The following story was collected by Centropa in an interview with István Domonkos, the son of Miksa Domonkos. István’s full oral history interview can be read here. 

For more than 40 years Miksa Domonkos unknowingly trained for the moment when he was needed most.  He became a hero, a genuine Hungarian hero, and like so many heroes in Hungary’s history, he paid a steep price for his sacrifice.

Domonkos was born in 1890 in Zsambek. Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time, and Miksa spoke perfect German. He studied in Berlin and in 1910 when the first commercial tractors were being sold in Europe, he went to work for Caterpillar.

When the First World War began, he took his ability to work with trucks and tractors and went to serve the nation. He quickly rose through the ranks, from private to ensign to first lieutenant. He was wounded several times, after recovering from the injury, he would always return to the war front.

In 1918, Miksa married Gabriella Rozsa and they had three children, Peter, Istvan, and Anna. But the marriage didn’t last, and a few years later, Miksa married Stefania Szabo. He went back to work for tractor companies and was extremely successful.

When the world economic crisis started in America in 1929 and spread its way to Europe, Hungary was hit hard. As new governments were elected they seemed to move ever more to the right. The situation worsened in 1938, as one anti-Jewish law after another was passed. Miksa lost his job and became a traveling salesman.

When Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, he expected the Italians, the Romanians, and the Hungarians to join him in his fight. Jews went too, in unarmed labor brigades. In 1942, Miksa’s son Peter was sent to a labor brigade in Ukraine where he died at the early age of 22. Istvan also went into forced labor in the mountains, working through the summer heat and raging winters.

In 1944, Miksa was unemployed. As a Jew, he was unemployable. One day, he met with the leader of the Jewish community, Sandor Eppler. Eppler knew about Miksa Domonkos—the decorated soldier of the First World War. He knew that in 1935, he had become a Captain in the Reserves. Miksa Domonkos was hired and began arranging supplies to be sent to young Jews in forced labor brigades. He had soon turned the Jewish Museum into a warehouse for blankets, canned food, and medicine.

On March 19, 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary. Throughout the country, Jews were soon forced to wear the yellow star. Adolf Eichmann, with the help of the Hungarian government, the Hungarian gendarme and police very quickly arranged the deportation of 437,000 Jews from all provinces and outer districts of Pest directly to the death camps in German-occupied Poland.

In July 1944, a Swedish diplomat by the name of Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest and he soon began to save Jews by issuing them Swedish protective passes and later setting up safe houses.

Tens of thousands of Jews were sent out on death marches, and 75,000 people were forced into a very crowded ghetto in the center of Budapest as the Soviet Army began to surround the city.

This is when Miksa Domonkos became the man everyone depended on—he became the de-facto mayor of the ghetto—the mayor of hell.

Every day, even while soldiers guarded the ghetto, Miksa donned his uniform, polished his buttons and went to work. He was among those with permission not to wear the yellow star meaning he was able to move freely throughout the city. He used his army contacts to the best of his ability, reaching out to those who still respected the army that he had so faithfully served. They answered his calls, and when they could, they helped.

He ordered the workers of the community to distribute what little food he could find. They set up medical offices so doctors could care for the sick. They arranged for their own ghetto police, to keep order. And then arranged to bury the dead. All the while Raoul Wallenberg distributed forged documents to say Jews were under Swedish protection.

The Soviet Army entered Budapest, and on January 18, 1945, the ghetto was liberated. The great and grand city of Budapest was a war-ravaged wreck. It was then that Raoul Wallenberg went out to meet the Soviet Army—and vanished, never to be seen again.

From 1945 to 1948, things began to look up. Miksa went to work for the Jewish community and was highly decorated for all he had done during the war, but he had seen too much and in 1950, Miksa stepped down from his duties, exhausted.

Hungary—once an integral part of Europe—had now become a hardline Stalinist state. And the Russians were feeling the heat as the search for Wallenberg intensified. In April of 1953, Miksa was arrested and falsely accused of killing Raul Wallenberg. Miksa Domonkos, a decorated soldier of the First World War and hero of the Budapest ghetto, was tortured for six months by the communists to confess to murdering Wallenberg until there was nothing left of him.

In November 1953, when it was clear he was dying, they dumped him in a hospital and Miksa passed away shortly after. Miksa Domonkos was quietly buried in the Jewish cemetery and, two years later, when the Hungarians rose up against the Soviets, the heroes of that failed revolution were buried just over the wall from Miksa.

Miksa Domonkos spent his whole life in service. He was a man of conviction who was always determined to do the right thing—and when he walked into the Budapest Ghetto every day, armed only with his elegant uniform and those glittering medals, he went to do the job he was hired to do—the job he had been born to do.

Watch this video produced by Centropa for the full testimonial as told by Istvan Domonkos, the son of Miksa Domonkos. 

This post was written as part of Gesher L’Europa, the NLI’s initiative to connect with Europe and make our collections available to diverse audiences in Europe and beyond.

In the early 20^th century, in the heart of a pine forest in eastern Germany, a one of a kind institution was established – an educational facility for Jewish children with special needs. The director of this institution, set up in October 1908 near the town of Beelitz, was a 27-year-old Jewish man by the name of Sally (Samuel) Bein, who until then had worked as a teacher for deaf and mute children.

The facility (known as the Israelitische Erziehungsanstalt Wilhelm-Auguste-Viktoria-Stiftung) accepted children ranging from preschool aged to adolescents, most of them with special needs of various types. Others were sent there because of domestic issues at home and an inability of their parents to take care of them, while later on more children arrived because of limitations on the number of Jews allowed at ordinary schools. Sally Bein sought to receive them all, and integrate the different groups, a view that was quite ahead of its time.

In the beginning Sally and his wife Rebeka were the only teachers at the facility, but as the years went by more staff members joined the team, including three additional teachers and a teaching assistant, a cook, a caretaker and a gardener, all of whom contributed to the children’s education in addition to their regular work. Pupils would spend about two years at the institution, during which they studied academic subjects like Hebrew, German, history, and arithmetic, but a heavy emphasis was also placed on more mundane life skills and practices, including proper codes of social conduct, guidelines on order and cleanliness, as well as various arts and crafts like carpentry, cooking, and gardening.

Studies took place in a Jewish atmosphere, with Bible classes, observation of the Sabbath and dietary laws of Kosher, as well as the celebration of Jewish holidays. Day trips and games would take place during free time with the participation of all children, and no separation by gender or age, nor any consideration for cognitive differences among them. Throughout the years nearly 400 children studied at the institution, with most of them able to eventually move on to ordinary high schools or to find work. Bein’s achievements gained him a worldwide reputation, with doctors and educators from across Europe and even pre-state Israel coming to visit and learn his work methods.

 

The skies over the school began to darken in 1933, with the coming to power of the Nazi party. Sally Bein was forced to contend with constant attempts by local authorities to disrupt the institution’s activity and shut it down. The main complaint was that the facility and its children were perceived as a stain on the local population – a supposed negative influence on tourists who visited the area. When the Nazis began their extermination programs, the institution’s fate was sealed. Under the Third Reich, Jewish special needs children had no right to exist.

In April of 1942, nearly 30 children and staff members were sent away to the Warsaw Ghetto. Sally could by then sense the direction the wind was blowing, yet decided to stay put, though he and his family held visas that would have allowed them to leave Germany. In the months that followed, the last hopes of survival were dashed. On the 13^th of June, 1942, a “shipment to the East” left Berlin. On board the train were 748 Jews from Berlin, in addition to some 280 Jews from the Beelitz area, including all of the facility’s children and staff members, among them Sally Bein, his wife Rebeka and their daughter Lisa Carola. The train took them to the Sobibor death camp, where they were murdered. The institution, which for 34 years had been full of life and the sounds of children at play, was now silent.

A short time after the eviction, the facility was taken over by the League of German Girls, a Nazi youth movement. For the past few decades, it has been the sight of a high school, named after Sally Bein. The students take part in a number of commemorative activities in hopes of preserving the site’s history for the sake of future generations.

We were made aware of this story by Ronny Dotan, who first learned of it thanks to the Holocaust Railway Car Project, and later continued studying the subject along with Tatjana Ruge of Berlin. Their research collected information about hundreds of children and staff members, whose relatives have since been located. If you have further information about the institution or the children who studied there, you are welcome to contact Ronny Dotan: [email protected].