A Budapest Reunion

Memory is possibly our greatest gift and often remains unacknowledged until it is lost. Remembering one’s past may be painful but not remembering it can be devastating. Finding emotional connections with someone suffering from memory loss may spark their sense of identity and bring, even for a short time, the joy of having a past.

A Budapest Reunion

“Mr. Farkas, I have to talk to you about your brother,” Laura voice-mailed. “Last night, he talked incessantly about going to Budapest. It’s become an obsession to see where your father is buried. While repeating the same thing, over and over, is common with dementia, Dominic cries when he talks about wanting to see your father’s grave. He’s in pain. I can’t help him. Please call me back.”

The brothers, two years apart in age, with Toby being the older, were refugees of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Their mother sneaked them into Austria and stood in line for days in Vienna for visas at the American Embassy. Their memories of childhood in the ‘50s in Budapest had faded, fortunately. The terror and cruelty of the Rákosi government were hidden from them by their mother. However, the boys couldn’t escape their father’s killing; he was one of the university students who was shot by the AVH, the secret police, when the protestors demanded political reform outside the Magyar Radio building. Now, in his mid-seventies and with dementia, Dominic wanted to remember.

The flight from New York’s JFK to the Ferenc Liszt airport in Budapest was uneventful. Both brothers slept through most of it. They booked a small hotel on Kiraly Street, in their childhood neighborhood, in the heart of the Jewish quarter. Their mother had talked about the open-air market and small shops along the “Utca”(street). The brothers realized much had changed since the night they packed one suitcase each and were driven by their mother’s friend to a place near the Austrian border. That night, Toby remembered vividly. The three of them hid behind a haystack, avoiding the patrols of Hungarian and Soviet soldiers, stationed there to catch those fleeing Hungary. His cough had alerted a Hungarian soldier to their presence. The soldier instructed them to return to Budapest before a Russian border guard discovered them. They knew that worse things would happen from an AVH or Soviet soldier. But they didn’t go; they waited behind the haystack. Just before dawn on that cold October morning, when hope seemed to fade as a faint line appeared on the horizon, the Hungarian soldier returned. In the remaining darkness, he led them over the border.

The family eventually settled in Parma Heights, Cleveland, a melting pot of Poles and Hungarians. The boys were quick to learn English and to shed their Hungarian identity. They, like their friends from Hungary and Poland, wanted to become American as quickly as possible. Many of them changed their names to sound more like Yankees. Tobias became Toby, and Dominik only had to spell his name with a c. The social occasions when the Hungarian community came together and spoke in their own language were avoided by Toby and Dominic, if they could. Their Polish and Hungarian school friends didn’t want to stand out with their parents’ accents. As the boys grew up, their Hungarian language facility faded. Now they only remembered the greetings, which were resurrected as they explored their old neighborhood in Budapest.

The one thing that their mother insisted on was their adherence to their faith, Judaism. Besides the pilgrimage to where their father died, which was the reason for the trip for Dominic, Toby wanted to worship in the Great Dohany Street Synagogue, the one place both of them remembered from their youth. Even as youngsters, they recognized the beauty of the synagogue, probably the most beautiful one in the world. Its Moorish Revival design and its large size made it unique. Fortunately, the bombs of World War 2 missed the structure. Their family would attend Shabbat in the synagogue, even when it became more difficult under the Rákosi regime. Its garden and memorial graveyard of those murdered near the end of the war provided a place for the brothers to contemplate what their grandparents had gone through at the hands of the Nazis. Their uncles and aunts were there too. While their parents survived one holocaust, only their mother and they survived the next one by the Soviets.

Dominic’s insistence on visiting his father’s grave became almost a mantra. He didn’t come to Budapest to sightsee. Kossuth Square, in front of the Parliament Building, was the location of the October 25 Memorial. It was where the revolution started and where the Soviets mowed down Hungarians, including their father. The brothers made their way to the square and entered the tunnel under it that housed the Memorial. The tomb-like Memorial monument was centered in a Rotunda. Around it was a space to stand or sit to remember those who died that day. Small nameplates of those killed were attached to the surrounding wall. With no records of all the Hungarians killed by the Soviets, many nameplates were left empty. Toby and Dominic sat on the rounded benches surrounding the Rotunda to view the monument. Above them, hanging from the ceiling, a tattered Hungarian flag with a hole in its middle where the hammer and sickle had been torn out, was a reminder of the terrible day and the courage of the Hungarian patriots in confronting the Soviet troops.

Their reverie was interrupted by a Hungarian worker asking them if they knew someone who had died on that day in October. In unison, Dominic and Toby responded: “Our father.”

The worker brought out a form, and Toby filled in the full name of his father, Janos Daniel Farkas. Asking the men to wait for a short time, the worker retreated into the building. Fifteen minutes later, he returned with the plate inscribed with their father’s name. The staff gave Dominic the nameplate to hold. He then asked Dominic to find a place on the wall where it would be attached. Dominic was overwhelmed. He looked at Toby, who had tears welling up. They both got up and went to a space on the wall where their father’s name would be forever: his grave marker. The nameplate was attached, and a replica of the plate was given to the brothers to take home. Their mission had been accomplished.

The emotional impact of laying to rest their father’s name where he had been killed with other martyrs of the revolution was more than either brother could have contemplated. Dominic was especially moved. When the brothers were at the airport, readying to return to America, Dominic started his mantra once again: “I want to be with my father.” Toby quieted his brother as they stood at the ticket counter. The bags were weighed and soon moved down the baggage belt. As Toby turned around with boarding passes in hand, Dominic was nowhere in sight.

Dominic moved quickly down the long passageway of the airport, repeating loudly enough for passengers to hear: “I want to be with my father. He’s in my luggage.” As he walked, repeating this mantra, a few passengers stopped and gave him directions to the luggage room, thinking he was looking for his lost luggage.

Toby was alarmed when he didn’t see his brother in the vicinity around the gate. Airline personnel were informed, and they notified airport security. He didn’t know what to do but to remain where he was, hoping that airport security would find him before the flight took off.

Dominic, however, was on a mission to find his father. The replica nameplate was in his luggage, and he was determined to locate it. Walking quickly down the airport’s corridors, he searched for signs denoting baggage. Most of the doors he found were locked. As he turned the corner near a large door that led to the baggage holding area for a flight soon to take off, the door was ajar. He entered it, calling out, “I want to be with my father. He’s in my luggage.”

The baggage handlers didn’t understand what the elderly man was saying. Dominic continued his mantra, louder. He moved toward the men who were in the middle of the luggage, trying to identify his own. He continued his plea: “I want to be with my father. He’s in my luggage.” The men were spooked, as they didn’t know what he wanted. One of them called security on his phone.

Two security guards rushed into the baggage area and removed Dominic. They had been informed by the airline that Dominic wasn’t a security threat, only that he had wandered off and needed to be returned to the gate for his flight. As they led him through the airport, Dominic was upset. They tried to calm him down as they walked him back to the gate, where Toby was waiting anxiously. Dominic was still repeating his mantra.

Toby, after explaining the situation to the airline personnel, requested that they retrieve their luggage. Soon, a trolley appeared with their two bags. Dominic rushed to his luggage, opened it, and found his father’s replica nameplate wrapped between his shirts. He brought it out and held it. He and his father were finally reunited.