A charming bracelet

Gold charm bracelet belonging first to Ilona Gardos and subsequently her daughter Vera Seder. Throughout her life Ilona, who lived in Budapest with her husband Laszlo, added to the bracelet with charms that appealed to her superstitions or symbolised holidays or other important events in her life. In November 1934 Vera was born and a year later Ilona added a clover leaf charm engraved with Vera’s birth date for the occasion of her first birthday.

For the better part of the war, the Gardos family managed to live relatively peaceably. However, a few months before Vera’s tenth birthday in 1944, Laszlo was arrested and sent to the Taksony slave labour camp. He was later murdered. Vera and Ilona moved into a house paid for by the Swedish Red Cross, but they were soon evicted and deported to the Jewish ghetto in Budapest. They tried to stay out of sight and quiet, often hiding in a bunker. On 21 December 1944, Ilona was arrested while trying to visit her parents. She was taken to the banks of the river Danube and shot. Vera managed to find her way to her grandparents and her cousin Lorant, with whom she lived through to the end of the war and afterwards.

On 27 May, 1956, she married Laszlo Szederjesy. They left together following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, travelling via the Hungarian Refugee Assisted Scheme, arriving in Sydney. Vera left Hungary with no possessions. It wasn’t until 1964 that she was able to return to visit her grandmother, and there received the charm bracelet that had been her mothers.

Vera continued to add to the bracelet with souvenirs from her travels, her life in Australia and mementos of her children. She said that wearing the bracelet brought her closer to her mother; that it was like having a piece of her.