Miklos Samual Kanitz (1939–2006) was a Hungarian-Canadian Holocaust survivor living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He narrowly escaped being transported to the German death camp at Auschwitz in June 1944 at the age of six, because a neighbor, whose son was a member of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross Party, risked her life to hide Kanitz, his mother, and his brother in her potato cellar for seven months until the end of the war.
In 1946, Kanitz's father became secretary of his local Communist Party and later still, deputy-minister of industry for Hungary. In his role as party secretary, his job was to oversee the post-war judicial system in his area. The neighbor who had saved his family appealed to him for the life of her own son, who was due to be hanged for his activities with the Arrow Cross Party. Kanitz's father refused to spare him, because, he said, "saving three Jews does not wash the blood off someone who has probably killed hundreds."
Awaiting transport to Auschwitz
Kanitz was six years old and living in Budapest with his parents, Miklos and Tereza Kanitz, and his older brother, Gyula, when the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944. His father had already been taken to a labor camp when his mother, brother, and himself were told to pack small bags, and make their way with 500 other Jews to an abandoned brick factory outside Budapest, where they would soon be transported, they were told, to a "safer place," which Kanitz later learned was the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in Poland. Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, 437,000 Jews were deported from Hungary, all but 15,000 of whom were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The disused factory was a muddy field the size of a football pitch containing thousands of people, with no facilities of any kind and no shelter. Kanitz and his family spent two weeks there, waiting for the trucks to take them to the camp. "It was raining and we had absolutely no cover, no blankets, no shelter, nothing to sit or to lie down on. Just the mud," Kanitz said in an interview with The StarPhoenix. There was one barrel of water a day, and meals consisted of a cup of hot water with some rotting vegetables in it.
"All around, children were so afraid they were defecating. Babies were screaming. Soldiers were going around beating people for being 'pigs.' You're living in mud, and they call you a dirty goddamn Jew because you're covered in mud."
Every night, a group of Jews was made to gather up the bodies of those who had died during the day. Kanitz watched as people lost their minds, as old people died, and as children were killed. "There was this family about 10 feet away from us, a mother with four children, three boys and a little girl. She was a very cute little girl, maybe two years old, curly blonde hair. But she was sick and she was crying a lot, and one afternoon I saw this guard shouting to the mother to keep this dirty little Jew quiet. But she kept on crying, so he came over and he just smashed the little girl's head in with his rifle butt."
Life in the cellar
After spending around two weeks in the field, the Kanitzs heard their names being called by one of the guards. When they walked to the gate, they saw that their neighbor, Mrs. Nagy, had asked a guard to release them. Kanitz assumes she said she needed them to use as labor.
She took them to her home for a bath and clean clothes, and then the family descended into Mrs. Nagy's potato cellar, where they were to spend the next seven months. The cellar measured eight by eight by five feet, built at the side of the house and mostly underground except for the top 18 inches, with no windows, just some light coming through wooden slats overhead.
The family had to be careful that Mrs. Nagy's son, János, did not notice their presence. János was a member of the Arrow Cross Party, the Hungarian fascist party that collaborated with the Nazis, and might have turned the family in.
They slept on sand, using a bucket for a toilet. Mrs. Nagy gave them what food she could, but was reluctant to draw attention to herself by buying and preparing more than she needed for herself, so the family lived mostly on potatoes and cabbage. Most of Kanitz's teeth fell out from lack of nutrition. "It was very cold and damp, and we were sick all the time with colds. And always, always hungry. You know how they say when your stomach touches your backbone. I became listless and every movement was an effort. My belly started to swell and my arms got very thin. At a certain point, I lost the hunger and became resigned to it, almost catatonic."
