A mother smothered her child to save fifty adults. She held a wool blanket tight over her infant’s face to stop her cries because their group could not be given away, could not be found in hiding. They all would have been shot or sent to prison camp. The pressure to stop the baby’s sounds stopped her breath.
My father was a member of that group, one of the last of the 200,000 Hungarian refugees who fled the country, traveling by train, truck, or foot, to escape Hungary’s Soviet-imposed policies.
This artist had faced true danger in his three decades of life. He escaped from prison camps; he fled from a communist regime and immigrated to this country never to return to his native home. He didn’t die from starvation, from torture, or from an enemy’s bullet, but will thirty-eight years later from an aneurysm. And though his heart continued to beat, he was brain dead. He was disconnected from the ventilator, yet the untethered tube remained taped to his mouth like a chimney sticking out between his lips. Two bypass surgeries replacing eight arteries, a draining feat on his heart, yet it pumped blood throughout his body. What once was the weakest part of his body remained the strongest.
Small in stature, but immense in resourcefulness and survival, dad beat all odds. As a young man he was captured by the Russians and placed in a group to be sent by boxcar to Russia. The people were told to stay in line, or they would be shot. He escaped by pretending to be a doctor to tend to a woman who had fainted. When the guard left to get water for the woman, he made his move and ran to a nearby building. Here a man hid him in his house until the Russians gave up their search. He was later captured a second time by the Hungarian Gestapo, again to escape by using his wits. He found a Hungarian doctor to falsify a report that he had contagious T.B. and he was released. But others were not so lucky. Raping, killing, stealing- these atrocious crimes were all part of the Russian occupation. The young, the old, the sick were captured off the street and sent to Russia to work, or to fight for their army, but most died before reaching their destination. Dad had told mom that the fighting was constant- when sirens would blare, he and his parents slept in the basement of their building. When food was scarce, people would shoot animals in the zoo or a horse on the street for meat. She recalled his words-I just knew I couldn’t live there any longer.
His hospital room faced the corner lot where my family once lived. Though that little white house was no longer there, the hospital tore it down for an eventual parking lot that never materialized, my mom told us that she still visualized the garden of roses, sunflowers, tomato plants that dad grew in our tiny yard. He taught himself how to garden, as he did with any project he started. At his weekly trips to Carnegie Library, he checked out how-to books (how to build a Russian fireplace, how to build a shed, how to gut a deer) and LP records, Peter and the Wolf, as children our favorite, and movie reels on famous painters, which he showed our family on a white bedsheet hanging from the ceiling in the living room. Because he loved learning, he instilled that love of knowledge in his four children
Mom tucked his special prayer card in his folded hands, the one he carried with him the night of his escape from Hungary. It is a picture of the Madonna, hand clasped over her heart, holding the sacred heart of Jesus, A halo of stars encircles her head. Written on the card is Madonna Delle Lacrime Siracusa : Madonna Tears Of Syracuse-.In Hungarian, Konnyezo szuzanya. The picture of the Madonna represents profound piety and faith- and knew its journey- Dad also carried this prayer card with him across the Atlantic Ocean. In Bremer Haven, West Germany, he boarded the ship going to America; luckily, he and other refugees had made the quota to the United States. This journey took ten days and in March of 1957, he arrived in Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, the collecting area for the refugees. From here dad and twenty-nine others were sent to Buffalo, New York, by train where a Hungarian minister housed the men in the YMCA. His long and dangerous two- month journey was finally over. The slightly worn, slightly torn card, Madonna Delle Lacrime Siracusa, along with its carrier, was safe in America.
A nurse entered the room. A blood pressure cuff, needles, tubes, stethoscope appeared next to his bed.
“Why are you drawing his blood?” questioned my mom.
“We take care of our patients until the end.”
The nurse rolled him from side to side. “This speeds up the slowing of the heart.” She rubbed his back and covered him with the sheet.
Mom placed her forehead on dad’s as her tears soaked his eyelids. She thought he was crying but it was her tears on his lashes.
“Why couldn’t we have been in a car accident and died together.”
“Mom, let’s go for a little walk in the hall.”
“No. He will be dead soon –I have the rest of my life to walk.”
His chest rose and fell as we breathed for him.
“Thank your father for your life,” she told us four adult children.
I touched my father’s hand and realized that it was fate that brought my parents together- Both at the same bus stop at the same time in the same big city, dad asking for directions, mom recognizing his accent. She gave him the phone number to her Hungarian friends. Six months later, he called for a date. He showed her his paintings, depicting his escape out of Hungary, vivid with weather and frightened faces, full of emotion; this is what initially drew her to him. She saw the compassion, the fortitude, the faith and knew she could spend the rest of her life with this man.
As I stood watching my father struggle for breath, I vividly recalled his struggle for freedom.
As the orchestra played “Silent Night” that Christmas Eve, in a church in Deutchen Kirchen , my dad kissed the one item he treasured most – a slightly worn, slightly torn prayer card . He thanked God not only for their safe escape but also for the infant who was smothered, sacrificed for their freedom. Dad tucked the prayer card back in in his thin jacket and continued to walk through the deep snow. He didn’t need to run; no need to hide-dad was safe in Vienna. No guards were chasing him with guns pointed. Dad had escaped with the help of a smuggle man out of Hungary. Fifty men, women, and children, risked their lives to escape the torment of the Russians, the communism, the terror that reached them every day of our lives. Dad had fought back- as part of the Liberation Party. These people wanted a voice and demanded that their rights be read over the Hungarian radio station. The Russians captured their spokesperson but the people fought back throwing rocks, firing guns, yelling. The Russians left but only to return a few weeks later with larger forces. Because of this, Dad decided that he was leaving Budapest for another country, one not ruled by communism but by democracy. “My faith gave me the courage to risk my life for freedom.”
Neck arched, prominent chin in the air, the Chin Man, as we always lovingly teased him, took his last breath. My brothers, on each side of our mother, propped her to a standing position. The room became busy with nurses.
“Who can sign the death certificate?”
”I will. I am the oldest.” But not very old at 35.
Mom closed her eyes, the Xanax helped her get through this day, and I knew what she was thinking-thanking the Madonna for protecting her husband, for giving him the chances to get out, for giving them thirty-five years together. Mom kissed her husband one last time. She recalled dad saying how in Hungary grieving family members would jump into the grave on top of the casket and have to be pulled back out. I then understood why. He was always so strong in spirit and body – I stood by his bedside realizing how quickly life had changed.
Before I left the room, I took the prayer card out of my father’s hands. I carry it with me every Christmas Eve as a reminder of dad’s struggle and gratitude for freedom. I now tend to the many grapes he grew in his backyard, eventually transplanted to mine; I saw this fruit as a symbol of his life. Though hampered by its enemies, beetle and birds, the grapevine still grew its long arms, protecting its treasures within, as Madonna Delle Lacrime Siracusa had protected my father from his Russian enemy those many years ago.
Ann Hultberg is a retired high school English teacher and current composition instructor at University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. Many of her pieces touch upon her father's escape from Budapest, Hungary, to the United States and his struggles and perseverance to live the American Dream.