October 29, 1999/19 Cheshvan 5760, Vol. 52, No.9
Finding lost romance closes chapter in woman's lifeBook tells of love amid war
TAMI BICKLEY
|
 Betty Schimmel prominently displays a collection of family photographs in her Scottsdale home. Photo by Tami Bickley |
Schimmel, 70, has told her life story numerous times - verbally, and now recently in book form. It is the story of a Holocaust survivor who clung to a romance for the strength to stay alive, even as she witnessed devastation and death around her. Her story has sparked interest in Hollywood and has just been released in the autobiographical volume "To See You Again," by Schimmel and Joyce Gabriel (Dutton Publishing, $23.95, hardcover).
Schimmel, who now lives with her husband in Scottsdale, fell in love as a young teenager during World War II. She ultimately survived the horrors of the Holocaust, only to hear that the object of her affection had been killed. Following the war, she married another man, moved with him to the United States and raised a family.
Thirty years later, on a visit to Budapest, Hungary, she encountered her childhood boyfriend, the man she thought had died. That reunion is the basis of "To See You Again."
During her youth, Schimmel had kept a journal, which grew to some 800 pages. She says that her notes helped her to recall details of her past and to write the book.
Schimmel, nicknamed "Baby" by her family, was born in a small village in Uzhgorod, on the border of Czechoslovakia and Ukraine, the oldest of three children. In early 1938, when news spread that Adolf Hitler was about to invade, Schimmel (then Betty Markowitz) moved with her parents, Jacob and Ethel Markowitz, sister Rose and brother Larry, to Bratislava in southern Czechoslovakia. A year later, when Hitler took his army across the borders of Czechoslovakia, the Markowitzes again fled, leaving behind most of their belongings, and moved to Budapest.
At school in Budapest, Schimmel met Richie Kovacs, who lived nearby with his Orthodox Jewish family. Classmates Kovacs and Schimmel soon became boyfriend and girlfriend. They would meet each other at boathouses on the Danube River, at a nearby castle and at a local cafe.
In 1942, Jacob Markowitz, who had been a Czech army officer and worked for the Czech underground, left on a mission to take people out of Hungary and transport them to South Africa. His family never again heard from him; Schimmel believes he was killed while returning to Hungary.
In 1944, Nazi troops invaded Hungary to carry out Hitler's Final Solution - the attempt to kill as many Jews as possible before Germany lost the war. Schimmel and her family were ordered out of their home and into quarters where they were subjected to a barrage of horrors, having their food and supplies confiscated, witnessing people being shot and then being forced by the Nazis to clean up the dead bodies.
Meanwhile, Schimmel and Kovacs met when they could, refusing to let deteriorating circumstances weaken their relationship.
"My love with Richie helped me to get through what was going on," recalls Schimmel in a recent interview at her home. She credits her mother, who insisted that she and her siblings stay together throughout their ordeal, with being another "very big influence" on her determination to survive.
Ultimately, Schimmel and her family were led through the streets of Hungary for miles during Adolf Eichmann's last march, in which the remaining Jews of Hungary were forcibly marched out of the country and led to a death camp at Gunzkirchen, Germany. A few days later, they were herded "like cattle" to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
The Markowitzes, by this time severely malnourished and infested with lice, were surrounded by dead bodies and the constant stench of death, says Schimmel in her book. She recalls being despondent also over her separation from Kovacs.
On May 5, 1945, the war ended, and the Markowitzes, along with other Jewish survivors, were rescued by American soldiers and taken to a displaced persons camp in Wetzlar, Germany. There, Schimmel met her future husband, Otto Schimmel. He had been held at the Auschwitz concentration camp and had lost his entire family in the Holocaust.
The two were married in 1948 at the behest of her family, she says, even though she still professed love for Kovacs. Nearly a year later, the couple moved to New York City, as did Betty Schimmel's mother and siblings. Betty Schimmel worked for a jeweler and Otto Schimmel in a leather goods factory.
Soon Schimmel gave birth to a son, Robert Schimmel, now a successful comedian. The couple later had a daughter, Sandy, and another son, Jeffrey. While raising her family, Betty Schimmel served as president of Hadassah.
The Schimmels now have five grandchildren.
In 1973, the couple moved to Phoenix, where Otto Schimmel opened a leather goods company.
In 1974, Ethel Markowitz died of cancer. The following year, Schimmel and her daughter Sandy traveled to Budapest. It was Betty Schimmel's first visit since she and her family had been marched out by the Nazis.
"I heard the (air raid) sirens and my mother's voice all over again," she recalls.
The two women stopped at Schimmel's former home and at the boathouse and castle where she and Kovacs had spent time together. She discovered the words 'Baby and Richie forever,' in Hungarian, etched in a heart on the castle wall where Kovacs had carved it with a metal spoon during one of their rendezvous.
"After that," says Schimmel, "I told (Sandy) more (about Richie). ... I had never talked to any of (my) children about Richie until (that day)."
That evening, Schimmel and her daughter dined at the Royale, a restaurant she and Kovacs had frequented.
"I looked over at the next table, and I saw this man's neck, and I said to Sandy, 'Oh my God, that's him (Kovacs),' " says Schimmel. "Sandy said, 'No, mom, you are just under the influence of today.' ... I went up to him, and I was shaking like a leaf. My voice didn't want to come out. I touched his shoulder and said, 'I think we know each other.' He looked up, grabbed me and sobbed. I was sobbing, too. I couldn't believe it. ... To this day, I wonder, 'Why did God do this to me? Why did he play this trick on me?' "
That evening, Schimmel spent hours with Kovacs and learned that he had been looking for her since she was forced out of Budapest. He told her that in 1950, when he saw the announcement of Robert's birth in a New York Jewish newspaper, he went to the Schimmel home. (Kovacs, too, lived in the United States.) Otto Schimmel, apparently fearing that his wife would leave him for Kovacs if she discovered he was alive, told him he was at the wrong house and sent him away.
"I called Otto up (that night after I saw Kovacs)," Schimmel says. "I was very angry because he should have told me that Richie was alive. I would not have left Otto. I did have a certain love for Richie, but it was immature, a young child love that carried through until I was 45 because I never had closure. Otto should have let me (have that closure) when Richie came to the door (in 1950)."
After her encounter with Kovacs - she says he begged her to leave Otto for him, assuring her that he would leave his own wife for her - Schimmel decided it would be best never to speak to Kovacs again.
"I didn't know Richie as a grown man, or what kind of a husband or father he would have been," she says. "Otto is whom my children adore, and I love him, too. Richie was my past. Otto was my future, and still is my future."
Schimmel has returned to Budapest twice since then, once to do research for a film based on her experiences, the rights to which she has sold to Paramount Pictures. Actor Kenneth Branaugh, who originally was going to direct the film, is no longer part of the deal, says Schimmel, so it "is sleeping, which isn't unusual in Hollywood."
A subsequent trip was to gather information for her book, released nationwide Oct. 1.
Today the Schimmels visit local schools to talk with children about the Holocaust. "I have beautiful letters from children," says Betty Schimmel. "They say, 'Thank you for opening my eyes to such hatred.' "
In recent years, Betty Schimmel has dealt with other pain. In 1992, grandson Derek died of cancer. Two months later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. She is cured today, she says.
Otto Schimmel, who designs ladies handbags in downtown Scottsdale, says that his life turned around after the war, thanks to his wife.
"I wouldn't trade my marriage or my kids for anything," he says. "Betty has supported me through her guidance. She is able to look into things like I cannot."