A FAMILY HEIRLOOM: THE WALKING STICK / Gabriella Vidor
The walking stick stood in our flat in Izabella Street, together with other old objects left by my grandmother. I had always been attracted to these family relics, so I took them with me every time I moved to a different flat as an adult.
I did not know who the owner of the stick had been until I saw it recently in the hand of my cousin, Dr. György Fleischmann, in one of the photos of my friend Rudi Groó. The picture shows Gyuri and Rudi’s mother together at an outing, each with a walking stick in their hands. Aunt Bözsi was my cousin’s fiancée, who wanted to save him from being deported in 1944. Unfortunately, Gyuri did not accept, and he was taken to Auschwitz.
Gyuri had polio as a child, which proved doubly fatal, first when he was transported by train. His companions pried open the floor of the moving wagon and escaped, but he did not dare jump. The second time was when he had to walk before the eyes of Mengele, who noticed his limp and sent him to the gas after the second lap.
The story of the flat at 81 Izabella Street is also interesting. My grandmother moved here from Upper Hungary with her nine younger children in 1914, after the death of my grandfather. My father had thirteen siblings altogether, but the elder ones were already living on their own, and they provided for my grandmother and the young ones. One of the adult children was my aunt, Mrs. Antalné Fleischmann, Flóra, who after her divorce moved back to the flat with her son Gyuri, the owner of the walking stick. In 1944, the women and the children were taken to the ghetto in Pest, and the empty flat was occupied by an Arrow Cross family of three, who immediately turned coats after the war and became members of the Hungarian Communist Party. Thus, when my aunt and her family returned to the flat after the liberation, this family could not be evicted, and the family home had to be shared with them.
After the war, Aunt Bözsi regularly visited my Aunt Flóra, and the friendship between the two families lasts to the present day.
