Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)
World War II. Second and Third American Tour (1939–1945)
WORLD WAR II. SECOND AND THIRD AMERICAN TO U R ( 1 9 3 9 - 1 9 4 5 ) 1 945 16 July - He begins to draft a letter to Mr and Mrs Schulthess-Geyer in Switzerland excusing himself for not having written so far to anyone but his son Béla in Budapest. (In the end he didn’t mail this letter either.) At the reopening of more direct contact with Hungary, in two letters Bartok asks a doctor in New York, Dr. István Sugár to make inquiries regarding the fate of certain persons via his acquaintances travelling to Budapest. In the first letter he inquires about the fate of Mr and Mrs Kodály, Béla Bartok Jnr and his wife, Jenő Pásztory, Bence Szabolcsi and scientific materials, in the second one about the situation of his first wife and her family, László Lajtha, György Kosa and Antal Molnár. All of the listed people survived, and his own furniture is also mostly intact. 19 July - Bartok writes all this to his son Péter, still in Panama. 21 July - He also notifies Pál Kecskeméti from Saranac Lake of the relatively good news, especially of his furnishings having remained almost intact. He writes that he received actual news regarding the fate of the folk music collection, about the cylinders not having been ruined during wartime events but by burglary, and he puts the blame on the occupying army: “The cylinders of the Ethnographic got damaged by robbers’ in April [obviously ‘in robbers’ outfits’ which, as it happened, might have had a great resemblance to Muscovite military uniforms. At least now you can know, Pali, what the robber’s outfit looks like!] Both copies of the 13 thousand melody notations are still there, carefully hidden [whom these still needed to be kept from even on 25 June?]... Just think back to the fact that the April newspapers of Pest only talked about damage, not about robbers, and then meditate on the identity of the robbers - ”. He also mentions the Shilkret Album which created publication problems. 25 July - He writes his son Péter the news from home in a repeated letter, to be on the safe side. 503
