Monica Porter - Deadly Carousel: A Diva’s Exploits in Wartime Budapest

DEADLY CAROUSEL

A Divas Exploits in Wartime Budapest

Monica Porter

First published by Quartet Books in 1990

Re-issued by Vallentine Mitchell in 2006

This edition published in 2021 by Lume Books

30 Great Guildford Street,

Borough, SE1 0HS

Copyright Monica Porter 2021

The right of Monica Porter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

For photos, film clips, song recordings and articles relating to Vali Racz, go to www.raczvali.hu

Cover photo montage by Roland Jagados, www.roland-design.com

In memory of my mother,

those whom she saved,

and those who saved her

Table of Contents

Foreword

They called Vali Rcz the Hungarian Marlene Dietrich, partly perhaps because she once performed wearing a mans top hat. But, as this enticing book makes perfectly clear, that is not the reason her name needs to be honoured.

Jerusalems Yad Vashem institution knew precisely why she had to be included in their list of Righteous Among the Nations and her name inscribed on their Righteous Honour Wall. It was not because she stunned audiences in Budapest singing songs of the day or appearing in the inter-war years musical movies which tried rather unsuccessfully to vie with Hollywood or the more professional European studios. It was for a more substantial reason like Marlene Dietrich she opposed the Nazis in her homeland. But Rcz did so much more than that. It was thanks to her that a Jewish family and other Jews survived the roundups that the Germans instituted in Hungary and so escaped the death camps that were the fate of thousands.

Her story has about it much of the drama of Anne Frank from the point of view of the rescuer. Amazingly, it is also implicitly a tale that honours the work of an architect and a cabinet maker the ones who built Rczs huge wardrobe in her home at Budakesi Avenue, Budapest. For that piece of bedroom furniture was big enough to form, along with the villas basement, the centrepiece and principal hiding place of those Jews a hiding place with little comfort, but distinctly more humane than Auschwitz.

The actress, who at one time dreamed of nothing more than fame and opportunities to demonstrate her unique Magyar talent, risked her own life time and again by hiding those Jews. Later, she would demonstrate the same sort of incredible courage when the Russians battled it out with the Germans in Budapest and, after that, when the Communists took control of a city which had, in its time, been one of the two romantic capitals of the Habsburg empire.

And that fact points to an important feature of this book: it forms both a political and social history of the times in which Vali Rcz lived. More digestible than a conventional history, the story of the dictator of Hungary, Admiral Horthy, the anti-Semite who opposed the Nazi war on the Jews, is a revealing backdrop to Rczs own tale.

Raoul Wallenberg, one of the great heroes of the war years, is there. But then so is Franz Lehar, creator of The Merry Widow .

How Wallenberg distributed his famous passports to save Jewish lives is familiar but in this book we learn how he did more than just that. He actually handed out some of those papers to Jews on death marches.

Lehars presence is very different. He recognised Rczs talent at a time when that recognition was enough to take her to the top of her profession. He gave her a song to introduce and wanted to take her to Vienna to star in a new operetta. It didnt happen because the real drama going on in Vienna was the Anschluss with Germany. There was a comeback of sorts after the war, but the time when she was mostly concerned with saving human lives brought down the curtain on her career at its peak.

This book is written by the subjects daughter. It could have been a gushing hagiography tale with praise and tributes on each page. The fact that it appears to be much more objective is actually praise and tribute to the author.

It isnt easy to imagine what show business was like in pre-war Hungary, that is, before the world was turned upside down. The centre of sophisticated entertainment, very different from Britain or America, was the caf. Caf society in Budapest wasnt just men in starched shirts, top hats and tails wining and dining beautiful women in long, low-cut dresses. Much more, this was where people came to hear the leading artists of the day the nearest equivalent in Britain was when Fred Astaire came here to dance and sing before the then Prince of Wales at the Kit Kat Club.

Everyone came to hear Vali after the triumph of her first film Spiders Web and her sell-out performances at the renowned Terzkrti Theatre. She starred at the Hangli Kioszk and that caf society came and stayed to clap and cheer.

But what really deserves clapping and cheering is the story of her bravery, her involvement in a world so far away from entertainment and so unknown now, generations away.

Michael Freedland

Broadcaster and show business biographer

July 2006

Acknowledgements

It was fortunate that I researched my mothers wartime story in the late 1980s. Back then, many of the people involved in it were still alive. I could interview them and learn first-hand the details I needed to write this book. Now, more than three decades later, they have all passed away, not least of all my mother. Piecing together her story today would be an impossible task the chasm between past and present has grown too great.

Even if they are no longer alive to read this, I want to express my gratitude to certain individuals. Vera Soml , Mihly Szle and Ilona (real name Olga Gbor) all assisted me generously all those years ago, as did Margit Herzog, who spoke to me openly and at length about her life during wartime. I realised how painful it was for her to relive those experiences.

The late military historian Dr Pter Gosztonyi, then of the East European Institute in Bern, helped to clarify various historical data included in my book. And the staff of the Wiener Library in London, which specialised in the Nazi era and the Holocaust, helpfully pointed me towards the right reading matter.

My late father Pter Halsz , writer and journalist of renown in his native Hungary, and so knowledgeable about Hungarian culture and history, told me many things I would not otherwise have known and vetted the text for inaccuracies. I am grateful to him not only for that, but also for the unfailing encouragement he had always given me in my work as a journalist. Everyone needs a father like that.

Lastly, of course, there is mother. She died twenty-four years ago. We werent always as close as we might have been, but thats the complicated mother/daughter relationship for you. However, during my research in 1988-89, when we spent a great deal of time together, we developed a genuine closeness. Her unfolding story became a new bond between us. Many times she was the willing and tireless victim of my probing questions, as I ruthlessly raked up memories she would rather have left alone. This book is a tribute to her courage, both in her youth and in her old age.

Monica Porter

London,

February 2021

Preface

Of the many turbulent and troubled times in the thousand-year history of the Magyar people, one year stands out in particular from the spring of 1944 to the spring of 1945. Hungary has always been set apart from the other European countries, and its experiences during World War II were also, in certain ways, unique.

During the forties, both the Nazis and the Soviet liberators were to slam down their iron fists upon the small and weakened nation. There was persecution, torture and murder, followed by its bloodthirsty sequel more persecution, torture and murder. No one who lived through that period in Hungary can be in any doubt as to the meaning of the word terror. That single year 19445 was decisive. It marked the changing of the guard from Right to Left.