Jenö (Eugen) Glaser

Hungary

1908 - 1944?

About

Jenö Glaser was born in Szatmar, Hungary. His parents were Adolf and Regina Glazer. He had 3 brothers (Sanyi, Edward and Berte) and a sister, Sarah.

Jenö was a radio technician. He and his brothers loved to play the violin and played at weddings. He was a very good-looking man. He married Erszabet Spitz (my grandmother) in Naygvárad 1930. They had 4 children, 3 boys who were born in Naygvárad (Gyuri, Sanyi and Pista) and a daughter, Szusana, born in Budapest in March 1944.

His parents moved to Palestine in the 1930s, after their son, Sanyi, had gone to live there a few years earlier.

Before the Holocaust, the Jewish communities in Nagyvárad (now Oradea Mare, Romania) and Szatmár (now Satu Mare, Romania) were relatively close, both geographically and culturally. Jews in both cities were part of a vibrant Jewish presence in the region, contributing to religious, economic, and cultural life.

In Nagyvárad, the Jewish population was one of the largest in the area, and Jews were involved in various industries such as trade, manufacturing, and education. The community had several synagogues, schools, and cultural institutions. In Szatmár, the Jewish community was also significant, and the city had a rich history of Jewish life, with many Jews working in commerce, crafts, and other sectors.

While these communities had distinct identities, they were interconnected through shared regional ties, religious observances, and trade networks. It was not uncommon for Jewish families from neighboring towns to visit each other or maintain family ties. These connections, however, were severed by the Holocaust, as both communities suffered immense losses during the deportations.

During the Holocaust

Before the Holocaust, Nagyvárad (now Oradea, Romania) had a significant Jewish population. At the time of World War II, around 25,000 Jews lived in the city. Jenö, with his access to radio communication, learned that the situation for Jews would become too dangerous in Nagyvárad and he wisely moved the family to Budapest in 1941, which spared them from deportation to Auschwitz.

The community of Nagyvárad was devastated during the Holocaust. In May 1944, following the German occupation of Hungary, the Jewish population was rounded up, and most were deported to Auschwitz. By the end of the war, very few Jews remained in Nagyvárad. The exact number of Jews who survived the Holocaust in the city is difficult to determine, but estimates suggest that only a few hundred Jews had survived by 1945. Today, there is a tiny Jewish community there.

In 1939, Jewish men in Hungary were conscripted into forced labor battalions under the Hungarian army, a system rooted in Hungary’s anti-Jewish laws that excluded them from military service. They endured brutal conditions, performing grueling tasks like building fortifications, clearing minefields, and digging trenches, often near front-line areas. Starvation, disease, and violence were rampant, and many were killed through overwork or abuse. After Germany's occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the situation worsened as thousands were deported to Nazi camps or forced on death marches to Austria and Germany. Jenö was called up to forced labour in the Hungarian army. In May 1944, he was sent to Dachau.

My father, Sanyi z”l, told me about the terrible conditions they lived in in the Budapest Ghetto. Starvation, cold, dead people in the street, daily bombing raids, living in a room filled with many hungry people. His sister, Szusana, was a baby and his mother’s milk had dried up. He tried to dig for roots in the floor of the basement and used to escape from the ghetto through a hole in the wall, which he filled with snow to hide his escape. Then he begged for potato peels from door to door. In the ghetto, they heated the peels over a small flame. Jenö had been taken away to forced labor in the Hungarian army. Erszabet found a job in a factory. She used to send underwear and food to Jenö, which my father brought to his father “at the bridge”. The last time he went to meet his father, he never showed up. My father waited and waited, and kept going back to the bridge, but he never saw his father again.

There were some rumors that he was on a death march to Vienna, but that he never arrived there. Later, I discovered documents at the International Tracing Service (Bad Arolsen in Germany) that show that he had been a prisoner in Dachau and later at Natzweiler concentration camp on the border of France and Germany.

Red Cross Prisoner form:

Name: Glaser Eugen

Birth Date: 8.8.1908

Birth Place: Szatmar, Hungary

File: GCC3/95/-IIG/2-

Nationality: Hungarian Jew

Source of Information: Dachau Lists of Jews transferred to different concentration camps.

Last known location: Dachau Concentration Camp

Transferred on 5.12.1944 to Natzweiler Concentration Camp

Died on: blank

Certificate of Incarceration at International Tracing Service:

T/D 609 745

Glaser “Jenoe”

Parents’ names: Adolf GLASER and Regina born KLEIN

Profession: “Elektriker”

Last permanent address: Budapest 10, Aug. Kistelep 59

Entered Concentration Camp: Dachau

Prisoner’s No: 122649

Date: 7 November 1944

Coming from: Sipo Budapest (Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo): During World War II, the Sicherheitspolizei, abbreviated as SiPo, was the German Security Police. In Hungary, particularly during the German occupation, SiPo units were active and played a significant role in enforcing Nazi policies. These units had considerable power and operated with a vast network of informants and collaborators.)

Reason given for incarceration: Schutzhaft Jude (The term "Schutzhaft" translates to "protective custody" in English. In Nazi Germany, this euphemism referred to the arrest and indefinite detention of individuals without judicial process. Despite its name, "protective custody" was a tool for suppressing political opponents, Jews, and other groups deemed undesirable by the regime. These individuals were often sent to concentration camps, where they faced harsh conditions and, in many cases, death. In concentration camps, prisoners were categorized and marked with colored triangles to identify their supposed offenses or affiliations. Jews were typically labeled with a yellow triangle or a yellow Star of David. The Nazis used these classifications to dehumanize and control inmates.)

Transferred: 5 December 1944 to KL Natzweiler/A.L. Leonberg

Liberated: “nicht angeführt” (not specified)

Remarks: Ein Todesnachweis liegt nicht vor. Wir sind daher nicht in der Lage, die Ausstellung einer Sterbeurkunde zu veranlassen. Jenoe = Eugen. ("No proof of death is available. Therefore, we are unable to initiate the issuance of a death certificate. Jenoe = Eugen.”)

Records Consulted: Schreibstubenkarte, Zugangsbuch und Transportliste des KL Dachau.

Date: Arolsen, 12.8.1964

Another Red Cross form, address given: Madi Utica 114, Hungary

Prisoner from: May 1944 in Budapest

Durch: Gestapo
Eingeliefert in das: Ghetto Budapest (refers to the forced relocation of Jews into the Budapest Ghetto during World War II. Established on November 29, 1944, by the Royal Hungarian Government, the ghetto was located in the eastern part of Budapest, known as Pest. Approximately 70,000 Jews were confined within a 0.1 square mile (0.26 square kilometer) area, surrounded by a high fence reinforced with planks and guarded to prevent escape.

On January 18, 1945, Soviet troops completed the liberation of the Budapest Ghetto, saving approximately 50,000 Jews.)

Why

I am consumed by anger, profound sorrow, and a deep sense of humiliation that my grandfather, Jenö Glaser, was murdered simply for being Jewish. That the Gestapo tore him from his family, sent him to a concentration camp, and branded him with a number. That he was never given the chance to say goodbye to his loved ones, never saw his four children grow up, and never met his six grandchildren. They stole him from us, and they never told us where they took him. His absence, a hole that can never be filled, will never cease to haunt us.

My mother, Linda, is South African; my father, Sanyi z”l, was Israeli, with Hungarian roots. They met and married in Tel Aviv in 1969, and my brother and I were born in Cape Town. My father was an outsider there, a man with a heavy accent and broken English. At times, I would hear him speaking Hungarian, and I would marvel at the rhythm and warmth of his words, at the comfort he found in his mother tongue. He carried with him the pride and nostalgia for Israel, and the love for his family there, but he was forever marked by the war — by the loss of his father, by the cruel sting of antisemitism, by the endless fear of hunger and death. His warmth, his generosity, and his humor never erased the scars the war left on him.

I attended a Jewish school in Cape Town. When I was 13, I finally had the chance to sit with my father for a family roots project. That day, we recorded his stories: about his childhood, about his life in the Budapest Ghetto, about his harrowing journey from Hungary to France and then to Haifa. But the details of his father's fate — the truth about how or where he died — were never clear. Not until I began my own research decades later did I uncover fragments of that dark history. My grandmother, Nomi, renamed in Israel, had survived the war, taking her four children with her on the dangerous journey to Palestine, the only place they could feel safe as Jews. They arrived penniless, but grateful to have a place to call home. Yet even as she worked to build a new life for her family, the wounds of her past never fully healed.

When my father passed away suddenly when I was just 15, it felt as though a part of me was ripped away forever. Amidst that grief, I clung to the one piece of him I had left — the interview we recorded. That tape became my lifeline, my anchor. It captured a voice, a spirit, a past that I could never let go of. His story — the story of our family — has been the heartbeat of my passion for genealogy, for uncovering the history of those who came before me.

It is because of this deep, unshakable connection to my roots, to the memory of my grandfather, that I have chosen to honor him through the Six Million Project. I will ensure that his memory, and the memory of all those like him, will never fade into the darkness of history. We will not forget.

Work Experience

8 August 1908

July 2024 - May 2025

January 2023 - June 2024

Born Szatmar, Hungary

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