Tom Tottis, who fled to Britain as a refugee to escape the Russians during the Hungarian uprising, has died aged 89.
A Brightlingsea resident since 1967, Mr Tottis died on Christmas Eve in the Colchester care home he entered after a stroke in the summer of 2022. More recently he’d been suffering with skin cancer.
Mr Tottis was born in Budapest in 1935 of Jewish ancestry. His family was subject to oppression during the war, and aged 10 he was sent to a nunnery for safety but ‘escaped’ and managed to return home after a death-defying journey. His father died in Buchenwald towards the end of the war and his mother narrowly avoided being rounded up for transportation, thanks to the kindess of some Hungarian policemen who objected to the German occupation of their country.
In 1956, a 12-day uprising against the Soviet-backed government was crushed by the USSR and Mr Tottis was one of some 200,000 Hungarians who fled the country. Travelling by train – lying in the luggage rack thanks to his small stature – he jumped off just before the Austrian border. He then walked across a strip of land peppered with holes ready for the fencing that was to form the Iron Curtain – and which had been a minefield. Guessing that there wouldn’t be any mines near the holes, he ran and made it to safety.
He arrived in Britain in December 1956 at the age of 21 and married Maria in 1959. Daughter Jackie was born in 1962. The family moved to Brightlingsea, where Mr Tottis started work as a foreman at Astralux Dynamics, and went on to hold a managerial position at Ormandy & Stollery, from where he retired aged 60.
He became a Freeman of Brightlingsea and supported the Cinque Port Liberty, the annual open gardens event, the Friends of All Saints and other local charities. He also worked as caretaker of All Saints’ and was the first to discover – owing to a large puddle in the vestry – the theft of 100kg of lead from its roof in 2008. After a subsequent theft a few days afterwards, he was at one point to be found ‘standing guard’ outside the church at 2am.
In 2010 Mr Tottis published a well-received memoir, A Long Look Back, still for sale on Amazon, where it’s described as “a family saga of three generations, ravaged by two wars and adverse circumstances”. In the cover notes, Mr Tottis wrote: “I had met the Grim Reaper more than once, have walked side by side with him and observed him at his work. The Reaper’s aversion to his task makes him dour and miserable, yet each time our paths have crossed the Grim Reaper smiled at me.”
Mr Tottis’ wife died in 1980 and besides his daughter he leaves two grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
