Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2013 (25. évfolyam, 1-50. szám)
2013-05-03 / 18. szám
^MERICAN ^ VOTE MAY 21, 2013 Controller: Dennis Zine City Controller Wendy Greuel has stopped fraud and wasteful spending. She is endorsed by both Republicans and Democrats, including Mayor Richard Riordan and President Bill Clinton. Former City Council Member and State Asemblyman Prior head of Bet. Tzedek. Endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Former Police Officer and City Council Member. Endorsed by Firefighters and former District Attorney Steve Cooley. PAID FOR BY ALEX FRIEDMAN Highest Quality Care at the Best Price! Elderly, Rehabilitating, Children, Newborn Beszélünk magyarul is! Ingyenes konzultáció otthonában. Hívják Piroskát vagy Krisztinát! 24 Hour Immediate Response * Licensed & Insured * Companions * Assistants (CNA, CHHA) * Nurses (RN, LVN) * Newborn Nurses * Nannies & Babysitters * Group Child Care * Live-in or Live-out * Temporary or Permanent * Qualified & Screened * Flexible Payment Plans * Most Insurances Accepted * Worker Comp. & Long Term Care AdvantagePlusAgency.com 800 687-8066 The Death of a Countess in Exile They knew her as the slender, straight-backed woman with an independent streak and a head for numbers. She told them she had immigrated from Hungary, and her colleagues at Merrill Lynch did not pry with more questions. What most of them did not know was that their colleague, the quiet market analyst with the Italian name and the Hungarian accent, had been born a countess and grew up in a castle. They had no idea that Ilona DeVito, as they knew her, had had little formal education before arriving on Wall Street, or that she and her family had fled to New York with no more than few small suitcases to escape the Romanian Communist government. The death of Ilona DeVito di Porriasa last week, at 73, went largely unnoticed beyond her family and friends. But if nothing else, her story, as recounted by surviving relatives, peels back the hard shell of the city, proving, perhaps, that even the most anonymous apartment dweller can be a countess in exile. Born in 1939 in a Transylvanian Baroque-style castle given to her parents as a wedding present by her grandmother, Countess Ilona Teleki de Szék spent the first years of her life surrounded by nannies, maids and cooks. Her mother was a baroness, her father a count who served as Transylvania’s representative to Hungary; one of his cousins, Pal Teleki served as prime minister of Hungary on two occasions and was said to have been responsible for the passage of a number of anti-Semitic measures. Pal Teleki was said to have fatally shot himself when Hitler’s troops crossed the Hungarian border heading to Yugoslavia; the Hungarian Army joined in the invasion. Winston Churchill called Teleki’s suicide “a sacrifice to absolve himself and his people from guilt in the German attack on Yugoslavia.” Ilona’s daughter, Elisa DeVito, said this week that her mother had not expressed embarrassment about her relative’s place in Hungarian history, believing, as other members of her family had, that he had not been anti-Semitic and might not have committed suicide. But the family was vulnerable in the waning months of World War II, when the Soviets took control of Hungary and Romania, to which Transylvania then belonged. As recounted by Ilona’s daughter this week, the government imprisoned Ilona’s father, whom she would not see for another 20 years, seized the Telekis’ properties and eventually pushed her, her siblings and her mother out of their castle. (It is now a clinic and botanical garden.) The Telekis moved into a converted stable with no running water. The baroness took in laundry and sewing; Ilona worked in a shoe factory, her brother Paul on a farm. Ilona wore shoes made out of her grandfather’s old bedroom slippers, and her older sister’s dresses were made of old curtains. At one point, Ilona lived with her grandparents in a library her family had founded. It was so overrun by rats, she would later recall to her daughter, that they would sling wooden planks over the bookshelves at night to sleep. As anti-Hungarian sentiment rose in Romania, the government repeatedly pulled the Teleki children out of school and opened the family’s mail. Count Teleki finally escaped and sought asylum in the United States. His family joined him in 1964 after the count had bribed the Romanian authorities to allow them to leave. Ilona spoke no English, but she took a series of jobs — first at a hosiery factory in the Bronx, eventually as a teletypist at a financial firm. And though her father continued to advocate for Hungarian people across Central Europe, she rarely mentioned her past. “She didn’t really want people to know, because people think of nobility as having something, and my mother really had nothing when she came here,” her daughter said. Once on Wall Street, she showed enough aptitude that despite having no college degree, she was promoted to market analyst, studying trends and making investment recommendations. She joined Merrill’s securities research department in the early 1970s and stayed until retiring in 2005, developing a reputation for quick calculations and prescient recommendations — as well as a certain reserve. But she never acknowledged her background to most colleagues until they read her mother’s obituary in the 1990s. Some did not find out until her death. “In all the time I talked to her every day, we talked about Hungary and everything, but she never said a word about her being royalty,” said Tom Webster, a Merrill Lynch broker. In 1975, she married Lino DeVito di Porriasa, who came from an Italian noble family. Mr. DeVito died in 2008, a few months after his wife learned she had breast cancer. Even while ill, she loved to follow the stock market, even making a profit after the 2008 financial crisis, her brother said. She died on April 15. nytimes.com Május 3,2013 Hungarian jump rope artist loves spotlight in Cirque du Soleil ‘Quidam’ “My dad saw a movie about Double Dutch. He was teaching at a boarding school, and it was inexpensive. It had easy equipment,” said Adrienn Bánhegyi, 29, a world champion skipper and a performer with Cirque du Soleil. Bánhegyi is one of three jump rope artists assigned to the show, Quidam. Only two jump rope artists take the stage at the same time; the third arrives in town ahead of the show to promote it. Bánhegyi and her younger sister, Kata, alternate performing and making appearances. Improving coordination and staying fit were among her early jump roping goals, but after seeing an American Double Dutch competition team, she expanded them to include competing. Bánhegyi has been with Cirque since the end of 2010 and with Quidam since 2011, but at one time, she’d almost given up hope that she’d ever perform with the company. Despite holding two jump rope world records and winning multiple world and European jump rope championships, she waited four years before Cirque du Soleil called her with a job offer. She’d submitted an audition tape, and it was stored in a database until the organization had a spot for someone with her skills. Quidam is the story of “a young girl’s escape into the world of imagination,” according to the Cirque du Soleil Web site. Cirque spokeswoman Jessica Leboeuf called Quidam “classic Cirque du Soleil.” The story blends in acrobatics, clowns and audience participation. Bánhegyi performs a solo routine and participates in a group piece in the show. Bánhegyi said she likes performing with Quidam. “I really like the story line. It relates to every single one of us,” she said. To see Bánhegyi in action before the show, visit YouTube. A video of her jumping in the streets of her native Hungary was posted on YouTube on April 17 and within four days had more than 1.5 million hits. chronicle.augusta.com Herzog Heirs Say Closer to Recovering Nazi-Looted Art The heirs of a pre-World War II Jewish collector who are seeking to recover art worth more than $100 million said a U.S. court ruling and a Hungarian government announcement are steps toward success in their 70-year struggle. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit on April 19 rejected Hungary’s motion to dismiss the Herzog complaint, paving the way for a lawsuit to proceed. On April 16, Hungary announced plans to begin restituting looted art in Hungarian museums to owners persecuted in World War II. Baron Mor Lipot Herzog assembled one of Europe’s great private art collections, the largest in Hungary, with more than 2,000pjeces by artists including Diego Velazquez, Pierre-Auguste Rengjr anq Claude Monet. The art was looted by occupying Nazi Germany ancj by the Hungarian government of the time, businesscom City Attorney: Mike Feuer Mayor: Wendy Greuel
