Oldal 311 [311]
OCR
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 Hungarian, just to say in any circumstance: “nem ertag magiarul” (nem értek magyarul). 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. * 310
