Item 29: Holocaust survivors from Hungary ; Helen Kalina interviewed by Ilona Vogel, 1990

MLOH 500/165-167

item

20/02/1990

Nonmusical Sound Recordings, Oral Histories

997372

Sound Recording : CY MLOH 500/165-167

3 sound cassettes (3 hrs.)

Helen (Ilona) Kalina, nee Kalman, was born in Dolha, Hungary, in 1914. She had a happy childhood in a traditional Jewish home, growing up in Beregsasz, Czechoslovakia. Helen studied to be a chemist at university in Prague and from 1936 she worked in her father's chemist shop. In 1938 the town was taken over by Hungary, the shop was confiscated and her father was briefly jailed for his political views.

Helen was married in 1940. Her husband was called up many times by the Hungarian army and in 1942 he ended up in a prisoner-or war camp in Siberia. The Germans arrived in 1944 and Helen's family were forced to move to the ghetto in Beregsasz. Helen was subsequently transported to Auschwitz concentration camp. There she was put to work as a garbage supervisor.

Later Helen was moved to Stutthof concentration camp in Poland and then to a labour camp at Torun. There she dug trenches until the break up of the camp in January 1945. Some inmates were shot, but the rest were allowed to go free. Helen and many others were soon captured again by the SS, and taken to Koronovo, where they were soon liberated by Russian soldiers.

Helen made her way home through Poland by foot and train and arrived at Beregszasz in April 1945. She was reunited with her father and her husband. She moved to Prague and migrated to Australia in 1950.

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Log of interview available in the Mitchell Library Reading Room -

Original Mitchell Library allocated tape number 88.