Noémi’s story begins in the central-European country of Austria-Hungary, a dual monarchy created in 1867 when the Kingdom of Hungary and the Austrian Empire united under the rule of the Austrian monarch. Noémi’s parents, both citizens of Austria-Hungary, first met in 1914 just prior to the event that sparked World War I—the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by a Serbian nationalist. In response to the assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. World War I commenced when Russia mobilized troops to defend Serbia, and Germany declared war on Russia and France. Additional countries, honoring established alliances, soon joined the battles raging across the European continent. Many of the ill-equipped and poorly trained Austro-Hungarian soldiers, at grave disadvantage in the fight against the Russians, died or were captured by Russian forces. Noémi’s father was one of the young men drafted to fight with the Austro-Hungarian army, and one of the soldiers who spent years in captivity in the Russian province of Siberia.

    Austro-Hungarians comprised a large number of the two million prisoners of war (POWs) held captive in Russia during World War I. Many of the prisoners suffered long, harsh winters and hot summers while confined in POW camps in remote Siberia. Russia's official participation in World War I ended in March, 1918, with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, a declaration of peace between Russia and Austria-Hungary and their allies. However, Austro-Hungarian prisoners were not immediately released and repatriated due to political changes in their own country as well as civil conflicts within Russia. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy had unexpectedly collapsed, resulting in the creation of two separate counties, Austria and Hungary. Although their country’s conflict with the Russians had officially ended, many Hungarians remained in isolated POW camps throughout Russia for years after the armistice and thus became involuntarily embroiled in Russia’s ongoing political turmoil.

    Early in 1917, amid frustration with corruption and a stagnant economy, a violent revolution erupted across Russia. Rebels succeeded in overthrowing the czar, ending centuries of imperial rule. Months later a second rebellion—encouraged by the Bolsheviks, a Russian political party led by Vladimir Lenin, a leftist revolutionary who subscribed to the Communist principles of Karl Marx—resulted in three years of civil war within Russia. In accordance with Marxist principles, Lenin believed the only way to ultimately prevent war was by creating a Communist system of government that would abolish social classes. Lenin, therefore, encouraged the Bolsheviks to continue fighting everyone who opposed their cause. The ensuing chaos increased discontent among the POWs who had been waiting patiently for the war to end so they could return home.

    Throughout the Russian civil war, the Bolsheviks worked to recruit POWs to join their cause. The Bolsheviks surrounded the POWs with Marxist propaganda, including Communist literature translated into various languages, hoping to enlist the support of prisoners who were frustrated with the unequal treatment in the camps. Determined to expand communism beyond Russia, Lenin attended POW group meetings and lectured on the benefits of Marxism, hoping that POWs would spread their propaganda and advocate for communism once they returned home. The Bolsheviks prioritized recruitment of Austro-Hungarian prisoners, recognizing that their frustration with poor living conditions, high death rates from typhoid and dysentery, and neglect from their own government might encourage them to embrace Marxism.

    During the prolonged Russian civil conflict, tens of thousands of Hungarians fought with the Bolshevik Red Army while others supported the White Army, a collection of groups opposed to communism. Each time the Bolsheviks acquired control of a region, they attempted to recruit prisoners by favoring those who had received the greatest mistreatment from the Russians. Many of the former prisoners who had refrained from aligning with either the Red or the White armies remained in the POW camps to avoid the ongoing fighting. However, since they were no longer captive, the newly released prisoners needed to support themselves and thus became important contributors to Russia’s workforce. Given the Bolsheviks’ reliance on the work provided by the former prisoners, there was little effort to help repatriate the POWs, many of whom had been away from their home countries for years.

    Additionally, tens of thousands of POWs, including Noémi’s father, remained in Russian POW camps because the Bolsheviks initially controlled only Western Russia; civil war still raged in Siberia, where soldiers fighting with the White Army maintained control of the Trans-Siberian railroad, isolating Siberia from the rest of Europe. Although armed forces from the United Kingdom, France, and eventually the United States joined the White Army’s efforts to defeat the Red Army, the Russian civil war ended with the Bolsheviks triumphing. The new Bolshevik government, led by Vladimir Lenin, established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and rapidly created advisory councils comprised of soldiers, peasants, and workers in accordance with Communist philosophy.

    When Russia’s violent civil war finally ended, almost one-half million POWs remained in Russia; Noémi’s father was among them. Even after the conclusion of the fighting, repatriation of former prisoners was slow. Although the majority of the Hungarian POWs did not fight with the Russians, Hungarian government officials, concerned that returning soldiers might spread communism, made minimal effort to support repatriation. Soldiers who managed to return to Hungary soon learned that the government was requiring all former POWs to remain in demobilization camps until they could prove that they had not succumbed to Bolshevik political indoctrination. Noémi’s father was one of the prisoners subjected to interrogation after he finally managed to return from Siberia.

    In Hungary, a country struggling to recover from the war and the transition from Austro-Hungarian rule, the post-World War I period was fraught with political turmoil. Most significantly, the Treaty of Trianon, a 1920 peace agreement between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Allies of World War I, significantly altered Hungary’s borders because two-thirds of Hungary’s previous territory was awarded to neighboring counties. After a brief Communist dictatorship failed, authoritarian leader Miklós Horthy rose to power in 1920 and remained the head of the Kingdom of Hungary until October, 1944. Although openly anti-Semitic, Horthy banned the Arrow Cross Party, a Hungarian fascist party, as well as the Hungarian Communist Party—political groups that he feared could threaten his authoritarian rule.

    Horthy was not alone in his anti-Semitic views. Europe has a long history of anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews dating back centuries. Jewish soldiers and POWs had faced significant anti-Semitic discrimination from guards and other POWs throughout World War I. The prisoners in Russian captivity, including Noémi’s father, were separated by nationality and ethnicity. Jewish prisoners from different countries were housed together, often creating their own support systems to counter anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior.

    Many Hungarian Jews had suffered, or even died, fighting for their country during World War 1. Nevertheless, there was an increase in anti-Semitic policies and anger toward Jews as Horthy and other Hungarian leaders aligned themselves with neighboring fascist regimes—the governments Horthy believed were most likely to allow Hungary to regain lost territory through a revision of the Treaty of Trianon. Anti-Semitism further increased as fascists in Hungary and Germany complained about the commercial and professional success of the Jewish population and began blaming Jews for the economic disasters after World War I, including the Great Depression.

    In part to appease Hungarian fascists, in 1938 the Hungarian government passed a variety of anti-Jewish laws modeled after the Nurnberg Laws enacted in fascist Germany. Going beyond the 1920 Hungarian numerus clausus law that limited the number of Jewish university students, the new rules severely limited Jewish participation in certain professions and businesses. Further, beginning in 1939, many Jewish men were required to participate in forced labor in the Ukraine. The army separated these men from the regular soldiers and insisted they wear civilian clothing and armbands identifying them as Jewish. Additional laws further reduced professional quotas, barred Jews from government employment, and broadened the definition of Jewish by considering Jews a racial group instead of a religious group. As a result of these laws, many Hungarian Jews lost their livelihoods.

    It was virtually impossible for Hungarian Jews to mount a strongly opposition to these anti-Semitic laws. Additionally, as with Jews throughout Europe who wished to escape anti-Semitism, it was not easy to relocate due to restrictive immigration policies in countries worldwide. Even a move to Palestine was not an option for Zionists (Jews who supported the concept of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East) because the British exerted tight control over Jewish immigration to Palestine.

    In other areas of Europe, a serious threat to Jews had emerged: Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ party, better known as the Nazi party, was quickly gaining power. Hitler, initially considered a joke by many traditional politicians, was willing to say and do whatever was needed to advance his political ambitions, including promoting violence. After leading a failed political coup in 1923, Hitler was convicted of treason and imprisoned for five years, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf, an anti-Semitic and anti-Communist manifesto outlining his plans for a German rise to power. Hitler espoused the inferiority of all people of Jewish, Slavic, or Roma descent. Hitler maintained that Jews were destroying the financial and social lives of Germans and made false claims of a Jewish conspiracy endeavoring to gain worldwide financial control. Hitler’s manifesto also advocated expansion of Germany’s boundaries and allowing a single leader to rule Germany with complete power.

    Once released from prison, Hitler was successful in surrounding himself with people eager to support the Nazi party’s ideology of German nationalism and the racist belief in the superiority of Germanic people. Hitler frequently used dehumanizing language as he and the Nazis targeted groups they perceived to be a threat to their nationalist view of an ideal German. This included open persecution of those they deemed undesirable including Jews; Romani, Polish, or Slavic people; homosexuals; Jehovah’s Witnesses; and individuals with mental or physical handicaps.

    Hitler, known for his deceptiveness, cunning, and skilled use of propaganda, was a charismatic speaker easily able to mesmerize cheering crowds of fervent supporters eager to support the Nazis and embrace his rhetoric of restoring Germany to its former glory. When the German Parliament building was set on fire in early 1933, Hitler succeeded in consolidating power by claiming, without evidence, that the arson was part of a communist plot, resulting in the expulsion of communist leaders from Parliament. A subgroup of Germans who supported democratic principles and opposed the authoritarian and racist nature of Nazism attempted to prevent Hitler’s rise to power, but without success.

    Governmental institutions slowly began to normalize Hitler’s authoritarian behavior and increasingly gave in to his demands. Hitler promoted new legislation that allowed him to combine the presidency and the chancellorship and to seize full dictatorial power by emergency decree. Having achieved absolute power, one of his first dictatorial decisions was to require military personnel to take an oath pledging loyalty and unconditional obedience to Hitler rather than to Germany’s constitution.

    Hitler continued to build his base by organizing large rallies and making fiery speeches full of hateful rhetoric, cheered on by adoring followers susceptible to his self-promotion and promises of easy solutions. Hitler further consolidated power by aggressively attacking and undermining his opponents, including newspapers that expressed concern about whether he was fit to lead the country. Hitler succeeded in recruiting more followers by capitalizing on the emotions of lower- and middle-class Germans frustrated with their economic circumstances. The popularity of the Nazi party intensified as the government increased spending on the military and national infrastructure, resulting in economic recovery and declining unemployment.

    Soon after the Nazi party gained control of the German Parliament and Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler rapidly moved forward with his anti-Semitic philosophies and policies. He excelled at generating racial resentment, and supporters responded with violent actions against Jewish professionals and businesses. The emboldened Nazi government not only condoned these actions, but furthered the violence by popularizing anti-Semitic slogans, initiating a national boycott against Jewish businesses, promoting the burning of books by Jewish authors, and excluding Jews from civil service or practicing law. These actions were followed by the implementation of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, which defined Jewishness in racial rather than religious terms, stripped anyone with Jewish lineage of their citizenship and voting rights, and criminalized marriage between Jews and other Germans. The Nazi persecution led to widespread economic and social isolation of German citizens of Jewish descent. The laws and their harsh punishments later extended to Romani people and political opponents of the Nazi regime.

    The Nazis’ plans to destroy Jews were furthered when, on the evening of November 9, 1938, anti-Semitic violence spontaneously erupted throughout Germany, resulting in the destruction of the homes, synagogues, and businesses of German Jews. Hundreds of Jews were killed or wounded in the violence directed against them, and the next morning 30,000 Jewish men were taken to forced labor camps. This night, known as Kristallnacht, is considered by many to have been the beginning of the Holocaust—the Nazis campaign of genocide and systematic murder of over five million European Jews and millions of other individuals from targeted groups.

    Hitler soon established more concentration camps, not only to contain and brutally silence political opponents and instill fear in those who might oppose him, but also to house Jews and others the Nazis deemed undesirable. The secret state police, the Gestapo, soon joined with Hitler’s paramilitary forces, the Schutzstaffel or SS, in a systematic effort to round up and imprison Jews. Finally, the Nazis began building death camps to accomplish Hitler’s Final Solution—a plan to systematically destroy Europe’s entire Jewish population.