Let Go and Let God

Darkness, then pain, then a white, cold foreign environment...my father, little Jancsika awoke in a bed and was disoriented. Through the fog of ether, Jancsi began to recall the shiny pen he attempted to pick up, then the stinging bite on his lower right leg, as anxiety and dread surrounded him. He came to the realization that he was seriously injured and began to run thru the logic of the situation and arriving at the conclusion he was in a hospital. How did he get here? Did his Grandmother and family know where he was? What bit him?

He tried to prop up in the bed and look down at his injury. He was covered with bed sheets and wondered,  was his leg was still underneath?  

It is not clear in my memory as to how my father learned or about the details of his wound. I can only imagine the bittersweet series of discoveries he made as the doctors and nurses explained the situation. Yes, he still had his leg, a Good Samaritan brought him to the hospital after witnessing the event, that his injury was so serious that there was no guarantee that he would keep his leg, and that he had undergone a procedure to remove traces of an artillery shell from his ankle. Here he was, 9 year old Janscika, alone in the hospital, receiving the grim prognosis all by himself. He was told that it was not a good idea to look beneath the bandages as his leg had changed color and developed gangrene. The doctors went on to explain that they removed as much of the shrapnel from his leg as possible and that he would need to stay in the hospital to try and save his leg and his life.  Attempts would be made to contact his Grandmother, though Budapest was under "Siege" and the Soviet and German forces were battling for control.

Dad described the hospital he was in as a children's hospital. He described it as a small building with only a couple of floors. I am not sure if in fact it was one, but he was surrounded by injured and dying children. Some crying for their parents dead or alive, others in shock after sustaining injury, and some lucky ones with their family at their side. My father felt alone. It would be one of the times that he would recall that feeling of abandonment, but without a real way to give a word to the emptiness he harbored after being left by his mother and hardly ever seeing his father. His Grandmother, Aunt Margit and Cousin Joska were all he had. He prayed and cried and prayed and cried.

Not too long after learning of the severity of the situation, my father was told he had a visitor. He perked up. Maybe it was his Grandma, how did she know, how did she get here? Or, maybe it was his father or the priest from church? Instead, a young woman appeared whom he did not recognize. She had a familiarity about her, perhaps she was from the neighborhood and he was having trouble remembering? What he learned next would be the shock of his life. She looked at him, I imagine in a very shocked way, taking in his appearance, and the state he was in. I wonder if she marveled at how big he had gotten, and if she found herself in him. The woman would tell him she was his mother. She said that there was a rumor going around in Budapest that the hospital was going to be bombed and that he needed to leave with her at once. She briefly explained that she was sent by his grandmother as the hospital would only release him to a legal parent. It seems that his Father was nowhere to be found and that this was the only way.

The details of what happened next are a little fuzzy in my memory, but I do know that she managed to get my Father home to his Grandmother safely. She left him there as quickly as she came. My Father would only see her once more time, later in his life at church, where she did not acknowledge him.

The following events that unfolded were extraordinary. My nine year old father was home with this horrible infection. He did not have medicine or any extra bandages or the antibiotics he desperately needed to save his life. I can only imagine the pain he felt. My Grandmother, did her best to make him comfortable in the basement bunker they were in and with her old country wisdom, managed to get hold of some tomatoes. She cut them into slices and laid them directly over the wound/s and asked my Father to pray with her. Whenever the wound seeped a significant amount of infected material, she would replace with new slices.  All this as sirens roared and more raids sounded into the cold and bitter dawn of the next day.

Early the next morning, they learned that the hospital in fact was bombed and then raided. Little remained of the patients, doctor's, or anyone else that couldn't make it out in time.

Little Janscika's life would go on and his leg would be saved. I remember about fifteen years ago, taking my Dad to the hospital to have an x-ray done of his leg. He suffered from bouts of gout and was experiencing some swelling due to his weakened heart.  This particular time, they discovered some fragments floating around in his ankle. The doctor asked my father if he knew what that could be. At first, Dad was taken aback, he seemed a bit bewildered....then, knowing tears began to well up in his green eyes. My father, being the amazing story tell that he was, blinked, then cleared his throat and decided to supply a detailed accounting of the lodged shrapnel and what his grandmother did with simple tomatoes to save his leg. Looking at my Dad that day, it seems in a strange way that it was as if he saw an old friend again from the very distant past.

As I remember it, this was the only soft memory he would have of his mother, though he never really said anything bad about her. If anything, it seemed he always wondered why he was never good enough to keep, and the answer to a burning question; why had she decided to show up and save his life that day only to let him go again?

Edelwiess

Dad loved the outdoors, particularly going camping or in his mother tongue; "Kemping". He would always wonder why we Americans never used our parks, went to the beautiful beaches or enjoyed our yards. He could be so simple in what he shared with us. It was never extravagant. Often times,  it was  simple French bread, with some good salami, chips and cold drinks to share together at a park. Other times, it was an outing to the beach. Oh, how we loved that so much! Every year he would work without taking time off to save and save enough vacation to take us on a 3 week trip; up the coast of California.

The things I remember most about those trips were stopping by roadside stands for fruit in season or near a harbor for fresh fish. I remember spending the day at the beach, all of us together, baking in the sun, building sand castles with his army surplus shovel, and digging for sand crabs. I used to freak out whenever I would unearth a large one and scream in a frenzy. Walking thru tide pools, looking at rock formations, and touching the slimy, seaweed like moss that blanketed the coastline are memories I carry with me as if they happened yesterday. I loved how as we would move further and further up the coast, these things would change. Falling asleep to the sound of breaking waves and waking up to places where the redwoods would kiss the sea was quite a special experience.

Dad said in Hungary, that people loved being out and visiting with one another. He never understood how we as a society here, couldn't stop and talk to each other. He thought that the art of conversation was dying. I wonder what he would have said about the world today, having social media and text messaging as a primary means of communication.

Dad had some stories about being outdoors in Budapest. In the summers after the war, he was sent for several weeks to the Czechoslovakian border to spend time with his Aunt and Uncle on their farm. It was a common belief that getting out of the city was good for growing boys and girls and fresh air was like magic for the soul.

He talked about how much he loved picking mushrooms on the hillside and how green everything was. He learned how to select them and observed good farm cooking and eating  techniques. Being there helped him forget the War and to just be.  It was a nice respite from all that he had seen and had imprinted into his thinking and it was great to forage for something fresh that had the smell of earth. 

Thinking back now, I can see why he loved "The Sound of Music" so much. He would gather us around the television and make us sit down to watch. I remember the shine in his eyes during all the beautiful panoramic scenes. It was just recently that I realized the connection to World War II and what he watched happen to his country.  I understand now why his eyes would glisten when the Von Trapp family performed "Edelweiss".  He watched them in a way as if he was there with them, fearing for their lives together as the destruction of their beautiful culture unfolded.  How they approached the unknown and escaped to survive, in many ways, mirrored my father's own life.

It was only a couple years before that my father had been walking through the streets one day, foraging for whatever he could find during another bombing campaign. He had been reflecting on what the street used to look like. It was once cafe lined with pastry shop windows that he would stand in front of, longing for a sweet delight. It was and still is common knowledge that we Hungarians have quite a sweet tooth, especially around 3 or 4 in the afternoon; when it was time to stop, meet with a friend or loved one and have a slice of cake and a good strong cup of coffee or aperitif before dinner. The city was once so cosmopolitan with it's nickel countered coffee houses and copper espresso machines displayed with pride to entice you to stop and indulge.

The park, now frozen;  where his father often joked about tales of the "Dracula", that would feast on the unlucky fool to fall asleep on the benches, was beginning to look like a mass grave.  No longer was it the grassy haven for Futbol he once remembered.  It was the winter of 1944 and the city was suffering through a particularly bleak and frigid winter. In the days leading up to the tragic collection of people in the park, Dad said they began collecting his Jewish neighbors and either killing them on the spot or deporting them to labor camps, now commonly known as concentration camps. He had even observed German soldiers taking their bodies and unceremoniously dumping them into Budapest's beloved river Danube and how the dead would bloat up after a couple of days making their journey down to a point where other soldiers deflated them with bayonets  and transfer them to an unknown location.

How could this be? For the first few years of the war, weren't they somehow able to protect each other? It seemed that quite suddenly , the Gestapo had penetrated the city and protection of anyone was difficult.  yellow stars were all around now and horrific events now began to manifest in a rapid pace. His family and their neighborhood did what they could to take turns moving families were possible from one location to another in an attempt to save their lives. 

The town lost it's vibrance and took on a somber and bone chilling tone. It was during this time that other types of campaigns had also started. Rumors wildly spread that the German's were coming to defend Budapest at the behest of the Furor himself against the Russians regarded as barbarians.  Meanwhile, more and more people were disappearing.  Then a  particular campaign was launched that involved the dropping of toys from the sky to entice children them pick them up.

My dad saw a shiny pen on the street and reasoned  that it wasn't the toy dolls he was told to stay away from. He thought it would be nice to have at home to take notes on the Jules Verne's stories he had been reading. 

Suddenly, as if the earth shattered, Dad was surrounded in a cloud of dust.  Then a deafening silence. There was sting felt in his lower leg and then darkness. Dad had been hit.

Hold Your Breath

Dad used to talk about some of the crazy things he would do as a child for cheap entertainment. When he wasn't helping out at home, or out working a small job in the neighborhood, he was out in the city. Looking at people and things would form adventures. He once told me on a particularly warm day that he had this urge to jump into the Danube River and cool off. He said that he was with one of his friends and not his cautious cousin Joska because he tended to be a tattle tale and my Dad wasn't up for proper Hungarian discipline or as we would call it stateside; smacking.

He and his friend make their way to the river's edge to see all the happenings. It didn't seem fun enough to merely take a dip in the water. Especially not while they were watching this heavily trafficked waterway ferry through ships with freight delivery that was surely escorting goods and people headed to what had to be an exciting destination. It was a sunny day and early enough yet for some fun.

He said that he did not know what got into him, but that he and his friend somehow dared each other to see who could hold their breath the longest. That got old quick and somehow they arrived at the challenge of proving how long they could hold their breath by daring each other to swim beneath the hull of one of these docked ships to the other side. Whoever could do it first would be the winner. So they select one of the larger ones determining that it would be wimpy to settle for anything smaller. They decided to chose a point in the middle and off they went.

Dad said that the swim felt like an eternity. The depth of the ship and the distance it would take to clear the path to take that needed breath had been greatly underestimated. The other conditions that they had not realized was the lack of clarity at that depth and how much colder the water would be than at the surface.

Halfway through the distance, anxiety began to set in. The water was calm and quiet and my father was left alone with his thoughts. What would happen to his grandmother if he did not survive this? What would happen if he did, and suffered injury? How will he get out of this and when was he going to make the surface to breathe again. When? When? I imagined him feeling the cool, unforgiving ships bottom and being scraped by the occasional group of barnacles. He really in that instant began to understand his faith, all the things the "padre" would say to him as an Altar Boy at church and just what it meant to really surrender for help. Just as he felt he might have to succumb to this dark, floating tomb he somehow reached the noisy surface.

Dad would go on to say that he and his friend made it, barely. They never tried to determine a winner, nor, would they ever speak of it again. Dad would reflect with a look of being somewhere far and said many a time that this would join the list of the many times he escaped death.

Survival of the events that would continue to unfold around his childhood would require great risk, courage, and prayer. Holding his breath would become a way of being for many years to come.

The Red Bicycle

Seven year old Janos was asked by his elderly grandmother during a lull in attacks, to surface to the streets and go find whatever he could...food was of high importance and after the barrage of bombings that rocked their shared apartment bunker in Pest, he put on his grandmother's shoes and whatever warm clothes they had to go searching, it was winter and the invasion was official.

Dad used to tell us that Pest, was considered the more humble side of Budapest, and included a huge Jewish population that inhabited that part of town along with a smaller group of Roman Catholics. It didn't bear much significance as in his view, people coexisted in a normal manner. Little did he know what that was about to mean for his town, his neighbors, his friends and many other innocent people. It was much of what he witnessed there that would shape the rest of his life.

There were many beautiful things about the city that were enjoyed by rich and poor alike. Before the war, my dad Janos could walk over or take a street car to the opera house and listen under the stars for free by just sitting outside. He had great freedom as a young boy. It's hard for me to imagine allowing my son at that age to wander around in that manner. Life was different.

He had a father that worked hard as a craftsman that worked as a wood artisan and made a mark with the Basilicas and local churches with his work. When my dad Janos and his cousin Joska where young boys, they would go searching to find my grandfather when payday came around and could easily locate him at the local pub. The owner always had a cup of beer foam for the boys to keep them calm...my great-grandmother was always worried that my grandfather would drink his money away. A good man otherwise who my father adored and always honored till dying day but had his vices.  My dad used to say it was always nice see his father when he could and had fond memories of that delicious foam that made them feel sleepy.

My great grandmother (whose name escapes me and is part of the reason why I am doing the genealogy search) was loving, strict, and hardworking. She was my father's main guardian and caregiver from the day he was abandoned by his own mother, literally left on a potato sack, on my great-grandmother's door step. Hard to believe that this was actually true to life and not out a fairytale, but it did happen. My great- grandmother took my father and gave him a good Roman Catholic upbringing and had him helping out and working from about age 5. She did her best to provide the stability he needed since his father was not too available. She had since retired as a former cook for the Austro-Hungarian nobility and used her skills as a seamstress to make ends meet. She was up in age and not so physically strong, so little Janos or Janchika as she would affectionately call him had to help out for their survival.

So, on this particular day, Janchika surfaces to the street level and begins to look around. He sees many things that he has begun to desensitize to: dead bodies, dying horses, parachutes, pieces of things he cannot allow himself to re-assemble in his mind as they could form a whole person. He begins to notice other people climbing out of the safety of their basements when he notices a sudden and frenzied rush to the stores as people began to loot for their survival. Janchika, being age 7, for a quick second, forgets his responsibilities to find food and other necessities. He joins the mob and runs to the department store. He remembers something he has long adored.  He is lucky to make it amidst all the desperate grabbing by neighbors, strangers pushing their way thru take what they could get.

Finally, there is a break in the crowd and my father has a clear shot of an item he had long admired thru the store window holiday display. He would see this beautiful little object and imagine himself riding on it to the park, opera house, school,  over the bridges, to church. Suddenly, he is acutely aware of the discomfort in his feet wearing his grandmother's shoes that are about twice his size and stuffed with newspaper. Oh how that that little shiny red bicycle could whisk him away and was at last going to be his! All this within reach, at last a bit of happiness amidst all the misery. Triumphantly and swiftly he picks up the bike and begins to easily wheel it away to ride home.

Then a strange silence. Where was everyone? Where is all the pushing and shoving?

The desperate mob had dispersed and virtually disappeared and a gripping fear came over him.

There standing before him was an  SS soldier  blocking his way. Yelling at my seven year old dad in German expletives he then viciously proceeded ripped the bicycle away from him after teaching him a lesson he wouldn't be allowed to forget. He is left to survive but only after a horribly broken nose from the butt of a gun.

My dad's eyes still welled up every time he would tell that story. He would go on to tell us that he could not go home to his grandmother empty handed, even though his nose was bleeding profusely and he was running for his life in fear. He had to stop and scavenge whatever he could find. His feet throbbed, his head hurt, and he had to put away whatever hurt feelings he had about the coveted bike. He took parachute material and some horsemeat from the street and brought them to their temporary home in the basement to his horrified grandmother. He was gone so long, she thought he died out there. She took the meat, parachute material and then went to work doing whatever she could to stop the bleeding. Once she stabilized him, she went to work on preparing the meat and then sewing some clothing out of the parachutes. Though their survival was not guaranteed, they had tonight, each other and food. Tomorrow was another day.

Ancestry.Com

Last week, I registered on Ancestry.Com. I was surprised to find some records on my Father: Janos Goda. They are all U.S. records, but one that really choked me up. I discovered the ship he came here on in 1957 as a refugee from the Hungarian Revolution. Finding that record that gave me courage to keep going. In his whole life, he had so much pain and regret about having to leave his family behind. He was just 22 years old and left in the dead of winter arriving in New York for processing on the General Leroy Eltinge and arrived on January 30th 1957. I remember him telling us the tears he had in his eyes seeing the famed "Statue of Liberty" and the bittersweet feelings of joy that he had that he made it coupled with the desperation he felt for his Grandmother and family members left behind and the uncertainty of what was to be.

I remember many stories about his escape from the Soviets as they crushed his country. Having been either drafted or due for mandatory military service into the Russian Army, my father's official title was "Tank Commander". The year before his draft he worked at a Grocery Store and despite being made to create propaganda signs to post outside the store (he was always very artistic), he enjoyed his spare time listening to contraband "swing music" "Elvis" and the great American Jazz heroes of his time. He was an amazing dancer and story teller and always a charming gentleman.

Previous to that his life had much more tragedy, escape from near death, horrific events that unfolded as a child watching the Nazis invade his city and country ( I will save those stories for another time).

Despite it all, he held on to a steadfast faith in God and the goodness in people and did his best to maintain a sense of optimism, though he had his days. Painful memories would flood back time and again however, through it all, he always found a reason to be grateful, especially to the United States for saving his life, taking him in and giving him endless opportunities.