Annons
Szenes was sent to Auschwitz, pleading with bystanders to save her as she was dragged through the front door of the hotel.That night, with the hotel asleep, I tried to get down to the basement; the art deco dancehall is now a "gentlemen's club" and was closed.The hotel has produced a two-line acknowledgement that it was once Eichmann's HQ in its official blurb on the wall. To be fair, it has witnessed experienced many other traumas: near destruction during the Soviet liberation of Hungary; and then in 1956 Soviet tanks to put down an uprising. And – given the number of Nazi-glorifiers in the world – advertising your hotel as somewhere the Holocaust was perpetrated is not a marketing strategy anybody would advise."They stood us up against a wall for hours, and they threatened that if we turned our faces they would use their weapons. Every morning we had to rise between 4 and 5 o'clock and to wash ourselves in the corridor while naked, which was exceedingly embarrassing to us… And if anyone did not undress and did not wash herself in a way that was satisfactory in their opinion, they would throw a bucket of water over her."
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