19 March, 1944 German troops invade Hungary. Laszlo Roman is 3:

It wasn't unusual for little children walking outside with their mum, if they needed a pee, going to the side of the road. I was always told I mustn’t do it because someone might see that I am circumcised.

My father was in the forced labour brigade. Jews weren’t allowed in the army, they were in the munkaszolgálat labour brigade. In the east they used them to clear mines. They marched them across & blew them up so the army would be OK. 

My father was lucky. He stayed in Romania & eastern Hungary so he sort of came home but most of my time he wasn’t there. His photo was up on the mantelpiece. That was your dad. Once he came home & wanted to kiss me: ‘Who are you?’ He said, ‘I’m your father.’ I said, ‘No, no, no, that’s my father, the photo. You’re not my father,’ [laughs]. So that was ‘til March ’44.

The first thing I really remember, after the invasion: my mother had a very fortunate nature. She never sort of said, ‘Oh, my God.’ She always smiled. I looked at her & as long as she was there, the world was fine. 

Then one morning they came, Nazis, the Hungarian Arrow Cross. Collaborators. Two of her sisters stayed with us: all their husbands were in the labour brigades. One morning they came & collected the 3 women & took them to the brick factory from where they were to be deported. It was a Jewish house so they came & took the 3 women there. I stayed there with my grandfather, a WW1 veteran. He lost a leg, was disabled from WW1, which gave him a certain amount of protection. But I was terribly desperate because they took my mother.

As luck would have it my father came to visit us, my grandfather & me, & he was told what happened. He managed to get back to his brigade & got 3 armed men from the brigade. They went down to the brick factory to collect my mother. 

The guards in the brick factory said 'What the hell are you doing here, bloody Jews?’ They said they had an order requesting my mother to the kitchen of the labour brigade. So they said, ‘All right,’ & went around shouting, Aranka Roman, Aranka Roman,’ but my mother said no, she doesn’t want to leave her sisters. 

The sisters said, ‘No, you must go because Laszitka is at home.’ That’s me. So she came out & I got reunited with my mother. The sisters got deported & went through a lot but survived.

Then I stayed with my mother. We were moved from our original address to a Jewish house. There were a lot of people in the apartment including my cousin. I was not yet 4, she was 6. Our grandfather had only one leg & we slept in the same bed. Judy occupied the legless side of the bed which was more comfortable. We still have a laugh about that. 

On one occasion—even then Jews were allowed half-an-hour in the morning to go out & buy bread or potatoes, whatever. I was out with my mother with my yellow star & her yellow star. Hungarian apartments are: you go in the main door & there’s a courtyard & apartments are around. 

As we approached we could see in the courtyard that all the women were there—the men were already in the labour brigade. All the women were there & Arrow Cross soldiers. So my mother said, ‘Hold on, we’re not going in there. Take off the yellow star, keep quiet, don’t talk’. I was not yet four. We took the tramcar which we weren’t allowed in since, I don’t know, earlier & went a few stops to where one of her sisters was in a protected house because there were these protected house.

It turned out that all these women were taken down to the Danube tied together & shot & pushed into the Danube. Later on, whenever I crossed the bridges from Pest to Buda I could always see bodies floating in the river because these people were shot there. They shot them not to kill them, just to harm them so that they drowned.