Item 03: Holocaust survivors from Hungary ; Tom Foster interviewed by George Foster

MLOH 500/137-139

item

between 1988 and 1994?

Nonmusical Sound Recordings, Oral Histories

997230

Sound Recording : CY MLOH 500/137-139

3 sound cassettes (3 hrs.)

Tom Foster (Thomas Tibor, formerly known as Tibor Fruchter), was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1917. He left school to work with an uncle who had a timber yard outside Budapest. He joined the army and was attached to a battalion building bridges and labouring along the border and in the Ukraine. His mother organised his discharge from the army and he returned to Budapest and married.

In 1942 Tom was recalled as forced labour for the army. When the Russians broke through the Hungarian bridgehead, he went off on his own in the chaos of the retreat. Before getting back to Budapest in January 1944 he was put to work by the Hungarians shovelling snow.

Tom fought for a few weeks with the partisans in the forest, then spent some time in Kiev as patient in hospital. He was marched from Kiev with Jewish camp inmates and finally put on a train to Poland. Tom was called up again in May and taken to work in the Siemens factory outside Budapest. He escaped the roundup of Jews for transport to Auschwitz, and took refuge with his wife at his mother's flat until the Russians arrived.

Tom's uncle was living in Australia and he organised passports for Tom and his family. Tom arrived in Australia in 1947 with his wife, his mother and his son.

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Log of interview available in the Mitchell Library Reading Room -

Digitised version available : For access to this material please contact the Curator of Oral History

Original Mitchell Library allocated tape number 55.