Holocaust survivor shares story with CMS students

Feb. 17—Clinton Middle School seventh grade students gathered in the school's library on Friday to hear Holocaust survivor Jeno Berta share his story.

Berta was born in Hungary in 1937. Nazi Germany troops invaded Hungary in March of 1944. During that fall, winter and the spring of 1945, Berta's family hid a Jewish family of four that his father had brought into their home, even when German Nazis came to ensure no others were in the home besides Berta, his mother, father, sister and brother.

"Before they left, they painted number five on the front door, because they don't want any visitors," Berta said, steadying himself by holding onto the back of a chair that'd been set in front of him. "That made it so much easier to keep that four people safe, because nobody can come to our house."

In April 1945, Soviet troops liberated the village.

In 1956, Berta fought against the Soviets during the Hungarian uprising.

"The Russians was a cat, we was a mouse," he said. "We decided it was time to move."

Berta was 18 years old when he reached the Hungarian border with three of his friends. It was lined with barbed wire fencing and a guard post every 150 yards.

"Frank and I made it," Berta said. "John and Jules didn't."

Berta went first to Austria, then eventually made his way to the U.S.

In September of 1956, he said, a ship was leaving for the United States.

"I was 19 years old and 135 pounds soaking wet," he recalled of the time he arrived in New Jersey. "The most beautiful, wonderful day of my life."

Two days later, he'd gotten a job in Casper, Wyoming, and left New Jersey on a bus. In March of 1957, however, that bus broke down in front of a hotel in Davenport, Iowa.

"Bus was smoking and steaming," he said.

He stayed the night in the hotel, attended Mass across the street the next morning, then found that the bus was gone.

Berta never left Davenport and became a U.S. citizen in 1962.

"It was just a wonderful time and everything was so nice," he said. "The United States of America, the red, white, and blue."

After being stranded in Davenport, Berta started working in a nursing home, then for over 30 years at Riverside Foundry/Sivyer Steel in Bettendorf where he was also a member of the United Auto Workers and a past president of UAW Local 377.

In 1989, he opened Jeno's Little Hungary in northwest Davenport, a bar he'd own until putting it up for sale 33 years later in 2021.

In 2010, Berta's wife Catherine, who he'd met after coming to the Quad-Cities, died of cancer. Their son, also named Jeno, went on to become a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Bettendorf lawyer.

"Can't help but think about it all," Berta told CMS students. "How many people who [were] left behind. Mom, dad, brother, sister, all broken-hearted."

The students, Language Arts teacher Alli Schultz said, have been reading a book called "Refugee," about a fictional character who leaves Germany because of Hitler's prosecution of Jewish people.

"Adolf Hitler and his gang was responsible for seven million peoples just like you," Berta said. "How much is a life worth. Priceless."

Berta, in closing, thanked the students for coming to listen to him, then asked them all to rise and face the American flag hanging in the school's library to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.