Surviving in Silence

A Deaf Boy in the Holocaust, The Harry I. Dunai Story

Eleanor C. Dunai, Harry I. Dunai

• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN:
  9781563681813
• Print ISBN:
  9781563682353
  9781563681196
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies

Izrael Zachariah Deutsch was born on March 15, 1934, in Komjata, Czechoslovakia. The second youngest child, Izrael lived a bucolic existence with nine brothers and sisters on a farm, differing from them only in that he was deaf. When he was six, his mother took him to Budapest, Hungary, and enrolled him in a Jewish school for deaf children, where he thrived. Soon, however, the Nazi regime in Germany and the Arrow Cross fascists in Hungary destroyed Izrael's world forever.
       Izrael realized that by being both Jewish and deaf, he faced a double threat of being exported to the gas chambers in Poland. But at every lethal junction, he found a way to survive, first by buying and reselling pastries for extra money that later saved his life in the Budapest ghetto. Still, Izrael was close to death from starvation when he was liberated by Russian soldiers on January 18, 1945.
?       Izrael survived the war only to learn that his parents and two brothers had been murdered by the Nazis. The rest of his brothers and sisters scattered to distant parts of the world. Forced to remain in Budapest, Izrael finished school and became an accomplished machinist. He avoided any part in the Hungarian uprising in 1956 so that he could secure a visa to leave for Sweden. From Sweden he traveled throughout Europe and Israel, using an amazing network of Holocaust survivors, relatives, and deaf friends to ease his journey. He finally settled in Los Angeles, where he married a deaf Jewish woman he had met years before. Along the way, he changed his name from Izrael Deutsch to Harry Dunai.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• chapter 1 (1934–1937) In the Beginning
• chapter 2 (1938–1940) Mischievous Childhood and Darkening Political Clouds
• chapter 3 (1940–1941) The Institute
• chapter 4 (1941–1943) Was God Watching?
• chapter 5 (1943–1944) A Special Trip Home
• chapter 6 (1944) The Yellow Star of David and the Red Cross
• chapter 7 (1944) Tears of Joy and Despair
• chapter 8 (1944–1945) The Central Ghetto and the Christmas Nightmare
• chapter 9 (1945) On Death Row
• chapter 10 (1945–1948) The Bar Mitzvah and Zionism
• chapter 11 (1948–1949) A Summer Vacation and a Kiss
• chapter 12 (1949–1950) Found: A Government School, but No God
• chapter 13 (1950–1952) The Mechanical Trade School
• chapter 14 (1952–1956) The Deaf Club and the Comforts of Home
• chapter 15 (1956) A Visit Home to Komjata
• chapter 16 (1956) The Revolution
• chapter 17 (1957) Farewell to Budapest
• chapter 18 (1957) Sweden
• chapter 19 (1958) The London Chess Tournament
• chapter 20 (1958–1959) Making Plans for a New Life
• chapter 21 (1959) Farewell to Sweden and Onward to Europe and Israel
• chapter 22 (1959) America and the Angel in the Sky
• chapter 23 (1960) The Comet and a Christmas Wedding
• chapter 24 (1960–1961) Jessica Gets a Job
• chapter 25 (1962–1963) January 18—Spiritual Fate
• Epilogue
• Endnotes