A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [129]
The officials of the seminary and the Budapest Jewish Community leadership, MIOK (the Hungarian acronym for National Representation of Hungarian Israelites)—which was directed by Geza Seifert and, after his death in 1976, by his wife Ilona —worried about maintaining their own positions and about keeping what they had operating and on good terms with the state. Because of this, the state could often rely on the central board to stop unapproved activities. This was the system for state management of Judaism throughout Central Europe. An older generation remembered that it had also been Eichmann's system. To a younger generation, including Zoltdn and Kati, it meant that they could expect no help in learning about Judaism from the official Jewish Community. There were no courses or books or any guidance for Jews wanting to learn the basics. Their only chance was to meet other Jews, and for this reason they started going regularly to the synagogue.
“You couldn't catch a word/’ said Zoltan. “I can't catch a word because I don't know Hebrew, and even if you know Hebrew you can't possibly understand what is going on if you are not told where you are.”
They joined a group of young professionals who studied with Rabbi Raj. Studying rendered them ever more confused: What did it mean to be Jewish? Was it a nationality, like being Hungarian? Or a religion that they did not know how to practice? If it was a nationality, then did they belong in Israel? In 1983, through an Israeli contact in Budapest, Zoltan and Kati were able to arrange an illegal trip to Israel. They told the government they wanted to visit neighboring Austria and were given passports and visas. In Vienna they were met by a Jewish organization with visas and plane tickets to Israel. In Israel they were taken around the country 1o meet Hungarian Jews who had immigrated. Everyone told them of the good Jewish life in Israel and showed them only the best and most beautiful sights.
But they could not make the decision to move there. Their lives, all their friends and relatives, everything they knew was in Hungary, and they hadn't even had a chance to say good-bye. They hadn't dared to tell anyone what they were really doing. After four weeks they returned to Hungary even more confused, and for years afterward they would periodically think about Israel.
22
In Warsaw
and Cracow
GOMUFCKA WAS FINALLY DESTROYED, NOT OVER ANY OF the student issues, not over democracy or free speech or anti-Semitism, but rather because of the price of meat. A 36 percent hike during Christmas 1970 led to strikes, and he was replaced by Edward Gierek. The change was welcome news for Marian Turski and the staff of the besieged Polityka. The independent Communist newspaper had been advocating a shift toward Western financing, opening opportunities for a private sector, and making infrastructural improvements such as a highway system.
This was exactly Gierek's approach. Gomulka had wanted nothing to do with the West. “In a way, there was something in common between him and De Gaulle,” Turski later said of Gomulka, “… a very selfish man with a very large, unlimited ego.” Gierek was a pragmatist who had been educated in the West. Promising economic growth, he obtained Western loans and started a Polish automobile industry and built roads, including the main highway from Katowice in the south to Warsaw. Poland showed impressive growth rates and was soon ranked the tenth strongest industrial nation in the world, only slightly behind East Germany. At the time these were probably the two most overrated economies in the world. By 1976, supposedly thriving Poland was forced to reveal that it was literally bankrupt and could not even service its debts. Just as Gomulka could not be forgiven his sins once his great virtue of holding down prices