Rodolfo: Magic, persecution and survival in wartime Hungary — Part Two
By 1944, Gross Rezső had already lived under two names... Born into a Jewish family in Budapest, he had become Rodolfo , building a career around sleight of hand, pickpocketing and a personality audiences remembered. Anti-Jewish legislation eventually forced him to depend entirely upon magic, while labour service repeatedly took him away from the stage. Yet he continued to perform, even among his fellow labour servicemen. Being Rodolfo had sometimes proved useful. It had not made Gross Rezső any less Jewish in the eyes of the Hungarian state. In 1944, that distinction became a matter of life and death. Image: Rodolfo and his wife, Olga performing the card in balloon trick. Towards the front For a Jewish labour serviceman, being sent east meant entering a world that had already killed tens of thousands of men like him. Hungary had joined Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In 1942 alone, some 45,000 Jewish men were deployed through the Hungarian Labour Service to the ...