marching song

Forging identity cards in the underground in Hungary for the mythological teacher of the village of the forest

As a child she was called Jose Steiner, in the underground in Hungary her name was Eva Huwat, after her marriage she was Shoshana and Ash and with her immigration to Israel for the next 73 years her name was Shoshana ("Shosha" by all) Iron.

Shosha Barzel passed away last month at the age of 98. Her life plot can support the lives of 4 people.

Eli Ashkenazi

26/03/2022

Saturday, 26 March 2022, 16:07 Updated: 16:14

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Shoshana ("Shosha" by all) Barzel passed away last month at the age of 98. Shoshana was born Jose Steiner in 1924 in Bratislava, then in Czechoslovakia and today the capital of Slovakia, to her parents Leo and Rena Steiner, and was a big sister to Vera.

The father was a grain merchant and the mother a housewife.

The city, which borders Hungary and Austria has passed hands several times between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

The languages ​​spoken at home were German and Hungarian.

The family lived financially well and Hungarian maids were employed at home.

"I remember childhood as a very comfortable childhood," Shoshana previously told Mickey Weiss, who interviewed her for the Kibbutz newsletter, Kfar HaHoresh.

She attended the first four years of school in an Evangelical German school.

She passed the exams for the fifth grade with honors, but was not accepted due to her Jewishness.

The claim was for "lack of space."

The alternative was a Slovak school and although she did not speak the language, she learned it quickly and integrated into the new school.

"For the first two years everything was fine, but towards the end, as the Nazis advanced in Europe, Jewish students began to be discriminated against, until at some point I was deliberately failed by the math teacher. "Sewing, covering the head and weaving artificial flowers," she said.

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Shoshana Barzel (Photo: Courtesy of the family)

The evil winds that blew in Europe led to the deportation of seven Jewish communities numbering about 4,000 people from the Burgenland region of Austria, with the annexation of Austria to Germany in March 1938. Some of the deportees were on a ship moored on the Danube in Bratislava.

The 13-year-old Shosha, who saw them in their sable, was among the Jews in the city who mobilized to help the deportees on the ship.

In Czechoslovakia, too, the earth began to shake.

She said that nationalist and anti-Semitic slogans and slogans began to be heard in the streets, such as: "Slovakia for the Slovaks, Palestine for the Jedi."

Slovakia declared its independence and established a fascist government, a metaphor for Nazi Germany.

Father Leo realized that they had to leave for a place that was then considered safer and the family moved to the town of Galante which was then annexed to Hungary and where were the silos in which he stored the grain in which he traded.

In the fall of 1940 the family moved to Budapest and it was a good time for her.

"In Budapest, I was privileged to complete the missing studies and finish high school. From the age of 15, I adopted the basics of Zionism and joined the young Maccabi movement. Previously, in Slovakia, I belonged to the Betar movement.

The percentage of grades in Hungarian Jewry was low.

"The Jews of Hungary, as well as the Jews of Slovakia, saw themselves as Hungarian and Slovak patriots, but I, even then, followed the idea of ​​Zionism," she said.

One day, when she had finished preparing for action in the youth movement, a young man showed up at the door and said that his mother had recommended that he invite her for a five-hour tea.

"I refused, because the action in the movement seemed more important to me. Of course I had no idea that with this guy, sent by his mother, I would share my life later," she said.

The young man, and Ash Sandor and later Alex Barzel, was drafted into the Hungarian army at the age of 21. When stationed in the city of Vats in Hungary the two would meet occasionally.

Following a widespread rumor that single women are being taken to labor camps, the two decided to get married.

At that time, when it was already clear that the Jews were being persecuted, Shosha decided to carry a false identity, and members of the youth movement who specialized in forging documents prepared for her forged documents with a borrowed identity.

Her name became Eva Huawat.

She even had fake IDs of that anonymous Eva's parents.

She assisted refugees who came from Slovakia to Budapest, and with the conquest of Hungary by Nazi Germany began to travel to various places with forged documents she gave to Jews to escape themselves.

Alex, her husband, who was then put to forced labor, managed to escape to Budapest, also adopted a false identity and worked in the underground to help the Jews.

Shoshana Barzel (Photo: Official Website, Ghetto Fighters' Partisans Organization)

The couple left Budapest on June 30, 1944 in the "rescue train" organized by Israel Kasztner.

They spent several months in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and later moved to a refugee camp in Switzerland, where their eldest son, Gabi, was born.

From Switzerland they moved to the port city of Bari in southern Italy and sailed to the shores of Israel.

In September 1944, they arrived at the port of Haifa.

The couple and the baby were sent to the Atlit illegal immigration camp and later, together with a nucleus of youth movements from Hungary to which they belonged, moved to Kibbutz Matzuva in the Western Galilee.

Among some of the members of the nucleus, there was a desire to establish a new settlement, and in 1947 they established Kibbutz Tze'elim in the Negev.

Two years later, they were asked by the Hever HaKovot movement to move north and strengthen Kibbutz Kfar HaHoresh near Nazareth.

In September 1949, the members of the nucleus moved to Kfar HaHoresh.

The kibbutz was established in 1933, but suffered difficulties and was difficult to establish until then.

Upon arriving in Kfar HaHoresh, Shosha began working in the kibbutz's kitchen and a few years later became a kindergarten teacher.

She went to study teaching at the Kibbutzim Seminary and Oranim College and worked as a teacher.

Alex was the secretary general of the working youth movement and later a researcher in Jewish thought and a professor at the Technion and the University of Haifa. "Everything was difficult but it was wonderful.

"Even in Hungary, I hoped to be a teacher in the country, and basically everything I did was given a touch of importance, as if I was dealing with the most important thing in the world," Shosha said recently. The couple had two more daughters and a son - Ora, Rachel Vigal.

Shoshana and Alex Barzel (Photo: courtesy of the family)

She was involved in kibbutz life and cared about what was happening in the country.

At the age of 82 she began studying at the Veterans College of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council and the Jezreel Valley College, where she studied for more than ten years.

In recent years she began to suffer from health problems but kept her mind clear and shared her story with teenagers who came to her to hear about her underground activities during the Holocaust.

She enjoyed her family of eight 13 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren.

"There are moments in life when a person feels a special elation. It's happiness. But how many such moments are there? If your life is peaceful, there is peace around you and your family, you are treated well and you look back with satisfaction - I think that is the essence of happiness," she said recently.

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