The Holocaust is easily known to be one of greatest tragedies of the 20th century. Never had the world seen such devastation to not only land but to culture and people. The Nazi movement, not started but encouraged by the strong and hateful words of Adolf Hitler, sent Europe into a frenzy of violence and destruction. Tearing families and their lives apart, they tried to destroy all aspects of Jewish life. The cries most often heard during this time were those of the children. They wept for their fathers and brothers who were sent to labor camps and their mothers who had been shot in the street. The Holocaust immensely affected the lives of the Jewish community in World II, but more so impacted the lives of their children, including Andrew Salamon, as the build up from before, the development, the peak, and the decline of the war changed their lives forever.

Andrew Salamon was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1932 to a world of brewing turmoil as the Nazi party achieved it first success at the polls in Germany. Andrew grew up the son of a warehouse manager, in a prosperous metropolis full of museums, theaters, expensive apartments, and elegant restaurants. His Jewish heri

Soon after, Andrew tracked down his brother and his mother, who’d found his father, and the family, together, again, moved into the lumberyard that his mother had occupied for the previous few months. Now the final battle was on as the Red Army from Russia advanced on the now failing Budapest army. The liberators had finally arrived with much relief but not necessarily excitement to the Jewish refugees. They were still trapped in a world of hate, a world they’d to recently become accustomed to. Andrew, David, their mother and father clung tot heir lives and their hopes until the last shell was fired and a Russian soldier crashed through their door. After 5 years of turmoil, pain, and suffering, they were finally liberated! Even though it “did not happen Hollywood-style”, they were still free from the oppression of the Germany army. So long had they waited for this day and after acting accordingly with the Russian soldiers, returned home. Life had started itself up once again in the once thriving city of Budapest. Although frightened and still somewhat detained, the Salamon’s began to rebuild their lives around their home and their business. The war was over now and Andrew was more than grateful that he and his family had survived such a mass tragedy, all in one piece. He now yearned to liberate other oppressed people, knowing of the obstacles they had to overcome. He had managed to live. He had lived free and courageous the whole time.

tage was established when his father converted to a Conservative Jew from orthodoxy, becoming part of the 10% of the Jewish population in Budapest. Andrew was raised to be an intelligent child as his mother taught him to read and count by the first grade, which led to respect not only from teachers but also from peers. He performed special tasks such as distributing books and taking charge of the class in a teachers’ absence, all of which seemed like such remarkable achievements at the time. In school, Andrew could only think of one other Jewish boy that had been in his classes, Arpad, whose looks replicated those shown in the anti-Semitic papers, leading to degrading and foul remarks from his gentile classmates. Although Andrew was of the same religion, he was a mix between his orthodox father and Jewish mother, which brought an apparent difference between the type of “dirty Jew” that Arpad was perceived to be. Since his peers found him to be someone who differed from one of “those Jews” had accepted him, Andrew was generally accepted and did not experience racism as a child. He had though heard stories of it from his Uncle Joe who served in the military. Finally in the fall of 1938, Andrew’s father was abruptly called back to active duty in the military as Hitler slowly began to tear apart Czechoslovakia, leaving his wife to open a glass repair store until his return a few months later. Andrew was sent to a small pension ev

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