Castles Burning

In 1944, Magda Denes was ten years old and living in Budapest. Squeezed into a tiny two-room apartment with her mother, adored brother Ivan, grandparents, aunt and cousin Erwin, the family were learning to adapt to the brutal regime of the occupying German forces. As rumours filtered through about concentration camps and mass deportations, Hungarian Jews found their lives more and more desperate. Starving, terrified, indiscriminately murdered, tortured and abused, they were now barricaded in underground ghettos. They formed militant resistance groups that went out by night to fight the Germans. Ivan and Erwin, both resistance fighters, were shot. Magda's grandfather died of starvation. The depleted family escaped from Budapest and with great difficulty made their way to Spain, via France, and then by boat to America, and a new life.