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TOMÁS ABRAHAM
I have a daughter from a previous marriage to a Slavik Jew whose father
came from Odessa, who already had a daughter whom I raised, whose father
had creole and aboriginal ancestry.
And we are happy.
Having different stories and geographies, is a blessing, at least for now.
A few years ago I invited my parents to Romania; the four of us went, my
parents, who had not returned in half a century, my wife and I. We arrived in
Budapest were we spent a couple of days. I discovered that I did not understand
the Hungarian language spoken by adults, because the little I remembered I
had never used in a conversation.
The little Hungarian I spoke was related to my childhood, and considering
my strict education, I had learned how to say “thank you,” “good morning”
and “sorry”. There is one word that I will definitely never forget: “samtelen”
(szemtelen). It’s difficult to translate but means something like disrespectful,
scoundrel, the worst of the worst.
I suggested to my wife, who does speak German but not a word of Hunga¬
rian, just to say in any circumstance: “nem ertag magiarul” (nem értek ma¬
gyarul). I don’t understand Hungarian.
During our visit we tasted good wines, ate goulash with violin music — I
wonder if it’s possible to eat goulash without violin music one day? — and we
visited the main Jewish synagogue, where a guide told us the story of the temple
and in response to a question I made with regard to the fate of the Jews during
the war, he told me that many had died of cold and hunger due to food scarcity.
A sort of vegetative calamity.
Upon such blasphemy, I asked my parents and my wife to immediately
leave the house of God.
I wanted to know who my grandfather had been, my father’s father, about
whom my father never spoke. He had died of an illness when my father was
very young, and a mysterious maternal mandate silenced even his name.
But my father had a father, and I wanted to know where he had been buried.
That’s how we arrived in Romania and Sighisoara.
I visited Timisoara, where I was born. I was moved by the synagogues,
impeccable on the outside and under lock. Synagogues without Jews. I
attended a Shabbat in the annex of a closed synagogue, were they were no
more than ten churchgoers and a Rabbi called Neumann that my father
recognized. Everything was poor and desolate.
In Sighisoara, a beautiful city, we found the house where my father grew up,
and I decided to look for my grandfather’s grave. There was a Jewish cemetery,
a closed synagogue and only one Jew in the city, Erich Raducan, an old man
who had survived Auschwitz, who I was finally able to locate.
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