Dr. Pál Abonyi
Dr. Pál Abonyi was born in Temesvár (Hungary, now Romania), on July 8, 1907. He enrolled at the BudapestLawSchool in 1925. An outstanding student, he received several prestigious job offers upon graduation in 1929. But since he had a Jewish background, none of them could materialize. For clerkship, he went to Kaposvár, and a year later, to Békéscsaba. Taking his exams, he stayed near his brother, László Abonyi, in the region and moved to Békés.
In 1938, he married Margit Konkoly-Thege, with whom he had two children: Magda (September 1940) and Margit (October 1942). But little Margit wasn’t yet born, when Pál was drafted into the labor service in October 1942. Probably denounced by someone in his hometown, as it was rampant at the time, Pál was dispatched to the front with approximately 50,000 Jewish labor service men with the Second Hungarian Army. As we know, inadequate clothing, hard physical labor, hunger, humiliation, and torture decimated the servicemen. Out of the 50,000, only 6-7,000 returned. Dr. Pál Abonyi was among those who did not.
Contributed by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, Texas, USA |
