After almost a year’s absence from my hometown of Miskolc, I arrived in Budapest with Shosha, my sister, and Rozalia, my mother. We stayed at the home of my aunt, Bozsi, and her daughter, Magda. My uncle, Moka, Bozsi’s husband, unfortunately did not return from forced labor.
How does one pick up the pieces and go back to the life one lived some 20 months before? How does one try to forget the way one left and the tremendous tragedy that was the reason for it all?
All of us spoke constantly of only one subject—the future—what to do, where to go, how to manage and plan our lives. And we came up with a solution: go to Miskolc and find out what happened with the penzió (boarding house), my mother’s business before the war.
The three of us did just that. Without getting into all the details, my mother, Rozalia, succeeded in getting the penzió back and started to rebuild it, finding suitable kitchen staff, a gardener, and most important: GUESTS!
She did it all on her own. My father, who had once been with her all the time—helping, advising, managing, even looking after Shosha and me—had passed away before we left Miskolc.
This was the time I wanted friends and needed company. I did not feel comfortable alone. I did not want to be alone. I did not want to remember and think of the past year. I did not want to go back to school because of the renewed antisemitism.
My very good friend, Edith, who had sat near me in class all those years, had been killed. So had the girls and boys I had studied with two years before. This was an absurd situation, not to be compared to anything normal. Still, it was expected of me to behave normally.
Could I? Well, maybe on the surface.
I called Eva, a girl I had known before. She was very happy to hear from me, and we met the next day. We were joined by Marika, whose aunt had been Shosha’s and my gymnastics teacher. Two days later a boy named Pista walked in on us talking, bringing a girl, Kati, with him. Then came Gyuri bringing Imre.
We became very good friends, having in common the tragedy of the past year. Besides Eva, Shosha, and me, all had lost a parent and a sibling. We called ourselves: The Klikk. The meetings were always at my house. We were some ten young Jewish people, including Ocsi and his brother Frici.
I had met Ocsi and Frici in a different way. I had once taught English, mostly to people who planned to leave the country. Ocsi and Frici’s father had called to enroll them to learn English with me and also asked me to prepare them for their matriculation exams.
As I was the same age as they were at that time, I changed my appearance and my hairstyle in order to look older and gain more respect.
Then came a time when I needed help with mathematics, for my own exams. I gave it a lot of thought, what to do. I could get a teacher from the school. But then I knew that Frici and Ocsi were very good at mathematics. So I swallowed my pride and revealed my age to them. I might have lost two students, but I gained two very good friends.
The Klikk’s main occupation was games of competition. We used to play operas, symphonies, and concertos on my gramophone—and had to tell what each one was and by whom. The same with reciting a paragraph from a book, a poem, or a proverb. Also showing a painting: Who could say first who painted it, when and where?
We were so much into all of this information. It came to it that Pista asked Imre for a piece of their knowledge about Kati, whom they both were in love with. One of us asked the questions and the winner was who answered first and correctly. Pista won, but Kati announced that she did not want him.
I had wanted friends and needed company. But what I think I really wanted was one or two friends to spend time with once or twice a week. I could not quite cope with so many people for so many hours a day!
Most of my new friends had no occupation, so they spent all their time with me, in my house, all the time. I, on the other hand, had to study, had to teach, had to help with the business, and practice the accordion.
I became overtired of the occupation I myself desired!
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