
Budapest, 1940 – Auschwitz-Birkenau, 19 May 1944
Rezső Fridmann, aged 40, and his wife Ilona Deszberg, seven years younger, lived in a house at 9 Szapolyai Square in Abaújszántó with their two children and Rezső’s widowed mother, 84-year-old Rozália Krausz. On 16 April 1944, at dawn, Hungarian gendarmes broke into the homes of the Abaújszántó Jews. After allowing only a few hours to pack, everyone was dragged into the school building. Within a few days, they were taken to a collection camp set up in a brick factory on the outskirts of Kassa, from where, from 15 May onwards, several trains transported Jews from Kassa and the surrounding area. The Jews of Abaújszántó were deported with the third transport. Most of those who arrived, including four-year-old István Fridman, his six-year-old sister, were sent to a gas chamber with their mother and grandmother immediately after their arrival.