Preface

Our mother, Irene Pirchiya Muskal, of blessed memory, was born 1 Nisan 5687 (April 4, 1927), in Hencida, Hajdu County, Hungary. She grew up in the anti-Semitic laden atmosphere of pre-WWII Hungary, lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, witnessed the miraculous rebirth of the Jewish State - where she built our family together with her husband Samuel, of blessed memory - spent 18 years in America, the "land of the free" whose people she so loved, and returned to Israel to enjoy some of the fruits of her labor as a devoted mother and grandmother. Irene finished her tour of duty in this world on 18 Cheshvan 5758 (November 18, 1997), in Jerusalem.

From childhood, Irene felt a burning desire to express her feelings by writing. She recalls bitterly how her parents postponed her entry to first grade, setting back her plans to learn how to write. The desire to write accompanied her throughout her life, and led her to start compiling an autobiography after all of us got married and left the house. It took her several years to complete the autobiography, with the closing handwritten manuscripts bearing testimony to the effects of treatment for the illness which ended her life. Irene explains why she set out to write:

"Oh how I want now to reach through my writing to the soul and mind of mankind, have them change the whole world to a better one, more peaceful and meaningful for all…. I so wish for the existence of a world that erases the last flame of hatred from the human soul!"

Throughout the horrors, facing the unfathomable treachery of the Nazis and their Hungarian accomplices, Irene believed that the Almighty could guide her to safety. And during her hardest times, Irene kept looking for sparks of goodness in mankind. Small gestures like a young Austrian girl giving her family a sandwich during their deportation, and an occasional Red Cross package to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, fed her with the spiritual energy needed to carry on. This, in stark contrast to her state of near hopelessness:

"The transport hurtled along mostly at night, rocking us to sleep. We dreamed of freedom, of home, of plentiful food and water. Each time the train stopped, so did our dreams."

While our mother's autobiography conveys chilling descriptions of some of the horrors of the Holocaust, the autobiography - on the whole - is not a sad story. It is a story of the triumph of good over evil, a story of survival painted against the backdrop of a series of personal relationships - unparalleled awe of a devoted father murdered in the prime of life, sharing in the pain of loving mother who mourns over the loss of her young babies, misery as a live-in helper to an unfortunate step-aunt, blossoming of a teenage girl's desire for her first love, and more.

Our mother wrote her autobiography in English, a language she acquired at the age of 40, after attaining fluency in Hungarian and Hebrew. While we edited the manuscripts for style and grammar, the contents are as she wrote them, and we have left the wording as close as possible to the original. Irene went to great lengths to build a rich, varied vocabulary, which is well reflected in the autobiography. We are compiling a series of "sidebars" for added perspective on Hungarian Jewish history and tradition, and themes of general Jewish interest.

In posting her autobiography, we hope to at least serve our mother with one small act of kindness as we reflect on her unparalleled devotion to us.

Tzivia Yeshua
Shoshana Ben Torah
Sara Avigdor
Yitzchak Muskal
David Muskal

Jerusalem, 5761 - 2001

© David Muskal, 2001