A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Historica 3. (Szeged, 2000)
Dr. HALMÁGYI Pál: A francia tolmács
The essay describes one of the typical groups of peasants of 19 th century Makó through the 30 members of the Árva-Trúth family, who were in general the well-to-do, sometimes rather rich residents of the Catholic section of the town. The study gives an insight into the process of selecting partners for marriage and the traditions of the marital ceremony of the period - "GUBA A GUBÁHOZ, SUBA A SUBÁHOZ" [Rich to rich, poor to poor]. In other words, it describes how the majority of the relationships began within a street or in the same section of the town, and how rare it was when a person from another settlement became part of this Makó family. Ferenc Truth lived through the entente occupation, following World War I, in Makó and was the bond between the French military authorities, occupying the settlement, and the town leadership as the official French interpreter of Makó. Among others, he was the one who housed General Lobit, the temporary commander-of-chief of the entente army of Hungary when he visited Makó on May 10 th , 1919. (See photograph on page 10.) At the beginning of the 1920s, Ferenc Truth returned to Paris where he died after a long and intriguing life in 1968, at the age of 91.
