Passover Respite

Ten months later Passover came, and she let me go home for the holiday, a short two days that I spent most happily with my family, visiting most of my school friends as well. They were all delighted to see me. A father of one of my friends promised me his son as my future fiance. But fate decided cruelly for this family of seven. This was the last I saw of them. Just a few months later they were deported with four other families with young children - including my Aunt Etelka and her twelve-year-old son Gyula - to be murdered in no-man's land. Oh, how a devilish force made a farce of humanity. Civilization etched nineteen forty-two in the calendar. Nazi Germany and its collaborators were in the midst of their mass murder of innocent human lives. The free world turned their heads away and let Hitler do the dirty work as they remained silent.

When the school year ended, life turned more unbearable. At least in school I could forget my bitter fate with Aunt Irene. I hungered for the warm and loving home which my parents deprived me of. During weekdays I performed light housekeeping like cleaning the kitchen, sweeping, tidying the courtyard and cleaning windows. During busy hours I stood in Aunt Irene's store and made sure customers did not take goods without paying for them. Many of the customers told me how beautiful I was and asked Aunt Irene who this nice girl belonged to. But my spirits ran very low.

© David Muskal, 2001