Magyar, Stars & Stripes: A Journey from Hungary Through the Holocaust and to New York

By Michael Lipiner

Magyar, Stars & Stripes strikingly recounts a Hungarian Jewish family's history of love, affection, persecution, and injustice. It tells about their close kinship and heart-wrenching experiences in labor and concentration camps.

The book chronicles Alexander Taub's life-from a playful childhood to a young adulthood shattered within a labor camp in Schachendorf, Austria. Every day is a new battle to survive amid countless bodies. He makes a daring escape and finds compassion in people who offer food and clothing. Rebuilding the ashes of his family, Taub takes us on an extraordinary journey to Manhattan, where he and surviving family members eventually become successful entrepreneurs. He uses street smarts and intuition to make his fortune but still remains an enigmatic figure building a brick wall to contend with the great losses in his life.

While giving historical accounts and sufficient background information of these different periods, the author often transcribes verbatim his grandfather's broken English to illustrate the man's unique style and humorous outlook on life. This incredibly witty and courageous story of perseverance will greatly appeal to the reader's emotions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 20, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595796489

Michael Lipiner

Michael Lipiner grew up on Long Island and teaches English Language Arts and film studies. He has also worked in corporate marketing and advertising. His other published works include: If I Fell, an original play published in September 2006 and performed at various New York City theaters; and Lights, Camera Lesson: Teaching Literacy Through Film, an educational case study published in November 2011.  At present, Michael lives in Israel with his wife and their three children.

Book preview

Magyar, Stars and Stripes

♦

A journey from Hungary through

the Holocaust and to New York

Michael Lipiner

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

Magyar, Stars and Stripes

A journey from Hungary through the Holocaust and to New York

Copyright © 2005 by Michael Lipiner

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Contents

Author’s Note

Preface

PART I

Our Town

Family Traits

Once Upon A Time

Tra-Dition!

Tip Of My Tongue

Home Sweet Home

This Land Is Your Land

Commerce

Imagine All The People Living Life In Peace

Schooling

Chores

Yiddishe Mamma

Yiddishe Bubbe

A Star Is Born

Playtime

Other Town Memories

An Old Wise Man

Guess Who’s Coming To Lunch

Yizkor

Gypsy

PART II

Third Reich

Born To Be Wild

Work And You Shall Be Free

Deportation

Survival Of The Fittest

The Russians Are Coming!

Long Way Home

Every Dog Has Its Day

Homestead

Family Ties

Making Preparations

Goodbye, Hello

PART III

I. Bazooka Joe

II. Charlotte’s Family Web

III. Louie, Louie

IV. Legal Alien

V. My Cousin Bozsi

Racketeering

The Big Apple

Name-Calling

You’ve Got A Friend

South For The Winter

A Star Is Reborn

Start Spreading The News

Love Is In The Air

Helen’s Experiences

The Kaufmans In America

Two Is Enough

Sibling Status

Vindow Vashing

New Kid On The Block

Helen’s Trauma

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Alexander, The Great

Big Brother

No Business Like Showroom Business

If I Were A Rich Man

Charlotte’s Time

All My Children

Tidbits

A Great Loss

Second Time Around

Last Call

You Are Here

No Bowl Of Cherries

M-I-C...K-E-Y’s H-O-U-S-E

Closing Remarks

Extra, Extra!

Works Cited

END NOTES

Dedicated to my grandfather, Alexander Taub, my family, and the memory of the more than six million Jews that perished in the Holocaust.

Author’s Note

As you read this book, try to envision a man who lost everything: who survived atrocities and hardships many cannot fathom. The words on these pages cannot reveal his idiosyncrasies. However, I remain hopeful that the reader will gain ample perspective about his persona, unique characteristics, and outlook through his broken English, which I have transcribed verbatim.

Additionally, I ask that you take notice of the irony in this man’s life: repeated names, dates, and snippets of history that resurface throughout.

His story is inspiring.

Preface

The Black Death of the Middle Ages killed more than 500 people per day at its peak. The central concern of many at that time was not to provide care or devise a cure, but rather to determine how deep to dig the graves in order to prevent further spread of the disease. Historically, lepers were cast from society and isolated; they were prohibited from touching their own children. In the 1830s, cholera was considered the punishment for people unwilling to change their lives, such as the poor and those thought to be immoral.¹

Ironically, ideas about medicine and the treatment of disease were little influenced. An Italian, Girolamo Fracastoro, first explained the theory of contagious disease. However, his theory was that it was only the poor who spread it. Although this theory was eventually discarded, the same medicinal practices used during the Black Death were utilized, at first, during the European Cholera outbreak of the 1830s.²

The first such epidemic occurred in the 1830s when the disease spread in many countries of the East. The French medical historian Hirsch later observed that this attack was probably the continuation of a pestilential progress from Egypt through Tripoli and Tunis, the wider ramifications of which may be seen in the epidemics that prevailed at the same time in Abyssinia, on the East Coast of Africa from Somaliland to Zanzibar, and in the Sudan.³

Then, in the 1830s, under the burgeoning weight of industrialization and the growth of population—seven-fold in London from 1790 to 1850—the conditions in European cities described in the novels of Charles Dickens became breeding grounds for three major infectious diseases: cholera, smallpox, and tuberculosis. Suddenly growth and development had outgrown infrastructure, and infectious diseases rebounded.⁴

Just as they had survived the plagues, diseases, and illnesses of Europe, almost a century later, their descendants would have to endure hardships once again to create a better world for future generations.

PART I

Magyar

♦

1848-1934

Our Town

My name in Hungary is Taub, Sandor. I was born in Szamossalyi, ezer kilenc-szaz-huszonharom, Februar tizenkilenc.¹ That’s saying in Hungarian.

Forget the fact that he grew up poor and uncultured. Never mind that he fulfilled his dreams and became a successful New York entrepreneur. Sandor Taub is first and foremost a Magyar, a Hungarian² native. He had learned how to farm, sew and make money from his paternal family, a long ancestral line that came from Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries to the small, rural town of Szamossalyi. Sandor’s ancestors had survived the Black Plague of Europe and his relatives would survive even greater hardships. In all that time, their family name never changed.

Even his [grandfather’s] great-grandfather [was] born there and buried there. [He’s] buried in the cemetery where was a sickness they called, ‘Black [Plague’]. Everybody died. And they buried them in one grave—30 people, all Jews—and they was putting on white talc.

Amid cow paths and wagon trails, Szamossalyi was located in Szatmar Megye³ (county) before the Second World War. Roughly 1,000 residents lived there, which included 25 Jewish families (around 113 Jews). In today’s Republic, the town is part of Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg Megye (which was established in 1950) and there are no Jews left among a population of around 800 residents.

Geographical information: Szamossalyi is 18.6 miles from Romania, 12.4 miles from the Ukraine and 226.8 miles from Budapest. Before the war, it was closer to the old Czechoslovakian border. It is also 82.6 miles east of Miskolc⁴ (Hungary’s second largest city) and the Karpat Mountains are about 700—800 miles away, which Sandor could see from his home.

Most of the skilled workers in town were gentiles. There was no bank and the only post office, located about a mile from Sandor’s home, consisted of one female postal worker who handled the mail. Additionally, this is where the only phone in town was accessible, which was used mostly to conduct business in nearby cities. Sometimes, Sandor’s father would have to wait hours for a person to call back. When an important call did come through, the town’s mail carrier would take a message and inform the individual about what time to expect the other party.

If you had phone call, then she used to send the mailman to tell you that someone [would] call you back in another half-hour: come to the phone.

Similarly, there was one barber and two grocery stores. However, there were no pharmacies, local eateries, doctors or dentists in town.

If your teeth was almost coming [falling] out, so [my] father used to put on a string and used to—on the other end—he used to tie it into the doorknob. And he used to talk [say] something and he knocked the door, and the door was pulling out your teeth.

You know when I was [at] the first dentist in my life? When I came to this country and I was 25 years old. In Atlanta, I used to be in Atlanta, Georgia, and there was, you know, [a] dentist. And my teeth was very bad. One of the teeth HURTS! So, I went to the dentist. So, he pulled it out and he give [gave] me iodine in [for] my teeth. All over, iodine, he puts on and I went maybe twice more. First check-up in my life: [he was] a Jewish doctor.

Without plumbing, public bathrooms made of plywood contained a hole in the ground.

We used newspaper[s] for toilet paper.

In the summertime, the Taubs would bathe in the Szamos River⁵ with nothing but soap. During the winter and fall, they pulled out a small wooden box—big enough for just one person—from underneath their large bed. Every Shabbat, the family would fill this box with boiling water (using their stove oven) and take turns bathing. In addition, Sandor’s parents required the children to change their clothing: everything from undergarments to clean shirts.

And the 25 Jewish families, there was—with the babies—when was the Holocaust start[ed], the ghetto, it was 113 Jewish people. That was very unusual because most towns, they don’t even have no Jews—or maybe had one or two families.

Really, they don’t even have no fireman. [Instead,] everybody [was] carrying a pail and they taking somewhere close by the water in a well and that’s how they liquidating the flames.

Image378.JPG

Szamossalyi is boxed at the top-left of this 1910 map of Szatmar Megye.

Family Traits

Born on February 19, 1923, Sandor (or ‘Sanyi,’ as his family calls him) recalls his earliest memory from the age of two years old. While sitting on his paternal grandfather’s lap, Sandor would listen to vivid and colorful stories: something he would repeat with his own grandchildren decades later. In fact, storytelling was a favorite pastime, as Grandpa Samu and Grandma Zaly lived close by.

So, my grandpa used to sit on the porch. He had his own house on the same property. And [he] was sitting in my porch and [I] was sitting in his lap. So he had a beard and he used to make funny things, and was playing with me. And smoking with a pipe all the time. And, you know, I used to laugh.

Sandor’s younger brother, Zoltan (Zoli), was 12 years old when he began to play the violin: something he had learned from local gypsies. When he became a skilled musician, the water from the Szamos River provided a brilliant echo for the resonance of Zoli’s music that traveled around the town.

Nice town—was like very quiet. And my brother used to play music with a violin. Beautiful, beautiful music! [He was] born like that—such a good sound and he had a good voice! And the [towns]people—he used to sit on top of a big tree. Nighttime, he used to play music and the whole town used to listen to him for the music because the town was all around a river, the Szamos, all around like an island. And the sound was from the water, came back—beautiful!

And he used to sing all beautiful song. Singing and dancing—he was born like that. Very talented, he was. And he was playing pretty good! He used to tune it nice—UH! Most beautiful!

On the other hand, a mischievous conniver in the family and mastermind in business would regularly buy items in the market and resell them at a higher price in Szamossalyi. This was Sandor’s older brother, Bela. Each marketplace was about 12.4 miles from town and the Taubs would conduct business there on certain days.

He [Zoli] was different. He used to ride with the horse and wagon. He used to plough the ground like a farmer. He used to work very hard, my brother.

And my older brother, he became a VERY good businessman—UH! He was the best businessman ever! He was 12 years old, he used to buy in the market little kettles. And he used to make like a dollar or two, you know. And he used to sell it—buying and selling kettles. And then later on, he was handling with cows, horses when he got bigger. [He] was buying up like a dozen each time.

Their parents, Moric (Moshe in Yiddish) and Sarolta (Zelda), had a loving relationship and rarely had disputes—at least not in front of the children. Nonetheless, divorce was uncommon and even unheard of in Szamossalyi. The constant work that needed to be done on their farm left little time (and energy) for conflicts.

Unlike Sarolta, Grandma Zaly, and other family members that helped with domestic chores, Sandor’s younger sister, Rozsi, was headstrong in business.

My sister didn’t help because she liked to go to buy things.

NO, she was like a business girl. She used to go to buy and sell all the dogs and chickens and eggs. She used to make good money on it.

She said she gonna have a maid. And that she had, in Israel. She had a maid; she didn’t have to cook, she didn’t have to do nothing.

Image385.JPG

Left to right: Sandor, Zoli and Bela around 1926.

Image394.JPG

(Back of left picture) Moric Taub’s handwritten poem to his sister, Sarolta, which also indicates his sons’ names in the picture.

Once Upon A Time

Everything was behind! My grandpa was born in 1848. The president was, in Hungary, Kossuth.

Indeed, Samuel Taub was born in the same year that Lajos Kossuth led Hungary’s 1848-1849 War of Independence from Austria. Sandor’s grandfather had met Zaly Berger in her place of birth: Szilagy Megye¹ in Csog, a small Romanian