Names Not Numbers

Karmela Waldman

Subotica, Yugoslavia

Ghetto In Yugoslavia

In Hiding

1939

Karmela Waldman

Subotica, Yugoslavia

1939

Karmela was born on August 7, 1939, in a town on the border of Hungary and Yugoslavia called Subotica. The town was known as Subotica in Serbian and Szabatka in Hungarian. Although part of Yugoslavia at her birth, it became part of Hungary when she was two years old. Subotica had a population of 100,000 people, 5,000 of whom were Jews.

She was the oldest child of Vera and Ladislav Krishaber.

Her father, who had studied in Germany, became an optometrist and owned an eyeglass store on the main street of Subotica. In the early stages of the war, life remained relatively normal for her family, though they occasionally heard about troubling events happening elsewhere. Her mother's first cousin, living in Budapest, advised them to obtain false documents, which they did.

In 1943, Karmela's family was forced into the ghetto.

They managed to exchange houses with a non-Jewish family and moved into their home inside the ghetto. On the evening of June 15, they were told to pack a small suitcase as they would be taken away the next morning. The following day, Hungarian fascists arrived, demanding money and jewelry. In a panic, her father urged her mother to escape.

At just four years old, Karmela and her mother walked into the garden and escaped through a fence that led out of the ghetto.

Karmela’s father had a Righteous Gentile friend, Dr. Ivo Shercer, an ophthalmologist, who arranged for nuns to hide Karmela. She remained with the nuns for four months. Meanwhile, her mother used her false documents to flee to Budapest.

Karmela's father and grandfather were deported to Auschwitz, where they perished in the gas chambers, though her grandmother survived.

Karmela's mother paid her father’s assistant to bring Karmela to Budapest by train. However, upon her arrival, Budapest was facing severe famine and bombing. In February 1945, they were liberated by the Russians.

After the liberation, Karmela and her mother returned to Subotica, a journey that took two weeks in the cold and snow. Upon their return, they learned of the deaths of her father, grandfather, uncle, aunt, and many other relatives, all murdered by the Germans.

After the war, Karmela's mother remarried a man who had lost his pregnant wife and son in Auschwitz.

Karmela’s sister was born in 1948. Karmela graduated from high school in Subotica and went on to study in Switzerland, where her mother's brother was a rabbi. While in Switzerland, she met her future husband, who was born in New York City.

Names Not Numbers

Karmela Waldman

Karmela Waldman

The End