Itt-Ott, 1980 (13. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

1980 / 1. szám

THE NEW YORK yagas.

iiMES, SUNDAY, MAY 4, 1980

^agMaaeasta

\C%'

On TV,

By ELEANOR CHARLES

• •• •: * *V. •*. . Bridgeport

Fn' Tn^E close-knit and proud Huningatlan community that clus• j 1 tered In the V/est End of

L_J Bridgeport in the early pact of

this century and has now all but disappeared will he celebrated tonight at 10 ' in “Searching for Wordiri Avenue,” on Connecticut Public Television.

Worxlin Avenue, where Exit 26 of the Connecticut Turnpike empties into an urban renewal area of Bridgeport containing an Industrial park end subsidized housing, was once a teeming, self-sufficient ethnic enclave. ,

' The community of 15,000, crowded into tenements and shops along Wordin Avenue, working In nearby factories and gathering in the; huge, long-slncc demolished Rákóczi Hall at Bostwick and Pine Streets, once made up almost 15 percent of the city’s population.

. Strong young men from northern Hungary, many of them expert toolmakers, worked 17 hours a day alongside boys of 10 at the forges of the American Tube and Stamping Com’ pany for a dally wage of $1.35. Their i Wives, daughters and sweethearts sewed corsets In the Warner factory (now Warnaco), hiking home at noon in > platoons to prepare lunch for the men,

' then hiking back again for another six hours of work before dinner. k One American Tube building Is still

* In use on Railroad Avenue, but the ' weekend festivals, the gypsy violins . and homemade wine, the picnics on [ Fayerweather Island pungent with 'sutnl szolona (pork drippings on rye

bread smothered1 with onions and peppers) sizzling on open fires, and the 1 brightly embroidered costumes celo' bra ting the Hungarian love of flowers, 1 are gone. *

The film, the work of Steve Ross, a ; member of the faculty of Sacred Heart University, traces a familiar pilgrimage at the turn of the century. A farmer named Harsanyi decided to try his luck tn the New World alone, later sending for his wife and daughter, who made I the dismal journey In steerage. At first „the family ghared a tiny apartment . with two strange men, and by the time , the father was able to buy land his wife jhaddied. á

i' The principal roles are played by professional actors, the extras are . dedicated Hungarians who volun-K

tee red. Interspersed with thq story are old stills, early movie footage and interviews with second- and third-generation IIungarian-Americans who live in the area. '

One of them is Mary Katona, Town Clerk of Fairfield and daughter of a 1011 immigrant. Recalling the brief heyday of her forebears, she said, "They had their own school, bus line, shops, bank — everything within walking distance. Some of them prospered quickly and were able to move out, scattering through Fairfield, Trumbull, Easton, Monroe and Stratford. ” Consequently, by the time the turnpike came and cut across the heart of the neighborhood in the 1960’s, the ambitious Hungarians were gone, assimilated and unrecognizable from other Americans. The marginal areas created by the turnpike, in which not even the three powerful Hungarian churches, Roman Catholic, Byzantine and Reformed, could not survive, were then bought by the city to further it3 urban renewal plans. "There were a lot of public hearings and organized opposition, but there was nothing anyone could do. The Irish neighborhood in the south end was destroyed too," said Miss Katona. .

Mr. Ross chose the Hungarians as his subject, he said, because "so little has been done about them. They were not representative of the image we have of immigrants. They weren’t starving or abused at home. They were simply dis-, satisfied working for baronial landowners, never having anything to pass on to their children. Here they fulfilled the American dream,” he said. V Unlike others who returned to their native countries after making money here, Hungarians could not return to what had become Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia. Since World War I about 60 percent of Hungary has been reapportioned, Mr. Ross pointed out. !

The film, which was made as, an educational project with a combination of government grants totaling $56,000, does not deal with the period after the 1930’s. "The Hungarians who came in the second wave of immigration after World War II and the 1953 revolution deserve a movie of their own,” said Mr. Ross. “I wanted this to be a starting point for discussion. What I think is important is that they and the 12 square blocks they 'inhabited just disappeared.” t , □