George Donath enjoyed a comfortable, privileged childhood in 1930s Ujpest, Hungary, and tannery and tanneries featured significantly in his family circle. Respected members of the community, his mother Livia (nee Vigodny) came from an old Hungarian family; his father, Gyula, was a machinery manufacturer and member of the Jewish Board of Deputies. As Neologists (reformists open to change) they were ‘Hungarians of the Mosaic Faith’ – ‘assimilated Hungarian patriots who also happened to be Jewish’. Nevertheless, Jews were singled out. Uncle Andrew Vigodny established a tannery and salami factory in Cumberland, UK, due to discrimination and the Numerus Clausus ensured a 6% limit of Jewish children attending a school. Of forty pupils in George Donath’s class at Venetianer Lajos Elemi Nepiskola (elementary school) in 1940, only five survived, including him. A sense of guilt regarding his survival haunts him still. The Donaths sided with the Allies during WWII but Hungary joined the Axis powers in 1940, and when conscription was introduced ‘Jews were not trusted’ to join the army; they had to join a labour force e.g. digging ditches. A relative was denounced, accused of industrial sabotage and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.

 

18–19 March 1944 was a turning point: Germany occupied Hungary. Until then, Livia had gone to the border to help Polish refugees, hence was aware of the wider situation and became the ‘moving force’ to leave for Britain. An active Zionist, she founded WIZO in Ujpest. George, aged fourteen, was attending Konyves Kalman Gimnazium (secondary school). When his father was temporarily taken away for labour, George’s mother, sister Anna and aunt Ester Donath (Kertesz) moved to an area in Budapest with many other Jews, and wore the yellow Star of David. Deportations followed June–September. The Donaths were taken amidst jeering crowds; there was ‘one S.S. soldier, all the other guards were Hungarian’, George recalled. He ‘had strong faith in his mother’, therefore was not afraid; however, the rise of the Fascist Arrow Cross Party resulted in ‘killing everywhere’. After several narrow escapes, the family, including Gyula, hid in the Swiss Consulate and a protected location until Russian soldiers liberated Budapest then all of Hungary, January–April 1945.

 

Post-war, ‘life re-started’, but ‘friends were missing’. The family planned its move to Britain. George studied English intensively at Sarospataki Remormatus Kollegium Gimnaziuma (secondary school) and in 1947 won a British Council scholarship to St Bees School, St Bees, Cumberland. His parents and sister reached Britain in 1948. After gaining a BSc in leather chemistry at Leeds University, George worked at his uncle’s tannery, later joined a company selling chemicals, became manager of a tannery in Porto Rico and was involved in public relations. He met his wife Lidia (nee Csillag) of Hungarian origin, in Turin, and married in a UK Registry Office in 1957.

 

Significantly, George stated that he had more in common socially and in business with English (non-Jews) than with English Jews, because Hungarian Jews and the English can laugh at themselves, unlike English Jews. ‘Suffering doesn’t make you a Jew’. ‘I don’t like being on the outside – but I don’t worry about it’. His two daughters ‘are interested in Israel but they are very English and have no affinity with Hungary or its cultural background’. George, though, returned to Hungary in 1966, mainly on business.

 

Family members including children had perished in WWII; ‘I always feel guilty every day of the week that I survived – why Me?’ George Donath was sad that he had no grandchildren (at the time of the interview), for without them there ‘was no continuity’. He was not religious, but believed in God, and has tried to be helpful and charitable, thinking of ‘the number of people whose life I’ve made better’.

 

Concluding, Donath quoted from the Bible: ‘“If I am only for myself who am I?” My children should remember that’.

 

Key words:      

DONATH: Anna, Ester Donath (Kertesz), George, Gyula, Lidia (nee Csillag), Livia (nee Vigodny). Andrew Vigodny. Arrow Cross Party; Budapest; Cumberland; England; Hungary; Konyves Kalman Gimnazium; Neologists; Numerus Clausus; Sarospataki Remormatus Kollegium Gimnaziuma; St Bees School; Ujpest; Venetianer Lajos Elemi Nepiskola, WIZO.