Ágnes Bartha

Ágnes Galambos Bartha (née Schwartz, 26 October 1922 – 9 May 2018) was a Hungarian photographer and Ravensbrück concentration camp survivor. Together with her friend Edith Kiss she was deported to Ravensbrück in the autumn of 1944 and then transferred to the Daimler-Benz factory at Ludwigsfelde where she was forced to work on aircraft engines for the Luftwaffe. After escaping from a death march in April 1945, she returned with Kiss to Budapest. Since 1992, she talked about her experiences of deportation and concentration camps, taking part in a number of exhibitions and films.

Biography Born in Dunaföldvár near Budapest on 26 October 1922, Ágnes Schwartz, known as Ági, was brought up in a Jewish family who had not adopted a strictly kosher lifestyle. Thanks to her nanny from Graz in Austria, she became fluent in German. When she was 14, she spent a year in a school in Vienna but returned to Hungary in 1937 as the Nazis became more threatening. Back home, she helped with the family business.

When she was 19, Ági Schwartz married her teenage sweetheart, Layos Galambos, a Roman Catholic. Galambos' parents did everything they could to break up the marriage, finally succeeding in October 1942 when the couple were divorced. Ágnes Galambos moved to Budapest where despite increasing anti-Jewish sentiment, she managed to find a job as an apprentice photographer. After her Jewish employer was deported, she and his assistant continued to run the business. In March 1944, Hungary was occupied by the Germans. The following October, all Jewish women aged between 16 and 40 were forced to assemble at Budapest's central sports ground. There she met Edith Kiss with whom she developed a deep friendship.

As the end of the war approached, they were sent back to Ravensbrück from where they were sent on a death march for execution in the gas chambers. On 30 April they escaped from the death march at Strasen near Wesenberg. After being raped by Soviet soldiers, they found sanctuary in a shelter. Galambos developed a fever but they found food and medicine in the selter, allowing her to recover over the next six weeks.