When I was growing up, I felt as if a golden age had existed just before my time. As a young child I caught glimpses of it before the war. I lived in a large apartment in Budapest, Hungary, with my parents, my little brother, and my grandmother and her sister, my great-aunt. The beautiful city, with its river, bridges, and hills, lay all around us. Many of the houses were painted yellow. It now seems to me that there was a golden light everywhere. My grandfather, who died in 1940, had a thoughtful face and a gold-white mustache. I remember him singing a Hungarian folk song to me “There is only one little girl in the whole wide world / And that little girl is my dear turtledove. / The Good Lord must have had me dearly in his heart / When he created you just for me.”

I still love that song. Although we were of Jewish origin, it symbolizes how Hungarian we felt, part of the culture of that flat land. My family was middle class, not wealthy, and they were disillusioned by how little the country had changed after the efforts of my grandparents’ generation early in the 20th century to bring about greater justice and equality. But my parents enjoyed their friends and the lively cultural activities of Budapest. All that changed in the early years of World War II. Jews became non-persons, non-Hungarians. They had to wear yellow stars, couldn’t attend public schools or public events. My parents lost their jobs. They had to train non-Jews to take over their livelihood.… Continue Reading >>