Andrew Zafir

Andrew Zafir (meaning Sapphire in Hungarian) was born in a rural village in Eastern Hungary on March the 7th. 1914. His birth name was Endre but from very early on he was called by his Hungarian nick name Bandi (pronounced Bondi). It is the only name his Hungarian friends and family have called him since. He was born in a village called Merk. The closest main town is Nyirbator which is twenty kilometers away and the closest major city is Debrecen. It is only six kilometres from the Romanian border. The village consisted mainly of two ethnic groups. One was Jewish who consisted of nineteen families who were all related and were both orthodox and observant. The other group was Schwab. They were of German descent and had migrated to Hungary many years before. Both groups co-existed harmoniously for many generations.

Bandi’s parents were general store keepers and his mother was a very capable business person. They lived relatively comfortably and the store provided them with a respectable income. All the relations in that village were related on his mother’s side. His father’s relatives lived mainly in Nyirbator and in those horse and buggy days twenty kilometers were a great distance and he rarely saw that side of the family. As was the custom, large families were the norm and both his parents had eight siblings. Bandi however only had two sisters who were two and four years older than him.

He was born at the beginning of the First World War. One of his earliest memories was seeing the return of the defeated Hungarian army crossing the Romanian border back into Hungary. His large family was not only dispersed in Hungary but also as a result of the collapse of the Austro - Hungarian Empire, were also across the border in Romania. He was free to cross the border any time without producing any papers because of proximity to the border. Another early memory which clearly left an impression on him was being taken by his uncle to see the Sacchmari Rebbe giving a sermon to his followers in 1920 at the age of six in Transylvania (also known in Hungarian as Erdi) inside Romania.

He was an exemplary student at the primary school and the teachers persuaded his parents to send him to the Jewish Gymnasium (College) in Debrecen. This suited him immensely as he knew his horizons extended well beyond the rural backwater of Merk. His questioning and scientific mind did not fit into the conformity of a traditional culture that had not changed for generations. Even though he was well versed in the laws, customs and history of Judaism he did not appreciate being bound by its strictures.

He went onto the Jewish Gymnasium in Debrecen and matriculated as one of the top three students. This was a remarkable achievement, because, after he arrived in Debrecen his family’s fortunes turned around as a result of the Great Depression and he not only had to support himself by taking on the job of a tutor but also sent money back home to support his family. When he went for his oral exams he also had to contend with a hostile and very antisemitic University examiner who not only failed to greet the students when they arrived, but also wore dark glasses to intimidate them.

Regrettably he lost a year in school due to a serious illness and matriculated at the introduction of a new law called “Numerous Klauses”.  It was a discriminatory law against Jewish students wishing to enter tertiary institutions, and only permitted children of University Graduates to qualify.

He knew that he had to study a trade and went to work as a tailor’s apprentice for his cousin in a town outside of Budapest called Erszebet. He made barely a subsistence income and supplemented it with tutoring. The father of one of his students offered him the opportunity to go to Sweden in nineteen thirty seven, however he refused to leave his family. He sent part of his meager earnings back to his parents whose income was severely affected by the depression. Even though he was poor he still managed to go to the theatre and buy the cheapest tickets and watch the performances sitting on the stairs.

In 1939 he was called up for military service. He was immediately given the recognition of an officer rank, because of his matriculation certificate, and consequently had two stripes put on his trousers. Later on he was promoted to corporal rank because due to his steady hand and clear eyesight he was an excellent sharp shooter. He was one of only four Jews to achieve that position in the Hungarian army.

Soon after he was discharged from the army he was recalled into the Hungarian military as a forced labourer. Most adult male Hungarian Jews were conscripted into this service at that time. It was highly dangerous and depended very much on the discretion of the military commander as to what harm’s way they were put in. Some of these forced labourers were sent to the front of the advancing troupes to set off detonators put there by the enemy. Fortunately for Bandi this was not the case and he was treated benignly by his commander.

In 1942 when the Hungarian Army had occupied parts of St. Petersburg as part of the axis, his unit had forcibly taken over a family home. Soon after, the tide of war had turned and the Russian army retook the city. The Russian soldiers evicted and in many cases executed the enemy soldiers. Bandi was being taken out of the house to be shot. Fortunately a Russian boy who lived in that house advised the soldiers that he was not the same as the occupying soldiers. While they showed him mercy the soldiers kept him as a prisoner of war. It was the first of many close encounters he had with death.

The second encounter came soon after, when he contracted typhoid. He lost over half his body weight and was incapacitated for six months. Due to his strong constitution he eventually recovered.

Being in the Soviet Union during the war was not a picnic for anyone, however due to both good fortune and an innate intelligence he knew how to make the most of it. He met up with other Hungarian Jews as prisoners of war who thought they could be clever and get themselves the best job going. In wartime since food was always in short supply that had to be a baker. They were too clever by half and told the Russian officers that they had been bakers back in Hungary, which was false. Naturally the officers asked them to prove themselves and they were shown to be fools. Bandi on the other hand was more circumspect, and just said that his grandfather had been a baker which also wasn’t true but at least he had nothing to prove. They took him on as a baker’s apprentice to the officer in charge.

Naturally as in most things in wartime, the officer was corrupt. Having been allocated flour and water he dissolved the flour producing more bread and sold the surplus on the black market. One day he was called away and Bandi was put in charge. Since he didn’t have any connection with any-one in the black market he simply made the bread the way it was meant to be made. Immediately people noticed the improvement in the quality of the bread and insisted that he stay in charge. Naturally, he refused fearing the reprisal from his superior. He was told not to worry and he would never see him again. His job gave him such great privilege, that there were times that he was offered bribes by officer’s wives for an extra loaf of bread.

His good luck did not end there. Although Bandi had very limited opportunities for education he was capable of picking up the skills of chess. He was self taught and very competent. On one occasion he watched the camp’s military commander playing chess and lost to another officer. He chided him for his mistakes. One would have thought that this was rather a dangerous road to take by humiliating an enemy officer. However in Russia, good chess players were highly regarded and the commander asked him to play against him. Bandi proved to be every bit as good as his word, and was afterwards feted by not only the officers but by apparatchiks’ who worked and lived there. He was trusted by the officers to such an extent, that he was often asked to escort soldiers who were transferring anything of value from one camp to another.

His other close encounter with death was when he and a baker were about to go to sleep near the ovens. He felt a strong desire to go to sleep but he knew that something was wrong. In a semi comatose condition he made his way to the bakery’s closed door and struggled to open it to let in air. He had the soundness of mind to realise that they were being exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning and only had seconds before they succumbed.

Although Bandi had successfully made the most of his circumstances he was never very street savvy and took people at their word. When the Russians informed the P.O.W.’s that good workers would be rewarded at the end of the war in 1945 and returned to their country of origin he believed them. In fact this was a lie. The people that the Russians held onto were precisely the ones they valued the most. Consequently, Bandi, instead of being released at the end of the war in 1945 returned home much later in 1948.

He returned to a Hungary that had totally changed. His immediate family had all perished. What remained was a scattering of relatives, mainly cousins from what had been a very large family. The Hungary of 1942 that had been run by an incompetent fascist, called Admiral Horte (which was rather absurd because after the collapse of the Austro - Hungarian Empire Hungary had become landlocked) it was now a Communist Soviet satellite. The elections of 1948 had produced a coalition of Socialists and Communists. However, it did not take long for the Communist party to get rid of their partners with the help of their Soviet masters.

It was an extremely volatile and uncertain period. Hungary was not only trying to recover from the ravages of war but was having to contend with a new world order. There were plenty of old scores to settle and no one felt safe, especially due to their past allegiances. Once again, Bandi through both good fortune and his innate skills at the age of 34 managed to find his place.

One of his cousins had been put into a high bureaucratic position and was able to find Bandi a job due to his educational qualifications, as a price commissioner. In Hungary at that time, the Communist style economics believed that the best way to prevent inflation was to give every item a fixed price which was printed on the item. Naturally, most of these prices were just arbitrary having no connection to reality. He was given the job to be an arbitrator when there was disagreement between two parties about what the real price ought to be.

His luck unfortunately didn’t hold out. His cousin found out that he was staying with a good friend who in spite of the regimes so called egalitarianism, was living very well, in fact he was living in the same street as the then Prime Minister. The cousin undoubtedly because of jealousy told him that his domicile was not an acceptable place for a person of his rank. Bandi was summarily dismissed, and realised that he no longer had any future in Hungary. Bandi had been in contact with his second cousins Kato and Deszo, when he came back to Budapest. They were the surviving children of the cousin to whom he had been apprenticed to in the 1930’s as a tailor. They had both married into a fairly large and wealthy family, the Fleiszig's. The family had taken in a young girl who had been a family friend and neighbour when they lived in Pest Erszebeth. After the war when she had found out that her entire family had perished, she lived with them and worked in their poultry business. Her name was Magda Fleischmann. However, like Bandi she was always referred to by her nickname Manyi.

When they met, she was eighteen and he was thirty four. Their age gap was sixteen years and many people, relatives included, thought that this was too extreme arguing that by the time Manyi was still in the prime of her life, Bandi would be approaching his twilight years leaving them with different priorities. This prediction as it turned out proved to be far from correct. Manyi, possibly suffering from the horrors of war at a very young age, in the hell of Auschwitz and orphaned at fourteen was mature, way beyond her years and she knew her own mind. Unlike Bandi she was street savvy very much like his mother and also like her, a good business woman. Bandi somehow was never the sort of person who aged as most do, he had too much pride in his appearance and mental ability to let age dictate his attitude to living. Over the years they have proved to be a perfect match, creating a successful mutual lifestyle.

They escaped from Hungary separately first to Austria and then Australia. She left Hungary with some members of the family she was living with; he on the other hand escaped a few months later with the assistance of a professional smuggler. Being a smuggler was a dangerous and often fatal profession. When the smuggler and the group he was with, approached the guard tower on the perimeter, the smuggler raised his gun towards the guard who had spotted him in clear sight and the guard however reported to his superiors that everything was clear. Consequently, the group made it through the mountains. Bandi was following Manyi to a distant country that they knew nothing about. All they knew that it was part of the British Empire they spoke English and had lots of Kangaroos. One thing Bandi did know about Australia was that being an island continent it had no borders with other countries. This as he surmised having lived close to the Romanian border, was the source of many conflicts. War was a part of his life that he wanted to leave very much behind.

Manyi, while having come to Australia with members of the family she had lived with, initially came to Melbourne. She decided to go to Sydney to be with her cousins the Lowy’s. She lived in a flat in Edgecliff with Ilonka and her son Sanyi (Alex) . Ilonka was close to her mother and was possibly the closest thing she had to a mother. Ilonka taught her to cook which Manyi later mastered with great proficiency. Ilonka would very much have liked Manyi to marry her son, but Manyi had made up her mind about who she was going to marry. Bandi with the assistance of JOINT, an American Jewish welfare agency, arrived in late January of 1950. They were married two weeks later on February the 5th. They lived in Doll’s Point for a year but not having made any successful social connections decided to return to Melbourne to be with the Fleiszig's.

They originally lived in a boarding home in Brunswick and then bought a house soon after in Fairfield. Manyi declaring that she would not want a child being brought up in an apartment. Their only son Tom was born February the 1st 1953. Bandi worked in a paper factory and later as a carpenter making cupboards. His work ethic and ability made him highly prized by his employers but not his fellow workers. He was once overlooked accidentally for overtime work and he resigned because of the insult. His employer came to their place begging him to come back and offering him free tools, but Bandi refused. He had other jobs including working for the Fleiszig's in their poultry business. By 1960 they bought themselves a delicatessen shop in Prahran Market. Manyi had worked in a similar shop in South Melbourne market and gotten to know the ropes. Their real success came in 1966 when they bought a coin laundry in St. Kilda. It was expanded and at one time was the largest laundry in Melbourne. They built two other small laundries in Caulfield later on.

Manyi and Bandi retired in the 1980’s wondering what to do with the rest of their lives. They soon found a vocation. They started playing Bridge. Bandi while proving to be quite competent, it was Manyi who became the star, as a highly regarded Bridge champion.

Tom married Karin Brodsky in 1984 and they have two children Daniel who is 26 and Adrian who is 24 and is now married to Tamar Macbeth. They live in New Zealand.

Bandi continued to maintain his mental faculties to the age of 98 and as usual wouldn’t let age dictate his attitude to life, although his body became increasingly frail.

As SBS likes to say there are 7 Billion stories, hopefully you will find this one, one of the more interesting ones. This is a story about hope and success, against extraordinary odds that have been told about over the years and I still find it enthralling.

Documentation References

(Birth record not available)

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, Search for Names (ENDRE ZAFIR)

https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=5871647

Sex: Male

Date of Birth: 7 Mar 1914

Place of Birth: MERK

Mother's Name: HERMIN WEISZBERG

Name of Kin: KALMAN ZAFIR

Unit: 101/52 TMSZ

Draft Notice Address: ZSIL VOLGY

Draft Notice Place: Pestszenterzsebet

Place Captured: ALEKSZEJOVKA

Date Missing: 17 Jan 1943

Source List: LABOUR BATTALION

List Type: LABOUR

Source: Title: Hungarian Jewish Victims: Names from the Nevek Project

• JDC Archives, Name Search, Index Card, Vienna Branch

Name of Andreas Zafir, born 7 March 1914 in Merk Hungary

http://search.archives.jdc.org/multimedia%2FDocuments%2FVMB_cardind...

• Arolsen Archives, Search the Online Archives (Andreas Zafir , date of birth 7 March 1914)

https://arolsen-archives.org/en/search-explore/search-online-archive/

Scope and content of Collection (Passenger List)

Title of the Collection

Correspondence and nominal roles, done at Innsbruck, Österreich, Wien: transport by train, airplane (FLUG NR. 623), ship (BRAZIL, CHANTILLY, CYRENIA, FLORIDA, FORMOSA, GROIX, KERGUELEN, USO DI MARE, VOLENDAM II); transit countries and final destinations: Argentina, Ethiopia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Dominican Republic, France, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Netherlands, Pakistan, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela

• National Archives of Australia (NAA)

1. Names Search

(a) ZAFIR Andrew - Nationality: Stateless - Arrived Melbourne per Volendam 25 January 1950

(b) Application for Naturalisation - ZAFIR Andrew born 7 March 1914

2. Passenger Arrivals - Passenger No 1050 (refer (a) above)

https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Gallery151/dist/JGa...

• Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: Oct 23 2018, 15:54:07 UTC
• Residence: St Kilda, isaacs, Victoria, Australia - 1963
  • Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Oct 23 2018, 15:56:04 UTC