Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2014 (26. évfolyam, 1-39. szám)
2014-09-26 / 37. szám
Hungarian Journal Always in my heart by Marta Fuchs The Author, Marta Fuchs, is a Professional Speaker and a Distinguished Psychotherapist who is the author of two books, Fragments of a Family: Remembering Hungary, the Holocaust, and Emigration to a New World, and Legacy of Rescue: A Daughter’s Tribute about her father and the Righteous Gentile who saved him. Marta was born in Hungary after the war and escaped with her family to the U.S. in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Her website is www.martafuchs.com . It’s a fantastic human story, a love story of Marta’s 96 year old Hungarian mother who reunites with her lost long love after 70 years! Marta’s mother is an Auschwitz survivor and she was also the caretaker of Anna Frank. Part 1 My parents both survived the horrors and devastating losses of the Holocaust and somehow managed to transform their grief into a meaningful life filled with compassion and service. They enjoyed a long and loving marriage for 54 years until my father’s death at nearly 89 years of age. They were filled with joy and pride from two children and four grandchildren. My mother at 96 today, “a force of nature” as some friends affectionately call her, is still curious and involved in the world and people around her. Yet over the years I would hear the sorrow in her often-repeated words that none of her boyfriends, not one of the men she dated, came back. And in particular, her fiancée Bandi for whom she vowed and waited for 5 years despite getting word that his labor battalion had “disappeared.” I have often wondered, what if he, in fact, had survived? A few years ago, my brother Henry, his two kids, and my two kids set out on another one of our trips back to Hungary. My brother and I were born in Hungary after the war and lived there until our escape in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. We enjoy going back to visit family in Budapest and childhood friends in Tokaj, and to search for our ancestral roots in the old cemeteries of Hungary and Slovakia where no Jew had the good fortune to be buried since before the war. We enter a small town in Slovakia in search of the cemetery where my father’s maternal grandfather is buried. Dad comes from a long lineage of famous rabbis on both sides of his family. We have been here before, years ago with Dad, but despite our notes and hand scrawled map to the cemetery, we are unable to find it. So we once again troll with amusement for old women and men who would speak Hungarian in this region that once belonged to Hungary. We spot an old man walking on the road with a cane and overcoat. It’s November and bitter cold. We stop and ask if he knows where the old Jewish cemetery is. “Yes, that’s where I am headed too,” he responds much to our surprise. We wonder why. There are no Jews left in this town nor in any towns around here. We offer him a ride which he gratefully accepts. He sits in the back with the girls and says a few words to them. Mimi and Sophie respond in Hungarian much to his delight. “What nice accents you both have,” he remarks. He notices their Star of David necklaces and smiles, with a touch of sadness Sophie later tells me. They smile back, and notice his priest collar. We soon reach the cemetery. “Egy pillanat, just a moment,” he says as he gets out. “I just want to let my sister know that you are here.” We look at each other surprised that the priest lives right here. We wait on the porch and he quickly comes out of the house with a sweet old woman. “Jó napot kívánok, good day. My name is Marika, Péter you’ve met is my brother. It is so nice to see you all. It’s rare that someone comes to visit these poor souls” as she extends her arm toward the cemetery. We search for hours through dilapidated and worn tombstones, fatigued and defeated, finding no evidence of a fence or some special marking to show the honored way in which Dad’s great grandfather, once the head rabbi of this town, would be buried. We rest on some big rocks, suggest we should just call it a day and say Kaddish since he’s here somewhere. No one can move, we’re so tired. I tell the kids about the last trip with Grandpa to another cemetery, and the miracle we all called it, when Dad and Henry and I found Dad’s great great grandfather’s grave. Jacob is visibly energized and leaps up. “Let’s just look one last time.” And soon he finds the grave, nearly hidden behind a little tree whose branches provide a canopy for both the rabbi’s and his wife’s grave next to his. We clean the graves in earnest using gloves we had brought and the shovel Marika lent us. We gather around and begin to say Kaddish. Sophie glances at Marika and Péter who are watching respectfully from the side, and notices that Péter’s eyes are closed and his lips are saying the Kaddish. “Mom, look. Why would he know the Kaddish?” she whispers. “Well, clergy from other religions often learn Hebrew,” I whisper back. “But he has tears in his eyes.” “He must feel the loss of his Jewish neighbors.” We ritually wash our hands on the porch and go inside to use the bathroom. Marika invites us to sit and have a little snack before we head back. Péter wants to show us something and takes us into a little alcove in his bedroom. “Here’s the one Torah I was able to save before the synagogue was completely ransacked. I probably should bury it, as I understand is the custom, since there are many torn parts. But Marika and I have been thinking of creating a little Jewish museum here next to the cemetery so that the school children could learn a little something about Jewish history, especially since there are no Jews left anywhere for hundreds of kilometers.” Marika brings out fruit and pastries and the kids’ eyes pop with glee. “Look at that mákos!” Sophie and Mimi exclaim seeing their favorite poppyseed pastry. “So, tell us about your family,” Marika asks. Henry and I take turns giving the highlights, ending with saying that at 95 Mom is doing well. “And what is her name?” “Ilona” I respond and add that Dad told me laughing that somehow everyone he met through shadchens, matchmakers before the war was named Ilona! “And what was her family name?” Péter asks. “Engel” says Henry, adding that Mom was one of five girls, and that she and the youngest, Sárika néni, are the only ones still living. “Here, let me show you a recent photo of Mom” Henry says as he grabs his iPhone from his pocket. “She’s 95?! She looks amazing!” Marika exclaims. Péter is visibly moved and slowly takes the phone in his hands. As his fingers move across Mom’s face, I hear him barely audibly say “lea.” Sophie hears it too, and looks at me wondering. I whisper that lea is the nickname for Ilona. “Tell us more about her,” Péter asks softly. “Is she in good health?” Yes, we say, that she is living in a skilled nursing home, and that she is going to outlive us all since she has such determination and zest for life. I suddenly notice the time. “Sorry, but it’s getting late and we need to leave if want to make it back to Tokaj before sundown.” “Let’s have a group photo,” Henry suggests as he sets up his self-timer. We gather around Marika and Péter and snap a few shots, thank them, and say goodbye. Our flight from Budapest to London, then London to New York went smoothly, but in New York our flight to Raleigh was delayed a couple hours due to adverse weather conditions. We called Mom to notify her. “I don’t care how late it is, just please call me when you arrive. I want to see you.” We arrived at nearly midnight and called Mom who insisted we come over. We called the nursing station to see if that was possible. “Sure, your mother has been anxious to see you. It’s been hard for her with all of you being gone so long.” To be continued in the next issue Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller to receive Wallenberg Medal Distinguished Hungarian philosopher and Holocaust survivor Agnes Heller will receive the 23rd Wallenberg Medal on Sept. 30 at the University of Michigan (U-M). Heller has spent her career seeking to understand the nature of ethics and morality in the modern world, and the social and political systems and institutions within which evil can flourish. Like U-M alumnus Raoul Wallenberg, for whom the medal is named, Heller has demonstrated that courage is the highest expression of civic spirit. She has witnessed regimes that have organized murder, crushed dissent, and persecuted independent voices. In 1944, as a young woman surviving in Budapest, she knew the name “Wallenberg.” Raised in a Jewish family, her father used his knowledge of German to help families emigrate from Nazi Europe. While Agnes and her mother avoided deportation, her father was sent to Auschwitz, where he died. She also lost many childhood friends in that terrible time. Heller has said the Holocaust “exercised an immense influence on my whole life, particularly on my work,” and she believes she has “a debt to pay as a survivor.” Her experiences during World War II led her to question the fundamental philosophical source of morality and evil in people and what kind of a world can allow horrific events like the Holocaust. Heller spoke out vigorously for autonomy and self-determination after the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. “My experience of the Holocaust was joined with my experience of the totalitarian regime,” she said. Both raised similar questions in what she calls her “soul search and world investigation. ... I had to find out what morality was all about.” Following thé defeat of the 1968 Prague Spring, she went into exile and became the Hannah Arendt Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate Studies Program of The New School in New York. She is an influential scholar who publishes internationally acclaimed works on ethics, aesthetics, modernity, and political theory. In 2010, she was awarded Germany’s prestigious Goethe Medal. Now retired from The New School, Heller has returned to Budapest, where she lives in a small apartment high above the Danube River. She remains fully engagéd in public life, speaking out against the neo-nationalist and anti-Semitic strains that are again current there. She actively argues against the policies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his party, in light of their actions to strip universities of their independence and limit freedom of expression. The current political climate in Hungary has made many university faculty members reluctant to speak out against policies implemented by the Ministry of Education. A 1935 graduate of U-M’s College of Architecture, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II. For more than 20 years, U-M has awarded its Wallenberg Medal annually to a humanitarian who has devoted his or her life in service to others, umich.edu Highest Quality Care at the Best Price! Elderly, Rehabilitating, Children, Newborn Beszélünk magyarul is! Ingyenes konzultáció otthonában. 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