Survival
Page 17
He listened to her, but he was absent-minded and barely standing. He apologized. “I’m very tired. I thank you very much.” He went in and fell asleep on one of the beds.
*
Janos would never forget the morning of May 1, 1945.
Very early in the morning, the people took to the streets, rejoicing in their liberation from the German occupation. Their celebration mixed with the traditional May 1 [International Labor Day] festivities. They waved the red flags with the hammer and sickle, the recognized symbols of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.
The line of people waiting to get in was even longer than the line Janos had seen the previous day. He walked in and sat by one of the desks where there was a pile of empty forms and a pencil tied to a nail. A French soldier sat next to him. She wrote the date on one of the forms and said, “We may begin.”
He motioned toward the door. An elderly-looking woman approached. He asked for her name and the missing persons she inquired after and translated the details she gave into French.
The soldier took down everything meticulously.
Between one sentence and another, one reply to the next, among the exchanges between the people and the other three interpreters, Janos caught a familiar sound. What was that? He looked here and there in search of the voice he had recognized.
His eyes beamed and his head ached as tough he was pierced through by arrows. That familiar woman’s sound. Such a distant memory. Could it be?
He rose from the desk as though struck by lightning. He looked back at the sound of the familiar voice, “Janos?”
Terry stood before him. Two children were clutching her hand. “Oh, Janos,” she said, weeping.
“I am here, I’m here.” He let the words pour out slowly as he held her shoulders softly.
There was clapping all around them and the church bells rang nine times, but they heard none of it.
The End
Epilogue
World War II ended on May 8, a short week after the St. Claire family had reunited. Nevertheless, the world did not return to normal. This was to come, if ever, only years upon years later. It was now time to lick the wounds of war and concentrate on building a better world—a saner world that would make more sense—and mourn the millions of casualties.
*
Bob returned to his squadron. Back in the U.S., each pilot received a hero’s welcome.
*
Ina had vanished among the hordes of refugees, making her way westward from one refugee camp to another, from one country to another, until she finally reached the land of her dreams—the U.S.
*
The St. Claire family’s troubles were far from over. They did not end along with the war.
The false idol of Communism, whose budding seeds fed on the hard-won victory, poisoned the government. The illusion Communism had provided now satisfied each willing zealot. For those who did not espouse it, it was forced upon them.
Thirteen-year-old Sandor was disgusted with the Communist way of life in Hungary and wanted to flee Hungary and grow up elsewhere. He decided to run away from home and make his way to America. He and a friend of his at the same age snuck aboard a train that made its way to Vienna. Much to his sorrow, Sandor’s friend fell to his death from the roof of the train. Sandor arrived in Vienna by himself. As he wondered how to make it from there to America, he fell upon an immigration agent from the Jewish settlement in Palestine who persuaded him to move to the Land of Israel.
After spending a short while at a training station along with other like-minded youngsters, the group set out for British-controlled Palestine. They went from Vienna to Italy, where they boarded a ship to the Land of Israel. When they reached the coast, a British destroyer captured them near the town of Nahariya. They were deported to an illegal immigrant’s camp in Cyprus. Sandor once again found himself in a concentration camp.
After a long stay at the camp, the British agreed that a small group of orphans imprisoned there could go free and be allowed to reach Palestine to live there.
In 1947, after being liberated from the transit camp, Sandor made Aliyah and was accepted to the Mikve Yisrael agricultural school. Nevertheless, a few months later, when he had barely turned sixteen, he decided to volunteer for the newly formed IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and fake his age, claiming to be eighteen. He assumed the Hebrew name Avraham and served in the Alexandroni brigade. He took part in the first campaign at Latrun, on the main road to Jerusalem, in an operation codenamed “Bin-Nun.”
*
During the course of their first few months in Budapest, Janos worked as a photographer. He and Terry received word of Sandor’s whereabouts in Cyprus from another Jewish illegal immigration agent who had arrived in Budapest at the time.
Janos was captivated by Zionism and was taken with the adventure it presented. He became active in organizing immigration groups comprising of camp survivors. Terry worked as a seamstress, catering to small groups of people throughout town.
At the end of 1948, Terry and Janos St. Claire packed a minimal yet crucial part of their belongings into three suitcases: a few clothes, kitchenware, linen, a large sewing kit, and an album of photographs. They also hid three Mauser guns, to be handed to IDF officials upon arrival in newly established Israel.
Deep inside her handbag, Terry had a photograph of her three sons, taken by their father back in 1941. Sandor and Arno were standing on either side of an armchair where baby Andre sat wrapped in a duvet.
*
Together with the “May First Group,” they took the train to Trieste, where they boarded the Caphalus, an old transport ship sailing under the Liberian flag. Janos, Terry, and Andre reached the port of Haifa in December 1948 along with 3,000 other Holocaust survivors.
Having been set up in a tent at the Pardes Hana transit camp [near Netanya], Janos met with IDF officials to hand the guns over to them. He received ten Israeli Pounds for his efforts, a fortune in those days. Nevertheless, they did not get to meet Sandor. The IDF officials told him his son, Avraham, had been missing in action since the battle to free Jerusalem from the siege Jordan’s Arab Legion had laid. Janos and Terry were given no further details.
*
In 1949, the Jordanians returned fourteen bodies of Israeli soldiers, who had died in the course of the battles at Latrun, but it was 1953 before Sandor-Avraham’s family received word that he fell in combat on May 26, 1948, and had been buried in a mass grave at Mount Herzl. They later found out he was captured alive and tortured to death.
*
Terry and Janos never lost hope of seeing their son Sandor during all those years until they finally were told he had been killed. They did find solace in their surviving son, Andre (the author of this manuscript). Nevertheless, the memory of the murder of their little son Arno’ka back in the ghetto at Debrecen, coupled with the death of their eldest son in the War of Israel’s Independence, was too much for them to bear. Upon receiving the terrible final news, both parents collapsed into a deep depression, lasting their entire lives.
Acknowledgment
To Lisi Moses-Rosenberg, a dear friend. Wise and highly able, she has been my right hand, attending to me throughout the course of writing this book. Without her assistance, this book would not have seen the light of day.