Week 5 Prompts

21. You go on a journey.

Trip

When our plane landed in Budapest, in the early morning hours, my mother turned to me and said:

“There is something I need to do, so why don’t you follow the group and I will catch up with you later.”

We were standing in the middle of the airport and I was still slightly overwhelmed with the Hungarian language, all around me, trying to keep a straight face at these familiar tuneful sounds that I could not understand, but always seemed so recognizable. As if all I need to do is to try harder and the language will open up and reveal itself to me.

When this did not happen I returned my attention to my mother and wondered for the hundredth time why was I temped to join her on this trip.

 I have to admit; I was not exactly thrilled when she asked me to join her on an organized tour to Eastern Europe, but couldn’t find any good reason to refuse. The plan was to visit three major cities, Budapest, Vienna and Prague and some known tourists’ attractions along the way. There were few reasons for my less than enthusiastic approach towards the trip. Not being too fond of organized tours was just one of them. Having a rather shaky relationship with my mother was another. Ever since my marriage, but probably even before, we had our differences and she never seemed to really accept who I became as an adult. But she insisted she wanted me to come with her. She offered to pay for the whole trip, it was summer vacation and my husband urged me to accept the invitation that looking back, I am happy I did.

“What do you mean you have something to do?” I looked at her trying to understand.

“I want to find my fathers’ grave and see if it is still in good condition,” she said.

 “This is really not interesting for you; I’m sure,” she added “you should continue with the tour and see the town.”

I wish I could see my own expression at that moment. Not only was it the first time I heard that my grandfather was buried there. I couldn’t believe she thought that I’d rather see some tourist attraction and not go with her. I insisted, and few minutes later she signaled a passing taxi, and in her fluent Hungarian asked the driver to take us to the Jewish cemetery. On the way she told me about the seven long years she, and her parents, spent in hiding in the Hungarian capitol, till the war ended.

The mission to find my grandfather grave proved simpler than I anticipated. We managed to locate the grave with the help of the cemetery keeper and were relieved to see that after more than fifty years, it was still in fine condition and the inscriptions only slightly faded.

Later, when our bus crossed the flat planes bordered by a mountain range called the“Little Carpathians”. On the road between Vienna and Prague, she told me about her mothers’ family who came from a small town, merely twenty minutes outside of Bratislava, now the Capitol of Slovakia. 

My mother was only 14 on March 12^th 1938 when the German Anschluss with Austria officially took place. This seemingly clean term, “link up” really meant the annexation of Austria by Germany. Hours before the German troops entered Vienna, where she and her parents resided, they managed to take the last train to the border to then, Czechoslovakia. They continued by foot to the small town where my grandmothers’ two sisters lived. They stayed there only for few days before opting to continue to Budapest, an act that clearly saved their life, as none of the other relatives survived. 

My mother died two years after the trip we took together. Every once in awhile when I am reminded of this trip, I think of the ten days we sat together on the bus and watched the green, lush, countryside alongside the road. The kind of deep green she told me as a child can never be seen in Israel, and was right. And at times I am trying to imagine the dark street from the border, and an old stone house, hovering over the dirt road with two very old aunts and the last time the family was together.

These are not my memories I used to think. I did not grow up hearing stories about the war or my lost relatives. Only handful of which made it to safety and of those who didn’t, not even pictures remained.  It is the only explanation I can offer for not asking more questions, or writing the information down.

 Once we got back we never spoke of her family again.