Outcasts
outcasts
outcasts
a love story
Susan M. Papp
Copyright © Susan M. Papp, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Project Editor: Michael Carroll
Editor: Barry Jowett
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Papp, Susan M
Outcasts : a love story / by Susan M. Papp.
ISBN 978-1-55488-422-3
1. Schroeder, Tibor. 2. Weisz, Hedy. 3. World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Hungarian. 4. Holocaust,
Jewish (1939-1945)--Hungary--Biography. 5. Soldiers--Hungary--Biography. I. Title.
DB999.N329 P36 2009 940.5482439 C2009-900284-1
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program
and
The Association for the Export of Canadian Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program
, and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
This book is dedicated to the youngest member of the Weisz family who was killed simply because of who she was - a twelve-year-old girl named Icuka who was sent to the gas chambers on the day she arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau at the end of May 1944.
T
HIS BOOK HAS ABSORBED
my life for the past six years. I owe a debt of gratitude to so many people who provided support and encouragement, both those who are mentioned here and those whom I have inadvertently omitted. First of all, I want to thank my grandmother, Margit Hokky, who instilled the love of storytelling in me at an early age. I would also like to thank my husband, Bela, who has encouraged me to pursue this project for years and who has coped with the frustrations of living with a writer.
Dr. Sandor Szakaly was of invaluable assistance in researching the military history of Hungary. The collected academic publications of Csilla Fedinec were enormously valuable in providing a comprehensive history of Karpatalja. I relied on the research of many scholars and authors to authenticate the history of the era. These books are listed under Suggested Further Reading.
Eva Demjen, Tibor's wife of many years, was a source of inspiration, never failing to tell me that this is a great story and needs to be told. Special thanks go to the many people who read chapters and gave their feedback: Mark Lovewell, Ilona Mikoczy, Bobbi Speck, Eva Tomory, Helen Walsh, and especially to writing coach and editor, Myrna Riback.
Without the brilliant advice and assistance of Anna Porter, this project would have never come to fruition. I will always be very grateful to her for that.
Finally, many thanks go to all the people at Dundurn Press who have been so supportive and helpful: Kirk Howard, president and publisher; Michael Carroll, editorial director; and Barry Jowett, my editor, who so skillfully brought the manuscript together.
Hungary in the twentieth century. Reproduced from Historical Atlas of Central Europe by permission of Paul Robert Magocsi, revised and expanded edition (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002). Nagyszollos (Vinogradiv today) is now in Ukraine, just across the northeastern border of Hungary between Satu-Mare and Mukachevo.
T
HIS STORY MIGHT NEVER
have been told had it not been for an incredible accident - one that can only be called serendipity ...
This incident occurred in 1988 in Toronto at a banquet to celebrate the successful completion of a new non-profit apartment building for Hungarian-Canadian senior citizens. The federal government and the Ontario Ministry of Housing were partners in funding the building, but my husband, Bela Aykler, the developer of the project, was sponsoring the banquet. For Bela it was especially important that the evening unfold without a hitch. The staff of the minister of housing for the Province of Ontario had announced that the minister, who had gained a reputation for her tough, intelligent, no-nonsense style, would attend the banquet. Bela saw this as a real opportunity to provide a positive impression of his company of developers and property managers.
The minister, Chaviva Hosek, arrived exactly on time at six-thirty with a very masculine-looking female assistant. My husband greeted them and introduced them to me and several other guests. We escorted them into the reception area and offered them each a glass of champagne and
pogacsa
(cheese biscuits) and, after a few minutes, Bela left to attend to other arriving dignitaries.
Events at the Hungarian Cultural Centre are notorious for starting late, and this evening would prove to be no exception. Left standing with the minister, I was relieved when several individuals approached her and introduced themselves. She was soon surrounded by people. Once I realized that, as a public person, protocol must require her to attend hundreds of such official functions each year, I stopped worrying about entertaining her. A trusted friend offered to give the minister and her assistant a tour of the artwork in the rooms, and I was pulled away by another group.
When Bela returned to check on the minister, he found her standing in front of a map of pre-First World War Hungary, examining it with great curiosity and pointing out something to her assistant on the map. When he joined them, the minister turned to him and asked, "Could you show me where you were born?"
Bela was a bit taken aback by the request and tried to shrug it off. "Trust me, you have never heard of it. It's a very small place that isn't even part of Hungary anymore."
"Try me," replied the minister with a little smile playing on her face. "What is the place called?"
"It was called Nagyszollos when I was born there, in a region Hungarians still call Karpatalja, though it's now known as Transcarpathia and is part of Ukraine."
The minister paused for an instant, visibly taken aback. Bela saw clearly from the expression on her face that she was stunned by his answer. "My mother was born in Nagyszollos," she answered calmly. "Did you know the Weisz family?"
Bela looked at her in disbelief. Not knowing what to say, he finally blurted out, "I was very young when I left to go to boarding school, but my older sister spent many more years there. Let me bring her over and introduce you to her." The minister nodded without saying a word and continued to study the map.
Bela hoped to find his sister quickly in the increasingly crowded room. She wouldn't be easy to pick out. Caroline - or "Picke," as everyone called her - was diminutive and, as she grew older, she seemed to shrink in height and weight. Soon he recognized her signature ash-blond, coiffed hair. She was chatting with a group of elderly friends when he politely interrupted and asked her to come with him. Elegantly dressed in a black velvet suit with rhinestone buttons offset by a string of pearls, Picke's face didn't show the years of hard work that had enfolded her life. Like the other members of their family, Picke and Bela had come to terms with the indisputable hardship of losing everything and starting anew. Each member of the family had developed a fatalistic attitude about life. Pulling her to the side, he looked intently into her eyes.
