The Italian football team Lucca was mediocre. Erno Egri Erbstein came in and it became great. The boys got a coach they had never known before: an undisputed football expert and a profound connoisseur of the human soul. Five years later, their paths diverged. A heavy cloud of prejudice descended over Europe and there was no place for a Hungarian Jew in fascist Italy. Erno Erbstein moved on. It was not the first time that his path had been diverted by circumstances beyond his control, but this time he found himself caught in a life-threatening vortex of prejudice. The hatred that flamed in Nazi souls could have broken him, but he was a man who, time after time, was lifted up by the hardships he had endured with a new understanding of life and man.
He realised that change is the only constant in life at a young age, when he moved with his parents and two younger brothers from his native Nagyvarad to Budapest, some 320 kilometres away, to get the chance of a lifetime. All three boys excelled at school, but only Erno flourished on the football field. Not that he was such a talented footballer, he just loved the ball and it was only with it between his legs that he really was who he was. When he had to choose between a career in academics and a career in football, he didn’t hesitate. He chose the latter.
But three years of military service could have ruined it, so he risked death by signing up for the Habsburg army and reducing his military service to one year. After a few months in officer training school, in November 1916, as an 18-year-old corporal, he took his men into battle for the first time. He survived several difficult battles before returning home with the knowledge that he was able to keep a cool head even under pressure.
“His courage and his abilities made them respect him”, his elder daughter Susanna explained years later how his subordinates felt about him, adding that he was particularly close to his assistant. They met again three decades later, again in war, but in a different war.
After the first one, the then 19-year-old Erno decided to make a living as a fighter while paving the way for his football future. He “played” sensibly with money, but on the pitch he was impulsive. Even if he didn’t play for the best club, he soon landed on the newspaper pages. He became a “notorious footballer” who, during one match, “jumped on the belly” of an opponent with both feet. The police intervened, but since the newspapers reported no sanctions, he must have got off cheap.
Home on the move
However, he increasingly thought about going abroad. Since the rise of anti-Semitism in Hungary, life in Budapest has become exhausting. Hungarians saw Jews as physically and mentally weak individuals, incapable of courage and patriotism, even though around 10,000 of them died in the trenches during the First World War. Afterwards, they managed to accuse them of having lost the war because of them, of having worked underground against their country, and they restricted their political and intellectual influence on social life by a law of 1920.
Erno Erbstein did not hesitate when the opportunity to play for Hakoah Arad in Romania presented itself in the spring of 1922. However, the decision was not purely professional: the club was made up of only Jews and was part of the Zionist movement. This sought to change the ingrained image of the Jew as a bookworm and successful businessman, and to portray him as a tough, determined and sporty man.
“Fresh air and physical activity, sports and games will ensure healthy senses and strong muscles and nerves. We need healthy nerves. So we can challenge fate. We will survive!” declared the Zionist physician Theodor Zlocisti in February 1920. It is not clear whether Erno was a Zionist or not, but when he joined the club, he also identified himself politically for his roots. He was what the Zionists wanted to show the world: a man who read a lot in his spare time, especially philosophy, but who also distinguished himself with courage in war, he was a born leader who fitted easily into his new environment, and he devoted his life to sport.
He didn’t stay long in Romania, but he certainly returned to his home club BAK much calmer. This was not due to football or politics, but to love. Jolan Huterer was his complete opposite. “My mother was instinctive, intelligent and direct. I could say she was irrational. My father was more intellectual, rational and stable, but they both had a great sense of humour. It was a great love that lasted until the end,” their younger daughter Marta later recalled.
They married in 1924 and, when Erno was offered his first professional football contract shortly afterwards, they moved to Rijeka. This was a retreat from anti-Semitism, but they fell into fascism because the Italians had annexed Rijeka only a short time before, except that the fascists were not then the enemies of the Jews that they later became.
In an Olimpija jersey, Erno showed a completely different face from the one he had a few years ago in BAK. The sports newspapers praised his discipline, which made him the leader of the team, taking full responsibility on the pitch. In contrast to Rijeka, Budapest was already playing football much like today’s: short passes, excellent ball control and deliberate movements, and a team ethic that required each individual to be extremely technically proficient.
In September 1924, he brought the spirit of cosmopolitanism to Rijeka and shortly afterwards to Vicenza in Veneto, Italy. He played only nine times for them before returning home with his wife and newborn daughter Susanna. The Italians passed new laws to make football “Italian”. They banned the hiring of foreign players and gave a one-year moratorium only to those already under contract. Erbstein’s contract expired and the young family had to return to Budapest in the summer of 1926.
But it was also at that time that football was becoming professionalised there, and Erbstein had everything he wanted: he lived from football and he lived in his home environment. Well, he had everything until a more tempting offer came along. The Zionists were putting together a football team to tour America promoting Maccabi, the international Jewish sports association founded in 1921. The pay was rich and Erno Egri Erbstein was their first choice for captain.
So he spent 1927 in America. He played on the field, studying the system of the game he had learned across the border. At the age of 29, he was already looking to the future. He was jotting down tactical and strategic ideas that would one day come in handy in his coaching career, without suspecting that he would have to put his plans into practice right away.
The coach was informed that his wife had died unexpectedly and Erno successfully stepped into his shoes. After returning home, he finished one more season in Budapest and said goodbye to the game at the age of 30.
Mad for Erna
His path took him back to Italy. There, they realised that if they wanted to take their game to the next level, they needed at least foreign coaches, and if they didn’t want players, their clubs were overrun by Jews from central Europe. At his new club, Union Sportiva Bari, Erno demanded of his players what he had demanded of everyone else ever since: a spirit of camaraderie and energy. He knew how to awaken both in them, but he could achieve nothing with the “average” players he had yet to teach how to play his system.
So he soon moved on, to Nocera Iferiore and then to Cagliari in Sardinia. Jolanda, as the Italians renamed his wife, and Susanna immediately settled into their new surroundings, and Erbstein began to show another of his special qualities: he had an eye for footballers who showed great promise but had not yet blossomed. In the years that followed, he brought a surprising number of previously undiscovered talents to the clubs he coached.
His technique has now been perfected. “He understood how to play football thirty years before anyone else. For him, the game was not just improvisation, he studied it and understood it down to the smallest detail,” reported journalist Corrado Delunas. He taught the boys how to attack with penetration and intelligence, and after training with them, he volunteered his time to the youngsters, so that they could one day become useful club footballers.
He explained his ideas to them without any problems. He was still flexible enough to play with them, instead of just explaining how the accuracy of a goal does not depend on the striking foot, but on the position of the supporting foot, as he liked to repeat.
He was so dedicated to his work that he soon became a star in Cagliari. “Everyone was crazy about this man who had something exquisite and elegant about him. He had really innovative ideas for those days”, one of his acquaintances summed up Erbstein’s spirit. The only problem was that now neither he nor his boys had peace of mind anymore. So he quarantined them before major matches, which was almost revolutionary for those days. Almost nobody had taken up football as professionally as he had.
He enjoyed it and, at the age of 33, he was also looking forward to the birth of another daughter, Martha, although he was not with his wife when she gave birth. Jolan returned to Budapest a month before the birth to make Marta a Hungarian citizen. She wrote to him in Italy that he might be disappointed not to have a son, but he reassured her that he had fallen in love with Marta before his eye had even seen her.
But after three years, the Cagliari idyll came to an end. The club went bankrupt and he had to leave, just as he had to leave Bari a few years earlier, even though he did not want to. Now he is back, but he and the team were clearly not meant to be. Once again, he could not find common ground with the club’s management. “Erbstein is a gentleman and a connoisseur of football”, said one sports newspaper, which was upset about his departure, but he “didn’t bat an eyelid when it was time to say goodbye”.
As always, he kept his poise and confidence, but it was easier now that the club was forced to pay his salary for another ten months due to contractual obligations. He was in no hurry to find a new job. He was meeting friends, discussing training methods and tactics, spending time with his young family and waiting for the right opportunity. But this time he was not only interested in getting ahead professionally, he now wanted to create a home for his family that was at least as secure as possible.
A psychologist among trainers
He found it in Lucca, Tuscany. Professionally, he really had to take a step back, but for the family the environment was ideal. They all blended easily with him. Erno easily found a common language with his football players. “Compared to other coaches, he had an extra weapon – psychology,” said a local newspaper. “He understood better than anyone the nature, characters and emotions of his boys.” He knew their virtues and weaknesses and could easily reconcile their different personalities.
He never raised his voice over them and was not brusque, as his colleagues usually were. On the one hand, he avoided conflicts with his boys, even when they were bitterly opposed to him or when they were drinking, which he tried to limit, but on the other hand, he could be downright piccolos. One footballer he didn’t want in his team because ‘his hair is too long’. He can’t be a good player.”
Here, as everywhere else, it soon became popular. “Everyone listened to him because he was very charming and knew how people functioned”, said one of the many people who called him Il Mister.
He prepared his boys for the games with slogan-like statements. “The winning cake must be made with two ingredients: courage and sweat.” Or: “It only takes one move to go from great to ridiculous.” But of course Erbstein was not only charming, suave and thoughtful. He was consistent and relentless in his intention to turn the team into an indestructible football machine. He also tried to instil a sense of responsibility and professionalism in the boys through early training sessions, where those who drank too much at night suffered terribly.
He became a real hero in the city. He could have been carried away by the enthusiasm of the people, but with a wife like Jolan, he had to stay on solid ground. They saw everything in life from such different perspectives that their “discussions were amusing to death”, as Marta recalled. At home, he had an equal partner, with whom he fought in a way that neither he nor the children were upset, and in football he had few equals.
He was pulling some really strange moves. For example, he put Aldo Olivieri in front of goal, even though everyone warned him that his body was too bulky to be a great goal scorer. Erbstein sent him to his daughter Sussana, who had been practising ballet for several years. Through dance, he argued, he would develop balance and gain control of his body. At first, Olivieri’s colleagues laughed at him, but when the first results came, they began to support him. For the five years that the Erbsteins lived in Lucca, Olivieri practised ballet and became the most famous Italian goalkeeper of his generation.
That year, Il Littoriale compiled a list of seven qualities of the perfect coach. According to them, Erbstein had them all. A coach, they wrote, must never allow himself to be dragged down by his own conscience or public opinion. He must study constantly and never rest on his laurels; every morning he must have in his hands spreadsheets and formulas that reflect the practicality and the endorsements derived from the previous day. He must be authoritative like a despot and loving like a father towards his players.
The fourth virtue was unbreakable resilience, the fifth was a consistent methodology that the whole team believes in and follows, and that shows on the pitch. The sixth virtue was a deep knowledge of human psychology and work, which must be adapted to the sensitivity and abilities of each individual. The last virtue was that the coach always has a practical example to explain a theoretical assumption. “Erno Erbstein is a man worthy of our trust – skilled, enthusiastic and capable of all these things,” the paper concluded.
In the 1936/37 season, he was spoken of as Italy’s most famous coach, “both because of the success he made his team reap and the name he made for himself as a theoretician”. Letters reportedly arrived at his address asking for at least an autograph.
Lucce was the only team in Serie A to finish the season unbeaten on home soil. When Erbstein entered the tavern, it was silent, although passions could also flare up after the games. People waited for the returning heroes in the stadium and carried Erbstein and his boys home on their shoulders after the big wins.
But war was already knocking at the door. In 1938, Mussolini published the first anti-Semitic law, which formally made Jews an inferior race. Panic reigned among the Jews of Italy. In Lucca, a town with a strong fascist core, things were particularly tense. Erbstein was too powerful to go unnoticed, and he was also in disfavour for signing players over the previous five years who were good but not politically correct.
On top of that, he has pneumonia. The doctor forced him to rest in a convalescent home, but by February 1938 he was with the boys. To reassure his wife and the doctor, he took them to the hills around the convalescent home of Montecatini, near Lucca, and to reassure himself, he began to work. Without him, the team did not work. He knew that his failures would be a good excuse for the fascist bigwigs in the club to get rid of him. Indeed, they kindly advised him to leave on his own.
Erbstein knew when it was time to be emotional and when it was time to be pragmatic. He resigned. The club announced that he had left for health reasons, he later told the truth. The irony was that just three months later he reappeared in the limelight, this time at the top of Italy’s most ambitious team – Il Torino.
Play and laughter
He has surprised the boys with his preparations for the season. “They think they are just playing. They don’t understand that this is the best preparation,” he explained why they were hiding, chasing, playing ball and so on. He took his approach from the Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga, who wrote that “play” is an important part of human collective culture and that it is through it that freedom can be found, in which order is essential. Erno, of course, did not explain his philosophical theoretical foundations to the boys, he just let them have fun in a stress-free environment and, incidentally, weave strong bonds with each other.
He encouraged them to laugh. Why? Because a team that smiles through periods of triumph and periods of trials will stay in control under pressure. He gave the boys a whole new lease of life. “The pride of a pride of deer led by a lion is stronger than the pride of a pride of lions led by a doe,” someone has vividly described their intertwined nature.
For Erbstein, it was very important to be friends with the boys. He gained their respect because he saw their virtues and understood their weaknesses. “More than a great coach, he was an exceptional man. He was the first to establish a friendly relationship with the players, not an authoritative one. The relationship was man to man, not man to machine. Erbstein was the first person we trusted, even if it was … lapses. He always had good advice for us,” recalls actor Raf Vallone.
At that time, Torino was just rising to the top under the leadership of the new President Ferruccio Nova. Novo wanted the club to operate as a well-oiled business, and in Erbstein he found a perfectly compatible collaborator.
He could afford Erbstein despite the anti-Jewish law. In Turin, support for the fascists was low, and anti-Semitism was generally opposed by the townspeople. The environment was surprisingly healthy for family life, although 14-year-old Susanna and 7-year-old Marta were not allowed to go to school. They were taught by a private tutor.
But the Turinese resistance could not last forever. On 3 December 1938, the newspapers announced: ‘Erbstein is gone’. He had no other choice, he had to resign. For two months he thought about what to do. It was not safe in Hungary, but it was in Holland. From there he got a job offer and accepted it.
In the Nazi tentacles
In February 1939, the Erbsteins took the train to Rotterdam. They took only the essentials with them, everything else would have to be sent after them. They arrived at Kleve, the last stop before the German-Dutch border. The Nazis entered and demanded documents. Erbstein had a Dutch visa, a work permit and a residence permit. Everything was in order, except that they were Jews.
German law forbade Jews to leave the country. It referred to German Jews, but it was a small thing that did not stop the Nazis from immediately tearing up the passports of all four family members. They dragged them off the train, shouted at them, kicked them and beat them. They were put on a lorry and taken to what was known as the Jewish House, or a sort of assembly centre for Jews.
In reality, it was four two-bedroom flats where they crammed about 100 people and sold them a few scraps of food once a week for a fortune, as Marta later recalled. Weeks and months passed in overcrowded and dirty rooms full of people in need whose language they did not know. The Erbsteins did not know what fate awaited them, and no one outside the German borders knew what had happened to them. They had to find themselves.
Erbstein had already been thought of before they set off for Rotterdam. He withdrew all the daner he had in the bank and bought diamonds. They sewed them into their clothes so that they could not be confiscated. Now he opened one diamond and gave it to a guard in exchange for one phone call.
On the other side, his former boss Ferruccio Novo spoke up. He almost had a stroke when he heard the news. He immediately contacted the Hungarian embassy to intervene and, surprisingly, the Italian Football Federation also got involved. The pressure was strong enough for the Germans to allow the Erbstein family to leave.
Erbstein could not help feeling guilty when he left behind unfortunates who had fewer connections than he did. After the war, he researched what had happened to them. They were all sent to their deaths. He could not help them, he could only take care of his family.
The Germans allowed them to return to their home country, but Jolan fell ill due to stress just when they were due to board the train to Budapest. It was difficult for her to stand, let alone walk, but she had to go on. The younger daughter Marta had stopped speaking because of the trauma of the past months, but she too did as she was told in silence.
At the beginning of 1939, the Erbsteins were back in Hungary. It was not safe, but at least it offered them a chance to survive. Erno Erbstein, 41 years old, quickly adapted to his new circumstances. He set up a textile business with his brother, who had been fired from the bank because he was Jewish. With his connections and Karoly’s knowledge, the business was soon thriving, although the brothers did not aim for a quick profit.
Erno approached business as he did the game, with a scientific and rational mind that always balanced his romantic attitude to the world. He accepted life as it was at any given moment, and that was when Marta needed his attention.
She still hasn’t spoken. She had withdrawn into herself and forgotten everything she had experienced before coming to Germany. Although she never recovered her memory, her father successfully put her back on the road to life those days.
Finding a school for her seemed like mission impossible until he came across the Calvinist Scottish Missionary School run by Miss Jenny. She agreed that Martha would just sit in the classroom until she decided to speak up. A few months later, her father’s tactics bore fruit. “Ablak, fenster, window” were the first words of Marta, who had grown up in Italy and now had to learn Hungarian, German, English and Hebrew at the same time. She became a regular student, with the help of a local teacher to help her catch up.
Both girls, aged 9 and 16, started attending the prestigious Ballet Institute. Through dance, Erno hoped, Marta would become mentally stronger and Susanna would have a chance to express herself, since she was not allowed to go to school. Marta was later convinced that it was because of her father’s indomitable spirit that the family lived a relatively normal life. “I doubt I would have got through the trauma if it hadn’t been for his intelligence, resourcefulness and loving nature.”
But at the same time, Erno was managing his former team remotely, alongside his family and his business. He and Novo were in regular contact by phone, but as this was not enough to get the boys playing the way they should, he travelled to Italy via Yugoslavia with a forged passport provided by Novo. From there, he wrote to Susanna, telling her not to neglect her studies.
“Things will change, it can’t be otherwise. One day, common sense will prevail. That day cannot be so far away from today, and that is why I care so much about you keeping in touch with the school you had to leave – not through any fault of your own or mine, but because of circumstances beyond our control and which should not have lasted much longer.
Chi la dura la vince (He who perseveres, wins), the Italians would say. Continue to walk upright, strong in mind and spirit, through painful events and in spite of all difficulties. If you never look away from your ideal, if your will does not kneel before obstacles, if your inspiration remains pure and is never seduced by luxury, pleasure or the easy life, you will – surely you will – become what I dream of you becoming: a superior being, a poet, a writer, a scientist, or something of the sort.”
He immediately sent her books from Italy. “Let me say it again – don’t neglect your classical studies, even if you can’t go to high school at the moment. The philosophers, poets and thinkers of ancient times are still our spiritual fathers. Knowing their thoughts is crucial for anyone who wants to become an intellectual, just as knowing the alphabet is crucial for anyone who wants to learn to write.”
Towards the end of the letter, he explained again why he wanted her to read it: ‘Do not believe that we are also developing spiritually, because our technical progress is opposed by a regrettable spiritual regression.’
It is not clear whether he was in Italy only once or several times, but in any case his life was relatively manageable at the time. The family even went on regular holidays, moved to a better part of town and, thanks to the success of the Erbstein brothers’ business, avoided the fate of many other Jews in Budapest.
Life or death?
But the situation was changing rapidly. The war was turning in favour of the Allies, and in March 1944, Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest. It became clear that the Hungarian Jews were next in line for ethical cleansing. Marta could no longer go to school, but it soon became clear to her that this was the least of her problems.
The Germans began deporting Hungarian Jews to death camps at an accelerated pace. They saved Budapest for last. There was no chance to escape. Even Erbstein could not find one, he could only rely on the refuges set up in Budapest by foreign diplomats and the church.
Father Pal Klinda turned the uninhabited Katalin Monastery into a factory for the production of uniforms, essential for the War Ministry. It stood on Vatican soil and was protected by international laws, but it was clear to all that this did not guarantee complete protection for anyone.
The women who worked there needed it. They were all Jewish. No one knew this formally, although the Ministry probably had an inkling of what was going on behind the tightly closed doors. Behind them, all three of Erbstein’s ladies of the heart also found a way to survive. They were helped to safety by Valeria Dienes, Susanna and Marta’s ballet teacher, who was on good terms with the permanent papal mission in Budapest.
Jolan and Susanna quickly learned to sew, while Martha, who was too young to work, was simply hidden away. The women worked eight hours a day. They were not allowed in the garden without being seen. They were constantly afraid of what would happen to them, and at the same time worried about the family members who were not with them. They had no contact with the outside world. Or almost none.
One day, Susanna was called to the phone. She heard her father’s voice. He was alive. For now. Once he had got his women to a place of relative safety, he had reassessed his options. He could go underground, hide and risk being arrested and sent to a camp. The other option was to volunteer for a labour camp, as he was legally obliged to do. He did. As he marched towards his new destiny, he knew that he would survive only if he maintained his physical, mental and spiritual strength.
Because he was in good shape, he was sent to build a railway line, even though it was a Sisyphean job during the constant bombardments. He did not think about it. He reported to the camp. Suddenly he saw a familiar face in front of him. He was like a ghost from the past. In this war, the face belonged to his kapo, or Jewish overseer, who collaborated with the Nazis; in the previous war, it was the face of his assistant.
In the weeks and months that followed, the mutual affection that the two men had felt three decades earlier was revived. Capo often took Erno with him into town, saying he needed help, and in passing allowed him to call his girls. When it was too dangerous, he called himself and delivered his message. So the Erbstein family was back in touch and once again seemed to have their lives somewhat under control.
Of course they didn’t have it. When the Hungarian government tried to reach a premature armistice with the Allies in October 1944, Hitler replaced the moderate regent of Hungary, Rear Admiral Miklós Horthy, with his loyal oprodo, Ferenc Szalasi. Now the Jews no longer had anyone to protect them, at least in part, and even Father Pal Klindë’s monastery was no longer safe.
The extreme anti-Semites, led by Pater Andras Kun, first marched menacingly in front of him, then they broke into him. The women found themselves facing the barrels of guns. They were pushed into a room. They were stripped of everything they had of value.
It was a Sunday, or a day when they were allowed to call their relatives. The collaborationists came up with a fun game: the women had to invite everyone who called to a party and lure them into a trap. They must not give anything away that they are lying.
The phone rang. Susanna was called. She heard the voice of her father’s friend, Cap. With her gun pointed at her temples, she began to tell him about the party in a raised tone of voice. He sensed that she was different, and it seemed strange to him that he, her father and all the Jews they could smuggle into the monastery were invited to the party, but he could not know what was going on.
A little later, the phone rang again. The call was again for Susanna. This time it was her father on the other end. In the same tone of voice, she repeated the same story, but in between, in the same calm way she normally spoke, she uttered the word aiuto, or help. She usually spoke to her father in Italian. He only replied that he understood and that she should remain calm.
She returned to women. They were waiting again. No one appeared at the door. The collaborationists were getting nervous. They herded the women into the street and led them to an unknown destination in the middle of the night. The Jewish women knew well the stories of the Danube, where Jewish corpses floated. Already exhausted, they were convinced that they were on their way to death.
But before they could give in to their fate, a car pulled up alongside them. They didn’t see who got out or hear what was said, but their Hungarian captors turned them back towards the monastery. They now assumed that a bomb had been planted there and that they would be sent to the other world right there. “We were exhausted. We told ourselves that it would be better to be killed than to continue this morgue,” Susanna recalled.
But nothing happened. They were safe in the convent again, at least at that moment. They did not know that as soon as Erno Erbstein had hung up the receiver, he had called his daughters’ ballet teacher, Valeria Dienes, and asked her to intervene at the Papal Nunciature.
The Papal Nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, had long before joined some foreign diplomats in trying to save as many of Budapest’s Jews as possible. His younger colleague Gennaro Verolino was a great help to him. Rotta immediately put pressure on some influential members of the Hungarian government and more or less threatened them with being guilty of war crimes if they did not withdraw from foreign territory, which Vatican territory undeniably was.
He also spoke to the Minister for the Interior. So did his deeply religious wife, who was scared to death of the rift between the Hungarian government and the Church and the scandal that would follow. The Minister could not stand the pressure of two such important people. He ordered the women to return to the convent. His will was carried forward by Gennaro Verolino, a man who got out of his car on the road.
The tense last weeks of the war
Some 70 women were now safe, but they knew they would not be for much longer. They began to prepare to flee. Meanwhile, Gitta Mallasz, who ran the convent factory, had become involved with a young SS officer. He happened to knock on their door because he had heard that a former colleague of his was working there.
He and Gitta had a little chat and she complained to him that they were being harassed by the Hungarian collaborationists. She kept quiet about the technical detail that the workers were Jewish. As the SS were stationed in the immediate vicinity, they cavalierly offered them their protection. Under her protection, the women fled one night. Only 13 women remained in the convent. They were either too old or too weak to escape. Only one of them survived.
Jolan, Susanna and Marta went to Jolan’s sister, who was married to a Hungarian and temporarily protected from deportation. They risked being stopped and arrested on the way because they were undocumented. They arrived at their destination happy, if scared to death. For now, they had a safe hiding place in a block of flats.
But the labour camp was no longer safe for Erno. He began to plan his escape. He got in touch with four of his teammates, one of whom was his trainer colleague Bela Guttmann. They had met in 1927 on a tour of America, and were now trying to gather as much information as possible about when, how and where the Nazis would take them before the approaching Soviet army.
First they marched to Vac, a small town outside Budapest, from where they went to Erdovaros and then on to Timothy. There, Erbstein’s group was put on a train which was to take them to an unknown destination. Petorica decided to make her own destiny.
For several days, the men had been observing the habits of the guards and discussing the terrain they should jump on to avoid breaking their ankles. When the time came to jump, no one hesitated. They quickly took shelter and dispersed.
Erno went to Pest, where his family lived. Now he was hiding in his sister-in-law’s flat, while his girls were already free to roam around. They managed to get hold of forged documents. Susanna’s were the best, because they had the Red Cross stamp on them, and Martini’s were the worst, because they could not find a deceased girl of her age, only to replace the picture on the original document. They had to forge the whole document and the forgery was bad.
But the war was coming to an end. They had to hold out for a few more weeks, maybe a few months, they estimated. The Allies started bombing Budapest. All the tenants had to go to the basement. Erno couldn’t, because nobody knew about him. It was a good thing that Susanna had papers with the Red Cross stamp on them, so that she was allowed to move around and she could bring him food.
One day, a neighbour mentioned to her that Hungarian collaborationists were coming because there were Jews hidden in the house. Erno had to leave immediately. But where to? His niece, an employee of the Swedish embassy, intervened and, under the tireless Raoul Wallenberg, rescued Jews en masse.
Erno spent the first night in the embassy offices, then was transferred to an unknown location, but in any case managed to survive the last weeks of the war. His younger daughter Martha almost did not.
When they came to their block to pick up the Jews, they checked the documents of all the residents. Jolan and Susanna were sent to one side by the soldier, and after a thorough check of Martin’s identity papers, she was sent to the other. Her stomach twisted with fear. She couldn’t even move. Before she could gather herself to take a step, another soldier came up, looked at her face carefully and sent her to her mother.
Her previous group was taken to the courtyard. Everyone in it was shot. When the Red Army finally entered Budapest on 13 February 1945, all four members of the Erbstein family were still alive.
Reborn in Turin
The plague was over and Erno wanted to get back to what he really loved – football. He only stopped long enough to change his family name. After what he had experienced during the war, he no longer wanted to carry on his old aristocratic Prussian surname. He changed it to Egri and became Erno Egri.
But when he returned to the Turin bench in September 1946, the Italian media could not write about him with his new surname, so it was inserted as a middle name. Erno was renamed Egri Erbstein when he was not being written about as Ernesto Egri Erbstein. The confusion in the Italian media at the time about the spelling of his first and last name continues to this day.
Ferruccio Novo was not influenced by Erno’s surname. During the war, he had remained in contact with Erbstein as long as the situation allowed, and now he immediately offered him his old job as coach. Ferruccio Novo “was one of those rare people, perhaps even the only one, who … not only did not abandon me, but turned out to be a true friend, which certainly made my life better than it really was”, Erbstein later explained in his own style their relationship and his experience of the war.
He returned to Italy without his family and began to build on his old successes with new but excellent Torino players. Now he was technical director, with a succession of coaches. Before the first decisive game, he explained to the boys: “This game is also a game of nerves. Don’t lose them and don’t let them provoke you or be influenced by anything else. Victory is only complete when you are not only better than your opponent technically, but also play with honesty, calmness and discipline.”
He wanted to turn his team into a well-tuned racing car, but he also needed good food to keep it running smoothly. He noticed that the players from the south of Italy were in better shape than the northerners at certain times of the season, and concluded that it was because of the food. Seasonal fruit and vegetables from the south had started arriving at the club and the players had also started taking vitamin supplements.
He has forged friendships with the boys again and protected the less well adjusted. One of them, for example, had a habit of getting on his motorbike under stress and disappearing for days. He only turned up just before a match, once so late that his replacement was already waiting for his five minutes. He explained that his engine had broken down and he was late.
Erbstein sent him to the field and ordered him to train individually the next few days, because he didn’t really shine in the match. He operated on a “fire and forget” system, one of his colleagues recalled. “He liked them too much to take any major disciplinary action, even if it meant that they sometimes took advantage of his kindness. Punishment? He didn’t even know what that was.”
His daughter recalled that for him, “players were never just ‘men kicking a ball’, but people. He knew their family problems, tried to understand them and be helpful when things got tough in their private lives. He knew that a team could only work well if the boys were in balance with each other, not at odds with each other over the worries of everyday life.”
For example, he helped Valentin Mazzola to get a divorce, even though he had to do his own research to find the easiest and least dusty way to do it in Romania. Nevertheless, he kept telling the boys that their private lives should not interfere with their football lives. He expected everyone to give their best, no matter what was happening at home.
Thus, by June 1947, or just a year after he survived the holacava, he and his team became national champions for the first time at the age of 49. And that was enough to make enemies. After the war, Italy was reeling from its fascist past, but Italian selector Vittorio Pozzo was still firmly in the saddle, even if his name was badly tarnished. After a dispute with Erbstein, which in itself was nothing special, the former fascists united and hit out at him.
He was publicly accused of being a communist and a Soviet spy. His friends did include anti-fascist poets and philosophers, but that did not automatically make them communists. And Erbstein did go to Budapest, which was under Soviet influence, but there he had a wife, a daughter and a business that was still going strong.
Susanna had already returned to Italy after marrying an Italian, while Jolan and Marta decided to recover from the traumatic war in Budapest. But at the end of 1947, the Iron Curtain began to descend over Hungary and it was only a matter of time before the borders were closed. Their visa applications were continuously rejected. Erno had to get them out of the country.
But how could he leave Italy unnoticed? At a time when he had to explain publicly that he was not a communist and that he was not passing on classified information about Italy to the Soviets, he simply could not go to Hungary. Unwittingly, his boys helped him. They whipped their opponents in the match and, as a punishment, both coaches were not allowed to sit on the coaches’ bench for a month.
Now Erno had an excuse for his absence in public and headed to Budapest. He called his former political acquaintances, including the Minister for Sport, Gyula Hegyi. He explained that he needed visas and passports. Hegyi knew what the original visas were and had some blank passports in his drawer. He pasted pictures of Jolan and Martha in them, forged the visas and everything was ready to go.
Erno left the country and waited on the other side of the border. Marta went to school and halfway there she remembered that she had forgotten something at home. She jumped on the tram to the central station and met her mother, who had presumably gone out on an errand. They had only their passports and nothing else. Nothing should have revealed that they were planning to run away.
They drove to the border. Fearing that someone at the ministry had noticed that two passports were missing, they trembled as to whether or not they would be able to cross the border. No one stopped them. Finally, she and Erno returned home. To Turin.
But the family had only a year and a half of happiness ahead of them. On 4 May 1949, the news struck like a bolt of lightning that a plane carrying the then unbeatable Il Grande Torino team had crashed into the Superga hill on its way home from a friendly match with Benfica. All 31 passengers on board were killed. Including Erno Egri Erbstein, aged 51.
