My name is Agnes Rosner Grossinger, and I am an 80 year old survivor from Budapest, thanks to the effort of Raoul Wallenberg and in my case of Dr. Charles Lutz, whose ”Shutzpass” saved not only my own life but my parents too; My father Rosner Izidor and my mother Rosner Szerenke.
After Oct. 15 / 1944 I was drafted in an all female mandatory Labour Camp and sent to SzigetMonostor and SzentEndre from where I was able to escape and returned home to Budapest.
In my absence some friends stationed in Labour Camps in Budapest, visited my parents home finding only my desperate mother, because my father was also sent to a labour camp to Gonyu, not far from Budapest.
They offerred help to my mother and bought her 3 Swiss Schutzpasses, because their whole battalion was under a blanket Shutzpass, and they had access to some more.
My mother and I lived in different Swiss Safe houses, until end of Nov. 1944, when we were able to get refuge to the so called ”Glass House” on Vadasz utca 29, wich was considered like an annex to the Swiss Embassy located on the Dunnapart, wich by that time housed all the other foreign Embassies.
The Glass House gave refuge to about 2000 Jews, mostly young Zionist, who constantly risked their lives, delivering passports, letters news to the people hiding in different safe houses, and living in the ghetto. Through this couriers dressed in ”nyillas” arrowhead uniforms, we found out that my father was brought back from the Austrian border to the ghetto, because of his Schutzpass.
On end of Dec. 1944 the Arrowhead band and the Germans attacked our safe house on Vadasz utca, over powering the guards and got into the building taking out all the people, linening them up on the street facing the Danube. The owner of the building Mr. Arthur Weiss, on his belly got to the telephone and called the Embassy. Dr. Lutz himself with the help of the hungarian army, cut the way out from the street and made the Nyillas and Germans return the people to the building saving them for sure death to be shot directly to the Danube, wich was by this time the method to kill the Jews, not having enough trains for deportation.
I have to thank Dr. Lutz for saving not only my direct family, but most of the Jews of Budapest. I paid tribute to Raoul Wallenberg and Dr. Lutz in my speach last year, when I was an invited guest speaker to the Santa Clara County Supervisors Shoa Memorial Celebration; but mostly I pay tribute in my heart to this men and all the others who had the courage to stand up for us, giving me hope and the will to believe in humanity. May Dr. Lutz memory live for ever.
Agnes Grossinger
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