My career as a looter: Budapest, 1945

The city of Pest fell to the Russians on 15^th January 1945. I had just turned 15 years old.

I have already described in TheArticle here those few days after the end of the siege. I saw plenty of robberies. As for rapes I saw only two unsuccessful attempts. The first one failed thanks to the interference of another Russian soldier; the second because the prospective rapist for some reason decided not to kill me.

After the city fell, my mother and I managed to return to our flat (should one small room adjoining a cramped kitchen earn that title). As my mother put the key into the lock to enter, a man emerged from inside. Apparently, a couple had moved in while we were away. Our furniture was still there, but as I opened the wardrobes I discovered our possessions had all gone. The couple had not yet moved in – they were just squatting, to use a modern expression. Nonetheless they had found time to burn most of my mother’s music and they had just begun burning my books.

I don’t know where the courage came from. I ordered them out. They had the decency to look guilty. “Tomorrow,” said the man. “Now,” I demanded. To my surprise, they obeyed. Obviously, they had some other accommodation elsewhere. They put everything they had into a small suitcase and were gone. They left the pots and pans. They were ours.

Now we had somewhere to live, but no food and no fuel. It fell to me to find both. My mother swore that she would rather freeze to death than burn any of her remaining music.  The question of what to do in this situation was answered by a maxim well-relied on in emergencies: “beg, borrow or steal.” The first was out of question simply because there was nobody from whom you could beg. Attempts at borrowing, we knew, would be equally unsuccessful. Only the third possibility remained: to steal. I roamed the streets hoping that an opportunity would present itself. By then most of the shops had been cleaned out by the Russian soldiers. This second wave of looting belonged exclusively to Hungarians.

My own looting career started when I noticed a buzz of activity around a nearby building. The people leaving it had full rucksacks: a rare sight and surely a sign of something enticing.  I joined the crowd going in.  It was a silo with a high ceiling, absolutely full of some kind of peas — maybe ten tons, maybe more.  It was a kind of pea I had never seen before. My rucksack was simply a reasonably functional sack with some ropes attached to facilitate transport. Nonetheless, I filled it, taking as much as I could carry — perhaps 20kg, and walked the two miles home.

I was very disappointed when my mother declared that that was food for animals (‘marhaborso’ in Hungarian). Its skin was very hard. It turned out, however, that if cooked for long enough — I had to sacrifice several of my books — it was edible. Not good, but just about edible. The peas kept our stomachs full, though rumbling in protest, for two days.

The next goal was to find fuel. I had no idea how I could achieve this. I walked the streets in the hope that somewhere, somehow, some coal was lying there for me to find, having fallen off a cart or befallen an equally improbable fate. I found no coal, but I did suddenly find myself in front of a shop that was being looted. The opportunity was too good to miss. I joined in. I had no chance to compete with well-built adults but I tried.

The shop sold dried tropical fruits. These were in boxes of various sizes on the shelves.  Unfortunately, whenever I was sufficiently near to a shelf to be able to remove one of the smaller boxes, I was invariably pushed away by stronger men. I was a failure, I had to admit. I decided that looting was not for me.

By this time I was in the Inner City, close to the Danube. I walked to Petöfi Square, a playground where I spent many happy days in years past. The place was completely deserted. I soon learned why. Buda, on the other side of the river, was still a battlefield. Occasionally shooting strayed across the water.

I decided to find shelter in one of the hotels lining the embankment. It was the Hotel Bristol (they all had English names), if I remember correctly. I could enter the hotel via a broken window on the ground floor. There was nobody around. I stepped in. Inside were only bare walls. Apparently, anything that could be taken had been a long time ago.

I was just on the verge of leaving when I suddenly realised that I was sitting (or standing, given the lack of chairs) on a gold mine. The parquet floor was intact. Parquet is made of a specially treated wood that burns fantastically well. I got down to work, starting in the corner of the restaurant. The floor yielded relatively easily. All I needed was a chisel; fortunately, I had one in my looting toolkit. I filled my rucksack with dismantled flooring and returned home, triumphant. Having offloaded my precious cargo, I immediately went back to the hotel — twice, actually — and thus ensured a couple of weeks of reasonable heat.

Two weeks later, I found myself in need of another batch of parquet flooring. I returned to my hotel. The battle in Buda was still being fought and my parquet reservoir remained untouched. This time I went back three times. This turned out to have been a rather silly decision.  I felt rich, complacent: just living for the day (carpe diem, as Horace said), without thinking about the future. I shouldn’t have rested until I had ripped up all the parquet floor that was there. Even if it took a full day and the loot took up a major part of our room, that would have been a valuable asset, exchangeable for food at any time. Why didn’t I take everything while the going was good? I knew that once the fighting stopped in Buda the remainder of the flooring would soon disappear. My reluctance to capitalise fully on my discovery might have been due to some newfound feeling of loyalty towards my fellow-looters. I had had my share, and now they should have a chance to enjoy the fruits of crime as well.

The next time I returned to the hotel there was no parquet floor left. By now it was March. Law and order, and with it the availability of potatoes, slowly returned. I managed to find gainful employment as a messenger boy. That was the end of my career as a looter.

A Message from TheArticle

We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation.