A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [127]
Unexpectedly, the Six-Day War had stirred up forgotten sentiments in Konrad. He had gone to a newsstand, bought a newspaper, and started reading. Suddenly he felt faint, the sickening flutter of anxiety in his stomach. The war had broken out. Jews were once again being singled out for a slaughter. Could this be happening again? He began to think increasingly about the fact that he was a Jew and to read Jewish history. But when the anti-Zionist campaign started attacking Jewish government officials, attacking some of the very people who were censoring writers, Konrad had little sympathy for the Jewish officials. “I am not interested in the fact that they are Jews,” he would say. “Only that they are censors.”
Gyorgy Gado was so angered by the government's only slightly modified Soviet anti-Zionist line that he turned in his party membership. In the government statistical bureau where he worked, he was demoted to a low-level clerk.
As in Poland, support for Israel during the Six-Day War was seen as an expression of anti-Russian sentiments. Jews found themselves with the most unlikely of allies. Andras Kovacs took an excursion on the Danube and visited a small village inhabited by ethnic Germans who had been living in Hungary for many generations without losing their German identity. Kovacs was sitting on a park bench enjoying the setting when the village guide came over to him and started talking in German. Kovacs answered in German, and as they talked, he realized that the guide was extremely drunk. The guide at about the same time realized that Kovacs was Jewish.
“Aha,” said the guide, scrutinizing Kovacs through drooping eyelids. “Are you Jewish?”
“Yes,” said Kovacs, preparing himself.
The guide, leaning forward, stared into Kovacs’ eyes. “I am German,” he said. “We are eternal enemies. I fought in the SS in the Second World War, and I was put in a prison for twelve years.”
Then he clamped a thick hand on Kovacs's shoulder and lowered his voice. “Now times have changed. Now we are on the same side. I fought the same Russians that you fought in Israel.”
IN THE EARLY 1970s, Konrad helped to smuggle a friend's manuscript out of Hungary. The friend had been expelled from the university and given a laborer job and had written about his experience. For his part in the smuggling, Konrad lost his job, but he was able to get another as an urban sociologist for a planning institute. This experience led to his second novel, The City Builder. He was informed that the novel was “too dark/’ lacking in optimism, and it was refused Hungarian publication. The book was published in the United States.
Since Hungarians do not learn other languages and others do not learn theirs, translations are always in demand. When Gyorgy Gado's low-level clerical job was finally taken from him, for the next twenty years he could not get a job and he survived by doing translations from Russian and German. Andras Kovacs was also forced into the free-lance translation trade. He had been an editor in a publishing house as well as a teacher of philosophy at the university. But like Konrad, he was writing for the underground press, and he decided as a deliberate provocation to run an article that, rather than being anonymous, would bear his byline. He was removed from both the publishing house and the university. In 1980 a West German university