1. LOVE OF A MOTHER

In 1905, my father Martin was the last of 11 children borne by his mother Rosa, or so he thought at first. He never forgot her face, careworn but still beautiful, its oval shape set off by wings of dark hair. In the single photo we have of her Photo1 she had grown fat - who wouldn’t have, with all those children - but how she doted on him in those first four years, until his little brother Dezso was born! From then on, Dezso was her pet and continued so for the rest of her life. All that remained to Martin was the memory, which he tried to recreate by choosing wives that resembled her.

Thus Martin was left to the care of his older brother Alex, the “wild one”. Many opportunities for mischief presented themselves on the rural Hungarian farm where their father Adolf was overseer. “Why don’t we play butcher” suggested Alex one day, picking up the axe hanging in the barn. “You’ll be the lamb, just put your hand here on this block of wood…” Martin was rushed to the doctor with four bloody fingers dangling dangerously, but was saved with only a lifetime scar. Another day Alex buried Martin up to his neck out in the field and left him there all night. Nobody missed him until morning in the crowd around the kitchen table clamoring for food.

Alex ran away for the first time at 14, when he looked much older than his real age. They found him at an elegant spa, where he had become engaged to a young countess, but brought him back by force. Soon he ran away for the second time and was never heard from again. Since the family name was Willinger, they later suspected that he had made good in America as the gangster Dillinger – that kind of success would have been just his style.

Martin, bereft of even this ambiguous relationship, soon left home himself. Up to Budapest to look for work, he slept in a flophouse to save money: a cord was strung between two ends of a room and the “boarders” rested by lying across it. On the weekends he was invited to dinner with distant relatives, but gave that up when he noticed that they served the noodles in a large tin pan that also acted as a footbath. Then he met Johan, the placid young woman who became his first wife. She looked just like a younger version of his mother and was probably a few years older than him. Or so she appears in her pictures, next to Martin with his fledging mustache and uncertain look. Photo2

Jobs were scarce even in the Hungarian capital, so the young couple emigrated to France hoping for improvement. He had qualified as a plumber’s helper and soon found work in a factory. Here he had another lucky escape: while fixing the gutters on a roof, he stood up and touched the live electric lines above him with his shoulder. Wet feet would have led to an early death, if he hadn’t fallen towards the slanted roof instead of into the deep below. Colleagues had already informed Johan of his death when he showed up at home, with only a bad burn on his arm.

With the compensation money for the accident and their savings, Martin and Johan returned to Hungary to start a family. Little Vera was born, Photo3 resembling of course her mother and thus Martin’s mother Rosa. The same oval face and dark hair looks out at us from the photograph, but maybe he would have loved her anyway, if she had been blond like me? Their happiness lasted a dozen years, with work going well and even a small house being bought in Nyiregyhaza, Martin’s home town.

That was the house from which they were all taken away during the war by the Nazis, Johan and Vera Photo4 never to return. Only Martin escaped and walked back on foot from the forced labor camp he was confined in, to find an empty house and his life in ruins at the age of 40. He, who had never smoked before, took up smoking like a fiend in order not to go crazy with memories. Then his sister-in-law Edith showed up, another survivor needing a place to stay. Edith resembled Rosa his mother and maybe that led to his falling in love again so soon. His parents had been taken away as well, so only this resemblance remained. When I was born a new story began, a new love for a blond child who finally resembled himself, to continue until his death in faraway New York.