There are three men entering details by the gateway; these are immediately passed on. It is possible to get a brief glimpse of the yard inside each time the entrance is opened: the outer glass roofing carries on past the entrance. A man in a peaked cap brings out the Schutzbriefe that have already been filled in; he reads out the names. The many hundreds of people fall quiet; names are passed on by word of mouth. Anyone whose name is mentioned is allowed through. Someone says how good it would be to make it into the house; someone else points out that there are already several thousand inside, on every floor and even down in the cellar.
The outer glass roof no longer exists; the old main beams are still visible, however. A woman comes out through the entrance. She opens the door wide in order to be able to drive out the Opel that is parked there. I ask her if she lives in the building. No, she parks there during the day by permission of the caretaker. She is not even sure if anyone lives in the house. There is a workshop in the corner; I should ask there.
She is around thirty and is wearing a three-quarter-length car coat and brightly coloured silk scarf. She has blonde hair, wears frameless eyeglasses and has recently applied lipstick. I get an impression of there being an air of pity in her expression as she looks me over. She points the ignition key at her car, which bleeps back in response. She would like to shut the gate after I have gone in, saying, I’m late, I’m rushing to pick my little girl up from nursery school, Lord, this eternal rush. By now it is not pity that I detect in her gaze, more powerlessness. Perhaps the compassion was not directed at me in the first place; maybe towards herself. Still, if she is rushing, why does she spend so long looking at me? She asks if she should shut the gate or not.
The man with the peaked cap at the gate says they cannot issue any more Schutzbriefe; those whose details have been registered should come back at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.
It has now gone four o’clock in the afternoon, and it is forbidden to be out on the streets wearing a yellow star, a boy next to me yells. Everyone pushes towards the gate. I put an arm round Vera and grab Mádi’s hand. The crowd swept us into the courtyard; the gate is slammed shut behind us. I mention a name to a man standing by the stairs. Just then it comes to mind: Father had shouted it in the Óbuda Brickworks from his departing column. The man asks how come I know the name. He’s a friend of my father’s, I say. The man asks who my father is and where is he? I tell him who my father is and that our parents were taken away from the brickworks five days ago. I use the plural; the man looks at Vera and Mádi. Vera is shivering. One of the lenses in Mádi’s glasses is broken.
Go upstairs, all three of you. First floor, second door on the left.
Schutzbriefe Section.
On the nameplate: Dr E. Beregi, Dr M. Bleu, D. Friedmann, V. Geiger, Dr E. Gellért.
Fifty-eight years later I find the names in the archives as well as the fact that nineteen sections operated there.
We go past the first door. The nameplate: Relations Section.
In the documentation I read: ‘Relations with legations of neutral powers, with ICRC organizations, with underground movements, with parties, with children’s homes.’
We enter the second door. There are maybe twenty or twenty-five people waiting in front of four desks. Antique furniture, chests of drawers, armchairs. Women, both older and younger, in white blouses at work on Remington typewriters, with which I am familiar as I learned to type on that make of machine in Father’s workshop. A balding man searches his notes for a long time but doesn’t find our names. He says that they will be able to provide a Schutzbrief tomorrow; all they have is as many as the number of names on their lists. We should look for a place in the attic or in the garage.
Mádi also does not remember which of us it was who, having found no place even to sit after looking up in the attic and down in the cellar, said that we were not going to stay. Again, holding her by the hand, I have Vera in tow behind me. She slips in the mud in the yard. She weeps. I’m covered in mud, she cries. I’ve never before heard her talk this way. I mop her coat with my handkerchief.
So are you going to shut the gate now or not? the woman in the car coat repeats.
Maybe, I replied. Yes, maybe. No. She leans closer. She wears Givenchy perfume. She scrutinizes my face. It’s as if now she had something even more important than getting somewhere on time. If I could establish what that is, I have the feeling I could arrive at some deeper insight. She has a small wart over her right eye. She is stroking her chin; silver fingernails. She goes back to the car, picks up two crammed shopping-bags on top of one of which is a head of cauliflower, in the other a plaited loaf of challah and baked cakes that she slings on to the rear seat. Screw all of you, she mutters to herself. She starts the car. Tyres squeal as she speeds out through the gate. She doesn’t stop, doesn’t get out, doesn’t shut the gate after her.
I take another look the old photographs through a magnifying glass. I spot a boy in a school cap. He is about my age, but he’s wearing ’specs. He is pressed against a wall in the crush.
I also head for a wall with Vera. A woman asks us what we saw inside the house.
K., a former classmate, writes from Jerusalem in the autumn of 2003:
Rumours had spread that the inmates of children’s homes were going to be moved to the ghetto. The Zionist movement, He-Halutz, decided that they were going to save four youngsters, bringing us to the Vadász Street Glass House. A massive uproar broke out among the crowd at the entrance. They were not in a mood to let us in at all, but after protracted arguments the gate finally opened. The sight was indescribable — a mass of people swarming wherever you looked. A place was designated for us in the attic. I came across more than one acquaintance. They were sitting or stretched out lethargically on enormous plank beds, spooning up other people’s leftover scraps of food from a mess tin. I asked where I could bunk down. Here, they replied. There were hardly any toilets in the house, and there were long queues for them. The other three boys and I decided we were not going to stay. We told the guard we had been given an errand. They let us out.
I place the photograph of the crowd milling at the gate in a folder, as I also do with a photograph bearing the caption ‘Discovery of bodies in yard of Dohány Street Synagogue’. On that can be seen five elderly men in hats stepping round the graves. They are wearing Red Cross armbands. Behind them are a Red Army officer and a policeman; in the background small piles covered with rags from under which legs poke out all tangled up with one another.
The people who can be seen in the picture perhaps passed by on the very same day Mother and I discovered my grandmother’s name on one of the graves. Maybe we were treading in their footsteps, maybe they in ours, but the spectacle of the mound of bodies in the picture is certainly similar to what we saw.
I close both parts of the gate after the woman’s Opel, cutting a hand on the bolt that fastens it. Next to the gate is a commemorative plaque: ‘This was the legendary Glass House. Those who lived to see liberation here cherish the memory of Arthur Weiss, who was its hero and fell victim of the rescue action for thousands on 1 January 1945.’
I place documentation of the Glass House’s organization, which lists the names of the heads, secretaries and chairmen of the nineteen committees. Arthur Weiss is one of the four members of the overall board of management.
I also file away a photograph of the office that I went to, now the Archives of the Museum of Contemporary History. First floor, second door on the left. In the picture, standing in front of floral-patterned wallpaper is an antique German cabinet and on it a pendulum clock. Four vases. On the right is a bentwood table and armchairs. A besuited, bow-tied man of about forty-five is reading papers and probably dictating to a woman in her twenties next to him in a white blouse and suit, who is at work, fountain pen in hand. Another woman, holding identification papers, maybe a registration form, judging from her open mouth and the posture of her upper body, seems to be dictating to a white-bloused colleague operating one of the typewriters. Another typist can also be seen who is copying details from a sheet of paper placed on the table. Behind her a fifth is writing on the table with a fountain pen.