Portrait of a young Hungarian Jewish girl

Eva Brust (later Cooper, b. 1934) was born in Budapest, Hungary, the only child of Elek (1899-1957) and Livia Schwarcz (later Lilly Gach, 1912-2001) Brust. Elek was born to Bela (1878-1943) and Roza Orova Brust in Budapest. Livia was born to Adolf (1880-1959) and Szeren (Serena, nee Deutsch, 1889-1942) Schwarcz, and had a younger brother, Laszlo (later Leslie Shaw, 1915-1990). Her grandfather, Adolf, and his business partner and brother-in-law, Ödön Vogel (Edmond, 1883-1944), ran a wholesale business representing the Swiss Movado Watch Company in Hungary. Both Eva’s grandparents and parents were university educated, affluent, and assimilated. They spoke Hungarian, German, English, and French. Elek and Livia married on June 4, 1933. He owned a wholesale paper company and was a prominent member of the Jewish community. The family lived in a large apartment in Pest, and employed several full-time staff members in their home. They attended the Dohány Street Synagogue. Eva's large, extended family was close-knit, and they gathered regularly for holidays. Eva attended public school, where she received lessons that included Judaism, as religion was a required subject. Starting in 1938, Hungary began passing anti-Jewish laws modeled after Germany’s Nuremberg laws from 1935, which defined Jews in racial terms. They excluded them from various professions, restricted their opportunities in economic life, and stripped them of equal citizenship status. In spring 1939, Eva’s maternal grandparents visited the World’s Fair in America, and stayed in New York, where they reestablished their watch business. Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II (1939-1945), and Hungary joined the German-led Axis Alliance on November 20, 1940. Soon thereafter, Eva’s father, Elek, was conscripted into a Hungarian forced labor camp, leaving her mother, Livia, to run the business while he was gone. After several months, Livia secured his release using papers acquired on the black market. In June 1941, the Hungarian Army joined Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union. In August, Eva’s uncle, Laszlo, left to join his parents. On November 3, 1942, Eva’s grandmother, Szeren, died of cancer. In 1943, Elek was again conscripted into forced labor service. In March 1944, Elek was released. Later that month, during Eva’s 10th birthday party, guests heard marching and saw German occupational troops out the window. The occupation was Germany’s response to Hungary attempting to negotiate an armistice with the Allied powers following Germany’s defeat by the Soviet Union at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943. German authorities severely restricted Jewish life in Budapest, and her father’s business was among those confiscated and Aryanized. In April, Jews were ordered to wear Star of David badges. The following month, in mid-May, the Hungarian and German authorities began to systematically deport Hungarian Jews. Most of the nearly 440,000 Jews, likely including Eva’s paternal grandparents and extended family members, were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. By the end of July 1944, the deportations had been so thorough that only the Jewish community in Budapest remained. In summer 1944, the authorities in Budapest segregated Jews, requiring that they live only in Jewish buildings marked with yellow Stars of David. Elek used his connections to have their building declared a “yellow star” building. They were allowed to occupy only one room of their home, but were able to have family friends occupy the other rooms. Eva was prohibited from attending the public school, and non-Jewish children in the neighborhood were no longer allowed to play with her. Jewish families were forbidden from employing others, so her parents had to let their servants go. Eva and a friend gathered old cigarette stubs, repackaged the tobacco, and sold them. Elek, leveraged his Swedish business contacts to apply for protective papers from the Swedish legation. On August 24, Elek, Livia, and Eva received a Schutz-Pass (protective pass), initialed by Raoul Wallenberg. Eva and Livia attended classes to convert to Catholicism, and had papers to document the conversion. On October 17, 1944, a coup by the fascist Arrow Cross Party led to the deportation of the remaining Jews to concentration camps. To avoid this, the Brust family went into hiding with non-Jewish friends. They then went to a Swedish safe house, but left quickly due to crowding. They went to an apartment building they used to own, and the building manager, Joseph, let them stay in the basement and brought food. Later, Joseph hid the Brust family in the apartment of a traveling couple. In late November, the remaining Jews in Budapest were forced into a closed ghetto. The Arrow Cross regularly removed groups of Jews from the ghetto and shot them along the banks of the Danube River. By December 1944, Budapest was under constant bombardment from Soviet forces, there was no electricity, gas, or water, and food was scarce. As the Red Army approached, a former employee of Eva’s maternal grandfather came and invited the family to join them at a home in the mountains. While they were there, a group of Soviet soldiers arrived and began to threaten them until the former employee demonstrated that he could translate. The soldiers decided to protect him and his group. Later on, the Soviets took the group to a town where they were almost killed in a firing line over a misunderstanding. Livia’s family left the town, hid on a few farms, and were in Soviet-controlled Érd when Budapest was liberated on February 13, 1945. Most of Eva’s extended family perished at Auschwitz, or were shot beside the Danube. The Brusts returned to Budapest, and found the glass blown-out of the windows in their apartment, but that it was otherwise habitable. Most of their belongings had been stolen, but some money was still safely hidden. Eva’s parents reopened family businesses, and she returned to school in September. As Soviet communist control over Hungary tightened, and new restrictions were put in place, Livia and Elek decided to leave Budapest. In May 1947, they boarded a Cunard liner, Mauretania, in England, and immigrated to the US. They arrived in New York City on May 27, met by Livia’s brother Laszlo, who had Americanized his name to Leslie Shaw, and married a woman named Eleanor. During the war, Laszlo had fought in the US Army in Africa, Italy, and on the Swiss border as a Staff Sergeant with the 5th Army. Eva’s family settled near her grandfather, and Elek went to work for him. Livia began using her nickname, Lilly, most of the time. Eva completed school, became a teacher, and later earned a Master’s degree in special education. The family later reconnected with Lilly’s cousin, István Vogel (later Steven, 1922-2012), who survived Auschwitz. In 1955, Eva married Elihu Turgell (1929-?).The couple had a daughter in 1957, the same year Elek died. In 1961, Lilly, married William Bela Gach (born Bela Gacs, 1905-1999). Eva later got divorced, and in 1979, she married Leslie Cooper (born Laszlo Cohn).

The portrait was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018, by Eva Brust Cooper.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Eva Brust Cooper