Dreams of a Future in Education

The years passed by quickly. I was a good pupil with a promising future, looking forward to four years at the [polgari] school in our town after finishing four years of elementary school, and then on to Gyor, where I would live with my relatives and study to be a teacher.

A future in education seemed like the perfect plan for me, but I secretly dreamed of being a writer. My teachers always expressed amazement at my excellent writing skills. I can recall two stories I wrote in school. In second grade, we had to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote that I wanted to be a teacher, so that I need not worry about earning a living. My teacher commended my writing skills, but pointed out that everyone has their worries. Her words made me feel uncomfortable. I had meant to say that teachers receive a nice, steady income from the government every month - not like other people who have to look for their income every day and work very hard for it. And some days they earn nothing for their family needs. In third grade we had to write a short story about snow. I don't remember what I wrote, but recall that my teacher found it excellent.

A very devoted student, I would always be the first in the classroom. I was so excited to go to school that I could not eat breakfast! My mother would run after me with a glass of milk which I would usually just take a few licks of. But I did take tasty sandwiches which I ate heartily at school.

As the years passed by, we Jews closed our eyes and pushed away the thoughts about the bitter fate which loomed over us. We were unwanted, unwelcome and barely tolerated. Here and there the Hungarian government passed another law restricting our income or higher education. But none of us wanted to recognize what was coming. Generations of persecution stiffened our necks and we got used to the flaming hatred that surrounded us. It was like an unseen sword stabbing us.

My Aunt Etelka came to live in Puspokladany, together with her husband - sick with tuberculosis - and their only son Gyula. By some chance they rented a small apartment next to one of my enemies, so we became friends with former foes.

To augment their meager living, Etelka and her husband took in some homeless Jewish children, with the government paying for their upkeep. While living in a one-room apartment, they once housed a very nice looking little boy about four years old. I visited them with my father, and suddenly saw something which shocked me to tears - myself an eleven-year-old girl at the time. The little boy climbed out from beneath a bed, where he took his afternoon nap in a wooden bathtub. But they forced this poor child - whom they nicknamed Muky - back into the bathtub and pushed him beneath the bed. This inhuman treatment left me speechless, and I did not know what I could do to help. I felt a very deep pain which hurt me all the more so because it was my own relatives who acted this way.

© David Muskal, 2001