Outcasts (32 page)

Bela had heard about the black marketeering that went on between the city and the countryside, but he never imagined there would be so many people on the train heading west toward Gyor. The train was packed on Saturday morning, with hundreds of men and women even climbing to the top of the train and hanging on. This is where Bela finally found a spot. Carrying knapsacks and suitcases held close to their bodies, they were mainly dressed in grey, brown, and black work clothes. Could all these people be heading to sell things in the countryside? Bela tucked the precious cargo into the safari pants he still wore - it had many closable pockets.

As the train pulled out of the Nyugati train station, another slow-moving train was just pulling in. It was also packed to the rafters with people coming back from the countryside. The two trains passed each other and a great cry went up: "Death to the black marketers!"

I guess this is what will greet us on the way back, he thought.

T
IBOR'S DAY USUALLY BEGAN
before dawn. He awoke, dressed, and drank a cupful of something that distantly resembled the taste of coffee. It was instant coffee laced with chicory, and no matter how much of it one drank, there was never the feeling that one had consumed enough caffeine. What I wouldn't give for a good cup of espresso, he thought.

By five in the morning he was out of the apartment, looking for places where Jews from Karpatalja might gather - looking for anyone who might have any bit of information about Hedy. He would search the streets until 8:00 a.m. when he went to his uncle's restaurant to work. After working all day, he would go back to walking and searching. He usually got back to the apartment late at night after darkness fell on the city.

Over the past few weeks, he had felt that he had walked down every street, side street, and alleyway of the city. His feet ached by the end of the day - he barely felt the pain anymore. The soles of his shoes were nearly worn through. He remembered with regret the many pairs of shoes he had left back home. He wished he had taken just a few more pairs. Yet he kept walking, relentlessly, knocking on doors, making enquiries.

Sometimes he was met with a smile of a neighbour - a Jew from Nagyszollos who remembered his family. Sometimes he was greeted with disdain and suspicion. Often he was asked to explain himself: "What do you want with the Weisz family?" But most of the time people just stared back at him when he asked about Hedy Weisz, the daughter of Vilmos Weisz and Terez Leizerovich from Nagyszollos.

Karola Aykler and Domokos Aykler as refugees in Austria.

One day in early August, fortune smiled upon him. He encountered a young woman named Sara who remembered that the Aykler-Schroeder family had sent yeast into the ghetto - with it, she had been able to bake bread for her family. This young woman had seen Hedy's younger brother, Suti, in an apartment block around Nagymezo utca. Tibor was elated.

The next morning at five he walked to the building on Nagymezo ut. It wasn't even dawn, yet Tibor felt it would be another hot summer day. There was a bit of a hot breeze, reflected off the concrete buildings and streets. He waited until seven, when people started entering and leaving the building. Tibor didn't recognize Suti at first - when he saw the skinny kid walking toward him, he looked twice, then three times. Suti slowed down as well - the young man standing at the entranceway to the building had a familiar stance about him.

"Sutikam," Tibor said.

Suti smiled - a big warm smile. They hugged each other.

"I'm just going to work," Tibor began. "I'm working at my uncle's restaurant cleaning up rubble. Will you come with me and talk to me while I work? I'm desperate to find out about what happened to you and your family."

Suti agreed to come along so they could talk. He saw anxiousness in Tibor's eyes.

As they walked along, the questions started pouring out of Tibor: How long had he been in Budapest? When had he returned? What had happened to them since he had last seen them at the train station in Nagyszollos?

Finally, he blurted out, "Did you know I am in love with Hedy?"

Suti stopped, turned to Tibor, and replied, "Yes, Hedy told me you were in love with each other and that you were engaged to be married. She told me on the train, once we left Nagyszollos. She was holding the prayer book you gave her on the platform."

One tear slipped inadvertently out of Tibor's right eye, and he wiped it away quickly.

"Is she all right?" Tibor asked quietly, tentatively, almost as if he feared hearing the answer.

Suti started telling, slowly at first, then sentence by sentence, what had happened to them since he last saw Tibor on that fateful day more than one year ago.

Suti explained the last time he saw Hedy was in January, when they emptied the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. "It was a horrible place in Poland. Icuka was taken away on the first day when they arrived. She got into the wrong lineup - the one for small children and elderly women. They went into a building that was a human crematorium. That was the last time anyone saw her alive." Suti could see the colour drain from Tibor's face as he spoke.

"Hedy and Aliz were together," Suti continued. "They shaved their heads. I don't know where they are today. I hope they are all right. But I know I wouldn't be alive were it not for Hedy encouraging me to fight to survive. Father died a few days after we were liberated - he was very sick with typhus." Suti's voice cracked with emotion.

They were still walking side by side, Tibor's face ashen, his whole being visibly shaken by all he had heard. After minutes of silence, as if he needed the time to absorb all of this, he reached over, gently putting his arm around Suti's shoulders. "I feel like a boxer whose head has been pummelled by too many blows. There are no words to express how sorry I am for the suffering endured by your family. If only I could have done more ...." His voice broke, and no more words came out. There was nothing more to say.

They walked the rest of the way in silence until they arrived at the restaurant where Tibor worked. His job was to salvage what was salvageable - mainly glass from the rubble. Window glass was of great value in the city, so much of it had been smashed during the bombardments. Suti offered to help. Tibor demonstrated how to gingerly place the glass in rows. They worked silently side by side, both immersed in their own thoughts, in all that had been said.

The sun crept higher and higher in the sky. It wasn't even 10:00 a.m., yet the day was already turning into a scorcher. Both worked without gloves - gingerly lifting and carrying the useable pieces of glass. But Suti's hands were sweating from the heat and one of the large pieces of glass slipped out of his hands and came crashing down onto the concrete sidewalk, breaking into what seemed like a hundred pieces. Tibor was aghast and although he didn't say anything, he realized within a few seconds that the look on his face was one of "how will I explain this to my employer?" Tibor could see that Suti felt terrible about the accident and despite Tibor's assurances that it wouldn't be a problem for him, Suti quickly said goodbye to Tibor and left. Tibor continued working in the scorching sun, hoping no one would notice the tears streaming down his face as sweat poured off his brow.

T
HE CLANDESTINE GROUP WORKED
in a dimly lit office in an old apartment block on Nagymezo ut in the heart of Budapest. Ten people sat around a massive table, all of them focussed on some aspect of creating official-looking false documents. The windows were covered with thick, dark paper to block prying eyes from seeing what was going on inside. Between the slats of the hastily pasted black paper, streams of hot August sunlight fell on the working group. Everyone had their specific role in the operation. Two young men concentrated on folding the document, making sure that the paper was the right weight and size. They worked with a Gestetner stencil machine. Each copy was made slowly, carefully, with the turn of a crank. Each name was written in by hand. Others were typing the created identities: place and date of birth, false addresses, made-up occupations. New identities for individuals who had lost or destroyed their identity papers during the war. These Jews had made it through the war. Some, through luck or chance, survived the concentration camps, others stayed alive by hiding in the basements and attics of Budapest, or in rural areas. The forged papers re-established their identities, allowing them to ultimately leave Hungary and travel to Palestine.

In the centre of this working group sat a thin, almost emaciated young teenager, looking much older than his fifteen years. Suti felt he had regained a semblance of his identity within this group of left-wing Zionists. The people he worked with never saw him smile. He deadened himself to the pain of the past year.

He believed in nothing. His religion, his home, his childhood memories were all extinguished within him. He considered himself no longer Hungarian. After all, the Hungarians had betrayed his community and family in the cruelest way: by loading them all onto cattle cars and sending them and hundreds of thousands of others from Karpatalja to Nazi concentration camps. It didn't matter that they were brutalized by the Nazis in those camps; Suti held the Hungarians responsible for the act of being evicted from their homes, loaded onto cattle cars and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The past year had awakened the Jew in him. While being persecuted as a Jew, he ultimately found his Jewishness. For the first time in his life, he wore a Star of David on a simple chain around his neck. And he started calling himself "Itzik," a derogatory name used by some Hungarians for Jews. It was comparable to calling a black person "nigger."

Suti had a very important role in the group. He knew the Cyrillic alphabet - the seemingly incomprehensible language of the Russians, who presently occupied Budapest. The creation of identity documents was one of the most critical and most lucrative services one could provide in 1945.

Suti created the Russian signatures and the stamps, which were so crucial for the veracity of the documents. Without the prominent red stamps, nothing was official as far as the Russians were concerned. Some of the Russian soldiers who were stopping citizens were illiterate, but when they saw a large red stamp with Cyrillic lettering, they felt reassured that everything was in order.

Zsigmond Perenyi, the son of the baron, discovered through Tibor that Suti was living in Budapest and sent a message that he should come for a visit. Suti had always admired the baron's son. He was a curiosity: Oxford educated with a skinny American wife. Eleanor Perenyi didn't speak a word of Hungarian - nor did she try to learn. She kept herself aloof from most of the residents. She became pregnant during the war and went back to the United States to give birth to their child.

Zsiga wasn't alone in the apartment when Suti arrived. Terez Alexander was there as well. Terez came to Nagyszollos during the war and lived with the Ilkovics family - she was one of the refugees from Slovakia fleeing persecution. Terez sat silently as they spoke, occasionally wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. At one point, she stood up and said she was going to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. It was then that Zsiga quietly confided to Suti that they had fallen in love with each other. He was determined to marry Terez once his divorce from Eleanor came through. Nothing else mattered, he said.

Young Zsiga looked contented as he spoke of their love. Suti was moved that Zsiga would confide in him about their love affair. They sat quietly. By this time Terez had returned with a pot of tea. Terez was so thin she looked breakable. Suti suspected she had lived through the camps as well.

Suti told them about his intention to go to Palestine. When he stood up to leave Zsiga guided Suti down a long hallway to the door, stopped, and quietly slipped him some money. "You will need it for your trip," he said in a half-whisper. Zsiga apologized that he couldn't give him more.

Suti was surprised, stunned, and moved by his gesture. Suti reflected on their humble circumstances - it looked as if the two of them had just enough to eat, but nothing more.

S
UTI WAS WORKING AMONG
the forgers when a stranger came to see him. The man introduced himself as Gyula Berger, and claimed he was a cousin from his mother's side of the family. Gyula had a strange-looking round hat on his head - part of a military uniform Suti had never seen before. Suti had never met this relative and was skeptical about whether he was indeed a cousin. At this point in his life, contacts and family members were critical for Suti. Gyula explained he had already made
aliyah
to Palestine in the 1930s. Suti queried him about dozens of family members - they went through the entire family tree before Suti's skepticism became allayed. He found out his cousin was an officer in the British army contingent in Palestine.

Gyula informed Suti that his brother, Bandi, was alive and already living in Palestine. Gyula claimed to have his brother's address - not with him, but in Milano where he was stationed. After a long night of talking, Gyula convinced Suti that he should go to Milano in Italy, where his unit would take him to a place where he would be well-looked-after. Suti was still a bit wary of this man in the strange uniform when they parted, but realized, during their conversation about Bandi, that his desire to go to Palestine and find his family was overwhelming. Ostracized by his homeland, he needed a place in this world where he felt at home. He believed in Zionism and wanted to build the new Jewish homeland. He heard all about the kibbutz system and wanted to live in and help build such a place.