Elsa Hellinger
Author: Elsa Hellinger
Publisher: Makor Jewish Community Library
Place of publication: Melbourne, Australia
Year of Publication: 2013
Location of Book: LAMM Jewish Library
Cities/town/camps: Czechoslovakia – Michalovce, Kassa, Prague; Hungary – Budapest; Post war – Bratislava – Prague – Paris; Australia – Melbourne
Lucky, Again and Again: A Survivor from Michalovce is the memoir of Elsa Hellinger. The book is divided into three main sections – pages 1-22 deal with Elsa’s life in Czechoslovakia before the war; pages 23- 90 describe the war years from 1939 - 1945 and liberation of Budapest and the last part of the book (pages 91-150) portrays Elsa’s post-war life in Melbourne. A feature of the book is 50 pages of family photographs (taken before the war and later in Australia).
Elsa Neuman was born on 11 February 1919, the eldest of six children from Michalovce, Czechoslovakia. The family observed Shabbat and all the Jewish holidays. They lived in a mixed neighbourhood and Elsa never experienced anti-Semitism as a child. She attended the local government school, then spent one year at a business college.
Shortly before the war began, Elsa’s mother tried to get papers for the family to immigrate to the United States. Unfortunately, it was too late. In 1940, the Jews were forced to wear yellow stars, bank accounts were frozen, and businesses were confiscated. In March 1942, Elsa and her sister Margaret were warned that single Jewish girls between the ages of 16 and 35 were being deported, they fled across the border to Ungvar, Hungary. When that area was declared dangerous for Jews, the girls moved to Budapest where they hoped to lose themselves in a big city. Elsa (who changed her name to Ilona Kovacs) found work in a clothing factory and was constantly on the move, looking for safe houses in which to live while trying to evade the Hungarian police. In Budapest Elsa met her future husband, John Hellinger, who was also hiding under an assumed identity.
Elsa details the trials and tribulations of living in constant fear of being discovered. One of her bravest moments is when she saved her ten-year-old brother, Erwin (he had been hiding in an orphanage in Kassa, not far from Budapest) by smuggling him out of the orphanage. After liberation in 1944, Erwin stayed with family friends while Elsa returned with her sister Margaret to Michalovce, only to discover that their parents and four of her siblings had been murdered. John and Elsa married on 3 June 1945, and they lived in Prague, then Paris until they came to Australia with their son Tom in June 1950 aboard the Napoli.
In Australia, Elsa and John worked hard to earn a living. Their daughter Asha was born in 1952. Life in Melbourne was good, and the Hellinger’s had a wide circle of family and friends. Her message for future generations is to be honest and to live life to the fullest because one never knows what tomorrow will bring.
Elsa’s book is broken up into short chapters and reads like a diary. The story contains interesting anecdotes about Elsa’s life and her extended family. Elsa ends her book with a summary of the fortuitous incidents that enabled her to survive the war years.