was probably the most unattractive-looking woman I have ever seen). Throughout my time at the orphanage I was scared to death of her.
Aunt Olga knew my father and spoke of him with great respect. Everyone seemed to know Dad, who by this time was making a name for himself as a noteworthy cello teacher. He made arrangements with Aunt Olga to see me on Wednesdays and Sundays to give me cello lessons, and this was when he surprised me with my first cello. I started dreaming about becoming a great cellist. I thought if I worked hard the way he did I could fulfill the dream of my father. I could bring back to him something so valuable that he had lost, and also make him proud of me.
For a long time I was terribly lonely in the orphanage; I just could not make friends with anyone. I remember looking around the courtyard and seeing many girls of all ages running around playing games, but no one seemed to pay any attention to me. Looking back, I think I know why that happened. I wasn’t an orphan like nearly all the other children. Also, though my hair had grown darker by then, I noticed that I was the only blond-haired, blue-eyed kid out of eighty-five girls. Everyone else had dark brown or black curly hair, so I just stuck out. They used to tease me nonstop about my looks. The first couple of years I cried myself to sleep almost every night.
Then, when I was in third grade, Bea Frank came to the orphanage. She soon became my very best friend. Our friendship helped both of us to get through those tough times. We had a lot in common: like me, she wasn’t an orphan, either. Her mom was not in good health, and her dad just disappeared one day, leaving home to pick up a pack of cigarettes and never coming back. During the early fifties it was not unusual for people simply to vanish for no apparent reason. The KGB controlled everything, and you never knew who was listening in to your conversations.
Bea and I were complete opposites in looks. She was skinny and sick all the time with asthma. She had very thick brown hair, light olive skin, and big brown almond-shaped eyes. I was lily-white with rosy cheeks, plump and healthy-looking. But Bea and I loved all the same things. We would make up stories about what we would do when we left the orphanage. We had big dreams for our futures.
We were lucky because Bea sat next to me in the study room in the orphanage and her bed was also assigned next to mine. We studied together and loved reading, theater, and movies. We started a scrapbook about all of our favorite actors and actresses. We were definitely star-struck! We were completely infatuated with the same actors and imagined what we would say if we ever met them. We created our own fantasy world and had a lot of innocent fun.
We also started writing a daily diary. I think we got our inspiration from the book The Diary of Anne Frank. We both instinctively knew that we lived in unusual times that should be recorded. We would often compare our entries and share our most secret thoughts and dreams. And we shed many tears talking about our lives, yet we could also make each other laugh and forget about our often difficult daily reality.
We used to save every penny to buy tickets to the movies or theater. We talked a lot about going to America, where it seemed everybody wanted to go. In school, however, we were taught that America was evil and that it was about rich people taking advantage of poor people. We were brainwashed with daily dogma from The Communist Manifesto that the only way to succeed was to support the Communist Party, where everybody was equal and had the same rights.
We were always told that we had to give everything to the Soviet Union because they “liberated” us from the Nazis and we owed them our freedom. We studied the lives of Stalin, Lenin, and Marx in school, and their statues were displayed everywhere. We had red stars on every building and all the children were required to become Pioneers, members of a youth Communist organization. All of us had to wear a red kerchief around our necks showing our solidarity with the Soviet Union. Our streets were renamed after “Soviet heroes.”
Under Communist rule there was no freedom of religion, though at the Jewish orphanage we had religious instruction weekly. In public school classes, however, the story was completely different. Both Bea and I believed deeply in God, but in school God was never mentioned, as if He didn’t exist. In books and poems the word God was never capitalized, and when we asked the teacher why God’s name wasn’t written with a capital G she answered, without blinking an eye, “Because there is no God.” Then we saw that very same teacher in the Jewish temple the following Friday at the evening services. We were so indoctrinated with the Communist ideology that we just accepted these double standards as a way of life.
There was one thing we never understood, though. If America was so bad, then why did people want to go there? If the Soviet occupation was so great, then why were people always talking about leaving Hungary to go west for a better life? Bea and I would try to see every American movie, and we would dream about this other world. Even though we knew nothing about it, we both knew we wanted to go there!
The schedule at the orphanage was like being in the military. We wore uniforms to the public school, but underneath we had to wear dresses made by the in-house seamstress at the orphanage. Everybody had a number that was sewn into our towels and our clothes. I was number 11. At school we were always so embarrassed about our clothing because everyone knew that we were the girls from the Jewish orphanage. I remember how humiliated I felt because nobody in school wanted to be friends with us. Even though the war was over, Jews were merely tolerated but not particularly liked. Anti-Semitism was rampant in Hungary and all over Eastern Europe, but nobody talked openly about it.
We had to wake up every morning at six o’clock sharp. Usually, a supervisor would be at the door of the large bedroom where most of us slept. They would have a bucket of cold water ready in case someone decided not to jump out of bed immediately. I tried always to be up early to avoid the cold water treatment!
We had to line up at the communal bathroom sinks to wash our faces, brush our teeth, and then be dressed by 6:30 a.m. Beds had to be made neatly, and then we lined up for breakfast. We had a long main dining room in the basement where we ate at assigned seats, usually decided by what grade we were in school. Breakfast was always the same: coffee with milk and a thick slice of bread (sometimes buttered). It ended at 7:00 a.m., and then we had to go back upstairs to get our school bags, snacks, and coats. After that we lined up downstairs for roll call at 7:15 a.m. We then walked to the nearby public school, which started promptly at 8:00 a.m.
There was an incident that happened one morning at roll call that I could not forget, mainly because it involved my best friend, Bea. We were not allowed to have bangs, and our hair had to be completely out of our faces. Bea did have bangs, but she carefully combed it under her cap, secured with some hairpins. Her hair, however, was very thick in texture and hard to control. She was trying to hide her bangs to get through roll call. Unfortunately, this particular morning her hair would not cooperate and her bangs slipped out just as we were being checked. Aunt Olga was livid and proceeded to get scissors and cut Bea’s bangs completely off. It was a miserable scene. Bea cried, and I cried with her. Oh, how I hated that woman in that moment! To this day I still don’t understand what she had against bangs; I thought they looked really pretty on Bea.
We got out of school at 2:00 p.m., and then we walked back to the orphanage and had our main meal in the dining room. It was a regular meal with soup, vegetables or potatoes, and sometimes meat or a stew. Then it was time to do homework until 7:00 p.m. All our assigned work was always checked by our supervisor before we finished for the day. At 7:30 we had supper, which usually consisted of hot tea and some buttered bread. Then we had playtime, but I usually took this opportunity to practice my cello. At 9:00 it was bedtime.
There was a temple in the orphanage building that we attended every Friday night and Saturday morning. We also had religious instruction every Wednesday evening, taught by the wife of the rabbi who conducted the services on Fridays and Saturdays. Her name was Aunt Margaret, and she was a wonderful storyteller. I always looked forward to Wednesdays, when I would see my father in the afternoon for cello lessons and would then be with Aunt Margaret in the evening.
I
