Before the War
Barbara Bandler Steinmetz
Barbara Bandler Steinmetz is born in Győr, Hungary on November 26, 1936, to Margit and Alexander Bandler. Her older sister, Ann, was born three years earlier in the Hungarian city of Veszprém. But Margit and Alexander do not live in Hungary; they live in Italy, where they call the island of Lussinpiccolo home. There Alexander owns and operates a small hotel. The island—today known as Lošinj and part of Croatia’s Adriatic coast—had belonged to Austria-Hungary under the Habsburg monarchy until the First World War, and was awarded to Italy in 1919. From 1947, following World War II, Lošinj would become part of Yugoslavia until the formation of present-day Croatia in 1991.
Because the island lacks a maternity hospital, Margit returns to Hungary to safely give birth to her daughters.
Europe in 1933, Hungary and Győr indicated.
Italy, 1933; Lussinpiccolo indicated.
Margit (Marguerite, Margaret) herself was born in 1900 to assimilated Jewish parents. Her father, Morris Vámosi, was a well-known doctor in Győr, a prosperous city with a prominent Jewish minority. She grew up in a privileged home furnished with Persian rugs, attended by maids, and surrounded by cultural riches: opera, classical music, and an extensive library. Margit attended a Catholic school and later studied medicine at the University of Debrecen. Though Margit completed her medical training, as a woman she was not allowed to practice as a physician and instead worked as a pharmacist beginning in the 1920s.
Barbara’s father, Alexander (Samuel), was born into a strictly Orthodox Jewish family in 1902 in cosmopolitan Budapest, the Hungarian capitol. But the spirited Alexander rebelled against his devout upbringing from a young age. Political reforms granted Jews more civil rights and social freedoms in early 20th century Hungary, and Alexander—like many of his contemporaries—was exposed to the upheavals of the era. Shortly after the eruption of World War I, the teenaged Alexander was gripped by patriotic fervor and attempted to join the military. His father found him in line for enlistment and pulled him away.
Transcript
Barbara: I was in Hungary for one month. I was born in Hungary, and my parents lived in Italy. But that is the country of our families-- where our family has been living for probably well over 100 years before I was born.
Interviewer: Was there a Jewish identity in your family while they lived in Hungary?
Barbara: My parents were both from Orthodox Jewish families. My father-- my grandfather studied the Torah all the time. And as a matter of fact, there's a family story that he didn't really do a very good job in earning a living, because he was so busy studying the Torah, and whenever anybody came into his shop, he was irritated, because he had to pick his head up from studying the Talmud.
Interviewer: What shop?
Barbara: He was some kind of a wholesaler. He really had a lot of different kinds of occupations. It seemed like they, they really had a hard time earning a living. My mother's family-- her father was the chief doctor of the county in Hungary, and she came from a very educated family.
However, they were also a religious family. At that time in Hungary, there was really no such thing as a non-religious family. She came from a very small town and used to tell us that she had to travel quite far to go to the synagogue. And she went to a wonderful, beautiful, beautiful synagogue in Győr, G- Y-O-R. But she came from a town called Győrszentmarton, which is about 25, 30 miles from Győr. And so, it was quite a trip. But they had a religious education, even though there were only a few Jewish children in the community that she lived in. There may not have even been another Jewish family. I don't really know.
"At that time in Hungary, there was really no such thing as a non-religious family."
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 38619
Map of Austria-Hungary, c. 1910, showing distribution of ethnicities living within the Empire. Jewish communities were distributed throughout the Empire.
The end of World War I brought about the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire—also known as Austria-Hungary—which had extended beyond the borders of today’s Austria and Hungary to encompass many peoples of different ethnicities, languages, and cultures: Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukranians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Italians, and Jews. Under Franz Joseph I, who ruled the Empire from 1848-1916, Jews had been granted equal rights, but in the aftermath of the First World War, Jewish communities distributed throughout formerly Habsburg lands in the periphery experienced a rise in antisemitism as the region reorganized into smaller states based on national identities.
In Hungary, the country’s newfound independence was accompanied by political instability. A short-lived communist government supported by many young Hungarians gave way to an authoritarian counter-revolution. Alexander Bandler was jailed by the newly installed nationalist leadership for his budding communist sympathies. His mother bribed his jailers to release him, and he hastily left the country at the age of 18. Alexander then wandered from one European city to another. Along the way, he met other young men looking for work and seeking a sense of belonging after the dislocations of World War I.
Alexander’s movie-star good looks, street smarts, and charisma enabled him to thrive as he made his way across a ravaged Europe. After a stint in Venice, he traveled to Lussinpiccolo and was spellbound by the island’s natural beauty. He and a group of similar-minded friends pooled their meager resources in the early 1920s to purchase a tourist hotel built on the island. Thanks to Alexander’s ingenuity and thrift, the small hotel prospered. He later bought the property outright and named it Hotel Alhambra. The seasonal nature of the tourist business meant that Alexander would travel back to Hungary to visit his family during winter months.
One midwinter day in 1928-29, Alexander made his way through the streets of Budapest and spotted a well-dressed woman weeping at the entranceway to one of the city’s hospitals. He went over to offer his assistance; the distressed woman was none other than Margit. She had just come from visiting her father, who lay dying of cancer in the hospital ward. When Margit raised her tear-strewn face to Alexander, it was love at first sight. Their whirlwind courtship, tempered by grief over Dr. Vamosi’s terminal diagnosis, culminated in marriage in February 1929. By April, the young couple was back in Lussinpiccolo to ready Hotel Alhambra for the start of the vacation season.
Margit and Alexander Bandler in the lobby of the Hotel Alhambra, 1920s.
Courtesy of Barbara Bandler Steinmetz
Barbara Bandler Steinmetz' Timeline
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Rome-Berlin Axis Agreement
Italy, under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, concludes an alliance with Germany's Hitler. Mussolini later issues anti-Jewish legislation and enforces persecution of Italian Jewish community.
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Barbara Bandler is born in Győr, Hungary
Her parents, Margit and Alexander Bandler, are Hungarian citizens but live in Italy, where Alexander owns a hotel on the Adriatic island of Lussinpiccolo, just off the coast of what is today Croatia. They return to Italy soon after Barbara’s birth
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Publication of the “Race Manifesto” in Italy
Published anonymously but drawn up by a scholar with close ties to the Fascist government, the article outlines in ten clauses a theoretical framework for the concept of race in Fascist Italy, according to which Italians are essentially Aryan and Jews do not belong to the Italian race.
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Italy adopts antisemitic laws
Italy adopts a series of antisemitic “Race Laws.” A September 5, 1938 law prohibits Jews from studying or teaching at Italian public schools and universities. A September 7, 1938 law retroactively annuls Italian citizenship granted to Jewish immigrants to Italy after 1919 and revokes permanent residency in Italy for foreign Jews, requiring them to leave the country within six months. Like the Nuremberg Race Laws and other Nazi legislation, additional laws prohibits marriage between Jews and “Aryans,” define who is Jewish, and require all Italian Jews to register, as well as placing restrictions on professional activities and business ownership.
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Italy and Germany sign the “Pact of Steel”
Expanding on the alliance between the two countries since the Rome-Berlin Axis of October 1936, in the “Pact of Steel” (officially the Pact of Friendship and Alliance) Italy and Germany agree to military cooperation and mutual defense. Despite this agreement, Italy remains neutral during the first year of the war, only entering the war as Germany’s ally in June 1940.
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Rafael Trujillo and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee sign an agreement
The document formalized the first wave of Jewish immigration to a 26,000 acre agricultural settlement in Sosúa, on the northern coast of Hispaniola. The New York City-based American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee set up a separate arm, the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA), to establish Sosúa as an agricultural community.
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France formally surrenders to Nazi Germany
Much of France falls to Nazi domination. Parts of southern France are governed by a Nazi collaborator government headed by Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, called the "Vichy" regime after its capital.
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Vichy France enacts anti-Jewish legislation
The collaborationist Vichy government enacts a series of anti-Jewish laws in accordance with Nazi policy.
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Germany orders closure of US diplomatic missions
After the US State Department orders the closure of German consulates in the United States because German diplomats are suspected of spying, Germany and Italy order all American consulates in Axis-occupied Europe to cease operation, closing the door for refugees fleeing Nazi persecution to apply for immigration to the United States.
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Bandlers set sail for the Dominican Republic
Aboard the Portuguese ship Nyassa, the family sail for the Caribbean, making a stop at Ellis Island on the way.
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DORSA establishes a hotel in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic for new Jewish settlers
Disease, fatigue, poor sanitation, the brutal sun, and the emotional distress of dislocation all take their toll on the island’s new Jewish residents. DORSA organizers recognize the need to provide ailing refugees with a place to recuperate from their exertions, and ask Alexander and Margit Bandler to manage the refuge.
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The Battle of the Caribbean
In an attempt to disrupt the Allied supply of oil and other material by targeting their points of origin in the Caribbean, German and Italian submarines torpedoed 263 ships in the Caribbean, including two Dominican ships. The S. S. Presidente Trujillo and the San Rafael, both named by the Dominican president after himself, were sunk, and 25 crew members were killed.
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Allies denounce Nazi mass murder of Jews
Reports of the Nazi plan to murder all of the Jewish people in Europe begin to circulate in the second half of 1942 and are widely reported in U.S. newspapers in late November. On December 17 1942, the Allied governments denounce the mass murder of European Jews under Nazi control. Though Nazi crimes are now publicized, Allied forces do not target Nazi killing installations or prioritize the rescue of Jews.
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Ads for Margit Bandler’s cosmetics company appear in American Jewish newspapers
Lori (Elenor) Mayer, one of Margit’s childhood friends who had immigrated to Boston in the mid-1930s, sees the advertisement in 1945, and sends a letter to Margit in Jarabacoa. Lori and her husband, Eugene, later secure work visas for the Bandlers to enter the U.S.
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Nazis install new fascist government in Hungary
Nazis arrest Hungarian leader Miklos Horthy and install a new government under Ferenc Szalasi, leader of the fascist and radically antisemitic Arrow Cross Party.
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Mass executions of Budapest Jews
Between December 1944 and January 1945, approximately 20,000 Jews from Budapest's ghetto are taken to the banks of the Danube, where they are murdered and their bodies thrown into the river.
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Soviet forces liberate Budapest
After nearly two months, Soviet forces succeed in liberating Budapest from Nazi and Hungarian fascist control. Approximately 100,000 Jews survive, mostly thanks to protections offered by foreign diplomats such as Raoul Wallenberg.
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Bandler family leaves the Dominican Republic for the U.S.
With little notice, Barbara boards a bus to Santo Domingo, then a plane to Miami, FL, then another bus to Boston, MA where she and her family begin their new American life.
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Sosúa project dwindles
By the late 1940s, only 275 settlers remain in Sosúa, which had once been home to many hundreds more refugees. DORSA’s experiment under Trujillo never becomes a profitable agricultural settlement, though a successful dairy cooperative founded by Jewish immigrants flourishes there for decades.
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Hungarian People's Republic established
Soviet forces had remained in Hungary after liberating the country from Nazi occupation in 1944. After the war, Hungary had held democratic elections, but under Soviet influence the Communists successively neutralized all other parties until, in 1949, voters were presented with ballots with only one party list. The newly elected Communist legislature adopted a new, Soviet-style constitution and became a Soviet satellite.
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Barbara becomes a U.S. citizen
Just a few months before her 16th birthday, Barbara takes the oath to become a United States citizen.
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Barbara Bandler graduates high school
She and her boyfriend, Howard Steinmetz, make plans to wed, but her father insists she complete her college education before marrying. The two reach an agreement, and Barbara and Howard are married in 1956, after Barbara is accepted to college.
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Hungarian Revolution of 1956
Student demonstrations in Budapest calling for political and social reforms grow into a broad-based, nationwide popular uprising against the Soviet-backed government of the Hungarian People's Republic. Despite the movement's initial success, the revolution is brutally crushed by Soviet military intervention. Some 200,000 people flee the country in the course of the revolution.
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Rafael Trujillo assassinated
Trujillo’s reign grows notoriously bloody throughout the 1950s, though his repression is not felt in Sosúa. Still, political unrest, economic woes, and scandal plague the General’s rule. In May 1961, the embattled dictator is assassinated by a group of conspirators who ambushed his turquoise Chevrolet Bel Air. Trujillo’s death sets off a period of political instability in the Dominican Republic that drives many of the few remaining Jewish residents to emigrate.
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Barbara and Howard move to Boulder, CO
After vacationing in Colorado for decades, the pair finally decide to settle permanently.