The Lichtig Family

Yisrael Moshe Lichtig, my grandfather, was born in Lipnik in Galicia. We don't know when his family moved to Hungary, but we know that most of the Lichtig family already lived in Miskolc at the beginning of the 20^th Century.

Yisrael Moshe got married to Ester Pasternak from Fuzer, where they lived till Ester passed away on November 11^th 1912, 9 Kislev 5673. My grandfather remained with four children, Avraham (Adolf), Sara (Serene), Hanna (Onush), and Shalom (Shoni) my father who was only two years old. Later, my grandfather married Ester's relative, Frieda Oroslan and the family moved to Edelény, only 13 km. from Miskolc.

The Lichtig family moved into a house very close to the Edelény train station. They owned a restaurant, a pub (kocsma), and a billiard saloon. The fact that at the beginning of the 20^th century there was a kosher place to eat in Edelény always impressed us when we were children growing up here in Israel. It seemed to us as if Edelény were one of the "centers" of the world.

During the following 20 years the family grew with four more children, Ester (Etel), Bluma (Magda), Areye (Erno) and Binyamin (Laszlo). None of them survived the Holocaust.

In his teen years, my father Shoni decided that life for a Jew in Hungary was boring, without much future or hope for change. We always admired his ability to think ahead about life. He was too young to leave Hungary at that time, especially after several older youngsters had already left to Mexico and my father felt "stuck" in this small village to do a year and a half in the army. The service in the army was not difficult; the camp location was in Miskolc where Aunt Rozi Gluck supplied him with kosher food.

To come back home to Edelény after the army (1931) to work in the family business was not the future he wanted. Therefore, my father travelled to Budapest to get a passport, which he fortunately got although without permission to enter Russia, USSR, or Palestine. These limitations and the express prohibition to go to Palestine did not stop him. Together with his friend Dejo Bogler they planned their way to Palestine. So, in the summer of 1934 my father started his journey through Constance (Romania) and arrived in the Promised Land in April 18^th 1935, 15 Nissan 5795 at night through Metula, on the north of Israel. Two years later his sister Onush joined him, still not knowing that they would never see their family again.

They received many letters from the family in Hungary. From letter to letter the despair arose higher and higher, until the frequency of the correspondence decreased. The last telegram my father received from home was in April 1944.

The Story of Granpa Lichtig's Watch

One evening at the end of Elul 5717 (September 1957), our father Shoni Lichtig arrived home from work with a small blue package in his hands. The excitement that filled him was unmistakable when he announced: "Thirteen years after he was murdered, I received my father's pocket watch!". This watch is the only object that remains from the possessions of the family, which was wiped out by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The watch arrived with a letter attached that told the story of the watch and described the extermination of the Edelény ghetto through the eyes of a witness. As far as we know, this letter is the first testimony of the last hours of the Edelény Jewish community.

Besides the watch story, the letter gives a unique description of the difficulties of the survivors. No one talked about these horrible years. No one even mentioned them; therefore, we were afraid to ask. Those who survived the inferno thought that no one would understand them, or believe them, so they chose to keep these horrors in their hearts.

… and this is what was written in the letter: (translated from the Hebrew):

D.