Steven

Birthdate: 29 Sep 1934

Place: Budapest, Hungary

Steven Sedley still remembers vividly the walks he took with his father, a pharmaceutical wholesaler and 'avid sportsman'. They would cross the bridge over the Danube from Buda to Pest and admire the wonderful colours of the Byzantine Jewish synagogue. He joined the synagogue choir though he recalls humorously he was not actually asked to sing, “just look like” he was singing. Schooling was a fun, rough-and-tumble sort of affair with Steven and his Jewish friend fighting the non-Jewish boys. "We were a gang of two, they a gang of everyone else”. Though some of the boys had relatives in the Hungarian Fascist party “The Arrow Cross” he does not remember there being specific antisemitic propaganda at that time. It was just how things were: Jews against the others.

War became a reality when local men, including his father, were called up for military duty, Hungary being an ally of Germany. Although antisemitic measures were introduced it was a feature of the “unique and strange” political situation in Hungary that as long as Horthy was in power and agreed with the persecution of Jews he did not cooperate when it came to deporting them to the concentration camps. "We were his Jews, not Hitler's, and he wanted to persecute us on his own terms,” said Steven.

Within the Jewish community and within Steven's family there were different views as to how serious a threat Hitler represented. This changed with the 1944 announcement that Hungary wanted to pull out of the war. Horthy was over­thrown and Hungary was taken over by the Germans. Steven was playing with friends and when he arrived home he found his mother extremely agitated. She had wondered if they would ever see Steven again. Antisemitic measures increased; Jews were forced to share designated “Jewish flats” and wear the yellow star. His aunt from Vienna was ordered to report to the authorities and despite knowing better she did so, never to be seen again.