PHOTO ALBUM WITH SHOT HOLES FROM THE GHETTO IN BUDAPEST / Myriam Sandra Soignet
Erzsébet Müller, “Lizike” lived in Buda with her parents and her elder sister, Éva. Her diaries depict a vivid picture of a cheerful fifteen-year-old girl’s everyday life in school and of her free-time activities. Lizike was a real social person, the central figure in a large group of youngsters. She studied well, learnt to play the piano and English, attended a dance school, and often went out hiking or skating with her friends.
Her journal also gives an authentic account of the deteriorating circumstances of youth living in Budapest in the shadow of Anti-Semite laws: the boys are conscripted for labour service, and they disappear one after the other. Their friends, and often even their families have no idea what had happened to them. Then the news comes that one of them was taken to Kistarcsa to a relocation camp. Lizike’s father is also forced to go for labour service, from which he never returns, although he was supposed to be exempt from conscription, due to his military rank gained in World War I. The journal entries become less and less frequent as the situation deteriorates; there are only a few words reporting on the removal to the ghetto.
Lizike owned several photos of her family members and friends, and she always kept the tiny photo album with her. She still had it 12 Síp Street, the house in the ghetto where she was forced to move with her mother and her sister, when the place was bombed. The girl’s death was caused by numerous splinters, and the photo album as well as the photos in it were also holed by a splinter.
