A story of loss and survival.
Germany’s invasion of Hungary in 1944 marked the end of a culture that had dominated Central Europe from the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. In this poignant memoir, Charles Farkas offers a testament to this vanished way of life-its society, morality, personal integrity, wealth, traditions, and chivalry-as well as an eyewitness account of its destruction, begun at the hands of the Nazis and then completed under the heel of Soviet Communism. Farkas’s recollections of growing up in Budapest, a city whose grandeur embraced-indeed spanned-the Danube River; his vivid descriptions of everyday life in Hungary before, during, and after World War II; and his ultimate flight to freedom in the United States remind us that behind the larger historical events of the past century are the stories of the individual men and women who endured and, ultimately, survived them.
قائمة المحتويات
Prologue
Introduction by Margaret Mc Mullan
1. Social Life in the Budapest Cafés in the 1920s and the Farkas Family Line
2. Strange Happenings
3. Jaunts into the Countryside
4. Malvina Tarnóczy
5. The Vineyard at Veresegyház
6. The Tragic Death of Henry O’Donnell
7. The World of Grandmother Eveline
8. The World of the Vicziáns
9. The World of the Child and the Servants
10. Uncle Rory and My Father Make a Deal
11. New Dwellers in the Old Manor House
12. My School Life
13. Gyuri Sághy Appears on the Scene
14. Romantic Encounters
15. Magnolias in the Moonlight and September in the Rain
16. My First Visit to the Gunda Farm
17. Champion du Mond
18. Illusions, Emotions, and the Coming of the Whirlwind
19. The Last Summer before the Siege
20. Hitler Occupies Hungary—Manhunt
21. In Transylvania
22. Homeward Bound
23. Autumn in the Vineyard
24. October 15, 1944—The Arrow Cross Grabs Power
25. Reminiscences
26. The Siege of Budapest and the End of Nazism
27. Vanished by the Danube
28. Home Again in the Old Manor Building
29. ‘In the Meantime, Back at the Ranch, ‘ and Our Daily Russian ‘Visitors’
30. Exploring Our Newfound Domain
31. Working the Land
32. Farewell to Logodi Street
33. Settling Down at the Old Homestead and a New Year’s Party
34. An Adventure in the Life of Szabolcs
35. Moonshing in the Moonlight
36. A Garden in the Rain
37. A Phony Peace (1946–1947)
38. Blue Skies Smiling at Us
39. The Fall of the House of Roediger
40. Liquidation of the Kulaks
41. Searches at the Ranch and Another Dreadful Year
42. The Red Army Wants Me
43. My Move to Buda
44. Haven for the Shipwrecked at the Old Manor House
45. Workers Unite!
46. A Budding Romance
47. My Life as a Rickshaw Man
48. Clouds on the Horizon
49. Revolutionaries Pull Down the Stalin Statue. Siege of the Studio
50. Escape to the West
51. Journey to the New World on the U.S.N.S Marine Carp
Epilogue
عن المؤلف
Charles Farkas was born in 1925 in Budapest, Hungary. In 1949, he earned a double doctorate in law and political science from the University of Pázmány Péter. After the failure of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, Farkas fled to the United States, where he received a master’s in library science from Columbia University. He went on to become director of the Briarcliff Manor Public Library, where he worked from 1968 until his retirement in 1996. He and his wife, Edit, live in Chappaqua, New York. They have four children and, as of early 2013, four grandchildren.