Budapest After the Ceasefire, Gunpowder Used for Fire — 1946

In the months after the ceasefire, when Tom and his mother were getting established in their apartment, they had to make do with what they could scavenge from the rubble.

Utilities were defunct. Electricity was not reliable or non-existent. Light from candles would have sufficed, but they were scarce. However, we did have cooking oil which could be the basis for a lamp. I filled a small glass jar with oil, braided pieces of string for a wick, and pulled it through a small hole punched into a three-pronged star cut from a discarded can. Three small pieces of cork pushed onto the prongs of the star kept it afloat. We lit the lamp with a splinter of wood from the fire in the stove. Its glow provided us with light and a cozy atmosphere. When the oil got low, we would pour water into the jar, which lifted the layer of oil. The water would get replaced with oil whenever we were able to obtain more of it. 

I thought others might want an oil lamp like this, too. I displayed them on a table made from discarded plywood, and began selling or trading them for food. This little venture became handy when we had no other source of other income. Heat, if any, came from small wood stoves in which we burned broken pieces of furniture we found lying around the ruins. It was not unusual to see a building with a stovepipes sticking out of each window.

We needed paper to get the fire going, but it was hard to find. Instead, I went on frequent search trips for unused bullets. When I got home, I pried them carefully away from their canisters with a pair of pliers and collected the gunpowder in glass jars. One had to be careful with opening the bullets. One of my buddies lost three fingers when his pliers slipped and the spark ignited a canister full of gunpowder.

With the stove door open, I would spray a quarter of a cup of gunpowder over the wood. There was little danger of an explosion using this method. Mother was not very happy with this process, but she trusted my technical prowess. It kept us warm and we cooked and fried whatever we could afford to buy from the proceeds of my oil lamp business.