Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1944, Glass house, Glass Island, Hanukkah, Holidays, Mihály Salamon, Second World War, siege of Budapest, Teri Gács
„Hanukkah was approaching. The spiritual leaders of the house, rabbis and teachers, tried to make an evening or two become holiday in spite of the hard situation. Though the mood was depressed, bombs fluttered around the Vadász utca, it was dangerous enough to make a stay in the assembly room upstairs, many were curious about the evening holiday. The holiday was introduced by the traditional candles lightning, then doctor Richtmann’s sermon came.
The audience in the assembly room listened to his words fighting against their tears and soundlessly. You might see the piety of the festive hour what they didn’t feel a long time ago. Then Teri Gács, the excellent poetess came. Or rather she would have come, but, even then, when she wanted to begin reciting one of her ad hoc poems – The List 7800 –, a bomb fell to the firewall of the next house with great noise. The Glass House trembled, a huge amount of plaster streamed from the ceiling to the necks of the audience.
I wasn’t at home, I came back late at night from the Szabadság square. Some good friends led by Arthur Weiss waited for me in the small room. In the corner some nutshells, oil and wicks in each, were lined up on a stick which was put on a chair. One by one I lit the small oil lamps. I will never forget that holiday feeling what descended upon us, and I will even less forget the dinner what my wife made on this occasion. She took out some potato lángos from the pot under the table which I didn’t know how she had fried, and, especially, from what she had fried. Especially as that there wasn’t any potato in the Glass House since months. There was a little fat on the cold lángos. I never eat so delicious potato lángos since then.”
(from the book of Mihály Salamon: “Keresztény” voltam Európában. [I was a "Christian" in Europe])
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Very interesting and informative website. It may interest your site visitors to see my pages on The Glass House, Budapest Ghetto and Heroes of the Hungarian Holocaust. Please visit http://www.budapestvacationservice.com/budapest_ghetto_1944-1945.html
Comment by Martin Collins July 27, 2010 @ 7:41 amand follow the links from that page. Thank you, Martin Collins, Budapest