THE TINY PICTURE-POSTCARD BOOK
“The idyllic images—lakes, parks, spas—resembled the Hungary of our vacations, but not the war-ravaged country of my father’s youth.”
The Nazis invaded Hungary when my father was 8 years old. His aunt and uncle took him into hiding and raised him after his mother perished in Dachau. (His father was already several years dead, from a lung embolism.) A decade or so later, during the Hungarian Revolution, Dad fled the country on foot, escaping into Austria in the dark of night. He was headed for the U.S., where, as a refugee, he’d be granted asylum and an education—unlike in Hungary, where Jews were often barred from college. He couldn’t tell his family goodbye without endangering them all. He had to choose between his family and his future.
Dad earned engineering and business degrees, became an American citizen, married my mother and returned to Hungary to visit. He hoped to bring home a few reminders of his past, but the Communist regime banned taking items of value—say, family heirlooms like silver candleholders—out of the country. In any case, most of his family’s décor—anything not hidden away—had disappeared. The Hungarian folk art, embroidery, and ceramics I grew up with in Los Angeles were purchased at stores frequented by tourists, not native sons. They were facsimiles of things my father had lost long before.
We visited my father’s family every few years. One time, in a souvenir shop, this tiny wooden book caught my eye. It was about an inch square, with a pine tree and mountains painted on its cover. A ribbon tab stuck out from its center; when you pulled it, an accordioned strip of miniature black-and-white picture postcards unfurled. It was of limited entertainment value and too delicate for a 7-year-old, but I begged my father to buy it, and he did. At home, after I lost interest in the book, he placed it in a display cabinet next to some folk-dancing figurines, where it sat undisturbed for decades.
After Dad died, as my mother was preparing to sell their house, I helped her decide what to keep and what to let go. In the living room, surrounded by boxes, I spotted my old book.
I pulled the tab and squinted at the photos. The idyllic images—lakes, parks, spas—resembled the Hungary of our vacations, but not the war-ravaged country of my father’s youth. I tried to decipher the labels: Tórészlet. Patak. Fürdo. My father had never taught my sister or me to speak Hungarian; he said it would be of no use to us, but really I think he was trying to avoid being reminded of his childhood upheaval and all he’d lost. So many of his memories remained sealed off—like a language I’d never understand.
It often felt as if my father never fully stopped hiding—as if he were hiding in plain sight. He was brilliant and successful, yet humble to a fault, never wanting anyone to “make a fuss” over him. He spoke sparingly of his months as a hidden child, offering only snapshots—a night spent in a synagogue pew with his mother just before her deportation, a pot of cabbage soup narrowly saved from falling debris. I had questions—what did his mother’s voice sound like? when did he finally give up on seeing her again? did he remember his father? did any of his friends die? did he have nightmares?—but I didn't ask. I didn't want to make him go back.
The little book that fits in the palm of my hand reminds me of the gulf between what my father shared and all he could not express. His carefully curated wartime stories were as rationed as the food he ate in hiding, and likely designed to protect himself as much as us. He wanted to present a Hungary that was pretty as a picture. If it was a fiction, it was a loving one. The depth of my father’s affection—and of my loss—is, improbably, evoked by a tiny book that hints at the lengths he traveled to survive and to spare us the heavy burden of his pain.
—Melinda Gordon Blum
Melinda Gordon Blum is an MFA candidate working on a memoir-in-essays about intergenerational trauma. She is the former managing editor of The Coachella Review and has published essays in Live Wire, Lunch Ticket, the Los Angeles Times, Kveller and The Sun Magazine’s "Readers Write."