Painted Pebbles: A Hungarian Memoir

By Peter Stangl

An eye-witness account of watershed moments in modern European history. In 1983 librarian Peter Stangl took his teenaged son and daughter to Budapest, to show them the city and the land where he had grown up. He wrote an account of that trip, which he titled Pebbles,-because a surprise encounter with some stones his mother had painted stirred up such strong memories of his boyhood. In time, Mr. Stangl expanded his memoir into a saga of memories of world-shaking events that he had witnessed as a boy and young man in Hungary: the rise of Naziism, the violence of World War II, the subsequent Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Interspersed with these accounts of history in the making, the author gives a fond anecdotal chronicle of his family. After his hair-raising escape from Hungary, Peter Stangl landed in New York, via Vienna. The story ends with his assimilation into Yale University and a reunion with family in Paris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel & Daniel Publishers
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781564747907

Book preview

Painted Pebbles

A HUNGARIAN MEMOIR

by Peter Stangl

2015 · FITHIAN PRESS, MCKINLEYVILLE, CALIFORNIA

Copyright © 2015 by Peter Stangl

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-56474-790-7

The interior design and the cover design of this book are intended for and limited to the ­publisher’s first print edition of the book and related marketing display purposes. All other use of those designs without the publisher’s permission is prohibited.

Published by Fithian Press

A division of Daniel and Daniel, Publishers, Inc.

Post Office Box 2790

McKinleyville, CA 95519

www.danielpublishing.com

Design and production: Studio E Books, Santa Barbara

Distributed by SCB Distributors [phone]

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Stangl, Peter, (date)

Painted pebbles : a Hungarian memoir / by Peter Stangl.

      pages cm

ISBN [first printed edition] 978-1-56474-567-5 (paperback : alkaline paper)

1. Stangl, Peter, (date) 2. Jews—Hungary—Biography. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, Jewish. 4. Hungary—History—Revolution, 1956—Personal narratives. 5. Jews, Hungarian—United States—Biography. 6. Librarians—United States—Biography. I. Title.

DS135.H93S73 2015

943.905092—dc23

[B]

                         2014025761

I dedicate this chronicle to Anondo and Indrani, my son and daughter, with the hope that they will profit a little from one glimpse into their complicated and multicultural roots.

Contents

Preface

Foreword

Prologue: Pebbles

1. Early Memories of My Family

2. Yellow Stars

3. Postwar Inflation

4. Fritzi and Her Sons

5. Button Soccer

6. Life Under Communism

7. Hard Work and Pretty Girls

8. Communism After Stalin

9. Russia Invades Again

10. Escape to Austria

11. In Vienna

12. Flight

13. Welcome to the U.S.A.

Epilogue: A Family Reunion and the Years Since Then

Photos

About the Author

Preface

This project, to put to paper what I know of my and my family’s background, was not my idea. I am not temperamentally oriented to tradition. I feel no gut-level need to record history or to perpetuate the past. For myself, I prefer donating my body to a medical school so it will serve at least a marginally useful function, rather than being buried under a graveyard symbol, inevitably to be soon forgotten. Along the same lines, I personally feel no void or loss in response to the prospect that I might end up without grandchildren to carry on the family name. I guess I feel that what is important is the here and now, rather than the past or the future.

So why am I sitting here and writing? It is because my dear son, Anondo—or Mung—asked me to. I thought about his request, and I think I can understand why he is interested. He is a product of the intersection (or collision?) of three distinct cultures, and he is certainly not the stereotypical middle-American, silent-majority boy. My son is a thoughtful person, so it is not surprising that he would try to get a handle on the factors that conspired to produce him.

Not that I don’t consider myself thoughtful as well, but all this stuff seems obvious to me—I don’t have to spell it out to myself. I grew up in one culture, lived most of my adult life in another, spending significant blocks of time in various others, and all this somehow blended in my subconscious. So I thank Anondo for kick-starting me in this direction—now he and his sister, Indrani, will have a little documentary evidence of at least a part of their lives’ complicated origins.

It took me a while to get up steam to start working on this. It turned out to be, in fact, a very interesting exercise to assume an out-of-body stance and to try to describe things that are a matter of course to me, in a fashion that someone, lacking the required cultural components to properly interpret them, can use. That is what I set out to do. Regrettably the story starts at a time when I was too young to retain or understand all the relevant detail. So much of what I say is not the result of first-hand memory but a blend of memories, implanted memories of stories from my parents, and interpretations of fragments that seem like memories. I apologize for any unintended inaccuracies.…

And now a note on the family name. On exit from Hungary I was officially Stangel Iván Péter, as it said on my birth certificate. Names in Hungarian are in the logical order, rather than reversed, as in English. The family name comes first, as you would find it in the phone book. Then comes the given name, finally the middle name. My father spelled his last name the same way, but I knew that George, my uncle, spelled Stangl without an e. I wondered about that, and my father said that George had changed his name after he left Hungary. Spelled with the e the name was more readily considered Jewish than without. Stangl is clearly a South German name, Bavarian or Tirolian. Stangel means little stick, resembling the family names given to Jews when they settled in Germany. Remembering this, I dropped the e when filing for my naturalization papers after I got to the States. Having experienced as a child the Nazi occupation of Budapest, I still harbored a vivid sense that it might not be safe to be Jewish.

Foreword

I first met—I should say heard—Peter Stangl across a large room at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Bengt Jangfeldt had just concluded a talk on Raoul Wallenberg when Peter asked a question about the Swedish safe houses for Jews in Budapest that Wallenberg had helped establish. It turned out that Peter had briefly lived in one such house as a child. We got to talking afterwards and, at some point, probably not that night, Peter told me he’d written a memoir, and I asked if he would consider depositing the manuscript in the Hoover Library & Archives. Peter eventually agreed, but now I have the pleasure of writing the Foreword to the published version, which a wider audience can now read.

I’ve been fascinated by the form of the memoir for many years, having taught courses in which students read both diaries written at the time of events and memoirs written long afterwards. Thus, it was a great pleasure to read what Peter calls his project. Peter is a more reflective author than many writers of memoirs, and with self-awareness he describes the out-of-body stance necessary to complete such a work and acknowledges the blend of memories that make up what we remember. The result of his efforts is excellent.

Peter has written a fine, sad, happy, and beautiful book, in which he takes the reader through his experience in prewar Hungary, through World War II, into the communist period, and across the border to Austria in a daring escape after the 1956 uprising, and, finally, to the United States. By the time he writes, As I lean back having come to the end of this story,… the reader has had a first-person view of some of the worst brutality and finest humanity of the twentieth century.

Peter traverses ground that may be familiar to some readers, but in every part of his story, indeed on almost every page, there is much new and personal to learn from his experiences. We read about a prewar boyhood of sneaking candies and studies destroyed by Nazi fascism and about Peter’s survival in Budapest as a Jew during wartime and his almost fatal fascination with an air raid’s explosions. We read of his father’s careful choices, quick thinking, and hard work to save the family members he could from the camps. In those times any individual’s choice might result in death, and we marvel at the intelligence and luck that allowed those who could to survive.

Peter grows up after the war, playing with abandoned artillery rounds and tempting fate, yet avoiding a life of petty larceny to return to school again. His family grows and Peter adjusts to life under communism, addressing friends as comrade. The new rulers put in place a different set of restrictions for the family members of capitalists, and Peter experiences communist dogma woven into his reading and the impossibility of getting into medical school due to his capitalist background. With a combination of pluck and good fortune, the 1956 uprising provides an opportunity for an escape to the West. Once in Vienna, Peter writes, I had grown up in an environment where I was simply not familiar with the notion of self determination, individual autonomy, or independent responsibility. Experiencing all of these new models of living, Peter thrives.

The value of a personal account of historical times is that each of our experiences is unique and it is in the individual’s life—as much as it is in mass experience—that we see the meaning of our times. In Peter Stangl’s work, we find such meaning.

Eric Wakin

Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University

Prologue: Pebbles

I was climbing, lost in thought. My son and daughter were keeping up a few steps behind, quietly. Rounding the steps to the third-floor landing my thirteen-year-old daughter asked, Daddy, is this the place where the thing with the saccharin happened?

The answer to that question was no. Yet, I was tickled to see that apparently the story had taken on a dimension of reality in the kids’ minds. I said, No, that happened somewhere else. Perhaps we can go there another time, if you like.

We were halfway up the circular stairway of No. 11 Csanády utca in Budapest, a five-story apartment building. I had lived here as a child during the war. The stairs wound around the elevator shaft. The tired, old elevator was visible through the elaborate grillwork guarding the shaft. By dropping two forints (the local currency, worth about a dime) into the slot by the buttons we could have used it, but I decided for all of us that we would climb, as I had always done some forty years before.

This trip was a search party for my youth. Almost thirty years after escaping from Hungary in the wake of the 1956 revolution, I was back, with my American children, trying to find, and trying to share with them, pieces of my past that I had not been able to adequately describe to them.

We drove here, and I found a parking place right in front of the building. Stepping from the car and waiting for the kids to scramble out, I looked around. Yes, the corner store was still there, but it now had a bigger sign over the door. The cobblestones looked the same. And the faint staccato tapping noise I could hear suggested that the walnut packaging workshop, two doors down, was still in operation. I used to watch the row of young women sitting by the counter, cracking walnuts with small hammers—one precise tap—and smoothly easing out perfect walnut halves from the shell with a pick, all in a flash, hours on end.

Come on, guys, let me show you something, I said, and we crossed to the low, basement window to the left of the building’s entrance. Look in here, I continued, stooping. We were crowding the small window, peering into the gloom inside. Alas, all we saw were dirty walls and small debris on the floor.

What about it? asked my daughter, quietly. She was using her indulgent tone of voice, the one signaling Okay, Dad, do your thing, if you must.…

I was afraid we were off to a bad start. I once had loved to stand at this window and watch the man inside turn sticks of wood into spiral table legs, like magic.

It used to be a carpenter’s shop, I answered, sighing. Guess it’s gone now. Come, let’s go in the building and see what we can find.

Traversing the hallway, we stepped into the central, open courtyard. Communal clotheslines on the left. In the corner a wooden structure to spread carpets on, so you can pound them clean with a whisk. Shabby, gray stucco, spotty paint. The word Óvóhely (air raid shelter) still printed on the wall, rather faint after forty years. A large arrow obliquely pointing the way down to the cellar.

On each floor above the courtyard a gangway ran all the way around, the apartments opening onto it. I pointed skyward. Hey guys, I used to live up there, in the corner.

My daughter dutifully glanced up, but immediately, and without comment, followed her brother to a kitten, which was perched on a windowsill.

I caught up and said, This is where we dragged the dead horse.

What horse? they asked in unison. I seemed to have their attention.

Haven’t I told you about that? I was sure I had. I extracted the purring kitten from my son’s arms, took him by the hand, and led the way toward the staircase.

We slowly made it to the top of the stairs. To the right was the front door to my old apartment. I stopped for a moment to let a whole flood of memories wash over me. This is where I had seen my mother for the last time. This is where I nearly died of fright when I watched a bomb hit across the street during an air raid. And this is where my grandmother visited on Sunday afternoons and would make me her special omelet with jam—the very finest thing in the world.

My plan was to ring the bell to the old apartment and see if I could talk my way in—I wanted the children to see it. But when the two of them caught up, I motioned them to follow me to the gangway instead, above the courtyard. Somehow hesitant to ring that bell, I tried to gain a little time.

We leaned over the railing. I pointed across, and said to my son, Remember the stories I told you about the little girl next door, Ágnes? She was my girlfriend when I was six or seven—sort of. She lived right over there.

As I said this, I saw the shiny brass rectangle nailed to the door. It looked familiar. I quickly strode around to get closer. Sure enough, the family name LAX was engraved on it. Could it be that they still lived here, after all these years?

I impulsively knocked on the door, hard. Not knowing who would open, I tried to think of what I would say.

A short, portly man opened the door wide and looked us over—first me, then the children, one by one. He had well creased crow’s-feet by friendly-looking eyes. He said nothing, just stood there, his eyebrows like question marks. "Bocsánat (excuse me), I started haltingly in Hungarian. I saw the name on the door and recognized it. I used to live next door, as a child. Is the Lax family still here?"

No, that’s just the old plate, it never got taken off. My name is Radványi. Yours?

Stangl… I didn’t have a chance to say more. The little man practically jumped.

Oh, yes, just a second, he said, disappearing.

A moment later a middle-aged, plump woman came from the back of the hallway at a trot. She had a frayed, light blue cotton house dress with an apron, and her slippers made flapping noises as she hurried. She looked a little familiar, but I couldn’t place her. She wore a big smile as she approached with eyes brightly sparkling, arms extended wide, saying, My goodness, Péter! I am Évi Lax! And with that she enveloped me in a trembling hug.

She held me for what seemed a long time. Then it came to me. My little friend, Ágnes, had an older sister. I hadn’t remembered, but this Évi must be her. And she reminded me of Mrs. Lax, their mother, which was why she seemed familiar.

Mrs. Lax, a memory almost completely lost behind the years. The image struck me as I realized that Évi was crying while holding me, and burying her face in my shoulder. I vividly remembered seeing Mrs. Lax whipped by Nazi soldiers while we were in the cellar, during one of the interminable air raids.

I had trouble re-focusing on the present, listening to Évi’s excited chatter as she held me at arm’s length and went on and on about the marvel of seeing me again. She was, of course, speaking Hungarian, of which my kids understood nothing. I turned to them, one hand still held by Évi, and tried to quickly explain why she was crying. Meanwhile, Évi herded us to the living room and made us sit, all the while apologizing for all the mess in the apartment. Her husband quietly looked on, not interfering.

We settled down around the coffee table. Over my mild protest, Évi ran to get coffee and sweets. A halting conversation started, with me sporadically trying to translate. Ágnes was out of town, on vacation. No she didn’t live in this apartment, they had their own. She would surely be thrilled to hear that I stopped by. No, Daddy Lax was no longer around; he had passed away five years before. Yes, Ágnes had married, three children, all bright and beautiful.…

Évi got up and stepped from the room, only to return a moment later with a shiny-eyed fifteen-year-old girl, Mari, her daughter. She went and sat next to my thirteen-year-old. The girls smiled shyly at each other. I wished my daughter could speak Hungarian.

I asked Évi if I could show my children the balcony. We all stepped out, Évi and Mari behind us. I said to the kids, pointing, You see the bay window just over there? That was the apartment I used to live in.

But you said that the apartment was bombed out, didn’t you?

Yes, most of it was in the end. But one room in back was still intact. From the look of that window it seems like they did a good job rebuilding it.

Can we go see it?

I hope so, I said. We will have to see if the people living there now would let us in. I would like to have you see at least the little room in the back. That is where five of us stayed for several weeks, without electricity or heat, just after the Russians took over Buda and Pest.

Daddy, is everything the way you remembered? my son asked after a little pause.

I looked around. Well, more or less. Many things look the same, but they feel a little different. It’s hard to explain. That building across the street, it didn’t use to be there, did it? I asked Évi in Hungarian.

No, there used to be a scrap metal yard there, Évi said.

This generates another memory, as does almost everything she says. I and a couple of my friends almost burned that yard down, I told my kids.

I turned to my son. Before that building was built, you could see into the next street behind it, over there. Do you remember the story I told you about the air raid I saw from our window here once? My grandmother and I were upstairs at the time, and we could see bombs exploding right before our eyes.

Évi said, You know, I think I can remember that time. Your grandmother was a wreck. She kept complaining in the cellar about how stubborn you were, how she could not drag you away from the window.

I asked, Évi, do you think we could see our old apartment?

I don’t see why not. I know the people there, and they are very nice. Let’s go and see.… And with that she was already leading the way next door. We followed as she went to press the doorbell. A slim, dark-haired man, about my age, came to the door. "Szia, Évi, mi ujság? (Hi, Évi, what’s news?)," he said with a friendly smile.

Hello, Gyuri (George). Then, pointing at me, she said, This is Péter, an old friend of ours. We grew up together. He lived in this apartment during the war, and now is back from America with his children. She stepped to him, put her hand on his arm, and said, George, would you let them look around?

George did not hesitate. He beamed at me and said Velcomb to Boodapesht! Pleas comb een! and stepped aside. As we filed into the hall, the door from the kitchen opened a crack and someone looked through. George switched to Hungarian. It’s all right, mother, these are friends. And to me, Don’t mind her, she is very timid.

Évi turned with a wave of her hand to go home as George crossed the hall and opened the door for us. As I stepped in, I was surprised not to recognize the living room. The bay window was there, but the doors on both sides, leading to the other rooms, were not. The room was over-furnished with several little side tables, glassed cupboards, tables, a couch, chairs. There were doilies and little knick-knacks on every surface.

As soon as we were seated, with my kids on either side of me, George was full of questions. When did I leave Hungary? Where did we live now, what did I do for a living, did I own a house like all Americans are reputed to, how much money did I earn…? I tried my best to fill him in. Finally, I had a chance to ask my questions.

When did you people move into this apartment?

Sometime in nineteen forty-five. He turned to his mother. Anya, when exactly did we move in?

In the late summer, she answered.

George continued, I remember that the place was a terrible mess. Big holes in the walls and the ceiling—you could see the sky from that corner over there. And the front wall, with the bay window, was almost completely gone.

I know, I answered. We left this apartment in forty-four, before it was bombed, and returned I think in February forty-five, when it had been hit several times. I can still picture the hole in the ceiling; the snow came in through it. Then the front wall was hit by a grenade in the middle of the night about a week or two later. That was when the bay window went.…

Where did you actually stay? The place did not seem fit to live in when we got here!

There were five of us, and we all slept, cooked, and lived in the little back room, off the hall, I replied.

Oh, we made that room into a kitchen. You see, we separated the place into two apartments. My parents have two rooms, and we have the other two. That explained the changes that I had not been able to figure out.

Do you mind if I show the little room to my children? I asked.

Of course not, he answered, and he was already on the way. The kitchen—our little room—was perhaps nine feet by twelve, barely big enough for all of us to crowd in. For a few moments I said nothing. I looked at the sink, but pictured instead the small mattress on the floor in that corner, where Grandmother had slept. Where there now stood a cupboard, there had been the other mattress, shared by Father and me. Our small wood stove was in the same place where now an electric range stood. The kitchen was neat and well lit, a far cry from the dingy, dark hole I remembered.…

I drew my children to me and said to them, You know, I just remembered something that I think I have never told you about. See, I slept on a mattress over here, almost under the light fixture here. At that time there was a big, heavy glass globe up there. When the grenade hit, taking down the wall in the other room, that globe came crashing down between me and the stove. I don’t know what scared me more, the lamp crashing or the grenade.

We continued the conversation by the kitchen door. George asked, Was all the broken furniture we found here yours, then?

Yes, if you moved here in the summer, everything you found here must have been ours. Almost everything was destroyed by the bombing, so we just left it all.

Tell me one thing. There was a part of a horse, or cow, or some large animal, out on what was left of the balcony. Do you know anything about it?

I was puzzled. What exactly did you find? I asked.

Huge bones. A whole bunch of them. We could not figure out how they got there, and I remember imagining all kinds of mysterious things about them as a child.

Well, we had butchered a horse that had been killed by a grenade, down in the courtyard. I don’t actually remember the bones, but my grandmother must have put them out on the balcony. Garbage collection was only one of the luxuries we had to do without at the time.

George laughed as he turned to his mother. You see, I told you they must have eaten the horse!

George’s mother, who had said very little during the whole visit, just looked at me, her earlier reserve, and perhaps suspicion, gradually replaced by compassion in her eyes. Eating horse meat must have been nearly unthinkable for her. She must have been better off during the last weeks of the war than we were. At that moment I could almost taste that horse meat again. No meal in a five-star restaurant could ever generate the same feeling of satisfaction.

I thanked George and his mother for allowing a foreign tribe to invade their home. He was very gracious. With a big smile, he made me promise that we would stop in again the next time we were to visit Hungary.

The children walked down the corridor on either side of me, holding my hands, as we returned to Évi’s and settled again

Reviews for Painted Pebbles

[ddonovan-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Painted Pebbles: A Hungarian Memoir didn't come from the usual intention to publish a book: it was written as a gift to the author's son and daughter as a family history, and took on a life of its own in seeing publication in a book that will now reach a wider audience. The story begins with a description of the author's early childhood during World War II, as he recalls air raids, being Jewish in an increasingly Nazi world, and becoming trapped in Budapest's ghetto until the Soviets arrived in 1945, there to experience a different kind of totalitarian rule under their hand until he escaped to the West during the 1956 October uprising. Political and cultural survival techniques, insights, and experiences mark a journey that led to his eventual success as a Yale student in a new world. Anyone interested in accounts of European history will find this memoir an engrossing story of survival.