History

Mrs. Béláné Borsos (maiden name: Katalin Ney) was the member of the Ney-family, who had been living in the Buda Castle from 1829. Her father offered their house in Úri Street, Nr. 19 to the International and the Swedish Red Cross, to serve as a protected children’s home.

‘My husband – dr. György Buzinkay – with two other people got injured at the cistern next to Matthias Church, because woman from the Red Cross asked him to help her cutting ice. They ran out of water, and her fiancé was too afraid to go out. She asked my husband for help since there was no water at that time. The 10-year-old son of the janitor’s wife also went with them. This cistern was always shot from the Pest side. The Russians were already there, but on the 31st of January, around 3-4 o’clock they brought some buckets of water. My husband told me, that one needs to have the guts to do such thing, since a dead body was lying there without its head. But they went back once more, and at that moment came the mortal shots. This poor Red Cross woman and the 10-year-old son of the janitor’s wife – Árpi – died immediately. I don’t know who took my husband to the cave hospital. I was not allowed to go into the cave hospital, so I had to come back on the day after, at 7 o’clock. He was in a terrible condition, I did not recognize him.’

Mária Daróczy as a teenage member of a family living in the Buda Castle joined to the team of the Hospital in the Rock. She served here as a volunteer nurse assistant during the siege of 1944-1945.

‘Sometime around the middle of November, the Margaret bridge was exploded, because the Germans undermined it, and as a result, there was an enormous accident. The first injured – who were pulled out from the Danube – were taken to the hospital. At that moment the three wards completely filled up. There was a female, a male and a military ward. We started to go down to help, to feed the patients, or do anything needed when all of the wards almost got full. At that time there were no soldiers yet. December came, when Budapest was circled: no way out, no way in. Doctor Seibriger had already been doing surgeries downstairs, so he took some young girls beside himself. Our task was to change the bedpans and to clean and feed the patients. However the situation was getting harder and harder so we had to learn – the skilled nurses taught us – how to give intramuscular injection – in the muscles, and subcutaneous – under the skin – painkillers. So we learnt that as well as bandaging. So it went, even when circumstances got more and more crowded. After a while we also ran out of water…’

Gyula Steinert MD was the bacteriologist of the New St. John’s, then of the St. Ladislaus’ Hospital, later on the head of the laboratory. His old friend and colleague István Kovács MD Chief Physician took him and his whole family to the Hospital in the Rock, where he worked as a volunteer doctor during the siege of the capital 1944-1945.

‘As the time went by, the Hospital became more and more crowded. The cured people did not want to leave their shelter, which seemed to be secure, moreover they smuggled their relatives in as well. This process could not be stopped. The hygiene was at its worst, the drain-canal of the rest rooms got clogged for good. It was unbearably stinky all over the place. Most of them flew outdoors to relieve nature or to empty the buckets filled with faeces. The water supply was over, the only water we had, was what we could take from the water tank at Kapisztrán Square during the night. Due to the lack of hygiene, scab overwhelmed and lice appeared. As a result of the infection the bodies of the injured were unbearably itching and many people scratched their limbs till it got bloody. Who had medicine for this? The bandages, medicines decreased for the minimal reserve. The food was running low, each patient could get only one cup of soup. My children could only get a cup from thos hot soup if me and my wife gave blood for the injured, although due to the starving and the endless work we also could hardly stand on our feet. The situation was getting to the extremes when, on the 50th day of the siege the news spread that the Germans were planning an outbreak during the course of the night, and either the success or collapse of the plans would mean the end of the siege.’

Janka Benkő, a young teenage girl, got injured in the market hall during a prang at Madách Square in the beginning of December of 1944. The ambulance took her from town to the Hospital in the Rock, where she spent one month.

‘So there was no more food on the 24th of December. I think we could starve very much at that time, because my father told me on a Monday, that he could not take it anymore, and he would come over somehow, since we did not know anything about each other. The bridges were still intact so somehow he came over. My father brought a jar of jam, and I begged for a small piece of bread, so he promised to bring me some. When I got home, my father got down on his knees and apologized for not coming on the next day and not being able to bring a piece of bread. A solider lad did not let him cross the bridge, because they could have got the command in any moment to detonate the bridge. He groveled over the bridge and found me on that week on Tuesday or Wednesday, or maybe rather on Thursday. Everything went really fast since there were a lot of patients already. All along the corridors everybody laid on the stretchers. There were many, who could not even get any treatment and died right there. The only way for us to get out was to sidle. They were reaching for us and crying for help so we could hardly get out.’

Oszkár Wenetsek joined the Hungarian Army after the Second Vienna Award but he got severely injured at the battlefront with mortar shrapnel piercing his lungs. He was brought to the Hospital in the Rock where he was operated and managed to survive the rest of the war.

Ágnes Wenetsek (his daughter): “My dear father often told me the story of how he was saved by the chief physician of the Hospital in the Rock from going back to the battlefront. Some military officers arrived to the Hospital to collect everyone who was completely, or at least partially, healed but the chief doctor told my father that he will try his best to save him from the battlefield. My father was dressed as a nurse and was told to stand next to the operating table. As there was a blackout in the Hospital his only job was to hold a lamp and point it at the operating table. When the officers arrived to inspect the room they found nothing extraordinary inside and just left. After a few minutes my father – the fake nurse – simply fainted. The sight of blood always made him sick.”

Dr. Endre Mester worked in the Hospital in the Rock from early 1944 until November as a Jewish forced labor doctor. His wife arranged this for him, instead of frontline service, which would meant certain death.

‘The Ministry of Defense sent me and my collages there as forced labor doctors. Head-doctor Kovács treated us as humans, as colleagues, even as friends. He helped our needs as much as he could and despite our humiliating status, he dealt with us as if we were equals. (…) On the 15th of October, when we all arbitrarily left the hospital, he covered us, and despite knowing our location, he didn’t gave it away, and helped our return to the hospital. He helped our movement in the Castle – a fairly exposed location -, improved our food, and considerably helped as much as possible, when and where he could.’

In the 1940’s Edit Soltész and her family was living on Lovas Road, near the Hospital in the Rock. During the siege of Budapest they fled to the cave system of the Castle Hill. She was 21 years old, when she volunteered to help in the hospital, and in exchange she got a bottle of water every day.

„At first we thought it’s going to be just a few days. But when I saw that this was not going to end soon, I volunteered at the head-doctor, who was our neighbor previously. (…) There were three huge wards. I was in the men’s ward with civilian wounded, the flow of wounded people never ceased. There was a curfew at night, the guards shot at anything that moved without a warning. At daytime the Russians shot at the ones scurrying trough the white snow. Many ventured out to get water from the open cistern in front of the Matthias Church. The shelters of the houses weren’t safe either, many got wounded here too. Of course I wasn’t a trained nurse, but I gladly helped to wash and feed the patients, and to distribute medicine.”

At the age of 13 on 2 May 1945 he was injured on the stairs leading from Clark Ádám Square to the castle district. While he was playing an artillery shell exploded in his hand causing serious injuries. The back of his left hand was destroyed, shrapnel lodged in his knee and his right hand was seriously injured too. His leg was so badly damaged by the shrapnel that it almost had to be amputated. This was eventually avoided with the help of an X-ray at the Hospital in the Rock.

"... And it was around the middle of June when my condition became so critical that they either had to take the splinter out or cut off my leg. My father would not consent to my leg being cut off so it was left to them to try and take the splinter out. They actually brought me here, x-rayed me and after they had the x-rays, they managed to get the splinter out under quite critical circumstances."

Countess Ilona Széchényi arrived to the capital from the countryside, but just before she would have returned home, the circle of the besieging Soviet troops closed. Countess Ilona as a volunteer Red Cross nurse joined to the team of the Hospital in the Rock after Christmas of 1944.

‘The volunteers were ceaselessly working. They went outdoors every morning to gather snow. That was the water supply of the hospital. It often happened that one or more of them never returned! The most valuable element was water. Many times necessity teaches you the solution. Thus I studied a method with which I could clean myself from head to toe, and I also could brush my teeth in 1.5 liter of water, the amount I had for a day in a basin. The system worked very well.

Where did we sleep? Wherever we could find a tiny place, different rooms each day. I don’t remember any of these days with deep disgust. There was no space for lying down. Every inch was occupied. After working hard every day, I got tired indeed. Finally I spent the night on a stretcher got empty at that moment. The drying blood pouring on me and its overwhelming odor was not really a pleasant experience.

Dr András Seibriger was deputy chief physician at the Hospital in the Rock in 1944-45. He served in the army on several occasions and he has been on the Eastern Front as well. As a young, experienced surgeon he worked as deputy chief physician at the Hospital in the Rock from the spring of 1944. After the war during the communist dictatorship, he was banned from practising for years. He also served at the Hospital in the Rock during the 1956 Revolution and War of Independence. He then served for a long time as head physician of the Sports Hospital. His daughter, Erzsébet Seibriger, still lives on Úri Street in the Castle District.

"And then my father - if we now jump to 1956 - after '56 terrible times came again, the interrogations. After '56 when we came up from the Hospital many of those who were here left, defected. My mother tried to persuade my father that we should defect as well because she thought that nothing good will happen to us. My father didn't want to but then she managed to persuade him. And our little family left. I don't remember this, of course, but we set off with our luggage and then - according to my mother - we didn't even get to the corner of our street when my father put down his bag and said, "My dear Gladis, you can go but I'm not leaving. My home is here, I have patients waiting for me and the Hospital in the Rock may need me at any time. And he turned around and went home. Well, my mother followed him." – his daughter, Erzsébet Seibriger

In 1940, Countess Ilona Edelsheim-Gyulai married István Horthy de Nagybánya, the oldest son of regent Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya. She, Mady Waldbott, Alice Cziráky and Ilona Andrássy participated in a Red Cross nurse training together. Later, she worked as a nurse, been on the frontline and finished a surgical assistant training. She started working in the Hospital in the Rock, right after its opening. She served until the failed armistice in 1944, when the Germans caught and relocated the regent’s whole family.

‘There was a lot of work. As I said, this little gypsy girl was really cute. I would have liked to know, what happened to her, because a train cut off her legs. That’s how they brought her in that day. She was in great pain. During treatment her small lips were bending. But when she was in her bed, she sung little gypsy songs. We told her that she should sing during the treatment. Then she sung with bending lips…’

Dr. Mihály Bogárdi was seriously wounded in the jaw at the end of January 1945. He underwent an emergency surgery in an emergency hospital but an X-ray could only be taken after the breakout in the Hospital in the Rock. After the siege, there were no other working X-ray machines in Budapest for a long time.

"In the spacious corridors bunk beds were lined up one after the other and on each level two or three men were sitting or lying with bandaged heads, splinted arms and legs. The heat was extreme. A wide section of the corridor was divided by a glass wall behind which surgery was taking place. A few steps away food was being distributed from huge pots. It was extremely overcrowded, you could hear bustling and suffering noises and smell sweat and chemicals everywhere. However, the X-ray was working smoothly and perfectly. It took three pictures but only one of them was successful. A so-called probe was inserted through the surgical opening to see where the canal leads. The scan clearly showed my severe bone damage: the absence of the ascending branch of the jaw, the lower left wisdom tooth in my neck, as it turned out, with its tip towards the great carotid artery. I still have the x-ray today. I spent only a few hours in the Hospital in the Rock but those few hours will remain an everlasting memory."

László Máriássy served in the 4th Hussar Regiment during the Second World War. He was wounded in the fighting near Csepel in November 1944 and was treated in Budapest. He was admitted to the Hospital in the Rock for a short time but as soon as he felt better he left to live with his parents through the siege.

"The doctors and nurses there were fantastic. They worked day and night and sometimes fell asleep while standing. (...) It was a kind of controlled chaos here, I don't know what else to call it. The food was as good as it could be. Everybody got as much as it was possible and the doctors ate less than the nurses and us. We were told we needed it more. During the siege you could hear the bombings and sometimes things would shake. The nurses who pushed us on wheelchairs didn't move the sticks of their ears. They were fantastic. We always had bandages because they were always washing the old bandages in a laundry somewhere. Especially the ones they took off of the dead bodies because so many people died. They couldn't take them away immediately because they had to take the wounded first. We were uncomfortable because they were comrades. The day before we had joked with each other and the next day he was cold and was lying next to us."

Margit Pekáry was a Red Cross nurse, but during the siege of Budapest she was on leave because of childbirth. Her younger sister was working in the Hospital in the Rock, so for the duration of the fighting she and her 6 months old son moved in. Of course she helped with the medical attendance.

János Harmatta (son): ‘My mother Margit Pekáry and her younger sister Gizella Pekáry joined the Red Cross. (…) Mother became a head nurse, and worked until she got pregnant with me. We even have the document that temporarily relieved her of service because of childbirth. Her sister was a nurse here in the Hospital in the Rock. During the siege we stayed in the basement with our grandparents in Hattyú Street. We didn’t have much food so leaving the grandparents behind she brought me here to the Hospital in the Rock and she volunteered for service for supplies. I was living in a suitcase, that was my cradle. Mother told me about the unbelievable conditions, the crowdedness, and about all the people that they could help, and the ones they couldn’t. The doorman lost his life during a bombing or shelling. The entrance was shot to pieces. My mother said we were here from the first days of January until the outbreak attempt in the middle of February.’

Márta Kremzer got injured as a child in the basement of their home in Budafok in December 1944. She was brought here to the Hospital in the Rock.

‘In the hospital the soldiers were laying on their sides, like potato sacks on each other. One was missing an arm, another was missing a leg. We reached a really dark room where a doctor was operating. A small lamp was hanging from the ceiling, and they said that a Jewish doctor took shelter there. He was the one who operated me, but I can’t remember his name. I had two splinters just below my kidney. He was able to get one out straight away, but he failed to get the other one. Then they took me home.’

Zoltán Enyedi was severely wounded in the basement of his sister’s apartment in 1945. His hand was splintered and his leg was smashed. His older sister was working in the Hospital in the Rock’s kitchen, so he was brought here too. He spent more than two months in the hospital.

‘We got a fair slice of bread every morning, but I couldn’t eat. My sister had to force down my throat even the tea in the morning and the soup in the evening. Back then nobody had the nerves had the willpower to feed the patients, but my sister begged me to eat. By the end of January they stopped giving us bread. (…) By that time there were so many of us, they put three people on two beds: two severely wounded with their heads to the wall and between them a lightly wounded one who still needed medical supervision. The patients who didn’t need constant supervision were considered semi-recovered. They couldn’t be sent out on the streets, so for them the hospital made wooden bunkbeds inside the cave system.’

‘It was said before the outbreak attempt, that someone sent hectoliters of wine to the Hospital in the Rock. It seemed practical to send it here before the passing army could steal it. First I got about 2.5 deciliters of the wine, the second time just half a tin cup. I’m not an alcoholic, but that was heavenly! The only water we got was measured out, three deciliters during the worst times. We got tea in the morning, soup at noon, and tea in the evening again. It was plain tea, only the soup was filling. With these three deciliters we consumed the most essential liquid amount.’

On 4 November, Kornél Lobmayer armed up with a friend at the University of Technology and then headed to the Castle District. That day he was wounded on his head by a ricocheting bullet near the ruined Sándor Palace. He was brought to the Hospital in the Rock where his wound was stitched up. He spent a total of 11 days in the Hospital and also helping the staff when he started to feel better. He completed his recovery in his parents' house in the countryside and was not subjected to any serious reprisals for his revolutionary activities.

"I didn't know that there was such thing as Hospital in the Rock. A Hungarian soldier boy, who brought our ad hoc group together, escorted us down to the Hospital. We came down the covered stairs here and entered the main entrance there, as we do now. Here I was examined by a doctor, I now recognise the room (the room with the pillars - E.K.). The surgeon asked: “how are things going up there, my son?” I didn't know what to tell him, I said they've shot me! Thank God I got off easy. My wound was ripped, I was holding it with my handkerchief as we came to the Hospital. There were a couple of people here that I didn't know, we became friends here. I got a bed in the big ward – I recognize that as well. I was very comfortable here. Unfortunately my wound was swollen and it was pulled down over my right eye. After 11 days I was healed enough that I was able to leave."

"I've never been in the operating theatre, but the one thing I do know is that I was next to a man who was operated because he had been shot in the head. And there was no way of knowing if he was going to be normal when he wakes up. And I was with him for a day and a half, he was next to you in the hut (she says to Balogh), and I was icing him, he was constantly flapping his arms and had terrible movement anxiety. Finally I asked him where he had been shot. And he told me clearly where. His wife was giving birth and he was going to go in to visit her and he got this shot and luckily he healed completely."

György Balogh got injured at the age of 27 on the 5th of November 1956. He did not take part in the fight and he had no weapon with him. He was on his way home.

‘I was wearing civil clothes and had no weapon with me. When I got injured, I still had some coolness of mind so I ran away towards Fehérvári Gate, what still existed at that time at the end of the Castle. I ran up on Váralja Street, climbed over a fence and crawled in to the house in front of my flat. But I was already very weak there, I was laid down and in a short while a truck was coming on Attila Street and they were asked to help. They immediately took me and put me in the back of the truck and brought me here, Lovas Street 4/c. Actually, they stopped below the hill and ran up on Zerge stairs with me lying on the stretchers … They took me straight to the operating theater, where I took off my clothes myself, laid on the operating table and the surgeon called András Máthé started the surgery. Not only on my belly (because I got shot on my belly), but also on my wrist – which was operated by another doctor. If I remember well he was called Kelemen, but I do not remember his first name … – There were forty-one beds, and where the small door is, there was the isolation room. Someone with a shot in the head was taken there and Máthé took the bullet out from his brain – it was a miracle! For nine days I did not get neither food nor water, just blood transfusions and infusion. For nine days I was only allowed to take the water in my mouth and then spit it out. It was not allowed to swallow. Afterwards I started to feel better, I looked around in the hospital, and started to come to my senses. Then this head injured was brought out, right next to the wall. I had to talk to him to see if he is able to communicate, so they will see if he had brain damage.’

Anna Retmaniak radio reporter, the Special Correspondent of the Polish Radio, accompanied the first transport of aid supply sent from Poland. During her trip to Hungary, she visited the Hospital in the Rock.

“… András Máthé MD guided me. Doctor Máthé had a bullet hanging in his neck. »This is the first bullet, which I took out from an injured in our hospital – he says. By the way, we saved the life of that injured with your help. There were times when our blood proved to be not enough. Let’s go, have a look at this patient personally!« István Cziráki rises a bit from his bed and sees his new born baby, whom he doesn’t know yet. I’m very happy – he says – that I can say hello to my wife and my new-born baby through the Polish Radio. I would like them to take care of themselves and each other. For the Polish nation I wish not to choose the bloody road, as we did, but choose a peaceful way towards a blessed future. Niech żyje Polska!’