Bitter Jewish Memories of Budapest

 

There is a deep sadness of the uprooted souls. Those forced for many reasons - particularly political - to leave their homes they will always have a broken heart for their place of birth, no matter how much they love it. Or they used to love it. The pleasant taste of the childhood memories is bittered by the adulthood accounts of humiliations and frustrations. When/If they are allowed to return, the shock of seeing the idealised place of the memory with the eyes of the (over)critical adult is the source of a redoubled wave of frustration and unhappiness for not properly finding its own place.

André Lorant was born in a middle-class Hungarian Jewish family that did its best to cover its roots as many assimilated Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. They got baptised, mostly within the Catholic Church, no brit mila, no Hebrew names, they tried to respect as seriously as possible the Christian holidays. Then, the far-right come and force them to wear the yellow star and send them to concentration camps. Those who survived and returned, found not only their properties looted but soon they will be labeled as indesirables by the proletarian regimes. This time, they were not forced to wear the yellow star, but they were sent to prisons and reduced - again - to the status of ´second class´ citizens. 

His memoir, Le Perroquet de Budapest is bitter and cynical with a strong Freudian touch. Mostly, against the double-faced compatriots and the vanity of their national intoxication. Then, and now. Lorant, who was forced to leave Hungary following the 1956 events - I dare not to call it a revolution, because despite the expectations it did not change anything, except the murder of the communist leaders who wanted the change and a massive wave of immigration - refugiated to France where he became a specialist in Balzac, the fine observer of the human character. Recently, he also write a bvook about institutional antisemitism in Hungary. The memories of Jewish life are generously spiced with personal encounters and various family betrayals and petiness. It is both a society and family portrait with cartoonish touches. 

The book is an useful reader of Jewish life and encounters in Hungary - with a lot of similarities, at a different scale, with Germany´s. I was not extremely impressed about the style, particularly the bitterness, although I can fully understand it. Looking to the recent political evolutions in Hungary, it seems that there are so many things that stayed the same.