Eva Speigel Aigner

Frankel: Did you ever see him again after he was taken?
AIGNER: No. We never saw him after he was taken. And the way we even find out how he died that one of the men who was his friend he was with, he survived the bombing. And later on, he took off my father’s pocket watch from his body, and brought it back to us.

Frankel: By whom was the labor camp bombed?
AIGNER: By the Germans. Actually it was a fight between the Russians and the Germans. And it was bombed by the Germans.

Frankel: How did you survive after your father no longer worked at home and provided?
AIGNER: Well it was very difficult with all this family who moved in to our place. It was basically was a hand to mouth situation. Everybody brought whatever food they were able to put together into this apartment, and we shared. We try to, you know the woman try to cook some meals. And as the time was going by, it got less and less. And whatever funds, you know, we had, we tried to shop food, whichever was available.

Frankel: Could you still go out?
AIGNER: Yes, we were still able to go out, but it was a restriction until dark. You know it had to be in a certain time that you were in your apartment.

Frankel: Were there other changes after…?
AIGNER: Well there were a lot of changes; you were not allowed to go to public places. Like you were not allowed to go to a movie or to a library, or anything which was public. You were just able to go to the market, or if you had a job to go to you still could continue. But it was very, very, very restricted.
And this was going on for a about two or three months before we got the word that my father passed away. And about two or three weeks after he passed away, the cross arrow men came by again, and they started to pick up people who was still strong enough to do some labor and was left. So they took my mother who was 38 years old at that time, and my sister and I was left with my aunt who was my mother’s sister. [She] was quite a few years older than my mom. And she was left behind. But that was devastating when my mother was taken to you know even with a small child’s mind I really measured up that who is here now to take care of us? And my sister who was 15 years old, she really had to grow up in a hurry and become a mother and a sister. That was a terrible time. I still remember how my mother cried when they took her, and how we cried. It was hard. [crying].
And so, as I found out later from my mother, they took the women and a few more able-bodied people who they gathered around from the safe houses and they put her on a train, which they didn’t know exactly the destination, but they were told they were going to some camp. And at one point, when they opened the door on the train to put in some food, my mother jumped off of the train. And hid. Well, she was captured by a German soldier on gunpoint. And my mother spoke Yiddish and Czechoslovakian and a little bit of German (her generation spoke a lot languages) and she got on her knees and begged this soldier, “Please, my husband is already killed, and I left two children at home. And if I don’t get back to them, they are not going to survive.” And for some reason, this man had a heart, and he pulled out a picture from his wallet. And he said, “You think I like to fight this war?” He says, “I have a wife and three children back home,” and showed it to my mother. And let her go.
She got back to Budapest; she hid in the back of a truck, and somehow got back to Budapest and got back to the safe house looking for us. Well she couldn’t find nobody. She had a few valuable things hidden in the apartment and some money. She took off her yellow star. She didn’t wear it any longer. And put her valuables in her clothing and hid it, and found out from one of the neighbor that they emptied the safe house on that day, and as she understood they were taken to the ghetto.
Well my mother, as she was going toward the ghetto, talked to somebody and find out that they took all the children out of the groups and they took them down to the riverfront of the Danube. And some miracle happened, because you can imagine with all these crowds of people being on the riverfront and the Nazis were shooting the children into the river. They didn’t want to bother with them. There was no place to keep them. And my mother somehow, from the line, heard my sister’s voice. She took out her valuables, and her money, whatever she had left, including her wedding ring, and gave it to this cross arrow man, and said, “Please pull those kids out from the line.” And she pulled us out of the line. I remember, the one thing I remember so distinctly, it was so cold at night, and I took my comforter out of the bed, because they took us out at night from the bed, and I took the comforter along. And I still remember being as little, I was dragging this comforter, and my sister and I was hiding under it and trying to keep warm. And my mother knew there was no other place to go for two children and a Jewish woman but into the ghetto. And she sneaked us into the ghetto. And that’s where we basically stayed until the war ended.

Frankel: Now you said you were in a safe house, and yet your mother was taken away from the safe house?
AIGNER: Yes. Evidently the safe house only lasted for a while. And then they disallowed the safety. And they started to pull people out of there.

Frankel: How much time had passed between the time your mother was arrested and when she was able to come back?
AIGNER: About two weeks.

Frankel: And was it the Nazis who killed the children? Or was it the arrow cross?
AIGNER: You know, to me they all seemed the same. But it was the cross arrow, under the provision of the Germans.

Frankel: What happened to you after your mother was taken away, to you and your sister?
AIGNER: My mother, when my mother was taken away, my sister and I stayed in the apartment and my aunt took care of us for a while. But they were taken to the ghetto already, and they left the children behind. So we were in that apartment, my sister and I, for a couple of days before we were taken out to the river.

Frankel: Do you have any memories of those days, what you did?
AIGNER: Very little. I just know that we tried to hide in that apartment. My sister was a teenager, you know, she was also worried, a lot of the young women were raped. So we were sort of trying to stay in that apartment and hide.

Frankel: How far was the ghetto from that safe house?
AIGNER: About 15 blocks, 10-15 blocks, not too far.

Frankel: Did they give warning when you would go to the ghetto?
AIGNER: It was really no warning, because one day the arrow cross men came and they had people packing, and that’s when they took my aunt and some of the people who were still in the building and in the apartment. But they didn’t take the children. We had nobody to claim us. What they basically told us that the children will be taken care of by the Red Cross.

Frankel: Did you ever see the Red Cross?
AIGNER: I never saw the Red Cross.

Frankel: And so when were you taken to the ghetto?
AIGNER: Well, like I say, we were not taken to the ghetto. We were picked up and taken to the riverfront and my mother took us into the ghetto.

Frankel: And when they took you to the river, that was in the middle of the night?
AIGNER: It was in the middle of the night. We were yanked out of bed.

Frankel: Do you remember what time of year it was, and what year?
AIGNER: Ah, definitely, it was cold, winter, because we were freezing to death and we barely had a chance to get dressed. We heard later that not hundreds, but thousands of children and oldsters were killed by the river at that night.

Frankel: Was it already 1944?
AIGNER: It was 1944. We only been in the ghetto for about three or four months, and that was in the spring of ’45 when we were liberated.

Frankel: Did they tell you where you were going when they pulled you out of bed that night?
AIGNER: Well that’s what they told us that the children go to the Red Cross.

Frankel: Do you have any recollections from that?
AIGNER: I just remember being horribly scared and hanging on to my sister and crying and waking up at night, and shaken up, and my sister would tell me, “Don’t cry, everything will be OK; the Red Cross will take care of us.”

Frankel: And then was it shortly thereafter that your mother found you?
AIGNER: We stood in that line, seems like for hours. But she found my sister.

Frankel: What do you remember from the ghetto? Were there many children?
AIGNER: Seems like I remember more about the ghetto. [There were] at least 30 people put into this apartment because it was a section of the town. It was people’s apartments what they used for the ghetto. And we barely had room to lie. And there were like once a day feedings where we had to line up with a partner and everybody got some food. And I remember my mom always pushing me to the front of the line because I was so little, hoping that maybe we get food before they run out. Because a lot of times, you know you lined up for the food, and by the time it got to the end of the line, there wasn’t enough to go around. I also remember in this apartment, as my mother looked into the cupboards, in one corner she find a piece of bread, which was so moldy and so dry, that when she broke it apart, it was dusting all over. And we ate it like it was hot cake. We just were so pleased to have some food. And then of course the conditions were really bad in the ghetto and we all contracted Typhus. I remember having head lice. I had long braids and my mother cut my hair with the scissors. She said, “You know, may be the only way we can get rid of this.” But it was no cleaning conditions when it’s that many people put together. And by that time it was daily bombings. Constantly there were explosions and bombings, so a lot of times we had to all go down and be in the basement and people were very sick with not enough food and the dirty conditions and a lot of them contracted Typhus. We were very, very sick. So my recollection of the ghetto is very hard.

Frankel: When you say you had to line up for food, who ran the ghetto?
AIGNER: The cross arrow men ran the ghetto. And the Red Cross, that’s the time when I saw Red Cross, they brought in the food.

Frankel: Was there a Jewish Council? Jewish people in charge of the ghetto?
AIGNER: If it was, I don’t know.

Frankel: And what was your schedule like in the ghetto, did they try and organize schools, or?
AIGNER: There was no organization of any kind. It was just sort of like, hoping and waiting that the war will end and we survive.

Frankel: Do you have an approximate idea how big ghetto was? How many people were in the ghetto?
AIGNER: It seemed so big, but after the war, I know it was maybe a 20-30 block area. And if I think how we were jammed into this apartment where I was, and it was the same all over, it must have been a lot of people. But it was mainly older people left and people who were not able to work. I remember my mother constantly wearing a scarf; she was hiding her hair. She had bright hair, and she was hiding it so she look older. And a lot of times she would dirty up her face so she looks older. Because she was scared she would be picked up again.

Frankel: Were people deported from the ghetto?
AIGNER: I don’t know if they emptied the ghetto or if they took more or not but I remember she being scared a lot.

Frankel: Were you reunited with your aunt?
AIGNER: Yes, we were reunited with our aunt in the ghetto. In fact, you know, we survive it together.

Frankel: At that time, did you have any contact with family elsewhere?
AIGNER: Nobody else; my aunt was terribly concerned. She didn’t hear a word, anything about her four children who were all at that time between 18 to 27, 26, she didn’t hear anything from nobody.

Frankel: Had they been taken to a labor camp as well?
AIGNER: My cousin, who is still alive in Hungary, escaped and she ended up working as a household help someplace. She somehow was able to get false papers like she’s a gentile, so she survived it like that. Which we didn’t know until after the war. Then her younger son was taken to a labor camp who also survived. He was beaten so many times, so bad, that he never was an able bodied person after the war. The third son ended up in the United States;  he was in a concentration camp. When he inquired about his family through the Red Cross they said nobody survived, so he automatically, as a refugee came to the United States, and found out about his family later. And one son died in Auschwitz.

Frankel: Do you remember if in the ghetto you still had some kind of a religious life?
AIGNER: Yes, people were still trying to say the prayers. And I think, at that time, like my mother too, she realized that she couldn’t keep to the kosher rule because she is not going to survive. Any kind of a food was important to eat for nourishment. But I think her religion kept her going. She was constantly praying and, she constantly was praying that she could help her children to survive.

Frankel: What are your recollections? Did you think you would survive? What were your recollections of that time?
AIGNER: I remember how much I wished that we would have some heat and food again. And as a child, I think I just was going from meal to meal, from day to day. And I think what the biggest happiness was for me when my mother came back. And I had this terrible fear all the time that she will be gone again. My mother said that she had to sit with me; she had to sleep with me. I would absolutely not let go of her. I had this tremendous fear all the time that we will be separated again.

Frankel: How long were you in that ghetto?
AIGNER: We were in that ghetto until spring, in April. So I figured we were about four or five months.

Frankel: Was that April 19…?
AIGNER: ’45.

Frankel: ’45. You said there was a lot of Typhus. Did you get sick?
AIGNER: Yes, I remember having horrible, horrible diarrhea and passing blood, and by the time we were liberated and we were allowed to go out of the ghetto I couldn’t walk out. My mother and sister carried me and they said that they were very concerned that I was so run down.

Frankel: Who liberated you?
AIGNER: The Russians. The Russian soldiers came into Hungary and liberated Budapest.

Frankel: Do you remember that day?
AIGNER: I just remember that everybody said, “We can go home! We can go home!” Which I didn’t quite understand the war is over. And they started to walk out of the ghetto, my aunt, my mother, my sister and I. And they were taking turns carrying me, I remember that. And as we were walking out of the ghetto everybody was just so starved. There was a horse laying, which was shot by bullet, on the ground, and somebody said, “This horse is still warm.” And to this day I remember in two seconds I saw the skeleton of the horse laying there, because everybody was running and cutting off chunks of meat and taking it home and cooking it.

Frankel: Where did you go?
AIGNER: We went back to the apartment, where we always lived, and my mother was shocked. There wasn’t not one stitch left in that apartment, including the furniture and everything was carried away. I remember her crying, she says, “How I am I going to cover up my children for night? I have nothing here.” Was nothing left. And she went downstairs to the manager’s apartment, and came up and she says, “You won’t believe it, my furniture is in the manager’s apartment.” She went back down again and told them, “This is my furniture you have to give it back to me.” And they threatened her and called her a liar and everything. And she turned one of the chairs over and the stamp of the railroad from coming from Czechoslovakia from Košice still was on the chair. So my mother said, “You either going to bring this furniture back to me, or I will get some authorities and make you move it back.” Well they gave us back, so that’s the only thing we really recovered. And that’s all she had after the war. And being a widow, a few months later, when things started to settle down a little bit, she got a license to be able to sell popcorn and chestnuts and different things on the street corner. And that’s how she started to make a living for us.

Frankel: Did you try and make contact? Did you find out about other relatives?
AIGNER: Yes, they tried to make contact. One of my father’s brother came back who also sort of helped us for a while to be able to survive. And my aunt’s daughter and the one son who came back so sick, and we find absolutely nobody in Czechoslovakia. And about six months after the war ended one of my cousin from my father’s side came to us – to find us – because she went back to Czechoslovakia where she was taken from. She had the Auschwitz stamp in her arm too. She survived the war in Auschwitz. She find nobody who was left in Czechoslovakia. She didn’t find one soul from the family over there. So she came back to Budapest and she stayed with my mother and my uncle helped her too. And she came back very sick, she had tuberculosis that she contracted while she was in the camp. So this is about all who survived from our family.

Frankel: Had you heard the name Raoul Wallenberg during the war?
AIGNER: Yes. Yes.

Frankel: What can you tell us about it?
AIGNER: Well, he is the one who established these safe houses.

Frankel: Do you remember seeing him?
AIGNER: No, I never saw him I just heard his name.

Frankel: How was he spoken about? Was he considered already then as ..?
AIGNER: He was, you know, they talked about it that this man is helping the Jews. And we have to get this papers in order to survive and he is the one who established the safe houses. But I heard more about it after the war.

Frankel: And so even though you were in a safe house, did you also have papers?
AIGNER: Yes, there were some papers for each individual filled out at the time. You know, we are considered now a citizen of Sweden. But like I said, it worked for a while, but all of this was disregarded.

Frankel: What do you recall doing right after the war, in terms of back to school, seeing people?
AIGNER: It was a real chaos. After the war, first of all, you know, so many of the buildings were bombed. There was a shortage of apartments, tremendous food shortage. Took a while before electricity and water and all this was back in the buildings. I do remember that when I went back to school, I completely forgot how to read and write. And my mother and sister worked with me for quite a while because they never thought of it to start first grade all over. I went into second grade and it took a while until I caught up. I was sent to camp on a couple of occasions by the Joint. And we got some clothing from the Joint, which was sent from the United States after the war, and it was tremendously helpful.

Frankel: It was a Jewish camp?
AIGNER: Yes.

Frankel: By whom was it run?
AIGNER: They said it was provided by the Joint, and it was run by them. And we were sent, at one time I was at a camp at the Lake [name unclear], which is the vacation resort of Hungary. Then one time it was the nearby hills of Budapest where they had like a sanatorium where they sent the children to recover.

Frankel: That was right after the war?
AIGNER: Right after the war, yes.

Frankel: Was there ever talk in your family of not staying in Hungary after the war?
AIGNER: We were thinking, my mother was thinking at the time should we leave, should we not. But you know she was a very sheltered person until the war broke out. She didn’t have a profession outside of the home, and she just wasn’t sure if she could really see us through to go. And I think maybe because of all the hardship and escaping what she done through the war. She was actually scared to get started to leave the country.

Frankel: Also, growing up, as you were commenting, before the war, was Zionism ever spoken of?
AIGNER: I heard of Zionism actually, after the war, not much before. And there was lot of Zionist movement and for a little while my sister, who was older, she was involved.

Frankel: Israel was never considered as a place to go?
AIGNER: No. Not at the time, no.

Frankel: How about religion after the war?
AIGNER: Completely stopped, because after the war we had Communism. In Communism, in order for you to keep your job, you were not allowed to practice religion. And all the synagogues were closed; there was nothing open to practice religion. There was no religious classes of any kind taught in the schools. So whatever I learned about religion, I learned from my mother, what we observed at home. But basically, a real Passover dinner, what we were used to as children, we really didn’t have one until we came to the United States.

Frankel: What do you remember of the transition from liberation from Communism? How did it happen? What do you recall?
AIGNER: It was very difficult. My mother used to say, “How come we have to be always involved in something?” We had no freedom whatsoever. You couldn’t even as much as listen to the Free Europe radio, because if your neighbors heard it, you disappeared.
She ended up working in a factory. After, she had for a while her license to sell, like I said, food. And then when the stores opened, when things became more organized, that wouldn’t be enough to make a living. So she went to work in a factory. She was sewing undergarments. And she had to work in three shifts. One week days, one week afternoons, and the following week at night. My sister got married when she was quite young. She got married by the time she was 17. And her husband was a survivor of the concentration camp, too. He had no family left. So he considered my mother as his mother and he continued to be very close. Then when my sister had her first child born, after that she came down with tuberculosis and she ended up to be in a hospital for three years. So we had very difficult times because I was still in a school-age going to school. And then finally my mother stayed home to take care of my sister’s child. And at that time, to live from one person’s income, which was my brother-in-law’s, for our family, was almost starvation. So the quality of our life wasn’t much better. We had some very hard years.

Frankel: And all these years you lived in that same apartment?
AIGNER: We lived in the same apartment until 1949. Then what happened, because of all this housing shortage, they were putting in strange people to share your apartment. So, so much of our family who shared it with us while it was the safe house that we ended up having all strange families living there. And it was very difficult. So my mother, somehow, was able to trade her part of the apartment, that one room, for a bombed out flat. And then, my sister, her husband and us, we practically built it up so that it was livable. And we continued living in that one room flat, but at least we called it in our own quarters. We didn’t have to share it with so many people. And that’s where I lived before I came.

Frankel: Do you recall any organized Jewish life after the war?
AIGNER: Well a lot of the Zionist movement started in Hungary. So that was part of the organization. And basically I never attended a bar mitzvah or a Jewish wedding or anything like that in Hungary. Until I came to this country.

Frankel: And school for you? You continued your schooling?
AIGNER: I continued my schooling; I finished high school in Hungary. And I worked for a short while in a collective fur company. And through a gentleman who worked there who happened to be my husband’s uncle, I met my husband and got married.

Frankel: What is a collective fur company?
AIGNER: What happened, you know after Communism took over in Hungary, people who were self employed either had to go to work in a factory or they were forced into this collective fur companies and all these individual businessmen had to form a company together and share equally.

Frankel: What exactly did you do?
AIGNER: I worked as a cashier in one of the stores and did book keeping.

Frankel: And, when did you get married?
AIGNER: Got married in May 9, 1956. And then the revolution broke out on the 23rd of October in the same year, and then on the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, we escaped.

Frankel: Can you tell us about that period of time? The Hungarian revolution, were you involved in the politics of the town?
AIGNER: I have to tell you the truth, because I think what women do as Jews. We so much wanted to be unknown, unnoticed. Because somehow this fear, when you go through so much, never leaves you. So we didn’t get involved in too much, tried not to get involved in Communism either. Just work and try to live a peaceful life.
But when the revolution broke out, regardless if you were involved or not, everybody was a target. If you were in the wrong place in the wrong time. So we were just newlyweds and one morning we woke up with my husband that across the street from us, some of the revolutionaries were looking for someone and they were gun machining into every single apartment in the other house, and the bullets were flying over us as we were laying in bed. My husband pulled me down from the bed, and we lay on the floor. Again food was scarce, it was a tremendous chaos, lot of people was killed. We had a very hard time.
But for a while it looked like the Russians were going to win and freedom is going to be in Hungary. And we were elated because finally we were going to live in freedom. As time went by, we realized this is not going to happen because the Russians were taking back Hungary and they wanted to put it back under Communist ruling. But I think our decision was made to leave the country one morning when we were standing in line for bread, my husband and I. There were two men in front of us standing in the line and talking and they said, “Lets take care of the Communists first, and then we get the left over Jews.” And my husband and I looked at each other and we knew in that second that we not staying in this country anymore. We went home and we started to make plans how we can leave. My husband said, “I survived the concentration camp once.” he says, “I’m not going through this again.” And that’s when we decided to escape.

Frankel: Was it easy?
AIGNER: No it wasn’t easy, especially because, see they opened the borders at the time when the revolution broke out. They picked up all the mines around the borders for a while. But then by December, when the Russian ruling started to get back things were getting very hard again to leave the country. So my father-in-law and my husband’s stepmother, my husband and I, four of us, decided to come. And we inquired how to do the escape and we took the train to the border of Hungary. And over there, we paid money to a guardsman, who was guarding the border.

Frankel: For what country?
AIGNER: In Hungary – if he could show us how to get into Austria. Well he took us into a farmhouse where about 20 people collected on that night, and like I mentioned it before, it was Christmas Eve. We thought this would be a good night maybe to escape because the soldiers would be celebrating. We thought it would be less guarding on the border. And it was cold winter.
And in the middle of the night, they started to help us out from this farmhouse, and they advised us to take white sheets to cover up so blend into the snow. And it was like 15 adults and five children in this group. And the soldiers showed us which way to walk, but you know in this darkness, we were not sure if we already passed the border or not. And all of the sudden flares started to go up and we could heard the Russian soldiers and the voices, so we didn’t know should we move, should we not, where are we? And every time the flares would go up, we would hid under the sheets because the whole area was like daylight, and we didn’t move.
We stayed there most part of the night, until the point we thought we going to freeze. Finally we decided it doesn’t matter who is going to find, it was five little children in this group and we are going to freeze to death. That was a cornfield, and they carried some of the dried up corn leaves and made a fire to warm up by. And at that point my father-in-law and another couple of men decided to walk toward what they saw. And they knocked on the window; it was a couple of miles away. And people answered in German because it was Austria already. People were very nice to us, they woke up the whole town, they came with trucks, picked us up, and took us into this little town called I—. And we stayed in the school building, they gave us food, and that’s how our freedom started.
From there we went to Vienna, and got on to the last transport, actually, to come to the United States as Hungarian refugees. They had originally give 30,000 people quota to come in, then Eisenhower gave another 5,000 and we fell into the last group. Because my husband’s stepbrother lived in Portland and he sent a sort of affidavit for us to come.

Frankel: When you made those plans to leave, did you tell anyone?
AIGNER: No. You wouldn’t want to tell anyone. The only person I told is my family. Unfortunately, my sister was still sick. She couldn’t leave; she wasn’t in a condition to leave. So then my mother felt she didn’t want to leave her in that condition, so they stayed. But beside them, nobody in the world you would tell.

Frankel: Did they try to discourage you?
AIGNER: Yes, mainly because my mother just couldn’t see our family being separated.

Frankel: How far by train did you go to the border? How close to the border were you?
AIGNER: About 10 kilometer, maybe.

Frankel: And was there any trouble getting to the border?
AIGNER: It was, like I say, if we didn’t have a guard, we could have had a lot of problem. By having this man show the way to go, and then he told us if anybody stops us just tell them we going to celebrate Christmas with this family. We were not stopped. I think the timing was very good being a holiday. So we were very fortunate. I just feel like, all along, you know everybody has different feelings, but I feel like you know God was watching out for us. We went through so many miracles that I think that’s the only way we survived.

Frankel: How soon were you able to make contact with your mother after you had crossed the border?
AIGNER: I made contact by sent a couple of post cards and already from Vienna. But by the time we got to the United States then we were really able to make contact. Then in 1966 I brought my mother out for a visit. And then two years later she came and moved to us and she lived with us in Portland, died in a ripe old age of 84 in Portland.

Frankel: Did she have any trouble after you had left? Did the authorities come?
AIGNER: She was questioned, but she just said she has no idea. She didn’t know ahead of time.

Frankel: How long did you spend in Vienna before you came?
AIGNER: We left in December 24th from Hungary and by 8th of February we were in Portland. But two weeks of it we spent in New Jersey in Camp Kilmer and took ten days to come on the boat to the United States. So about a month.

Frankel: What was life like?
AIGNER: In the camps over there?

Frankel: Yes.
AIGNER: Well again, we stayed in, at first we stayed in a school building for a while where it was lots and lots of people, refugees, and again it was like a camp life. And feeding, you know, through the Red Cross provided food. And they allowed us to use the trains free of charge, which was very helpful, the electric streetcar. So that was for transportation. But by the time crossed the border the only thing we had is the clothes what we had on our back. It was very difficult. We got a change of clothes over there. I remember practically standing a whole day in line by the Red Cross. I got a pair of shoes. By the time we walked through the border, my shoes was in pieces.

Frankel: Now, where were you then?
AIGNER: In Vienna.

Frankel: In Vienna. And so you left Hungary with nothing?
AIGNER: Nothing, nothing. My in-laws brought a suitcase, which we couldn’t carry on the way any longer. So she just took out a few little memories and left that. And we had a knapsack but as we had to walk through the snow, and my in-laws were older, they needed help to help them walk through, we just started to throw our things, even what we brought along. Just a few valuable papers and memories what we kept, pictures.

Frankel: Had you, did you know English before coming to this country?
AIGNER: No, no. That was sort of difficult.

Frankel: So how was the transition period coming to this country?
AIGNER: When we came to this country, and came to Portland, we were so eager to get a job and start a life, it was very difficult. It was a time of unemployment. My husband’s stepbrother just lost his job a few weeks prior we got here. So for about three or four months we did whatever we could to make a living. My husband was doing yard work and cleaning basements and I was doing housework. Then finally he got a job (he’s a machinist by trade) at a small company, the Eastside Tool and Dye. So when he got his job he said, “OK, now you have to learn a trade.”
And I always wanted to be a hairdresser so I went to school, and started to learn hair dressing. And it was very difficult because I didn’t speak a word of English, so I learned a trade and a language in the same time. It was probably helped me a great deal, and I really enjoyed that part. And when I got my license I started working. Worked for a gentleman for ten years, which again, I think it was very fortunate break in my life because my English was still very broken when I got my license and I called up for this job interview and I said to the gentleman, “I got my license but I don’t speak very good English,” and he said, “Well, come and see me,” he says “I am here four years and I don’t speak very good English either.” He was from Poland. He was Mr. Joseph Newman from the Newman family. So that was a lucky thing. I started to work for him and I work for him for ten years and then I opened my own business for a while.

Frankel: What about a family?
AIGNER: Well when we came here I felt very homesick for my family. It was hard; it was very hard until my first child born in 1960, our daughter. And then in 1964 our son. I missed my mother and sister tremendously. This was the first time really in my life I was away from my family and such a new surrounding. And when my daughter was a year and half old, I went to meet and visit my mother’s family in NYC, who were living there, actually, in a small town around New York. And that gave me a little feeling of family. But you know the distance is great and you couldn’t travel back and forth all the time. But I think when our family came, my son and daughter, that was very healing and slowly we made our roots in Portland.

Frankel: And you said your mother came in 1966. You brought her over?
AIGNER: Yes.

Frankel: What about your sister?
AIGNER: We brought my sister (she had a daughter later) and her daughter to visit in 1970. And she visited. She was here with us for a few months. And I’m so happy she had the chance to see our life. And by natural causes she passed away in 1982, so that’s the last time I saw her.

Frankel: Were you ever able or willing to go back to Hungary?
AIGNER: Yes, we’ve been back. We’ve been back when it was Communistic and then when my husband retired in 1990 we went back for a trip. And we saw my nieces and nephews, my sister’s children and their children, and my cousin who is still living there. And went back to the apartment where I’d grown up. I feel like Portland is my home now. I couldn’t live there. But I am glad we had the opportunity to visit, especially since my husband has a sister still living there.

Frankel: You had mentioned that religion under the Communist regime was very difficult. Did anything change when you came to this country, where there was freedom to practice religion?
AIGNER: Yes. We joined the synagogue, and we started to worship. However, I think my husband and I realized at that time that to us the real organized religion wasn’t quite a thing anymore. We grown up in such an atmosphere, and we went through so much that we, the everyday kind of a religious situation what we grown up in Hungary, wasn’t the kind of life we wanted to continue. We observing all the High Holidays, and we very much feeling Jewish. But we are by any means not Orthodox.

Frankel: And, in terms of your children, did you feel it was important to give them a religious education?
AIGNER: Definitely. We belong here at Neveh Shalom for many years, and they both went through Sunday school here. My son was bar mitzvahed here. Tried to give them as much Jewish background as possible and I think that’s all a parent can do, give them the background.

Frankel: Do your children live in town?
AIGNER: My son lives in San Francisco. And our daughter lives in Portland, actually in Tualatin.

Frankel: Do you have grandchildren?
AIGNER: We have two grandchildren, two little grandsons – three and six years old.

Frankel: What are the names of your children?
AIGNER: My daughter is Susan, and our son is Robert.

Frankel: Is there any message you would like to pass on, give to the younger generation?
AIGNER: Yes. We went through so much persecution and discrimination. And I think discrimination can start with little things. It can start with as much as racial jokes or religious jokes. It can start with just small hatred which can grow into big one. And I feel that the way to fight is to educate the young people. To let them know what discrimination can do. And how innocent people and children can get killed and go through such terrors like we did, and have their family pulled apart. I think we all have to educate the children about that, and in our own way, we all have to fight discrimination.

Frankel: [Asks Lanie if she has any additional questions.]
Reich: No, thank you.

Frankel: Thank you very much for this interview.
AIGNER: Thank you for asking.