Magda Denes

Magda Denes, a hidden child in the second world war, died on December 28th 1996, aged 62

For most of her life Magda Denes preferred not to talk of her experiences as a child in the second world war, which she spent in hiding. In later life Dr Denes rose to eminence in her profession of psychoanalysis, both in private practice in New York and in academic posts, but interviewers who sought to delve deeply into her own psyche for early recollections drew a blank. “Hidden children try to forget what happened to them,” she said.

The number of children who were confined to secret places for long periods to escape the concentration camp appalled her: perhaps as many as 100,000 in Germany and the territories it occupied. And these were only a fraction of the million or more children who were caught and died in captivity, the best known of whom was Anne Frank, a Dutch girl who has come to exemplify the fate of Jewish children in the war.

Many victims of that time have tried, but with only limited success, to overcome the privations of their early years. Two of the more famous were Primo Levi, a scientist and writer who was interned in concentration camps, and Bruno Bettelheim, a psychologist who later used his experience in the camps to treat disturbed children in America. Both committed suicide.

From her work in psychology, Dr Denes may have decided that the hidden portion of her life should best be faced. Whatever the reason, she did eventually feel compelled to write of her childhood and did so at length. It was almost the last thing she did. Her book, Castles Burning: A Child’s Life in War, is published this month in America (W. W. Norton).

Dr Denes had planned to tour the United States and Europe in connection with the book. Her death at this moment might have seemed to her typical of the kicks from a brutal world. For age did not mellow her. Anne Frank’s memorialists in films and books have tended to avoid arousing hate against her oppressors. But Dr Denes never stopped loathing the Germans and their wartime surrogates in her native Hungary.

Magda Denes was born into a privileged household. Hungary was poor. It had been on the losing side in the first world war and the victors had awarded two-thirds of its territory to Yugoslavia and other neighbours (creating problems that still exist). But the Denes family was well off. Magda’s father was a successful publisher in Budapest. There were servants and other luxuries. Magda does not seem to have been an appealing child. In her mother’s eyes, Magda said, she was “impossibly sarcastic, big-mouthed, insolent and far too smart”. Still, at five, she must have had some charm. Magda recalled stories being read to her “in the dark of night, when I couldn’t sleep”, about Hungary’s magical castles, stories that always had a happy ending. The castles in the title of her book started burning in her imagination in 1939, at the outbreak of the second world war, when Magda’s father abandoned his family and left for America.

The bitterness Magda felt towards her father persisted throughout her life. Indignantly, she listed the luggage he took with him, including 12 suits and 45 shirts. No doubt her father had his reasons

for leaving. He had been critical of the Hungarian dictator, Admiral Horthy. Jews in Hungary were already coming under threat from Arrow-Cross, the local Nazis. Parts of Budapest were barred to Jews. Denes père may have thought that, by leaving, he would make his family safe.

What happened was that for years Magda, her brother Ivan and their mother were constantly on the move. Once Magda had to hide in an oven. Ivan was caught and shot.

After the war Hungary became a Soviet satellite. Magda experienced “a deep rot” that “ate away” her life. She got to America by way of Austria and Cuba. Meeting her father again was not a happy reunion. He thought her a rather unpleasant girl. She said that starving, while being eaten by lice, “tends to corrode one’s pleasant side”.Her life in New York was almost conventional. She had an education, rose in her career, got married and had two children. She became a psychologist, she said, because of her early experiences. “Survivors identify with the damaged. To help is a self-healing process.” She was drawn into feminist issues. One was abortion, or, as euphemists like to term it, being “pro-life” or “pro-choice”. How did Dr Denes feel about the unborn child in its “hiding place”? She spent two years interviewing staff in abortion clinics, and her report, published as a book that has become a classic of its type, reflected the mental agonies she had undergone. Abortion, she said, was murder, whatever it was called. “No physician involved with the procedure ever kids himself about that.” That sounds like an anti-abortion message, and some of the detail in her report has been used by “pro-life” campaigners. This upset her, for her conclusion, after considering the many reasons for abortion, was that it was killing “of a very special and necessary sort”. Any distracting sentiment in Magda Denes was crushed from the age of five.