Hungary honors man who saved Jews during WWII
Emanuel Zima, a concierge at the Czech Embassy in Budapest, helped hide 13 Jews between 1944 and 1945
The walls of the Czech Embassy in Budapest hid a secret history forgotten for decades. One of its former employees, Emanuel Zima, a concierge, helped to hide 13 Slovak and Hungarian Jews, including children, between 1944 and 1945 in the cellars of the embassy building taken over by Germans during that time. Zima hid them in a damaged part of the embassy, supplying them with food and warm blankets for several months until the war was over in Budapest in 1945. Zima’s story remained unknown to the public for decades. The Jews whom he helped to survive told his story after the war to the Yad Vashem Institute, which awarded Zima the status of Righteous Among the Nationsin 1971, but they could not find his family since there were no diplomatic relations between Israel and Hungary during the Cold War. Zima and his son never told their family about their story and the award remained a secret until a Slovak television journalist stumbled on the story while investigating another rescue story. He eventually tracked down Zima’s family in Budapest and alerted the Israeli Embassy. Zima’s great grandson and other family members received the Yad Vashem award in Budapest this week. The Czech Embassy honored Zima with a ceremony on February 21. “I’ve awarded this award of the Righteous Among the Nations for many people, not only in Hungary, in Germany, but it’s the first time I am in the place in which this rescue operations took place,” Israeli Ambassador Ilan Mor said at the ceremony. Hiding Jews was a dangerous act in any circumstances, but doing so in a building occupied by Germans was a hugely hazardous and brave act. Following the German occupation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia’s transformation to an independent state in the spring of 1939, the Germans took over the Czechoslovak Embassy and made it part of the German Embassy. Zima continued in his job as caretaker of the building. According to the Yad Vashem Institute records, during the war, Zima fell ill and was hospitalized in the Jewish hospital, where he met a Jewish doctor, Maria Flamm. Grateful for her dedicated attention, he told her that if the situation for Jews worsened, he would allow her and her relatives to stay in a cellar room in the embassy that was damaged during the bombardments that was no longer in use. As concierge, Zima was the only one to have a key for the damaged cellar rooms. In the summer of 1944, Maria and her husband decided to accept Zima’s offer. The German clerks used to leave the building in the afternoons when their workday ended. At the time, Zima was living outside the embassy building and he went there early every morning to supply his wards with food. His son Jozef knew about his actions and, on days that Zima could not visit his wards, Jozef replaced him, according to Yad Vashem records. When the danger of the Red Army surrounding the city increased, the Germans decided to evacuate the embassy building, relocate to Sopron, and lock up the building in the capital. They ordered Zima to move with them to their new location. However, his wife’s serious illness gave him a good excuse to avoid being relocated and he could thus stay in the capital and continue his rescue activities. As the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross terror intensified in the streets after October 15th, Maria’s brother, Sandor Flamm, and his wife; Gabriel Kemenyi and his wife; Rosenthal with his wife and two children; and Hillel Kornfeld hid in the shelter. Toward the end of the war, Aharon Gruenhut, a leader in the Orthodox community of Bratislava, and his wife also moved into the hiding place in the embassy. Only when it was safe did Zima let the people return to their homes. A few of the survivors remained in Hungary after the war, while others immigrated to Israel and the US. Emanuel Zima died in the early 1960s. Hardly anything was known about him. “I did not know my great-grandfather, of course, but my grandfather lived through it as a young man but he did not like to talk about it,” Zima’s great-grandson Miklos Zima told Reuters. The family was surprised and joyful to find out last year about the heroic acts of their ancestors and the award they received. “We were overcome by a very good feeling when we found out. One knows the grandparents and knows how good people they were, but in addition knowing they did a heroic act, because for me that’s what it was. I would not have dared to do the same thing, that he worked in a German protectorate, worked with Germans, talked to them everyday and at the same time he was hiding people, well, that was a huge thing. An incredible courage was needed for this,” said Miklos Zima. While Yad Vashem could not find Zima’s family, a Slovak television journalist and filmmaker came upon the story by chance as he was investigating another Jewish rescue story. Martin Mozer investigated the links to Zima in Budapest and eventually found his family through old telephone books. “It was a really fascinating story, because the whole story took place on an enemy soil at the time. And the hero savior Emanuel Zima risked his life without money, without any privilege, therefore it is right that he was awarded as a hero by Israel,” said Mozer. In total, about half a million Jews perished before the Budapest ghetto was liberated in 1945. (Reuters)