1920s
The truth is, I was a born leader. Right from the beginning, all my brothers and sisters looked up to me. There was never any question they wouldnât do as I said. Of course, I was the eldest of the six of us, but I also had that kind of character. I liked being in charge, taking responsibility, and the others were always happy that way tooâeven Imi, my oldest brother, who was close at my heels, and barely a year younger than me. They knew I knew best. And later, that helped us all.
So I was the first child in the family to sit at the table with the grownups at the Pesach Sederâthe feast that begins the Passover holiday. And that evening, all over our small, busy market town in south-western Hungary, other families were also celebrating. In December 1923, when I was born, out of BonyhĂĄdâs growing population of nearly 7,000, about one in eight was Jewish. When my great-great-grandparents were growing up there a century earlier, before all faiths had equal rights in Hungary, a third of the town were Jews. Everyone in our long-established community looked forward eagerly to every Yom Tov. We had enjoyed the spiritual guidance of eminent rabbis and respected Talmudic scholars for generations.
That memorable first Seder must have been April 1928. I was four years old and the only child in the household old enough to stay up late. Everything was laid out beautifullyâsalt water, bitter herbs, roasted egg, horseradish, wine, matzo and other symbolic foodsâand the candles were lit. How proud I was to say the first sentence, the Ma Nishtana, asking my father the question clearly and loudly, just as Iâd practiced: âWhy is this night different from all other nights?â
I loved nothing better than being with the grownups. I remember that feeling again when I was about ten, and I had a black coffee for the first time at my auntieâs house. Of course, it tasted horribly bitter, but I pretended I liked it. Actually, I just liked the fact that I was drinking it.
Now Iâm with the big people, I told myself. And because I acted as if I were grown-up, even when I was really very little, my brothers and sisters respected my judgment just the same.
One Shabbat, when our parents were at shul, we were playing as usual in our enormous garden. It really was huge, with space for everything. In the front were flowers, bright and colorful: chrysanthemums like golden orbs and tall yellow sunflowers. We loved cutting off their flopping heads so we could pick out the stripy seeds, roast them in the range and crack open the kernels one by one, or feed them to our chickens. As you came round the side of the house there was a big lawn where we played endless ball games, catching and throwing and tossing the ball up onto the roof, never quite knowing where it would bounce off next. Then there was the sprawling walnut tree, branches low and easily reached, its bright green fruit always tempting us before the husks split open. We could never resist trying to break them apart to get to the nuts too soon. And always our fingers were left black and stained from our efforts.
Round the back, past the outhouses where wood and coal were stored, you came to the orchard and the vegetable garden. We had apple trees, plums, cherries . . . Every kind of fruit bush you could imagine. Corn-on-the-cob, tomatoes, peppers. A gardener did a lot of the hard work, but we also took it in turns to help with the watering and the picking. There was always something in the summer to be put away for winter, and something in the winter to be saved for the summer. Cucumbers to pickle. Fruit to bottle or boil up into jam. But, as I said, it was a Saturday, and we were an Orthodox family, and many of our neighbors were also Jewish.
The trouble was that it was also a beautiful summerâs day. We were a little bored and hungry, and nobody was around. And the fruit looked just so delicious.
âNo picking on Shabbat!â I reminded my siblings.
We all knew the rules. There are thirty-nine different kinds of work which are forbidden on the Sabbath, and reaping is one of them.
I was a good girl really, perhaps ten or eleven years old then. I had responsibilities, and a reputation to keep up. My next sister, RenĂ©, laughing and lively, was two and a half years younger. After her came Piri, born in 1929, a neat and fastidious child, and very artistic, but much more shy than RenĂ©. Although RenĂ© was very outgoing, I was definitely by far the biggest extrovert of us all. Bela, our other brother, was another three years behind Piriâthe first birth I remember in the houseâand Berta still a babe-in-arms, I think. We were all dressed the same, in our best clothes. We always had nice, neat clothes.
âNo picking,â I repeated, more slowly, because Iâd had an idea. I was sizing up the apple tree, looking at the low branches, looking at Imi, who was growing ever taller, as tall as me already. âBut thereâs nothing to say we canât eat straight from the tree.â
And thatâs exactly what we did. Heads back, hands clasped firmly behind our backs, obedient to the last, we mouthed at the shiny fruit, catching its smooth skin with our teeth. Not picking, though! Not breaking the law. The little ones nibbled at the currant bushes like young goats. They crouched down happily, and we used our lips to slip tart berries straight into hungry mouths.
I was the mastermind. Imi was my henchman. We made a perfect team. He was so good with his handsâlike Piriâand had the neatest of fingers. I thought he could do anything. Whatâs more, he would do anything for me. When I had a wobbly tooth and I wanted it gone, Imi pulled it out, with a thread fastened to a door handle and a sharp slam. One day, when he was even younger, I took it into my head that I wanted to play with the pom-poms stitched all around the heavy embroidered tablecloth, a special covering that only came out for guests. I asked him to cut them off for me. Snip! Snip! Snip! Eager to please me, he scissored off every one.
We were both fascinated by small creatures. The two of us would collect crickets and worms and snails and frogs from the garden and watch them for hours on end, trying to work out exactly how they moved, or ate, or made their strange noises.
I loved being with Imi because he always helped me do what I wanted to do; he listened carefully to my ideas and together we put them into practice.
Our parents once bought Berta a beautiful new china doll, which sheâd seen in town and fallen in love with. Our youngest sister was bright and bubbly and she could wrap our father round her little finger. We all adored her. The doll was very special and unusual, because when you laid her back, her eyes magically closed. Weâd never seen anything like it before!
âHow on earth can that be?â I wondered. âImi, youâll have to help me find out.â
âWhat do you want me to do?â
âLetâs smash the head and then weâll be able to see how the eyes work!â
He was a willing accomplice. I expect he was just as curious. But it was no good. Somehow the mechanism also got broken, so we were left with no answers and no doll. Poor Berta! She was very forgiving. Maybe we thought Apu would buy her a replacement? After all, she hadnât had to ask him twice for the big red spotty ball she wanted so much.
Another time I wanted to know how a watch worked, to find out what was happening inside the ticking silver case. Naturally, I asked Imi to take it apart so we could both see. After heâd shown me the cogs and springs of my motherâs watch, of course we wanted to check my fatherâs too. I always egged Imi on. How could I be blamed? I hadnât done anything wrong!
In fact, my parents knew exactly who was behind each piece of mischief. Yet somehow I donât remember either of us getting into trouble or being punished.
âOh, mein Kind!â Apu would say to me. He was happier speaking German than Hungarian, and much of his business was in that language. âIch hĂ€tte nicht gedacht, dass du das tun wĂŒrdest!â Oh, my child! I didnât think youâd do that!
And in future, my father and motherâApu and Anyukaâtook better care not to leave their watches unguarded.
They werenât at all happy with me the time they discovered Iâd opened the door to a cage full of chickens Iâd come across in our garden, and released them into freedom. I felt so sorry for the birds, all cooped up like that, one on top of the other, and they looked so miserable. Yet my parents only actually drew the line twice, as far as I can remember. Quite reasonable of them, really. Imi and I were thwarted in our plan to sell little RenĂ©. Not that she minded. Even when she was tiny, RenĂ© would do anything she could to make someone else happy.
And Imi was quite desperate to have his own pet lamb. He simply wouldnât stop talking about the idea, nagging and nagging at our parents. He even went to the trouble of building a pen on the grass for it to live in. Yet no lamb ever arrived.
Apu and Anyuka knew we were adventurous, and perhaps mischievous, but never malicious or cruel. We were generally polite and well behaved at school, and that was what mattered to them. They taught us to be respectful, of course: no child would ever have sat in our fatherâs chair at the head of the dining table, or answered back to him. Conversation between different generations wasnât nearly as free as it is today. We didnât expect to be taken into their confidence, and we never asked personal questions. So to this day I have no idea how my parents met.
Born into a large rabbinical family in 1897, my mother grew up in a summer resort called Szenc, or Senec, near Bratislava, which had been in the old Kingdom of Hungary and then became part of Czechoslovakia, a republic created after the First World War and its treaties. Twelve years older than his wife, my father was born in BonyhĂĄd, like his father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather, and all his many cousins and nephews and nieces. Just like us, both Nina Breznitz and Ahron Engelman grew up in big, close-knit, middle-class Jewish families, Hungarian through and through, comfortably off and secure in every way. Why should that change?
Looking back, I remember only harmony in our home. It was noisy, but peaceful. If Apu and Anyuka ever had cross words with each other, we children certainly didnât hear them. If we little ones had an argument, it was quickly forgotten. It helped that RenĂ© was naturally such a very kind person, who avoided disagreements at all costs. Whenever Anyuka called for someone to lay the table or tidy up, sheâd be the first to run and help. In fact, if anyone ever needed anything, she was always there, ready to do whatever she could.
Every one of us was allowed to be ourselves. Like my father, Piri was quite obsessive about hygiene. She couldnât bear to eat anything that somebody elseâs hand had touched, for example. But that was fine. Our mother and father were very understanding. So on Friday nights, when Apu recited kiddush, the blessing before the Sabbath meal that we say over wine, and then the tall silver goblet was passed around the table for each person in the family to have a sip in order of age, Piri would have her own cup.
Really, I had the best parents any child could dream of: they were kind, calm, loving and very lenient indeed. Despite our escapades, I think they believed we were the cleverest and most beautiful children in the whole wide world. We grew up in a kind of cocoon, so safe and protected from the evils of the world we didnât even know evil existed.
Every morning, Apu would come into the kitchen and have a very hot coffee, and lick the cream from the top of the milk, which we collected each day from the farmer on the edge of town. The baker came past all the houses carrying little butter rolls, called zemmel, on his back. Thatâs what we ate for breakfast before we ran out of the house to school.
We werenât the wealthiest family, and there was nothing especially grand about our house, but it was on one of the nicest streets in the townâPerczel MĂłr, number 32. Our neighborhood was very friendly, and we children wanted for nothing. Really, we had no worries in life at all. And you simply canât imagine what freedom we enjoyed. The wide, tree-lined streets held no dangers: there were few strangers and only one car in the whole town, a taxi service that took people to the station at SzakĂĄly-HĆgyĂ©sz, thirty kilometres away. You could also catch a rather rickety bus. BonyhĂĄdâs own small railway station was mostly used by goods trains. Otherwise it was all horses and donkeys, carriages or carts, and sleighs in the long, snowy winters.
Sometimes we played in the attic. The house had only one storey, and in the big roof space we hung up the washing to dry in winter, and kept the Passover china and cutlery. There were also lots of mysterious old papers and letters belonging to my father and grandfather, with interesting stamps on the envelopes, which we liked to take off to stick in our collections. The plaything we loved best indoors was a beautiful, dapple-grey rocking horse, which had real horsehair for its mane and tail, a leather saddle and reins, and proper metal stirrups.
But we were usually outside, playing ball games, skipping or hopscotch, or sliding around on the simple skating rink we made each year by flooding the garden lawn as soon as the weather turned icy in November. Winters were extremely cold, but we enjoyed playing outside in the snow and then coming indoors to toast our frozen fingers by the kitchen range. Soft fur hats and muffs kept us warm when we were sledding.
So many of our friends were our relatives, and our relatives our friends. All year round we ran freely back and forth between each otherâs houses whenever we liked, sure of there being someone to play with wherever we went, or to make up the numbers for a game. Although she was the quietest, Piri was especially popular. Her friends were constantly dropping by. They loved her because she was so friendly and easy-going and interesting to talk to. Berta, too, had an endless stream of visitors.
One of my own favorite companions was my first cousin Hilda, who was nearly exactly my age and in my class at school too. She was taller and quieter than me, and such a clever girl. Very pretty, sh...
