Subscribe by RSS
Subscribe by EmailGeorge Soon Off For Family Heritage Trip!
Wednesday morning I’ll be off on a European trip for two weeks with my daughter Emily, who will have just graduated from high school the previous evening.
We will be stopping first in Budapest, Hungary, land of my ancestors, for a reunion of relatives from Hungary, Israel, France, and the US.
Q. How and why did we get so spread out?
A. An unfortunate event known as the Holocaust, which many members of this Hungarian-Jewish family were fortunate enough to be able to survive, one way or another.
In the incredibly short period of May 15 - June 6, 1944, Eichmann and his Sonderkommando deported 437,000 Jews of the Hungarian provinces (i.e., everywhere but Budapest) to Auschwitz with the active help of the Hungarian clerks, policemen, solders and gendarmeries.
My grandmother, father, aunt, and uncle (the latter three as teens) were among the fortunate few from the provinces who were shipped away for forced labor instead of to the Auschwitz death factory.
Meanwhile, my other grandmother, mother, and many other relatives survived in Budapest.
Nearly 200,000 Jews were terrified in Budapest by the coming into power of [Ferenc] Szálasi’s Arrow-Cross men. The troops of the Red Army were not able to liberate the ghetto of Pest until the 18th of January, 1945. Up to then, hundreds of defenseless Jews were murdered by Arrow-Cross men every day. . . . Many Jews were tortured horribly before their death, others were simply shot and thrown into the Danube which was filled with drift-ice. They handed over nearly 70,000 Budapest Jews to the Germans for forced labor.
Source: “Photographs Documenting the Holocaust in Hungary”
After the war, Hungary was abandoned to the Soviets by the West, and the 1956 revolution quickly crushed.
Now, finally, the nation is enjoying a return to its proper place as a free, democratic, vital, and prosperous part of Europe.
It will be a bittersweet return, my first visit since 1969, when I was 12, and red stars and Soviet blandness and depression were everywhere.
So, you see, while I write of discrimination law in the US from the employer’s perspective, I also have the perspective of someone raised by people who personally knew discrimination of a much deadlier type.
Thereafter, Emily and I will tour by rail, west to Paris via Austria, Italy, and the French Riveria.
I will have my laptop, so you never know, I may be posting from some hotel or Internet cafe. But if I don’t post for a couple of weeks, you’ll know why.
Photo: classic view of Budapest and Danube River by rguha via flickr
Related Posts
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing.
Have a great trip, George. I hope it is a lot of fun, as well as a great learning experience. Please wish my best to your family; I’ll be curious as to how they experience the “new” Hungary.
Finally, I wish you and your daughter a very safe trip!