Blessings of Failure: A Transylvanian Memoir

By Judit Gellerd

Blessings of Failure is a memoir of a physician – a child of communism where failure was guaranteed. She receives the Romanian secret police files about her father, code-named “The Prophet.” Stunning revelations by these documents reframe the daughter’s self-understanding.
The story moves from witnessing her parents’ tortured lives and failed ideals, to realizing their dreams in her own quest. While her father languishes in Romania’s Gulag and her mother lives under secret police harassment, the ten-year-old, politically-marked daughter of the Christian pastor is hidden and protected by her Jewish violin teacher.
In a stubborn pursuit of excellence, she keeps changing careers, countries, and marriages – one from political pressure and another for love. She excels in three consecutive professions, only to lose each as her inner quest drives her toward an ever-changing vision of becoming. All her striving comes to fruition in service to the very culture from which she fled.
Nobel Peace Laurate Elie Wiesel, her professor at Boston University, “decided” that she had to write the story of her journey from Transylvania to the United States.
This memoir explores her paradoxes, such as freedom in displacement or success in failure. Was Communist society completely evil? Does it teach valuable lessons? How free are we in freedom and how much our assumptions and fears create boundaries for us? What are the alternatives to conventional success?
The author’s outlook is broad. Not only did she live in and survive communism, but she made the best of it. She accumulated the wisdom of three successful careers in classical music, medicine, and ministry. She used it in two radically different societies, building a nationwide program in the United States to help her homeland.
In one last irony, she realizes that her freedoms and successes have come from failures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judit Gellerd
• Release date: Mar 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476371306

Judit Gellerd

Judit Gellérd, M.D., grew up in Transylvania as a daughter of a Hungarian minister-scholar, martyred by the communist witch hunt during the Ceausescu regime. She graduated first from music conservatory as a violinist, then from medical school. She specialized in neurology and psychiatry and practiced medicine in Transylvania and Budapest, Hungary for twenty years. She married California professor George M. Williams and moved to the United States in 1988. Judit and George created and led a international movement, the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church program. The Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1994. In 2002 she graduated summa cum laude from Boston University School of Theology and was ordained by the Transylvanian Unitarian Church. She studied with Nobel Peace laureate professor Elie Wiesel, and with his encouragement she wrote Prisoner of Liberté, both in English and Hungarian. As a member of the faculty for Semester at Sea, she sailed around the world twice. Her recently published Hungarian literary travelogue, Ahol leoldom saruimat, has been highly acclaimed. She is a bilingual translator of scholarly works of theology and history. In 2009, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences named a work published by University of Strasbourg in her English translation their Book of the Year.

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Blessings of Failure:

A Transylvanian Memoir

by Judit Gellérd

Copyright 2012 Judit Gellérd

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: My Rebellious Mother

Chapter 2: My Father, a Marxist Theologian

Chapter 3: Child of the Revolution

Chapter 4: Democracy of Opportunity, Hierarchy of Excellence

Chapter 5: Blindfolded

Chapter 6: My Jewish Savior

Chapter 7: The Verdict

Chapter 8: Embroidered Rags

Chapter 9: A Blessing in Failure

Chapter 10 : You may work, but don’t aspire

Chapter 11: Non-Consummation

Chapter 12: Ambiguities of Freedom

Chapter 13: Talent is but the courage to start over

Chapter 14: Ultimate Protest

Chapter 15: Touches

Chapter 16: Existential Imperative or Selfish Entitlement?

Chapter 17: Marriage or Motherhood?

Chapter 18: The Dilemma of the American Flag

Chapter 19: Displaced to Freedom

Chapter 20: Please, Buy a Church for Us!

Chapter 21: Shower of Doctorates

Chapter 22: In the School of Prophets

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

A bulky package of documents from the secret police archives arrived directly from Transylvania. Even to touch them seemed sacrilegious. I wished someone witnessed my breaking of the seal on the past. I wanted to shout from the busy street in Boston: "Here, at last, the truth. Fourteen hundred pages of files about my father - in my hands! Will I be able to peer into the patterns of the System?"

I nervously searched through the Romanian words on the cover page. Top Secret. The Ministry of Internal Affairs. File of Informative Monitoring Nr. 383. Seals and signatures of certainly important officials littered the page. But where is my father's name? Was he a mere number, I wondered. And then, I discovered the identifier, the code name of the conspirator: "PROFETUL" - THE PROPHET in Romanian.

The Prophet! If the documents had not come from our most feared and hated institution, I would have been touched by its poetic, even spiritual quality. Securitate or not, the beauty and irony in my father's exaltation as the prophet was fascinating. How could they have gotten the naming so right? You bastard! You bandit! that was how prison guards called this prophet to his face.

So I am a prophet's daughter! My reframed life seemed like the gift of a new identity. I was even filled with an irrational pride. My revealed heritage carried the power of reckoning more than anything. But can I really be a prophet-daughter?

Behind a veil, an iron curtain, our life was enfolded in the diabolical theatre of tyranny. A double life. For we were obeying puppets on the stage, but defiant and free behind it. It was an expensive freedom for my parents. And now, these ominous pages of the Securitate's parallel universe promised a better understanding of my parents' perceived lifetime failures. Their lives had been filled with idealism yet irrational decisions, coerced acts yet painful resentments, betrayals by friends yet forgiveness.

Have I repeated their failures?

Chapter 1

My Rebellious Mother

I was kneeling down to be ordained, when the wooden church door swung open with a bang against the stone wall - and there was my mother. She wore black from head to toe as if for a funeral. Her face was dark with grief.

The snowstorm surged into the church in her wake, capturing the attention of the entire congregation. The ceremony froze in a moment of drama as astonished mother and daughter stared at each other. I was about to become The Reverend Judit Gellérd as my ordaining bishop placed his hand on my head and opened the Bible to cite Isaiah 40:31. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the incongruity of the scene. As hilarious as it seemed for a moment, my heart became heavy for my mother's pain. In a sense, she was burying me. Or, rather she buried her dream that I had fulfilled but now she was about to lose.

In a flash I could hear my mother's story that she had recounted so many times.

I could always see in her eyes when she shifted inward, fleeing from this reality back to a time when the future was bursting with possibilities. Her conclusion that her life was a complete failure exasperated me each time. It felt like a slap to my face. She had what I couldn't: two children, Andor and me!

***

My mother had lost both of her parents before her fifth birthday. Her older siblings neglected the little leftover of the family. Her once black dress of mourning turned ever-lighter shade of gray with time. The only love she could count on was the occasional care package from her eldest sister, a house servant at a rich family in Bucharest, who would send her boxes of fine cookie crumbs.

She was not yet seven when she attempted jumping in front of a speeding train in front of their house. A bystander snatched her before the fatal moment. How dare you?! he shook her back to her senses. You scared me to death! Why did you do that? he yelled without expecting an answer from the child. But she did not need encouragement to give her reason; in fact, she seemed not to appreciate being saved. The single-minded determination still lingered on her face. I wanted to find my mother! she said defiantly.

But she has died, don't you know?

That's why! she burst into a desperate cry.

The incident stirred up emotions in the little town of Székelykeresztúr [Cristurul Secuiesc], and she soon was put up for adoption. A childless couple, János and Zsuzsanna Kovács, adopted the seven year old in 1933. This brought about an instant metamorphosis of her identity, so much so that even her peasant first name, Juliska, gave way to the more elegant Judit.

Standing between her new parents was a gorgeous girl pictured in a nice, lacy frock. It leaves little doubt that she was born into that family.

Her new name, however, came with a price tag of unforeseen expectations, which she readily embraced. The Calvinist austerity of her stepmother, that earned the respect of their town, straitjacketed the daughter. Judit longingly watched her classmates go hiking and dancing, while she had the privilege of tutoring older students in mathematics. This is for your own good, her stepmother reminded her of the virtue of hard work. And in her free time, she had another privilege of embroidering Gobelin tapestry for her dowry.

When this character-shaping weighed too heavily on the obedient girl, she found solace with her stepfather. His quiet and dignified acquiescence hardly gave away the humiliation of his generation. For him the good old times ended in 1920 with the partitions of Eastern Europe. Under the Treaty of Trianon, the borders moved over his head, when much of Transylvania was given to Romania. Thus my Hungarian grandfather became a Romanian citizen overnight, although he did not speak a word of Romanian, now the official language. An educated man and veteran of the First World War, he lost his state job as a financial inspector, along with his pension benefits because he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Romanian state. This coerced oath would have compromised his national dignity, so he rather faced impending poverty. Many of his contemporaries, torn by conflicting loyalties, left their homeland and livelihood to immigrate to Hungary or America. His love of the ancestral land would never let him abandon it. When I questioned him, he quoted a writer: We are in this world to be home some place.

For his irresponsible defiance, as my grandmother put it, he paid a hefty price beyond the economic hardships. His wife now declared herself in charge to find the real roots of their misfortune. She turned to witchcraft for an answer. My grandmother often experienced visions with religious content; she would see Jesus appearing before her eyes. She would wake my mother in the middle of the night to show her the apparition that held her transfixed in ecstasy.

My grandfather was quietly amused by these accounts - until one day a wandering Gypsy woman appeared at their door demanding her due payment. Grandmother had to reveal that a witch had planted a curse in the form of a rag doll under the apple tree. Its destructive power was threatening the whole family, so it had to be deflected at any price. She hired the Gypsy to defuse the curse. The price grew each month, until the family nearly went bankrupt. But she could not dismiss her in fear of unleashing a catastrophe. So she continued to pay the ransom with clothes, rugs, handiwork, and scarce food - eggs right from the nest, and later even the egg-laying hens. The local police finally caught the Gypsy with a sack of goods that was not too hard to identify in a small town buzzing with rumors.

Grandmother became frantic for losing her redeemer, so she had to seek out a replacement. The situation became very complicated, for the new shamans lived in a remote Romanian Orthodox monastery in the Carpathian mountains. Nearly every month she would pack up and board the train for her two-day trip that involved lots of hiking. Sometimes, she took her daughter along as a translator, disregarding her dread of these voyages. My mild grandfather could not interfere with his wife's mad determination.

Grandmother otherwise was a well-respected craft-artist. She ran a popular little shop in the main square of the town, where she sold her own Persian rugs, ladies' hats, and Gobelin embroideries. But most of her income ended up in the hands of special Orthodox monks in the mountains of Moldova. When the weather prevented her from visiting them, she sent money to them through the mail. Eventually, the police put an end to this operation as well.

It was then that she discovered her gift for occultism. My teenage mother had to assume the role of the medium in séances. For long and scary hours at night, they contacted the spirits of the dead to find out bloody family secrets. In this way grandmother learned the shocking identity of her father' killer. She also received a compliment from her dead mother for adopting the orphaned Judit. In her increasing curiosity, she even contacted the spirit of a great poet, Sándor Petöfi, who dictated a short, unknown poem on the Ouija board.

My exhausted mother tried to hang onto her sanity. She decided to take matters into her own hands. So, during the next séance, she sent her torturer a message from the assembly of her ancestors: You must leave us in peace from now on, for we are summoned by the Almighty. If you disturb us again, you will be struck with a fatal headache. Still, grandmother could not resist temptation and tried just one last time. Then her head exploded in a violent headache. That cured her.

It was a miracle that my mother eventually grew into the poised and beautiful young lady, the free spirited Judit, whom the town so admired.

The outbreak of the Second World War overshadowed her private miseries and brought real grief into her life. She lost her only friend, Pálma Dávid, her Jewish classmate. The two of them had vowed lifelong friendship, sealing it with their very blood. Pálma's extended family of three generations lived in a large house by the town-square. It became my mother's sole place of refuge, for Pálma's family loved her. She sat at their Passover table and loved to be there. She was proud of her Jewish name, Judit.

One day, when Pálma missed school, my mother inquired about her. A classmate whispered to her, "Don't you know that the Dávid's are wearing the yellow star?"

What is the yellow star? she stared at him naively.

Well, stupid, it means that they are dangerous! They are Jews! her well-informed classmate enlightened her.

My best friend, dangerous? Are you out of your mind?

She could hardly wait to rush to the Dávid house. She found Mrs. Dávid in their kitchen alone. They stared at each other speechless, then the always serene Mrs. Dávid burst out sobbing. Her words sounded incoherent. You will live...will have a family and children. But my daughters! O, my daughters! she wailed. Then she hugged my mother hastily, Go away, now! You must not be seen with us. You must live! We love you and want to protect you. Go! Now!

Mother ran to the neighboring store crying. What is happening to the Jews? she asked the shopkeeper. A man, whom she did not know, grabbed her. Crying because of the filthy Jews? Go and join them! He slapped her so hard that she landed on her face.

The next day the town square became nearly deserted, as most of the shops were Jewish-owned and now remained closed. The stillness in the town was eerie, as if in the eye of a hurricane.

About a week later, my mother woke up at night to a loud rumbling noise. She ran to the window and what she saw was a nightmare. A convoy of large horse carts filled with the Jewish families of their town and the neighboring villages was leaving in a somber procession. She knew them all! Mrs. Kain's loud cry, holding her twin babies, was unbearable. But then she saw Pálma! Pálma, her best friend, was huddling in a cart with her family. She did not even look at their window. Mother did not dare to call out to her but felt an irresistible urge to join them, to run after Pálma's cart. They were supposed to be inseparable! And yet, fear overrode that spark of humanity.

(Pálma had been secretly married to a Gentile and was pregnant. Of the large Jewish population of Székelykeresztúr only two people survived the Holocaust, the handsome Sándor Gidáli and Lili Dávid, Pálma's sister. Pálma gave birth to her baby in the death camp. Both died in the gas chamber along with seven other members of her family.)

Any time my mother recounted this horrific moment in her life, she would reach for her handkerchief and show me Pálma's picture. She was with four other beautiful teenage girls in school uniforms. These were my classmates and my friends, mother sobbed. None of them came back from Auschwitz! Not one!

In the blistering hot summer of 1944 the frontline moved to the outskirts of their town. My mother's step-parents - my grandparents - decided to flee in order to save their daughter from being raped by soldiers. It seemed safer to crawl through the crossfire between the Germans and the Russians. There were twelve kilometers. Bullets were flying over our heads from both directions. There were explosions all around us. It was hell itself, mother remembered.

They reached their destination by early morning, only to find the Russians ransacking the village. The troops were looking for watches and women - but they took anything. Mother's aunt disguised her beautiful niece as an old woman and hid her first in a chicken coop, then in a pig barn. She never slept in the house. From her hiding places, she watched the soldiers searching the house and the barns, then casually taking a nap only a few meters from her. She tried not even to breathe and prayed that God would render her invisible. At one dangerous moment, her uncle lowered her into the well to a terrifying safety.

After the fighting finally died out, they rushed back to the town and found their house undamaged. All they lost was my mother's dowry, the precious collection she had embroidered for years. They found pieces of lace littered in the mud - but she could care less. She was alive.

My favorite part of my mother's story was her teenage rebellion, so out of character for her! She was brilliant and took a double load at college and graduated a year early. There was too much marriage talk at home that began to seriously threaten her desire to take up medical studies. So, she summoned up her courage and fled to the city of Marosvásárhely [Targu Mures] to enroll into the newly opened medical school. She sent a postal card home about her irreversible decision.

She experienced freedom that she could not have even imagined. The war had just ended and life burst forth in vibrant colors. She gladly went hungry and slept on the floor in their makeshift boarding school. One day they found huge sacks of dried bread in the attic, leftover army provisions, and that sustained them for awhile.

My mother excelled from the very beginning and was rewarded with a merit scholarship that granted her the necessary independence from her stepparents. The road toward the desired profession of medicine seemed reachable.

Three semesters into her blossoming, she finally felt strong enough to visit home. She especially longed to see her stepfather. Surprisingly, instead of the expected grudges, her stepmother also showed kindness. This touched my mother so much that she let down her guard. She fell back into her old self of the dutiful daughter, feeling an urge to reciprocate her mother's graciousness.

She revealed her budding affection for an Armenian classmate at the medical school, András Mánya, who had begun to formally court her. She asked for her mother's permission.

What? Love? So, this is why you ran off! I am telling you what I knew all along: medicine is an immoral profession, not suited for a young woman - not my daughter anyway! You are going to be a virtuous wife instead of a wicked doctor! You will get married as a virgin!

My grandmother had very different plans for my mother - and this was the time to reveal it. She had promised her daughter's hand to the most eligible suitor - my mother's former professor, the prestigious Imre Gellérd. (He had confessed his love and attempted proposing after her college graduation, but my mother rejected him.)

The new semester at the medical school started without my mother. Her Armenian friend kept writing desperate letters to her in vain. Grandmother intercepted them all.

I had to interrupt my mother at this point in her story, for this was too much for me. How on earth could you be so submissive? You had finally taken your life into your own hands and realized what a perfect decision you made! You were becoming a doctor! Why did you allow tyranny to ruin it?

It was a rhetorical question. She could never really give me a reason, but I guessed it: she submitted to abuse. She called her submission gratitude and loyalty toward her stepparents for having saved her from the shame of orphanhood. And from her freedom, I thought bitterly.

She would fall silent, with a tragic expression on her face. For it was that moment when everything she had dreamed and was so capable of accomplishing evaporated. So I always tried to cheer her up.

Mom, think about what would have happened to your children if you refused to get married to our father? This argument always worked. She returned to this reality and she hugged me affectionately.

It felt like a conflicted exercise in filial loyalties. For I had a father, too, and I was no less compassionate toward his heartbreak.

Chapter 2

My Father, a Marxist Theologian

He was a shepherd boy in Kénos [Chinusu], the smallest village of Transylvania. His body was malnourished, his feet always bleeding and infected. Yet he had a strange attitude for an orphan. He held his head high as if his mind were on a loftier plane than his situation. His look was stirring, filled with defiance. And when he spoke his name, Imre Gellérd, it sounded as if he just uttered his title of a somebody - some nobility. In fact, his family had held the traditional status of Transylvanians' free nobles. But with the early death of his father, a veteran of First World War, the family lost their estate in a lawsuit and became destitute overnight. His mother, a simple peasant woman, now a day-laborer, could hardly provide to her five children. So one of them had to leave home for work. The ten-year-old Imre considered himself privileged to be chosen. The shepherd's earning would buy him a pair of boots - freedom itself - so he could go to school in the city!

His relatives did not share his ambition. You are just a peasant, and now fatherless and penniless! What on earth do you want? And they confiscated his only treasure, the few books he carried in his bag. But this did not prevent him from reading. Now he read the stories he wrote in his mind.

The craving for knowledge finally forced him to break rules. One day he stole his books back along with some candles. He slept in the barn - the shepherds' bedroom - that, in the candlelight, suddenly became a luxurious place of stolen freedom. Those were good days.

With the cold and rainy autumn, his anxiety turned into agony. The school year had already started but nobody seemed to care about rescuing him. It was the village's Unitarian minister who finally brought him liberation. The minister informed the relatives that the boy was too gifted to waste his life there. No one could contradict a village minister, so, with