George Konrad: A Guest in my Own Country

That evening all my uncles and cousins sat around the radio. According to a piece of stray news a local garrison commander had exhibited displeasure at the German invasion, and I immediately decided it would be the Újfalu regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Egyed, that would push the Germans back. After all, we had a large barracks on the edge of town, a powerful garrison with cannons drawn by giant artillery horses. If the Regent called on the people to fight for their freedom, he would find a foothold here in Bihar County.

“Him, of all people? Here?” István’s smile was more than acerbic. Yes, the Lieutenant Colonel was a good man and no friend to the Germans. For years I had been formulating political prayers in bed after the lights were out. At school I discussed the war only with István, between classes, out in the corridors. We looked around to make sure others could not hear us. We soon learned we were individuals to be avoided. On the very eve of the occupation we had to concede that not only Horthy but also the commander of the local garrison had offered no resistance. The next day German tanks stood before the town hall and the Calvinist church manned by soldiers in pike-gray uniforms. Civilians avoided contact with them, avoided even looking in their direction. To the strains of a vigorous march, in rows so tight they practically touched, the Germans demonstrated how a military review was meant to look. They put our cockeyed Hungarian sad sacks to shame.

Before long there were patrols moving through the town commandeering living quarters. As my uncle’s house was occupied in its entirety, my cousins moved in with us. Friends and relatives visited my parents to exchange news and share their bewilderment. My father sat out in the sunshine of the balcony with his eyes shut. He had had to close down the business, it being no longer his: there was a lock with a seal on the door. All valuables had to be turned in, the radio included. We three boys slept in the living room or, rather, pretended to sleep, then turned on a low lamp and availed ourselves of the walnut brandy in the sideboard to keep us awake through a night of talking politics.

New decrees appeared daily, so we knew that each day would be worse than the one before. We played ping-pong until dusk and fortunately did not have to part in the evening. Lacking the patience for board games, we discussed the chaotic current events. István thought the Russians would get here first and we would have communism. We did not know much about that. People returning from Ukraine said it was quite poor: goats slept in houses in the countryside; many families shared one apartment in the city. In our high-backed leather chairs we opined that poverty was tolerable as long as there was justice.

Ukraine held dark associations for the Jews of Berettyóújfalu. The younger men had been taken off to forced labor there in 1942. They had been forced to run naked through the halls of a Ukrainian school strewn with boot-nails. Hungarian police standing along the walls would hit them with the butts of their rifles. Something had got them worked up: they must have been drinking rum. Once the men’s bundles had been inspected, they were allowed to dress outside in the snow. Watches, rings, and other valuables were confiscated. If they had concealed something, they were sent back to dance in the hall.

As the army retreated, they were moved westward. The sick were delivered to infirmary barracks; those who could not walk were carried on their comrades’ backs. One night tongues of flame shot into the sky beyond the field of snow: soldiers had doused the infirmary in gasoline and set it afire, burning the sick Jews of the forced-labor patrol to death. Bandi Svéd rushed back through the snow, hallucinating that his brother at the barracks was walking towards him. His comrades ran after him and brought him back before the guards could shoot. The survivors were released in 1943, went back to Újfalu, and took up their previous lives. Everything was as in the old days, except they didn’t talk much.

Our classmates were not particularly hostile to us, nor did they rejoice in our situation. They were uninformed and indifferent. They would look at the tanks and say nothing. “Now you’re gonna have a peck of trouble,” scornfully remarked a scraggly little boy, the poorest of us all and the worst pupil. His father had joined the Arrow Cross as a road worker. There were only two Jews at the school: István and myself. The poorer ones were not accepted.

István liked to establish bitter truths, the kind that got you absolutely nowhere. “We are the richest in our class and the best pupils: of course they don’t like us. How many people are free of envy? Some like one or two Jews but not the rest. There are few good people and few truly bad ones; the rest are neither one nor the other. If they let the Jews live, all well and good; if they kill them, that’s fine too. Everyone agrees to everything.”

We were still heating the living room, and the atmosphere was familial: my mother was sewing yellow stars onto everyone’s coats and jackets. Homemade stars were acceptable, though private industry was flexible in responding to the new needs. Everyone knew the specifications: canary yellow, machine-hemmed, six-by-six centimeters. You had to sew it on tightly enough to keep a pencil from going under the threads: those clever Jews were capable of putting it on just for show and taking it off whenever they felt like it. The Jewish newspaper encouraged its readers to follow the authorities’ instructions to the letter.

One day István and I decided that the yellow star was nothing to be ashamed of, and walked all over town. It was spring, and since the school year had ended in April we had time on our hands. We stomped through the mud-covered unpaved side streets in heavy boots. Women stared down at us from tile-roofed, white-colonnaded porticoes.

I took to drinking from the lids of water barrels like a peasant boy. I went to the artesian well in front of the post office, where my good suit and shoes provoked pleasure at our misfortune from the constant semicircle of its users. But even with the yellow star I made new acquaintances: women occasionally greeted me warmly on the street; I would exchange a few words while waiting for the well. The village idiot, who once managed to eat an entire bucket of cooked beans on a bet, asked me for my yellow star. The onlookers laughed: still crazy as ever.

Then one morning they came, a loud pounding at the garden gate. I looked down from the balcony and saw five German officers, as many Hungarian gendarmes, and the ridiculous policeman Csontos, who had previously threatened to inform on everyone, but would let it slide for a few pengős. There were black caps too, but we did not yet know that they were the Gestapo. My father donned his tweed jacket, regulation yellow star and all, and went down to open the gate.

The Gestapo officer informed him in German that he had received a report accusing him of being an English spy and keeping a radio transmitter hidden in the attic. The house was searched from cellar to roof. I knew he had no transmitter, but it felt good to think he had been accused of having one. I very much wanted to look up to him. Had they searched him for a weapon I would have respected him even more.

My father was rather fearful and sensitive to pain, so my mother, the stronger of the two, led the Germans and gendarmes through the house, moving among them without any show of nerves and providing succinct information. They collected a few things — money, jewelry, a camera — but made no major finds. They appeared dissatisfied and ordered my father and uncle to go with them to the gendarmerie barracks and divulge where they had hidden the radio transmitter and, in general, what was hidden where. “Or, madam, would you truly have us believe that you are hiding nothing?”