Names Not Numbers

Yosef Hirsh Gross

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest Ghetto

1936

Yosef Hirsh Gross

Budapest, Hungary

1936

Yosef was born in Budapest, Hungary, in January 1936. As a young Jewish boy during the Holocaust, he was forced to wear a yellow Jewish star on his clothing. Restrictions were quickly imposed on their daily lives, preventing them from leaving their homes freely. The situation worsened when the Germans arrived and took Yosef’s parents to Germany. His father, likely in his 30s, was killed.

The Nazis imposed a curfew on the Jewish population, and soon after, they began deporting the older adults, leaving behind only young children and the elderly. Yosef and his family were forced into the Budapest ghetto, a cramped, filthy area where they were barricaded inside and unable to leave. Life in the ghetto was marked by unbearable conditions—lice infested everything,

and the older children were responsible for looking after the younger ones. Yosef, being the oldest in his family, took on the responsibility of caring for his younger sister. He gave her whatever food he could find, including soup, and when they became too weak to walk from malnutrition, he carried them on his shoulders.

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The nightmare finally ended when Russian forces liberated the ghetto.

After the liberation, the streets were filled with bodies, and people searched frantically for their missing relatives. Yosef was eventually reunited with his aunt, who had been looking for them among the survivors. However, life under the new Soviet regime in Hungary brought its own challenges. The family lived under Russian rule for a time before attempting to flee to Czechoslovakia.

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Their escape was unsuccessful, and the Czechoslovakian authorities sent them back to Hungary, where his mother was jailed.

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During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Yosef finally managed to escape, fleeing to Austria and eventually reaching the United States in 1956 or 1957. Later in life, Yosef spent time in Israel, where he attended the Eichmann trials.

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Names Not Numbers

Yosef Hirsh Gross

Yosef Hirsh Gross

The End