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List of Righteous Among the Nations by country
Karig Sára
Sára Karig | |
|---|---|
| Born | 13 June 1914 |
| Died | 2 February 1999 (aged 84) |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
| Parent | Emil Karig |
| Honours | Righteous Among the Nations |
| Righteous Among the Nations |
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| By country |
Karig Sára was a Hungarian poet best known for saving three jews during the Holocaust.
Life
Early Life
Karig Sára was born into a family of teachers in Baja, Hungaryas the youngest of three children. Sara went a variety of schools as a child, and learned Latin, English, German and French. From third grade on, she wrote short stories and poems for a local newspaper, and in high school was the president of the school's literary study circle. After high school in Szeged, Sara planned to become an English teacher and enrolled as a student at Franz Joseph University. During her two years there, she became friends with Albert Szent-Györgyi's daughter and stayed at the family's home for a time.
After failing to change her major at the university, with the help of the Szent-Györgyi family, she became an au pair in England, attending lectures at Durham University while obtaining a certificate as a language teacher from the University of London. She attended meetings of the Fabian Society in her free time. After returning from London in 1937, she worked at an ironworking plant in Budapest, managing English and German correspondence. In the years after, she worked at K&H Bank and a trade corporation. In 1943 she joined Social Democratic Party of Hungary inspired by her supervisor at the ironworking plant, Pál Justus.
Post-invasion of Hungary
After March 1944 she helped hundreds of persecuted individuals find apartments, get documents, or counseling. She put Jewish children in safe homes, and hid Polish refugees and British soldiers in ten different apartments rented under her name. Sara got married eight times to allow her "husbands" to pass as Christians. After the war, Sara was decorated by General Alexander for her help to British Soliders, and was offered citizenship in the UK. While officially she was working for the Swedish Red Cross, in reality she was working under Raoul Wallenberg.
After the war in late 1945, she studied law at Pázmány Péter Catholic University for two semesters along with becoming a certified accountant. She also took up an adminstrative post in the Social Democratic Party and served as a secretary with the British Council.
Before the 1947 Hungarian parliamentary election, she was involved in preparing voters' lists to the National Assembly like she also had in 1945. She had suspicions about voter fraud arising from the Hungarian Communist Party taking additional unused voting slips, and refused to hand them over to the local secretary. These suspicions led to the arrests of numerous voters. Because of this, in September 1947 she was abducted and handed over to the Soviet authorities. She spent three months in the Soviet occupation zone in Austria, interned at Baden bei Wien and subject to numerous interrogations.
Sara was accused of spying, and moved to Neunkirchen am Potzberg where she was kept until her move to the Soviet Union. In December 1947, she was moved to the Vorkuta gulag where she spent two and a half years working in a clay mine, loading wagons and moving them to the brickyard. She fell ill during her time there, having a serious ear infection and needing an emergency mastoidectomy performed. After a few months stay in a hospital, she was then transferred to Sverdlovsk, Ukraine. During her imprisonment there she read various Russian novels and learned Ukrainian and Russian.After the death of Stalin, she was moved to Lviv, before being released in 1953 and placed on train heading for Budapest.
Later Life
After her return, she worked as editor in chief for the publishing house Europa Publishers. She translated various novels into Hungarian and was an active member of various literary and scientific societies. In 1957, she was rehabilitated by Soviet authorities. She was given the riteous among nations award in 1985 by Yad Vashem. She never married, and died at her home in February 1999.[1]
References
- ^ Palasik, Mária (2012). "A Life Lived for Progress and Democracy: Sára Karig (1914-1999)". Hungarian Studies Review. XXXIX: 93–112 – via academia.edu.