As his written work focused on political developments in Europe , and his own early adulthood in central Europe became overlaid with more recent experiences , Stefan Szende was forced to confront his own very personal experience of the Shoah . In 1944 he published his book " Der letzte Jude aus Polen " ( '' " The last Jew from Poland " '' ) . In the foreword he himself described the volume as " the first detailed report of the annihilation of five Million Polish and other European Jews under German rule " . It is not clear whether or not at the time of writing the book he already knew that his family had been caught up in the Nazi extermination . His brother , László Szende , László 's wife Alice , their two sons Mihály and György , along with Szende 's mother , Elisabeth , had all experienced for themselves the intensification of antisemitic government measures in Szombathely , the family 's home town , where it was reported they had all been crammed into a Jewish ghetto . While László and his elder son , Mihály , had then been sent away as forced labourers , the rest of the Szende family remained , under appalling conditions , confined in the Szombathely ghetto from May 1944 . How Stefan Szende found out what was happening is not known , but after many years during which he had no contact with the relatives he had left behind , he telegraphed his sister in law and his mother from Stockholm , promising to do everything necessary to obtain visas for them so that they might travel to Sweden . Despite rising hopes , he was not able to help the relatives he had left behind . Deportation of the Jewish population of Szombathely to the Auschwitz concentration camp began on 4 July 1944 : Alice Szende and Elisabeth Szende were murdered in the gas chambers as soon as they arrived . Only young György Szende survived the death camp . In an Austrian concentration camp Mihály Szende died around the same time as his mother and grandmother . However , László Szende remained alive for long enough to be able to receive the visa arranged by his brother , and he used it to escape from Hungary . For the other family members , the visas arrived too late . Although Stefan Szende barely mentions his own family 's experience of the holocaust in memoires or other writings , it must have weighed very heavily with him that he was not able to rescue more of them , and the personal experiences will surely have affected profoundly " Der letzte Jude aus Polen " even if , as presented , its focus is on the wider political issues
Shoah
The Holocaust
Stefan Szende