Budapest 1944

Perele Horowitz’s early childhood had been peaceful, prosperous, happy: a close-knit family, an elegantly appointed apartment on Budapest’s upscale Andrássy Avenue. Her father, Tibor, was an importer with a successful business. Her mother, Klara, a regal matron who busied herself with her family and helping Jews less fortunate. With four older brothers, Perele was the coddled baby of the family, surrounded by love and prosperity. Though Tibor worked with assimilated Budapest Jews and his business partner was a non-Jew, the Horowitz home was a stronghold of Torah observance, with the boys learning in yeshivah and beautiful family meals around the Shabbos table.

Then came the changes. Whispered conversations, words like Nazis, conscription and forced labor, and, later, sonderkommando and ghetto. Names like Horthy and Eichmann.

More changes. Piece by piece the silver ornaments, the precious jewels, the elegant rugs and luminous artwork disappeared from their home. One by one, her brothers, too, vanished into slave labor battalions.

And then, not long after Perele’s bas mitzvah, came the night when her father’s gentile business partner arrived.

Tibor Horowitz placed his hands on Perele’s light-blonde hair, giving her the brachah that was reserved for Erev Yom Kippur. Klara Horowitz handed her daughter a small valise, then hugged her as if she would never let go.

And then she let go.

June 1964

“MYfather’s partner, Andras Kovacs, took me in. He was a good man. I was blonde and blue-eyed, and my father had somehow — I never learned how — gotten me forged papers showing I was a Christian, like the rest of the Kovacs family.”

Perele and Annie had wandered on a forest trail, far from the peaceful Manor House Hotel. Perele described her childhood in a quiet, low voice, almost a monotone, like someone far removed from her own life story. Now, though, she cast a concerned look at Annie and said, in a much more practical tone, “Annie dear, maybe this is too much for you. We’ve been walking and walking.”

Annie, who’d been absorbed in Perele’s story, suddenly became aware of her own tiredness. She noticed a large, low boulder nearby.

“I could use a few minutes to sit down.” Carefully, she lowered herself onto the rock, showing where Perele could sit next to her.

“And you survived the war in Budapest?” Annie asked, traveling back through the decades.

Perele smiled, a small, rather sad smile. “Obviously. I rarely left the Kovacs’ home. They were afraid my forged papers wouldn’t hold up to the police. Working together with my father, alav ha’shalom, Andras Kovacs had grown wealthy, and he owned a house of his own. I lived by myself in their basement. My identity was of a Christian girl from a Hungarian village, brought in to help the Kovacses’ chef. I spent hours in the kitchen — what else did I have to do? — and that’s where I learned to cook.”

“And then?”

“And then… the war came to an end. I could go back to my family. But there was no family. With the Kovacses’ help I searched and searched. Eventually I found out that my parents had perished in Auschwitz. Two of my brothers had grown too weak to be slave laborers and were deported and murdered there. My other brothers didn’t survive long enough to be deported, they died in the labor camp. My aunts and uncles and cousins — all gone.

“My father had an older brother who’d emigrated to the United States and done well. With the help of refugee organizations I contacted him. He sent me money — he still helps me financially. I stayed with the Kovacs. I had nowhere else to go. But I was usually alone.”

Though it was a beautiful June day in the forest, Annie shivered. She could almost feel the cold darkness and deep, endless loneliness of a young girl without home or family.

“The Communists were now in power, but I kept the mitzvos as best I could. I would spend Shabbos by myself in the basement. Of course, especially after the war, food was rationed, and anyway I wouldn’t eat treife meat. There was no kosher wine, but I did have two rolls, and I didn’t use electricity.” Another sad smile. “You can’t imagine what it means to me, when I’m in the hotel listening to your father and the others singing zemiros, and eating gefilte fish and chicken soup with other Yidden.

“I went back to a Communist-run school and, with financial help from my uncle, I began university when I was 18. And that’s where I met Laszlo.”

Perele sighed and glanced at her watch. “Annie darling, we’ve been gone pretty long. Your family will be worried about you. We’d better head back.” She carefully helped Annie up off the boulder and held a supporting arm around her shoulders.

“We met in a mathematics class. Though our backgrounds were very different — I was a Jew from a kosher Torah home, and Laszlo Schwartz was a Jew from an assimilated, Zionist home — we had a lot in common. Both survivors who’d spent a year hidden with false papers. Both Jews trying to survive in a Communist regime. And both lonely, so lonely, with no family.

“We met. We decided to marry, to rebuild our families. Laszlo agreed that we would keep a kosher home, as best we could in a Communist country, and that I would live as a Torah wife lives. I agreed that if we ever got out of cursed Hungary, we would move to the new State of Israel.”

Perele stopped, put both her arms on Annie’s shoulders and looked directly at her. “Annie, I understand your fears about Artie and Marjorie. And I can’t pretend it’s easy, or something that you would have chosen. But if this happens, if Hashem puts these two Yiddishe neshamos together, if there is respect, if there is love, they can make it work.”

Surrounded by the beauty of the forest and Perele’s story, Annie felt as if she’d been almost in some kind of waking, surreal dream. Now, hearing Artie and Marjorie’s names, reality fell heavily upon her.

Perele is wonderful, a tzadeikes. But she is wrong. This is not Communist Hungary in the 1950s. These are not survivors with no families. This is America in 1964. And it is the woman who creates a Jewish home, not a girl like Marjorie.

But she kept silent.

F

rom between the trees they could see the outline of the hotel building, and make out voices — Ruchele’s and Marjorie’s — in the distance.

Perele’s voice grew hurried. Annie couldn’t tell whether she wanted to finish up before they got back or if the memories were too painful to dwell upon.

“It was in 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, when many Jews were escaping from Hungary. Laszlo and I and our baby son found a guide. We hid during the day, walked during the night. Crossing the border, Laszlo’s leg got badly tangled in barbed wire.”

M

utty looked out his window as his father sped down the curving road. Through the blackness he could occasionally see the ghostly gleam of a deer’s eyes reflecting the beam of the headlights: twinkling lights in darkness, vibrant life hidden in the silent forest.

Other than the muffled roar of the Cadillac’s powerful V-8 engine, the car was quiet. The twins, who’d returned from Grossinger’s stuffed with food and sizzling with energy, were now blessedly asleep. When they first got into the car, Mama had placed herself firmly between them, to keep the peace between her two overtired and bickering boys.

Mutty turned around and glanced at his mother. She was sleeping now, her face peaceful.

So peaceful.

Funny, how upset Mama had been when Abe suggested that Artie join the others in the Mustang. Moe and Artie had come up to the hotel by bus, since the Caddy couldn’t hold all seven of them. But now, with an extra spot in Marjorie’s car, the two could be spared the long and boring bus ride. And it made sense for Artie to join them in the Mustang. This way he could go straight to the hotel, sleep in Uncle Moe’s room, and be ready to start work the next morning.

Mama had finally given in and so here was Mutty, with Ruchele’s head on his lap, sitting next to Dad.

The country road grew straighter and wider, and soon they were racing down a highway.

“Now we can finally talk,” Abe said, leaning back into the leather upholstery. “Those country roads can be tough.”

“But they’re fun to drive, aren’t they?”

“Sure are. Like country living. Tough, but fun.” Abe’s voice took on a more serious tone. “Would you like to live in the country, Mutty?”

“Never gave it much thought. You know what they say: It’s a nice place to visit…”

“…but I wouldn’t want to live there,” Abe ended his sentence. Abruptly, he changed the subject. “So what did you think of us old geezers?”

“Not geezers. Heroes.”

Abe smiled. “I guess you’re right about that. We lived in heroic times.”

“Dad?” A pause. “About that fellow. Jim. Is he usually drunk like that?”

“Don’t know. He certainly drinks too much.” Abe hit the gas and raised his voice a little so he could be heard over the engine’s protest. “Mutty, combat is complicated. You know you’re fighting for something good, something great. And you know you may die. You create friendships that are like nothing else on this earth — and you also have memories that may haunt you for the rest of your life, assuming you’ll live past the next battle. Men like Jim do whatever they have to to escape those memories.”

“Did you ever… do you have those kind of memories?”

A pause. “I have a wonderful wife, great kids, and a job I love. I don’t have time for memories.”

They lapsed into their own thoughts. There wasn’t much traffic, and Abe swiftly passed any cars that happened to be on the road. Soon they would be home.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

This was harder than he’d imagined. Mutty took a deep breath. “Dad, what would you say if… Dad, I want to enlist in the army.”

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 866)