Ida Kohner Farkas
Ida Kohner Farkas (1895-1945)
Ida was the oldest daughter of Adolf and Helene Kohner. She was a talented and intelligent woman, who married a well known painter, but was also a talented painter herself.
Ida was exposed to a large range of talented artists through her father Adolf. He would host salons for painters, writers, etc. and financially supported many famous Hungarian artists. Ida met the painter Istvan Farkas, and married him in 1925. They then had three children, Charles, Judit, and Paulo.
In a video interview through the USC Shoah Foundation, Charles recounts life with his parents and the subsequent traumas of WWII. He describes Ida as a loving and creative mother who once painted a circus mural on the wall of the children’s bedroom.
As WWII went on, and the Germans got closer to Budapest, life became much less idyllic. In April 1944, Istvan was arrested and sent to Auschwitz where he was gassed almost immediately. A note he wrote on the train was smuggled out and often gets quoted by Holocaust researchers, "When human dignity is so humiliated, it is not worth living anymore."
Charles was sent to a labor camp, Judit went into hiding in a Catholic convent, and the youngest, Paolo went into hiding, moving from safe house to safe house throughout Budapest.
da was eventually sent to the Jewish Ghetto in Budapest. Ida supposedly refused opportunities to go into hiding herself because she wanted Charles to have a place to return to should he escape from the camp. Sadly, he did, but not before Ida’s murder. In January 1945, Ida was brought to the edge of the Danube River by the Arrow Cross, shot, and pushed into the freezing water.
All three of Ida and Istvan’s children survived the war, but not without psychological scars. Charles and Paulo eventually moved to Italy, where they became well regarded artists themselves and had families. Judit stayed in Hungary, and did not have any children.
When we were in Budapest in June 2023, our researcher showed us Ida’s stumbling stone. Stumbling stones are put in front of homes of those who were killed by Nazis. Originally created by a German artist, they are now all over Europe.
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