The website dialogues with the angel {documents} publishes the story of the steps that allowed Gitta Mallasz to be recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" for her action as "commander" of the war factory of Katalin from June to December 1944. Thanks to her courage and sagacity, the “scribe of the angels” was thus able to save a hundred Jewish women and children.

While the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the death camps continued with an efficiency never achieved before, Gitta Mallasz agreed, on a voluntary basis, to become commander of a clothing factory for the Hungarian army whose workers were Jewish. The factory had been set up in a former convent in Buda by a Catholic priest, Father Klinda. It was placed under the protection of the Hungarian ministry of the army and the nunciature and benefited from extraterritoriality, which guaranteed its security, until the coming to power of the Hungarian Nazis in October 1944, who suspected pot roses. It was a bewildering situation: victims worked under the protection of the allies of their executioners... with a commander who enforced military discipline and at the same time, with two friends, Hanna and Lili, collected angelic messages in a cabin in the middle. of the garden. The most incredible will be reached when, on December 2, the Hungarian Nazis having invaded the factory, the workers escaped with the help of the German SS men who lived in the neighboring property thanks to a stratagem by the commander.

We owe Monique Guillemin the initiative to request the status of “Righteous” for Gitta because, she explains, “her books had helped her a lot in difficult periods of her life”. To help her compile this dossier, she was lucky enough to find a Hungarian, a former resistance fighter in Grenoble, Imre Boc. The development of the dossier took them two years (2007-2009). The beginnings were difficult, the history of Katalin being unknown to the official services. Finally, they came into contact with the niece of Father Klinda who communicated to them the file which had allowed her uncle to be recognized as Righteous, then found two women who had stayed as children in Katalin and agreed to testify. The request was sent on April 16, 2009 and the response arrived on May 12, 2011. ceremony, very moving, was held in Paris on May 13, 2012 at the Collège des Bernardins.

Other testimonies have since been discovered:

- Susanna Erbstein, who recounts the first incursion of Hungarian Nazis into the factory (there were two) and how an intervention - in extremis - by the Nunciature saved them from deportation. His account is included in a book about his father, Ernö Erbstein, a leading figure in European football before and after the war.

- that of Andreas Rusznyak, then aged eight, who also recounts how he experienced the first raid by the "Arrow Crosses" and managed to escape with girls his own age. Andreas is the son ofErzsebet Rusznyak, who will work after the war with Gitta.

Francoise Maupin

To read in Gitta Mallasz, Righteous Among the Nations :

• Risking her life, Gitta Mallasz, Budapest 1943-1944, by Imre Boc, who recounts the adventures that marked the constitution of the file for Yad Vashem.
• An excerpt from the book Erbstein: The triumph and tragedy of football's forgotten pioneer, by Dominic Bliss, Blizzard Books (2014), translated into French by Gabriel Oyharzabal and Françoise Maupin.
• The testimony of Andreas Rusznyak, collected by Eric Lombard.