Trust and Deceit

Book excerpt: Memoirs of Vrbová, who was born as Gerti Sidon in Trnava, Slovakia, in 1927 to a cosmopolitan affluent Jewish family. Describes anti-Jewish measures of the Slovakian authorities in 1939-41. In spring 1942 Vrbová's family, threatened with deportation, fled to Budapest, where they lived under assumed Hungarian identities. In 1943 they were denounced and sent to a detention camp, from which they were released through bribery. In 1944 Vrbová's father was arrested and killed. After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, she and her family returned to Slovakia and lived with forged identity papers in Bratislava. There she met a childhood friend, Rudolf Vrba, who had escaped from Auschwitz and told her about the mass murders. In November 1944 she and her mother were arrested by the Gestapo; she managed to flee, but her mother refused to and perished. Vrbová went to Budapest, where she lived under an assumed identity until the Soviet liberation of the city. After the war she married Vrba and they settled in Great Britain.