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| Three little kids hiding in a small village. |
There's this bulkhead on the Danube River, a
big concrete staging area in the center of Budapest. It sits maybe a
dozen feet below street level. My father took my sister and I to it when
we were teenagers. He sat down.
We had been walking most of the day so
initially it made sense. But he remained when he would normally have
moved along. "Right here," he said finally. Then he described a scene
that he didn't see but was told later after the war. That bulkhead, pier
or whatever it was served as the spot where a small contingent of Nazi
soldiers lined up a bunch of Jews. Snow covered the ground, but the Jews
often weren't wearing coats.
They didn't need them where they were
going. The soldiers tied three people together tightly. One group after
another. Then the officer put a pistol to the head of the person in the
center of this tightly bound cluster and shot. The soldiers with him
pushed the trio into the churning waters below. The dead weight sucked
them underwater immediately. "They didn't want to waste bullets," my
father said.
