April 1945, and it seems like after it’s liberation it was repurposed to serve as a Displaced People Camp), to "return home to Romania" (though he is listed as born and lived in Ersekujvar, which is the Hungarian name of Nové Zámky, Slovakia). Tamás disembarked this train in Budapest, where he started to rebuild his life.
On the 28th of November 1945 Tamás Frank is listed in a card file of names of survivors who returned to Hungary, prepared by DEGOB, 1945-1946 and shared with Yad Vashem by the Official Archives in Hungary. Tamás Frank’s card shows that his address was Lonyai utca 4, Budapest, Hungary. On the Nevek project he also appears as a survivor, living in Lonyai utca 54, Budapest, Hungary. According to his brother, he initially lived with relatives, probably referring to Uncle Artur and his wife Adel.
Uncle Artur was a very wealthy man. Besides the textile factory, he also owned several rental properties. After surviving World War 2 in one of Wallenberg’s safe houses, he and Adel returned to live in the building they owned at Alig Utca No. 3. In the same building, they also housed Adel’s sister Margit and her husband Andor Greiner.
During World War 2, Artur supported and helped his siblings and their children in any way he could, and when the war ended, he continued by supporting Tamás during his studies in Budapest and employing him in his Textile factory, allowing Tamás to graduate as a Textile Engineer. It seems that Artur was grooming Tamás, intending to eventually pass on the factory to him.
But sadly, everyone’s hopes for a new and free post-war world soon shattered, as Hungary transitioned from a wartime monarchy and democracy to a Soviet-influenced communist dictatorship between 1945 and 1949. When the communists came to power, they confiscated everything Artur owned. He was only permitted to retain a single apartment in his own building, and it was there that he lived until the end of his life.
As if that wasn’t enough, his wife Adel, who smoked like a chimney after the war (according to Elisabeth Falk, Artur’s niece and Adel’s former sister-in-law) became ill with lung cancer and eventually died on the 22nd of December 1950. In 1955, Artur married a second wife, Klári née Weisz. During this difficult decade, he remained close with his nephew Tamás.
In Budapest, Tamás met Zsuzsanna Elek, a beautiful and young Jewish survivor herself, and on the 11th of February 1949 they got married in Belváros, the 5th District of Budapest. Zsuzsanna was born on 29 March 1924 in Terézváros, the 6th district of Budapest, to Kálmán Elek and Sarlota née Hevesi, both of whom perished in the Holocaust.
In 1952 their only son was born, however, by the time he was 3 years old, Tamás and Zsuzsanna had separated and lived in different apartments. Word in the family says Tamás was already living with another woman, whose identity isn’t known to us.
During his time in Hungary, Tamás maintained a relationship with the family members who survived the war and continued to live in Slovakia. When he decided to leave Hungary, a plan was made for him and his brother in Israel to visit their parents in Slovakia in 1956 at the same time, for a post-war family reunion.
Sadly, the Sinai war broke-out and his brother Juraj, now going by his Hebrew name Yehuda, couldn’t leave the Kibbutz and Israel, but Tamás visited his parents with his son, before proceeding to execute an escape plan which he was already working on, it seems.
This story is cut in the middle, due to its length, but there's still a lot to tell, so...