The Jew Haters Next Door

Irene's next door neighbors, the Jew-hating Suvoltas family, made my aunt's life miserable. One morning we could not open the house's front door. We looked from the window and saw a huge wooden box full of heavy stones and metal rods blocking the door. There were dirty words scrawled on the box, and they yelled at us. My courageous aunt yelled back fearlessly.

During those two years I learned of the cruel fate of the Jewish people. The Jewish Hungarian paper, delivered by mail each Friday, wrote about the persecution, expulsion, burning at the stake, murder of individuals, then by the hundreds, and then by the tens of thousands of Jews. The Spanish inquisitors, the Crusaders, the Russians, Kozaks and who not. Those terrible lines filled my eyes with tears, my heart in deep sadness.

The loneliness of life with my aunt and the frequent conflict with the Suvoltas family took its toll on me. All the pressure that I choked inside me had to burst out. I cried so hard one day that my aunt took me to a doctor, who advised her to send me to the mountains for a couple of weeks for vacation. Instead, Irene decided to send me home for a vacation. It sounded too good to be true. The sun shining through to my heart as my aunt escorted me to the "big" train station of Debrecen, I offered Irene to send my younger sister to stay with her in my stead.

© David Muskal, 2001