A Hero Amid Genocide

Sixty years after the Nazi genocide in Hungary, in which some 450, 000 Jews were killed, the memory of a brave church minister has been honoured in an exhibition at Sydney's Jewish Museum. Clara Pongrass, the pastor's daughter, spoke to Kellie Hancock about her recollections of the time—the atrocity, the bravery and a surprising result.

Laszlo Michnay, a Seventh-day Adventist minister, was leader of the church’s Hungarian domain for 17 years, including the Holocaust of 1944. He risked his own and his family’s safety, protecting Jews in his home and church.

Some of his children and grandchildren now live in Australia, including his daughter, Clara Pongrass. Her daughter, Judy Kaye, recently paid homage to her grandfather at the opening of "The Final Solution: The Holocaust in Hungary" exhibition in Sydney. She said Michnay was guided by moral and religious principles. "He believed he would be blessed and protected for saving the Jews," she said. Clara believes his faith was honoured in that none of the family were harmed.

She recalls the Holocaust through the eyes of the 15-year-old girl she was then. "It was scary," she says. "Most women were raped by soldiers, but when they came to our area, we hid under the choir stalls in the church."

Over the course of the war, some 450,00 Jews of Hungary were executed both in the concentration of Germany and Poland and nearer to home.

With arrival of the Russians on the doorstep of Hungary, she observed that the Nazis "had to be quick." "They took Jews down to the Danube and gunned them down—hundreds of them—I saw this with my own eyes."

Laszlow Michnay, his wife Jolan, and six children.
(Clara is standing, far left.) He died in 1964, while on his
way to Sydney, and is buried in Vaucluse, Sydney. He
was recognised by the Israeli government as "Righteous
Among the Nations" in Yad Veshem, the Holocaust
museum and archive, in Jerusalem.

She says her father first became determined to help the Jews after witnessing rampant anti-Semitism while working as a minister in Germany and Poland. Realising it was but a matter of time before the Nazis hit Hungary, he stockpiled non-perishable food and planned a network of safe houses. He also appealed to his congregation to help oppressed Jews.

The basement of the main Seventh-day Adventist church in Budapest and the attic of the nearby Michnay home provided refuge for numerous Jews. The number the Michnays accommodated fluctuated according to the danger level in Budapest as well as the space available. The overflow was billeted in a network of safe houses belonging to Seventh-day Adventist ministers and church members in rural areas.

As a result of the shelter and care they received from the Adventists in Hungary, many Jews became Christians. Among them was Yehudit Carmeli, whose family was given original identity documents (they had no photos then) belonging to Pastor Michnay and his family, then sent to stay in a parishioner’s home in the village of Vats. She laments, however, that she failed to maintain her convictions over the years and ceased to practise what she knew about Jesus.

"I never stopped believing in Him, but I didn’t observe any of His teachings, not even the Sabbath." (Both Jews and Seventh-day Adventists worship on Saturday, the seventh day of the week.)

Then, in 1995, she went back to Budapest and met some of the people who had risked their lives to save hers. "Through them I discovered there was an Adventist church in Haifa, Israel, where she lived. So upon my return to Israel, I contacted the church, and 50 years after the Michnays helped me escape death and planted the seed of the gospel in my life, I was baptised.

"Those who read my story should take courage," she says. "Keep planting seeds through words and deeds. One day, God will make that seed sprout and grow."

Pastor Michnay died of a heart attack in 1964, while on his way to Sydney to visit his grandchildren, and is buried in Vaucluse, Sydney. But in 1981 he was recognised by the Israeli government as "Righteous Among the Nations" (an award for non-Jewish peoples), with a certificate issued by Yad Veshem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. He is one of more than 19,000 non-Jews to have received the award for protecting and saving Jewish lives at the risk—or cost—of their own.

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