Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1988. július-december (42. évfolyam, 27-48. szám)
1988-09-15 / 34. szám
Thursday, Sep. 15. 1988. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 11. AHlERICAn HURCARIARS At Rest Now Among the Locust Trees By Charles Fenyvesi WASHINGTON - The land my ancestors contracted to rent in the northeastern part of Hungary at the beginning of the 19th century was poor, windblown sand, only a little better suited for agriculture than dunes on a beach. The gentry, who owned everything as far as the eye could see and beyond, were happy to find somebody foolish enough to risk money and effort on such terrain. I do not know where my ancestors, who had been traders originally, learned farming techniques. What was handed down to me is that they planted locust trees, a new import from America to stop the harsh wind from the Carpathian mountains from stealing the soil. Then they collected all the dead foliage and all the manure they could get and plowed it under, year after year. By the end of the century their persistence paid off. They had bumper crops of wheat and potatoes, and from the profits they kept buying unimproved land. But the very first plot of land they acquired - at the end of the 17th century, long before Jews were allowed to own land - was for a family cemetery a mile from the village of Derzs. They later surrounded it with locust trees, which soon spread to form a grove, and even family members who sought their fortune outside the village returned to be buried there, in unplaned pine coffins, as required by the law of their Jewish faith. The family's motto ‘ was that nothing should be allowed to go to waste; if the story is accurate, they had a compost pile before it was "invented" early in this century by a British botanist. They experimented with fruit trees. They were among the first in the country to buy steampowered machinery to winnow wheat. Perhaps they bought more land than they could manage or invested too much money in equipment, which was stolen during the disorder of World War I and the Romanian occupation. By the time my grandfather died in 1920, the family's fortunes had been reversed, His eldest son, Samuel Schwarcz, then 21, fresh out of the Hapsburg emperor's army, took over the estate but failed to stop the slide to disaster. By the middle of the decade, everything had to be auctioned off to pay debts. The family moved to the nearby city of Debrecen, then scattered. The land so lovingly tended by five generations was lost and became a distant, painful memory. No longer belonging to the privileged class of landed gentry and out of place in the city, Uncle Samuel became a bookkeeper for a wine distributor. After World War II he was among the few who returned from a Hungarian forced-labor battalion dispatched to fight the Red Army - only to learn that the Nazis had eliminated his wife and daughter. He retired in the mid-'60s and for the next quarter-century nurtured a dream: to be buried in the family cemetery. But the problems seemed insurmountable. No one had been buried there since the family left the village in the 1920s. (Most of our relatives, as well as the Jews who stayed in the village, became wisps of smoke over Auschwitz.) The law was clear: A cemetery unused for 30 years is considered, abandoned, and no one may be buried there, so that the land could be returned to agriculture. Uncle Samuel refused to bow to reality. Every year or two he visited the village, far from paved roads and nearly a day's journey by train and bus from his home in Budapest. Two world wars, occupation by foreign armies and indigenous revolutions brought about changes in the local population, about 600 now, but he found a few old villagers who remembered him and had nothing but kind words for the Schwarcz family. He also made friends with the schoolteacher and the priest, both newcomers. He talked with and wrote to the school- children, who initially thought that the Jewish cemetery was haunted and that Jews had been wiped off the face of the earth. But they all learned to appreciate his stories. Every year Uncle Samuel was asked to tell the story about an ancestor of his who could not overcome his grief at burying his only son. Then a rabbi advised him to stage the funeral again. But this time he was to turn the tombstone over on the grave so the inscriptions could not be read - and, indeed, the father found peace. The Catholic priest studied Hebrew to translate the inscriptions on the tombstones, and by the early 1980s weeding the cemetery had become a school project. Two years ago some children put flowers on the graves on All Souls' Day, as they did on their own family graves. Than they had second thoughts and wrote to Uncle Samuel: Was it all right to observe a Christian custom in a Jewish cemetery? The answer came by return mail: "I am grateful and my ancestors were never so honored." Reluctantly, Uncle Samuel made contact with officials of the collective farm who at first looked at him - a courtly gentleman who used words they had only read in history books - as if he belonged in a museum. They didn'tknow what to say when he told them that he had been born in the building they now used as an office. But they soon found out that the old eccentric had no anger in him. He loved the land and could even offer good advice on how to use it better. Using bottles of plum brandy and the colorful stories of a long lifetime as his only negotiating tools, he asked the local authorities to accept a special arrangement: to look the other way when he arrived on his last journey. A few weeks ago, Uncle Samuel died at the age of 89. He was buried just as he wished, next to his father and near his grandfather, after whom he was named. Everyone from the village attended the funeral, and the schoolchildren sang his favorite song. A nephew who transported the pine coffin in his car brought along a rabbi. For the first time in more than 40 years, a Jew was buried in the village; and for the .first, time,in history, the vilAccording to the Latin saying, “Flowers are the stars of the earth” and according to the Chinese one it's the other way round: “Stars are the flowers of the sky." Poets address their loved ones by the names of flowers. Flower songs are born on the lips of the people. The Lord is said to have created the first couple in a flower garden—Paradise. Gardens assert an age-old attraction. Few can resist their symbiosis of man and nature. Ibusz Hungarian Travel Company satisfies this yearning with flower tours through Hungary's great flower gardens from spring until autumn. One marvels at the rarities in the ar- boretums and picks meadow flowers for sprays and garlands. Violet tour: The violet (Viola odorata) is a herald of spring. The tour starts from Budapest, and passes through Fót and Veresegyháza to reach Galgamácsa, where violets can be picked in the Galga Valley in April. used in cough mixtures. The flower, according to legend, will guide the one who holds to distant hidden treasure. Ibusz takes its guests to the treasure of the flower itself. The cowslip tour from Budapest to Transdanubia passes through Tata to the Horog Valley and Bagoly (Owl) Hill. The month for it is April; Blue globe-thistle tour: Echinops ruthenicus is an adornment of Hungary’s sandy puszta wastelands. Guests travel from Budapest via Kecskemét to the nature preserve at Bugac, where this simple flower smiles at them from the juniper grove. But it's a protected species—picking is strictly forbidden! The blue globe-thistle blooms in August. läge priest assisted in such a ritual. Late spring is the time for locust trees to bloom, and no one was surprised that on the day of the funeral the trees were in their full glory. Their sweet perfume wafted over the cemetery. The villagers said that the slender, pendulous clusters of blooms, quivering in the wind, were never before as numerous as on the day the last landowner returned home. Mr. Fenyvesi is a writer for U.S. News & World Report and a garden columnist for The Washington Post, to which he contributed this story. Cowslip tour: The wild ;owslip (Primuia veris) blooms in dry oak forests and clearings. It is a herb whose dried roots are still Illustrations: MTI: from “ Vadvirágok'1 (Wild Flowers), a pocketbook with drawings by Dr Vera Csapody published by Móra Kiadó. Budapest
