When Ivan Vamos was 6 years old in Budapest, Hungary, Arrow Cross Party troops used attack dogs and guns to force him from the Swedish safe house where he was staying with his mother. The troops marched them to the shore of the Danube River, where thousands of Jews and other minority groups were being separated into two lines.
Vamos was sent to one side, his mother the other. His mother was in the group of people who would be put into forced labor. Vamos was in the group of children, elderly and disabled people who were about to be put to death.
Then his mother asked a Budapest police officer, who Vamos said were generally more sympathetic than the far-right Arrow Cross forces, if she could bring her son a sweater. The officer obliged. When Vamos’ mother reached him, she grabbed his hand and started running.
“I thought my shoulder was being pulled apart. I didn’t know we were going to run,” Vamos said.
They ran toward a large crowd of other Hungarians, who had lined up on the sidewalks to watch the masses of Jews being sorted. Vamos’ mother bet that the police officers wouldn’t fire guns at “real” Hungarians, “good” Hungarians, Vamos recalled. She was right.
Vamos and his mother weren’t shot. They disappeared into the crowd and eventually used falsified identity papers to evade capture. They lived for months in buildings blown apart by bombs, surviving on nothing but canned peas and the water in toilet tanks until Russian troops liberated the city. But unlike scores of others killed that day and the 11 million killed during the Holocaust, Vamos is alive today because of his mother’s bravery.
Vamos shared this moving story of survival with about 60 high school students from Mayfield, OESJ and Fonda last week at the University at Albany’s ETEC Building. Vamos’ already powerful presentation was made even more significant because it marked the first time since the pandemic that the students have been able to attend an in-person field trip.
“Seeing him in person is different than reading a book about the Holocaust because when he was sharing his experiences, you could actually see his emotions and the way he wanted to tell the story,” said OESJ junior Carolyn Littrell.
The trip was part of the slow emergence out of pandemic restrictions that have hit students and teachers especially hard.
Rob Thelin, who teaches 11th grade AP U.S. history at Mayfield, said the return to routine is essential because it puts students in the right frame of mind to learn.
“We’re back five days in school, we’re not in a hybrid situation, we get to go on a field trip. It’s just nice getting a sense of normalcy and that routine that so many students need,” he said. “They thrive when they get that routine going.”
Learning opportunities like Vamos’ presentation are more impactful when they are in person, the students said. By being in the same room and seeing his facial expressions and his mannerisms and hearing his intonations as he spoke, students said they got a more complete picture of Vamos.
“You just felt it more,” said OESJ junior Sydney Schell. “He was able to make jokes about some things that made it more comforting. You could see how he was as a person. He was a positive person.”
That positivity came as something of a surprise to some of the students, especially considering the heaviness of Vamos’ life experience.
“I went into the presentation thinking this is going to be a negative experience for him — he went through a lot of hardship. But he had a positive outlook on it,” said Mayfield senior Aiden Martuscello. “He was saying when he was in all those torn down buildings, he actually had fun going through the windows and stuff.”
The organic nature of in-person conversations has a way of leading to new or unexpected material. For instance, at this year’s presentation, Vamos shared about a family bike that he had always wanted to ride. But he was too young to ever get the chance. He had to leave it behind when he and his mother fled their home in Budapest during the war. In all the years since 2009, when Vamos first began presenting to Mayfield’s History of the Holocaust classes, Vamos had never mentioned the bike, said Jennifer Doty, who organized the event with the help of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York. The Mayfield teacher has been teaching the History of the Holocaust class for 16 years, she said.
Vamos’ seemingly small memory about a bike carries increased relevance when you consider that he worked more than two decades as Deputy Commissioner for Planning and Development for NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP), where his accomplishments included the initiation of the 500-mile Statewide Canals Recreationway program.
“If you were reading a book that he wrote, he wouldn’t have touched on so many things, but since we were asking questions it brought up more topics,” Schell said.
For his part, Vamos said it’s a welcome change to be back speaking in front of live audiences, something he began doing more than 30 years ago.
“Somehow there is much better contact. I get a better feeling for who is asking the question, what is the question about. There are nuances to all of this that can occur,” he said.
While some of the potency of Vamos’ presentation comes from being in the same room as such an inspiring man, there is also simply a lot to be learned from his story, no matter how you’re digesting it. Students said they learned many lessons — from the importance of never forgetting the past to the importance of perseverance.
Annie Nichols, a Mayfield junior, said her big takeaway was the value of living in the moment. When Vamos evaded capture, and he and his mother spent months in war-torn buildings, he didn’t know if each day would be his last.
“He was trying to say take it one day at a time,” Nichols said. “You never know what tomorrow is going to bring, so just take it one moment at a time.”
The same could be said about high schoolers navigating their way through a pandemic.
“In a way, it’s kind of relatable,” Nichols said. “After COVID, it was always like you never know if tomorrow you are going to get put back in quarantine.”
Mayfield High School Principal John Bishop echoed the sentiment.
“The life lessons that people have taken from this go far and beyond just any ordinary field trip,” he said. “It does connect very much to the COVID experience and taking things day by day, but also that mindset of how we approach things each and every day: that positive mindset, that survivor mindset that we really can overcome.”
Andrew Waite can be reached at awaite@dailygazette.net and at 518-417-9338. Follow him on Twitter @UpstateWaite.
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