A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [83]
One hundred students were gathered together and handed a sixteen-page questionnaire, on which they had to answer questions about their birthdate, parents, grandparents, military record, and parents’ occupation. Do you know any foreigners? the questionnaire asked, and: Have you ever exchanged letters with a foreigner? Gutenbaum and a girl from Bulgaria were the only two foreign students in this particular group summoned for the questionnaire. There was one official present to answer the students’ own questions, and Jakub and the Bulgarian girl very quietly asked what they should do about the question of knowing foreigners. “Since we are foreigners and grew up somewhere else, we have always known foreigners, but not in the same sense.” The room grew quiet and tense. Everyone knew that the two students could not have it on their papers that they knew foreigners, no matter what the reason. And it would also probably be remembered that the other ninety-eight students in the group had been with the two who were caught knowing foreigners. The official left the room and did not come back for fifteen minutes. When he did return, he gave the ruling: “Since everybody knows it, it is not necessary to write it.” Everyone in the room seemed to exhale as one, like a single organ. Reprieve.
Then, with the country's leading doctors in prison, being tortured and waiting to die, thousands of others awaiting a similar fate, and Soviet Jewry bracing for what might be a second Holocaust, the problem was solved in the manner of a badly written nineteenth-century melodrama: The villain, possessed with his own mad hatred, rolled his eyes up in his head and fell over dead. There are a number of different accounts of Stalin's death—even the date varies. All that is certain is that he had a stroke and that no first-rate specialists were available to treat him. One distinguished doctor later said that he had been consulted from his prison cell.
Once Stalin had died, things changed almost instantly. People were released from prison without explanation. The press discontinued its anti-Semitic campaign. Jakub Gutenbaum no longer felt isolated. People were friendly to him again. “The Russians are friendly people,” he said.
13
In Budapest
IN 1948 THE COMMUNIST PARTY, WHICH HAD BEEN IN A coalition government, simply took over the Hungarian government the same way that the party had done in Czechoslovakia, except that in Hungary the Communist party had been only a small minority faction. The takeover was not popular with the general population. But many Jews at the time had been more concerned about the resurgence of extreme right-wing nationalist movements. To them, the Communist party was the alternative to fascism.
The new government was led by Matyas Rakosi, who had a Jewish mother and a number of close Jewish associates, including the head of internal police, Gabor Peters. But these ties did not mean that their ascension to power was good for Hungarian Jews. Zionist organizations were banned. Jewish publications were closed down. The only Jewish organizations permitted were those directly controlled by the state under the auspices of the official Jewish Community. The curriculum in Jewish schools was made to conform to the state curriculum, and the schools were eventually taken over by the state. One Jewish high school was allowed, the Anne Frank School, but it was maintained as a kind of second-class high school, since its graduates would find it difficult to be accepted by universities. As in Czechoslovakia, any Jewish religious activities or affiliations would greatly damage the chances for advancement not only of an individual but sometimes of the family.
The policy of nationalizing the economy also came as a hard blow to