Grandma

Here is a long but very interesting story. This is not made up it is true.

On the eve of World War II, Sighetu Marmatei in Romanian, Maramaros Sziget in Hungarian, had the highest proportion of Jewish residents of any city in Hungary representing close to 40 percent of the municipality’s population of about 40,000. During four days in May 1944, after having been penned into two ghetto areas for several weeks along with several thousand of their relatives and other Jewish residents from the smaller communities surrounding Sighet, almost all of the Sighet Jews were deported to Auschwitz.

People did not know what waited for them, but they all guessed there was nothing good at the end. Understandably, parents tried to protect their children as much as possible. The parents of two little girls in this story also wanted to protect them so they escaped to a small village close to the Romanian border. There they found a good-hearted family who were brave enough to hide their daughters from the nazis who went around gathering up the Jewish population.

These little girls were lucky. They survived, but their father and brother did not. They were hiding inside haystacks and cellars. Life was very difficult and dangerous. This goodhearted family also had a son who was in on this thing and helped the little girls whenever he could.

Jumping ahead in time, these young people stayed in touch after the war and eventually got married. Their marriage resulted in three girls who gave them nine grandchildren and eventually five great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild. Thank God they stayed around to enjoy all of their off springs.

As I indicated the little girl I am writing about was Jewish, but her husband was not. Interestingly, throughout the year the question of religion never came up. That could have been because after WWII this subject was muted by the regime. Not going to church or synagogue, not having baptism or bar mitzvah was the norm for the times.

The family lived well, prospered throughout the years. Because the grandmother never ventured to tell her story everybody lived with the assumption that this was a non-denominational family. 

Until...

Her favorite granddaughter came to this country and started to work. As luck had it she wound up working in a pretty strict orthodox environment. She was liked very much by her coworkers. Because of her way of thinking and acting they constantly teased her that she must be Jewish. They said she acted Jewish, she looked Jewish so she must be Jewish. The girl didn't know any better but did not argue. But since she was in frequent communication with her grandmother, she always told her these stories.

The grandmother never reacted. Never gave any sign as far as the truthfulness of their observations.

One day the grandmother got very sick, looking ahead to a bleak future. At that point she decided not to keep her secret anymore and to tell her story. She called her favorite granddaughter on the phone and told her the truth. Up to that point the granddaughter did not know any better either. But then reality hit the fan.

Reality is that this is a true large Jewish family. Since Jewishness goes from mother to daughter, every daughter is Jewish as well as each of their children. The granddaughter who was privy to this information was entrusted with informing the family. It was not an easy task but she prevailed.

In Hungary religion does not play a major role in family life. Because of that the family has plenty of mixed marriages. But since the Jewish origin is matrilineal technically all the children are Jewish.

As expected, this information was received with mixed results, but there was nothing anybody could do about it. 

Once the grandmother passed away the granddaughter collected all her papers and found documents and photographs proving this story correct.

I know he granddaughter, and I met the grandmother who recently passed away.