My beautiful mother Lily Ruttner 

My beautiful mother, Lily Ruttner, was born on 29 November 1925 to Berta and Avraham Ruttner. She had three older brothers, Julius, Josef and Markus, and one younger sister, Elza. The family lived at 35 Hustka Ulica, Ťačovo, Czechoslovakia. Ťačovo was a small town, idyllically situated on a fertile plain between the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and the Tisza River. The region was famous for its apples, probably due to the excellent irrigation from the Tisza. Avraham Ruttner was a successful fruit grower, he leased apple orchards and sold apples throughout Czechoslovakia. Berta ran a delicatessen shop from the front of her home that still exists today, but the address and country have changed. Now it’s 15 Armiiska Vulytsia in Tyachiv, Western Ukraine.

The Czechoslovakia my mother grew up in was a liberal democracy where all minorities, including Jews, were protected. Her family was religious, they observed the Sabbath and High Holidays and kept kosher, though not strictly. Berta did not wear any head covering and Avraham wore a hat, rather than a yarmulke. He regularly attended Ťačovo’s Great Synagogue that was a 20-minute walk from his home.  

From 1925-1939 my mother enjoyed a carefree childhood. She attended a Czech junior school that was conveniently located on Hustka Ulica exactly opposite her family home. She was clever and was accepted into a gymnasium in Chust that was a 45-minute train ride from Ťačovo. The gymnasium required attendance on Saturday, but Avraham wanted his daughter to stay home on Shabbat, so instead my mother went to a middle school in Ťačovo.  

The Ruttners’ wartime odyssey began on 15 March 1939, when Hungarian Nazi collaborators occupied Czechoslovakia’s easternmost region, including Ťačovo. My mother was 13 years old. The Hungarians immediately introduced antisemitic legislation that severely limited Jewish business and professional life. Many Jews became impoverished and relied on local and international Jewish charity organisations, especially those in Budapest and the U.S. Avraham managed to keep working because of a loophole in the legislation although his income was probably greatly reduced. 

Hungarian anti-Jewish laws also prohibited Jewish males from serving in the regular Hungarian Army. Instead, they were conscripted to the unique and deadly Hungarian Labor Service where they were subjected to extreme cruelty, abuse and humiliation. To avoid conscription Julius Ruttner escaped to the British Mandate of Palestine on the SS Sakarya, an Aliyah Bet ship. Unfortunately, his younger brothers, Josef and Markus, were drafted into the Labor Service. 

Berta cried every day, worried about her sons.

To their credit, the Hungarians resisted pressure from Germany to deport Jews to Nazi concentration camps. However, there were occasional atrocities. In July 1941 my mother’s grandfather, Zelig Ruttner, aged 74, was deported from Ťačovo to Kamenets-Podolsk, where he was shot in a pit with 23,600 Jews in a 3-day hail of bullets blood bath. 

After this Hungarian initiated massacre antisemitic activity quietened down in Eastern Czechoslovakia for a few years. My mother completed middle school and began training as a high end seamstress at Salon Elizabeth Haute Couture. In 1941 Ťačovo’s Jewish population was 2,150, being 20% of the total population of 10,371.

Then the unimaginable happened. On 19 March 1944 Germany invaded its ally Hungary and took control of Ťačovo on Thursday, 23 March 1944. On 16 April 1944, just one day after Passover ended, a ghetto was formed in Ťačovo. Berta and Avraham’s home on Hustka Ulica was within the cordoned off ghetto area, so several of their Ruttner relatives who had been living in other parts of Ťačovo moved into their home.

The ghetto existed for only six weeks. Ťačovo’s Jews were deported to Auschwitz–Birkenau in two transports on the 25th and 28th May 1944. Berta, Avraham, my mother and Elza were on the first transport and arrived in Birkenau erev Shavuot, Saturday, 27 May 1944 (6 Sivan 5704). My mother was 18 years old. The Ruttners were part of the Hungarian Deportation, the fastest deportation of Nazi Germany and its collaborators. In just 57 days 437,402 Jews living in territories occupied by Hungary were deported, mostly to Auschwitz; 320,000 were gassed on arrival; more died later in the camps. By 1944, the Nazis were losing the war, but they were still hell-bent on murdering the so-called Hungarian Jews – the last intact Jewish community of eastern Europe.

My mother said very little about her wartime experience, but she did make two comments about Birkenau. She told me when she arrived and saw men in stripped clothing, she thought she was in a nuthouse and she was there for 3 months, one more day would have killed her. 

Due to a labour shortage in Germany towards the end of the war, the Nazis selected healthy young Jews to work as slave labourers. Dr Mengele selected my family for work – it’s a miracle Berta, aged 45, was included and the family was able to stay together. In August 1944, they were transported from Birkenau to Muna Lubberstedt, a Luftwaffe ammunition factory located in a forest near Bremen, Germany where they made bombs for Nazi Germany for nine months. As the war was coming to an end the starving prisoners were loaded onto a death train that aimlessly shunted back and forth across Germany for two weeks. The Royal Air Force (RAF) believed the train’s occupants were Nazis and bombed it twice, many female Jewish prisoners on board died. Miraculously my family survived and were finally liberated by the British army in Plön, Germany on 8 May 1945, the same day WW2 ended in Europe.

After recuperating in a British DP camp in Haffkrug, Germany, my family chose to go to Prague, hoping to find other surviving family there. They never returned to Ťačovo that was now occupied by Soviet Russia.

In Prague they were reunited with Julius who had enlisted in the Czech Division of the British Army. They were informed that Josef had died of typhus on the Eastern Front in the Hungarian Labour Service, Markus was murdered by the Arrow Cross in Budapest and Avraham had been gassed in Birkenau after being forced to work as a Sonderkommando.

From Avraham and Berta’s family of seven, only four survived and my mother was the only relatively healthy family member. Berta was bedridden for 8 months, she recovered physically but her heart and mind were forever broken. Julius suffered from a serious leg injury for the rest of his life and Elza was in hospital and rehabilitation for almost 3 years. 

Two and a half years after her liberation my mother married Eugene Hellinger in the Prague Alte Nu Synagogue on 8 January 1948. She had just turned 22. One month after the wedding Prague was taken over by the Soviet communists. My parents escaped to Paris in 1949 and lived there for about 6 months before obtaining visas to Australia. In April 1949 they departed from Marseille on board the Luciano Manara and arrived in Melbourne, Australia on 16 May 1949. Berta, Elza and Julius followed in August 1949 on the Sebastiano Cabot.

My family thrived in Australia. 

Eugene was a smart businessman, first he bought into boarding houses where my mother, Elza and Berta worked hard cooking and cleaning. Then he built flats and shops.

My sister ‘Ria (Alexandria) was born in 1951, and I was born in 1956. By 1963, we were living in a large home with a pool in Toorak, quite unusual for that time. In summer the pool was the center of a wide social circle of my parents’ immigrant survivor friends from Czechoslovakia. My mother was a generous host and wonderful cook.  

In 1972 my parents celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary at the Town House in Carlton. In lieu of gifts they asked for donations to Israel through WIZO Nirim, an organisation run by Ruth Scheuer OAM, who they had first met on the Luciano Manara. Four years later my father died of cancer leaving my mother a widow at the age of 49. She took over the family business and with her natural intelligence successfully managed it until her death in 2006 aged 80.

I was raised in privilege and freedom, my parents said very little about their traumatic lives in Europe – a silence common amongst survivors, it took years of research to find these details. 

My research was triggered on 25 July 2016 when I received an email, out of the blue, from a distant cousin-in-law in Israel. My cousin told me that on 24 July 1945 my mother made a statement to the DEGOB (National Committee for Attending Deportees), a Hungarian Jewish Relief Organisation. I obtained that statement from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. It had the name of the ammunition factory, Muna Lubberstedt, on it. A researcher at Yad Vashem helped me contact archivist Alyn Bessman, who provided me with a lot of valuable information about Muna Lubberstedt. My research developed from that point.

I am in awe of my parents’ resilience and determination and bow to their memory.