Autograph Book.

<<“WE GO HOME, CONDEMNED TO LIVE.”>> The story of the owner of this historic volume, Jenő Benedek, can be partly reconstructed by the memoirs of fifteen of his fellow survivors presented here. In Kolozsvár (Cluj) Benedek was drafted in 1942 for the Labor Service, an alternative military service imposed upon Jews by the Hungarian Government. He served on the Eastern Front in Belarus (Gomel, Mazyr, Brest); Ukraine (Pripyat, Bondorovka, Davidovka); the Don River (Battle of Voronezh); and Germany (Mühldorf, Waldlager). At the end of the war Benedek was kept at the former sub-camp of Dachau, Feldafing-Weilheim, which was turned into a displaced persons camp mostly for the Hungarian Jews liberated by the United States Army. On August 22, 1945, Benedek was sent back to Hungary by train, and in October he settled in Kolozsvár. Beside warm words of friendship and in praise of Benedek’s virtues, the moving personal stories provide insight to the barbarity and tragedy of these times: Erzsi Hevesi writes (Feldafing, August 19, 1945) how the “Lager” is slowly beginning to vanish from within, as the barbed-wire falls from her heart and her brain turns human again. Zoltán Neumann ends his bittersweet note (August 21, 1945) with these poetically tragic lines: “We go home, condemned to live.” A more detailed description available upon request.