Silent games Monkey and the box

Climbing monkey toy belonging to Vera Seder, who played with it constantly for two months while in hiding within the Jewish ghetto in Budapest at the end of 1944.

Vera was born in Budapest, Hungary on 7 November 1934 to Laszlo and Ilona Gardos. For the better part of the war, the Gardos family managed to live peaceably at 21 Szemere Street. However, a few months before her tenth birthday in 1944, Laszlo was arrested and sent to the Taksony slave labour camp. He managed to send Vera a birthday card, which was the last time she heard from her father.

Vera and her mother 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. Vera said of that time, “I was 10 years old. You can’t make any noise. I played with the climbing monkey and counted how many times it took him to get to the top. You can’t pull the string too hard, you don’t want to break it. November and December 1944, I played with it constantly. My mother used to say, ‘just get your monkey man and play with it’. It kept me quiet. I invented games with it.”

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 used a small wooden souvenir box to store her climbing monkey toy. She is pictured here aged nine.