Casualty of War – The Tragic Tale of Marta Munzer (Lost Lands #181)

While researching the Holocaust in Oradea (Nagyvarad) I went searching for photos from the period when the city was under Hungarian control from 1940 – 1944. One photo I found was of people outside the railway station. It was taken in 1941 and shows business as usual. I always find these kinds of photos odd since World War II was in progress. The front lines at that time were far from Oradea, but the conflict had already affected the city and its citizenry. In 1940, Hungary regained Northern Transylvania, including Crisana where Oradea was located. for its alliance. The city’s switch from Romanian to Hungarian control is apparent in the railway station photo with Nagyvarad on a sign attached to the station. The Hungarians in the city were certainly pleased with this turn of events. At that time, they still made up an overwhelming majority of the city’s inhabitants. Romanians were a relatively small minority. Even Hungarian speaking Jews outnumbered them. For Hungarians, Nagyvarad was back where it belonged, but for Jews in the city, Hungarian control put them in peril. This was especially true for new arrivals.?

Staying Alive – A Difficult Situation

In Eva Heyman’s diary - the 13-year-old alludes to her friend Marta Munzer. By the time Eva mentions Marta it is 1944 and she has not seen Marta in several years and she would never see her again. Marta had come with her family to Nagyvarad, most likely from Poland when many Jews crossed the border into Hungary as Polish resistance to the invasion of Nazi Germany collapsed in the autumn of 1939. (Austrian, Czech and German Jews fleeing persecution by the Nazis did the same thing). At the time, Hungary was a safe haven for Jews compared to Poland. Upon occupying the country, the Nazis began to enact their genocidal plans against Poland’s large Jewish population. They did the same thing in every country they invaded in Europe. For their survival, Jews had no other choice to head to anywhere beyond the deadly clutches of Nazism.

Hungary, despite widespread antisemitism, was a somewhat safer country for Jews. Hungary was aligned with Nazi Germany but maintained control of its own territory. Hungary was also open to Poles fleeing from the war. Hungary had a long history of friendship with Poland. They sympathized with their plight and offered them refuge. While not less than welcoming towards Jews from abroad, the Hungarian government did not have genocidal intentions. The upshot was that Jews thought they might be able to wait out the war in Hungary. Unfortunately, if those that fled to Nagyvarad and other regions Hungary had recently occupied did not hold a Hungarian passport, they were at risk of deportation. Many of them were stateless with nowhere to go. Returning to Poland was a death sentence. They would stay in Hungary and hope for the best while being stuck in geopolitical limbo. This was the situation that Marta Munzer and her family found themselves in.

Identity Thieves - Methods & Madness

In the summer of 1941, the Hungarian government decided to deport any Jews who did not have a Hungarian passport or were stateless. Many of these were in Carpathian Ruthenia (present day Zakarpattia Oblast in southwestern Ukraine) which Hungary had recently annexed. Jews from northern Transylvania, including Nagyvarad, who found themselves in this situation were also expelled. This was when Eva Heyman’s friend Marta Munzer disappeared. If not for Eva’s diary, Marta would likely be lost to history. I searched her name in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s database and came up with two matches. Both were much older at the time than Marta Munzer would have been when they were friends. Eva’s inclusion of Marta in her diary is the only thing keeping the two girls from complete anonymity.

Hundreds of thousands of others who died in the Holocaust remain nameless. They will never be known unless there is documentation to prove their existence. The insidious nature of mass murder on such a scale, results in individual lives being lost. The importance of documentation cannot be overstated. Eva Heyman could not save Marta’s life or her own. What she did do was leave us a written record that means neither of them will ever be forgotten. The Nazis wanted to erase all traces of Jews in Europe to make it seem as though they never existed. Their diabolical scheme ultimately failed, but not before millions of lives were destroyed. ?While the deportations of stateless Jews in Hungary occurred three years before Eva began her diary, by 1944 she had a deep sense of foreboding about what happened to Marta. She says as much in her diary:

“the government was preparing to do something terrible, and Jews who weren’t born in Hungary would be taken to Poland where a horrible fate was in store for them […] I didn’t understand this right away […] Then ági [éva’s mother] rushed into town to the journalists, and they told her that tens of thousands of people like Márta and her family had been taken away to Poland in a train, without luggage and without food.”

19,000 Jews were transported out of Hungarian territory and delivered into the hands of the Nazis. They were subsequently taken to Kamianets-Podilskyi in what is today western Ukraine. They were then gunned down by Nazi death squads in what was one of the first large scale mass murders of the war. Long before the Final Solution of industrialized killing with gas chambers, families like Marta’s were marched into a ravine or freshly dug ditch, and machine gunned. It was a horrible way to die. Marta’s terrifying fate haunts Eva’ diary. She refers to it on several occasions, Eva has no illusions about what awaits her as the situation in Nagyvarad deteriorates after the German occupation of Hungary. The Nazis refined their killing methods as the war went on searching for the most efficient method of murder possible. This eventually led to Auschwitz where Eva would die.

Written In Ink – A Symbiotic Relationship

Eva Heyman and Marta Munzer had a symbiotic relationship. The war made them more than just friends. Though it tore them apart, they ended up sharing the same dark destiny. The two girls were caught up in a situation from which there was no escape. Marta’s fate mirrored that of Eva’s. One cannot be separated from another. They were brought together by the war and died because of it. When they used to spend time together in Nagyvarad, neither could have imagined their lives would end in such a horrific manner. Their identities were almost lost amid the maelstrom. Eva’s diary saved them because ink lasts much longer than blood.?