Day 279
Here’s the story: in 1944, the Nazis came into Budapest and rounded up the Jews. If my great-grandmother hadn’t left, she might have been one of them.
Some farmers, who lived in the countryside, were sent directly to Auschwitz, where they perished. Thirty thousand Hungarian Jews perished; forty thousand were liberated by the Russians at the end of the war. But a handful of unfortunate souls were taken to the edge of the Danube River in 1944, and ordered to remove their shoes. Then they were shot by the Hungarian Iron Cross soldiers — complicit with the Nazis — with all the perilous beauty of the Habsburg empire watching from the perch on the hills of Buda.
In 2005 the artists Gyula Pauer and Can Togay created a memorial commemorating that spot on the Danube. I walked there today. If my great grandmother hadn’t left Hungary when she did, I might never have been. This post is in her memory: Regina Falcone. The Hungarian seamstress who married my grandfather and kept her bloodline alive.
July 12, 2010 at 7:06 AM
This is beautiful, Laurie!
July 12, 2010 at 8:37 AM
We remember, never forget.
July 12, 2010 at 10:27 AM
Incredibly beautiful and uplifting, but at the same time sorrowful and devastating…thanks for sharing and reminding us.
July 13, 2010 at 11:09 AM
Thank you so much for sharing this. What a haunting story, and a haunting work of art. Of all the Jews of Europe, I believe the Hungarian Jews were the very last to be deported.May the river carry their lost souls on forever.