"As a pianist, she was considered an extraordinary talent" - The Berger Family

Anna Berger, Dr Márton Berger, and Mrs Berger née Julianna Hirschbein

Anna Berger was born on 11 July 1933 in Budapest. Her mother, Julianna Hirschbein, was 28, her father, Dr. Márton Berger, a physician, was 35. The Berger family lived at 1 Wesselényi Street in Kiskunfélegyháza in Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun County. According to the 1941 national census, in Kiskunfélegyháza, there were 1013 people falling under the anti-Jewish laws: 975 of them belonged to the Israelite denomination and 38 were from families with Jewish background who converted to Christianity.

Although her full name was Anna Veronika Berger, most people called her Panka. She was an excellent student at the United Orthodox and Congressional Israelite School in Kiskunfélegyháza. She played music often, and according to her sister, "As a pianist, he was considered an extraordinary talent".

In June 1943, Anna graduated from the 4th grade with distinction. Her diligence and behaviour were both commendable. She continued her studies in September, but did not finish that academic year: on 19 March 1944 Hungary was occupied by Nazi Germany.

According to a survey carried out in the spring of 1944 on the orders of the Germans and the collaborating Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, 459 Jews in Kiskunfélegyháza belonged to the Neologue and 517 to the Orthodox communities. Soon the yellow star was introduced and local police raided the premises several times to check if the Jews were wearing the distinctive sign. During these raids, 4 Jewish residents were interned.

The transfer to the ghetto began at 5 a.m. on 22 May 1944. A total of 985 people were crammed into the Jewish quarter. The ghetto was guarded by gendarmes from Kiskunhalas. Their commanding officer was Márton Zöldy, who had participated in the January 1942 massacre in Újvidék (now Novi Sad, Serbia), and who was about to be sentenced by a Hungarian court (along with other Hungarian officers responsible for the massacre) shortly before the German occupation. However, Zöldy, like many of the accused, escaped to Germany and returned in SS uniform after the invasion.

From the ghetto, the Hungarian army drafted a total of 71 Jewish men in two waves for labour service. Some were drafted to company 105/304 in Hódmezővásárhely, others remained in Kiskunfélegyháza. Among the latter was Anna's father, Dr Márton Berger.

Just three weeks later, the ghetto was liquidated. On the morning of 15 June 1944, the Jews were herded into a schoolyard and stripped of most of their belongings. The women's orifices were brutally searched for valuables by midwives from a local maternity home. That evening, a total of 983 Jews from Kiskunfélegyháza were deported to Kecskemét. (According to other sources, the number was 817.) The infirm and sick were transported in German lorries, the others by train. Anna and Julia were among the latter. Dr Berger could still catch a glance of his wife and little daughter being driven into one of the cattle cars. It was the last time he saw them. On the platform, Zöldy, who was in charge of the operation, beat up Rabbi Liebermann in front of everyone.

Anna and her mother spent the next 10 days in a brick factory in Kecskemét, and on 25 June 1944 they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau together with the local Jews. The train crossed the Slovak-Hungarian border at Kassa (today: Košice) on 27 June. They probably arrived at the 'Jewish ramp' at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the evening of 28 June or at dawn on 29 June. There were 2,642 Jews in the cattle cars. According to a list from Auschwitz, it is assumed that the SS doctors considered 232 men and slightly more women to be fit for work. The rest, some 2150 people, were sent to one of the crematoria. Anna and her mother were never seen again. On 29 June 1944, they were both killed in one of the gas chambers.

Meanwhile, Anna's father was in a labour service unit. Later, the Hungarian authorities handed him over to the Germans for forced labour along with his comrades. Márton Berger had been in several concentration and labour camps. As the front drew near, the SS liquidated the camps one by one. The prisoners were herded into trains or driven on foot towards the interior of the Reich. One of the destinations was the ghetto of Theresienstadt (now Terezín, Czech Republic). The ghetto, which was used as a showcase site for the Nazis, incarcerated then only about 17,000 people. Of the more than 140,000 people who had previously been transported here, 35,088 died here and 88,323 were deported to killing centres.

At the end of April 1945, Dr Berger, 47, arrived with a group of prisoners. Like the other concentration camp inmates, his details were recorded by the ghetto administration staff. On the reverse of another file, the date of the data entry is also indicated: 26 April 1945.

Theresienstadt was then still under SS control. Six days later, however, the Germans fled and the ghetto was handed over to the Red Cross. The Red Army liberated the survivors on 9 May 1945. However, as prisoners from the camps brought typhus with them, around 1,500 died in the following months – after the liberation.

Dr Berger was among the survivors. He soon returned to Kiskunfélegyháza and worked as a respected district physician for the next decades. In 1948 he remarried and in 1950 his son Zoltán was born. Dr Berger died in 1983 after a long illness. His son, Dr Zoltán Berger, brother of Anna, who was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, now lives in Chile.