SEQUIM — Captain Daniel Gellert is working on a book titled “An American Kid Left Behind in World War II.”
“Only generals, politicians and men who make history should write memoirs,” the Sequim resident wrote.
“As a child, I was merely witness to the deeds of men … our memories fade as dark recesses of our mind hides names, dates, releasing only vapors of past events, then flaming emotions into torrents of tears, guilt, hurt and unjustified shame.
“World War II, the premier event of the Twentieth Century, is man’s darkest hour! No one person could see all the events of war: generals saw the war on maps, soldiers saw the madness of war in the trudge and drudge of mud, heat, and cold drenching rain.
“This deadly drama, while bringing forth much human courage, forever etched and seared the minds of men,” Gellert wrote. “When victory finally came, we went our different ways, but the scars of the past will forever remain.”
Europe in the mid-1940s is brought palpably close as Gellert tells his story. It’s one he wishes to share with readers upon the 80th anniversary of the Christmas Eve he and his sister, led by his stalwart grandmother, escaped the Battle (or Siege) of Budapest.
His adolescent experiences are not something he will usually talk about, not even with his own children.
“The thing is that there was nothing good to talk about,” he said. “I guarantee everybody that really was in the military or in a war zone wanted to stuff it.
“We should never load our hurt or pain on children. Let them live their lives in happiness.”
Gellert said, “for a parent, nothing can be greater than to realize our sons can celebrate as free people with human love, respect for all.
“But in 1944, the insecurity of no home, running for life, was dehumanizing,” he said. “Christmas decorations were torn apart by shells, cars and street cars all abandoned, people running in silence, lights failing as deadly darkness blanketed the scene.”
The Soviet army, as part of a campaign that took nearly 52 days to be victorious, closed the last gap in their encirclement around the city of Budapest on Christmas Day 1944.
All people left were stuck in the city with few provisions while the Nazis and Hungarians battled the Soviets.
Hitler had issued an order in November that Budapest “must be defended block by block … and should the capital be surrounded, they would have to fight to the last round,” according to “Siege of Budapest 1944-45: The Brutal Battle for the Pearl of the Danube,” by Hungarian scholar Balázs Mihályi.
Will Gellert finish his book?
“Even those few pages you see kind of cut under the skin,” he said.
“I don’t really like that.”
Childhood cut short
Gellert tells his story from the viewpoint of a child in a bewildering and cruel adult world.
Born in 1932, “one half of my family is from the Austro Hungarian empire, and the other from the Colorado and New Mexico area,” he said, his accent a unique and beautiful mixture of these and further linguistic influences.
“My mother had kidney problems. I didn’t realize what it was,” Gellert said. “It was a situation that happened before penicillin.”
In 1934, his mother took a ship out of New York along with baby Gellert and his older sister Eloine (born in 1930) to be with her own mother, Emilia, on a half-acre home outside of Budapest, Hungary.
“Unfortunately, she died, so my sister and I stayed with my grandmother,” Gellert said.
“I had the most happy childhood. We didn’t even have a car or motorcycle in that place we lived outside Budapest, so you could run free.
“Then at age 9, the war began.”
War
“The Polish POWs came in 1939 into Hungary. When Hitler attacked, we had thousands of them, and then we also had German soldiers,” he said.
Gellert said when he was a child, someone would get spanked if they took “somebody’s toys.” Why, then, would one country be allowed to take over another?
“With the verbal thrashing I got for pulling watermelons under the fence (from his grandmother), I could not understand how grownups went into other countries. Why war?” he asked.
Gellert was just 12 that Christmas Eve in 1944, but since the previous year, he had already survived losing his childhood home, a failed attempt to cross into Switzerland, a boarding school in Romania, a stint slaving for the Nazis on a road gang, an escape back to his grandmother, who put him to bed for about two weeks — he recalled her saying, “’You have TB,’” which I probably didn’t. She just wanted to hide me” — and a long stint of homelessness involving trains, resulting in living out of a boxcar in Budapest.
Christmas Eve
“Christmas Eve in Budapest in ’44 wasn’t very festive,” Brigit Farley, a scholar and associate professor of history at Washington State University’s Tri Cities campus, wrote in an email.
“A pro-German puppet government led by a far right-nationalist group called the Arrow Cross was busy helping their German puppet masters round up Jews for deportation to the death camps, and doing some of their own killing,” Farley wrote.
“Meanwhile, the Soviet army was laying siege to the Nazis occupying Budapest. It couldn’t have been much fun for anyone in the city at that time. There are pictures of all the magnificent bridges across the Danube sunk into the river after the battle, victims of the siege.”
Farley said Christmas Eve normally would have been a bigger celebration in Hungary than the day after, with special food and drinks, caroling, decorating of a tree and the exchanging of gifts.
“Christmas Eve was always the big event with midnight mass,” Gellert said. “Great memories!”
On Dec. 24, 1944, Gellert’s family “finally decided we had to get out of there.
“We were running and they were turning the lights off. Street cars were abandoned,” he said.
“And then we ran across this police guy who was on a box directing traffic, and he got off. He was going home, and he told us to get out because all the artillery was coming.
“This is Christmas Eve. You know that we always had a beautiful experience … and you’re running through a crowd … and nobody knows where they’re going.
“It was just so unreal.”
After crossing the bridge over the Danube to the third railway station, the last train came with its lights off, completely full.
“My grandmother went on one coach, my sister another, and I went on another one, standing on a running board, and off we went,” Gellert said.
In his book, he detailed what came next: “The train was completely full, people hanging from its sides, as we became an outer layer of humanity holding together this train … with only people for its sides. We never asked where is this train going, it made not much difference now.”
Gellert said, “We didn’t know where to get off, so my sister and I got off at a station looking for our grandmother.
“There were a lot of people; we didn’t know if she got off, so we missed the train.
“Then everybody left, and here was this train station with the roof torn off. She and I slept on these wooden bunk seats for two days till my grandmother came back.”
She checked every station along the way until she found them, Gellert said.
She was about 70 then, he wrote, “part of the Greatest Generation, well disciplined, a never quitting character, not complaining, but doing … ”
After further dismal adventures involving the advance of the Russians and the retreat of the Germans, who destroyed his papers and put him in a POW camp, the war ended and Gellert was rescued by British soldiers. He said when a soldier reached into his pocket, he thought “he was going for a gun. Actually, it was a Hershey bar.”
Gellert’s family became part of the population of Europe that lived in displaced persons camps. They waited in Italy until 1946, when authorities tracked down his father, who was stationed domestically by the U.S. military. He and his sister were issued temporary passports and took a troop ship home.
Gellert told a story about eating in the captain’s dining room.
“I got a brand new suit with a tie,” he said. “Oh, I was really official.”
Supper was announced, and he looked for where he could eat.
“I look in there and there’s a table, white tablecloths and so forth. I walk to the door and the guy takes me to a table. There’s only about 15 people in there, the captain and some officials, like ambassadors or who knows what … ”
From that day forward, “I always ate there,” he said.
He said one day he was invited to the regular dining room, and after watching the beans be scooped onto his tray, he headed back to the captain’s room.
“So I was an official on the way back,” he said.
Only a kid could get away with that, he added.
Gellert’s sister was seasick the entire time, and their quarters were segregated by sex, so he saw little of her.
They were met by his father in New York City, but his grandmother was not a U.S. citizen, so she had to stay in Europe.
It took until about 1950 for Emilia to be able to come to the United States.
Transportation
Trains, ships and airplanes have been a constant in Gellert’s life. He wanted to be a pilot since he was small, and he achieved that ambition, going from completing grade school at 17 to college and on to a long career, always focused on improving safety, especially concerning airplanes.
But also, he was a senior chemical operator at the U.S. Army Rocky Mountain Arsenal before reaching adulthood. He recalled his “unit blew up” on the Fourth of July.
“I had to run in there to shut off this 1,000 gallon of white gas right next to the fire, and they had a battalion of firefighters,” he said. “If that would have caught fire, they would have been all dead.
“The battalion commander blamed me for saving their lives.
“We had a big laugh about that.”
Gellert said after the carnage of World War II, he dedicated his life to safety and saving lives. He has flown and taken ships all around the world, from Antarctica to Japan, many with Nattalia, his wife of 28 years. They are invited to Germany in 2025 “as an honored guest,” for the 80th anniversary of the end of the war and plan to do some touring before that.
“She’s my Christmas gift,” Gellert said about his wife. “I met her on the 20th of December on a cruise ship.”
“Yeah, he got so lucky,” Nattalia said with a laugh.
“She likes cruising and she likes dancing, so that kind of made the whole day,” Gellert said.
“Nattalia grew up in Germany,” he said, “and when the war ended, she was like 8 years old.
“It really helps to be around someone that sort of went through similarities of experience. The thing is, it’s very difficult to discuss it with anybody, but it’s almost impossible with people that were not involved in WWII and some of the things.”
Gellert added that “it’s really frightening to see what’s happening around the world now.” He spoke of the rise of dictators, billionaires inserting themselves into politics and civilian populations vicimitized in wars.
“How happy Nattalia and I are that we’re able to celebrate Christmas without bombs falling, without having to run,” he said.
“This is a Christmas story of gratitude.”
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Emily Matthiessen is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach her by email at emily.matthiessen@sequimgazette.com.
