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By Root 2068 0

often enough that she was part of the family? When we went on vacation, she came along. She participated in our festivals and in our mourning, leaving us only when the government forbade non-Jews from working for Jews, and when that happened she wept and swore she would return “as soon as all this is over.” In the days of the ghetto she would thread her way through barricades and barbed wire to bring us cheese and eggs, fruit and vegetables. And that night, a Sunday, she appeared again. She had managed to slip through the armed security cordon the gendarmes had thrown up around the half-empty ghetto. “No, it’s not witchcraft,” she said. “There are ways of getting in and out. I know a safe place. I wanted to come and tell you.… To beg you … The cabin in the mountains … It’s ready.… Come.… There’s nothing to fear there.… You’ll be safe.… There are no Germans there, and no bastards helping them. Come.…” Dear Maria. If other Christians had acted like her, the trains rolling toward the unknown would have been less crowded. If priests and pastors had raised their voices, if the Vatican had broken its silence, the enemy’s hands would not have been so free. But most of our compatriots thought only of themselves. Barely was a Jewish house emptied of its inhabitants than they descended like vultures on the abandoned possessions, breaking into closets and drawers, stealing bedsheets and clothing, smashing things, looting. For them it was a party, a treasure hunt. They were not like our Maria.

We gathered at the kitchen table and held a last family meeting. Should we follow Maria or stay? We surely would have accepted her offer had we known that “destination unknown” meant Birkenau—or even simply that we would be deported from the country. But we didn’t know. All we knew was what we had been told: that the convoys were headed for the interior. “Well-informed” Jewish notables in Budapest had given clear assurances on this point. In light of that, the general view was that we should tell Maria no. “But why?” she implored us, her voice breaking. “Because,” my father replied, “a Jew must never be separated from his community: what happens to everyone else will happen to us as well.” My mother wondered aloud whether it might not be better “to send the children with Maria.” By “the children” she meant the three oldest. Tsipouka would stay, as would Grandmother. We protested: “We’re young and strong, the trip won’t be as dangerous for us. If anyone should go with Maria, it’s you.” After a brief discussion, we thanked Maria but …

My father was right. We wanted to stay together, like everyone else. Family unity is one of our important traditions, as the enemy well knew. And he now used that knowledge, spreading the rumor in the ghetto that the Jewish population would be transferred to a Hungarian labor camp where—and this was the essential thing—families would remain together. And we believed it. So it was that the strength of the family tie, which had contributed to the survival of our people for centuries, became a tool in its exterminator’s hands.

I think of Maria often, with affection and gratitude. And with wonder as well. This simple, uneducated woman stood taller than the city’s intellectuals, dignitaries, and clergy. My father had many acquaintances and even friends in the Christian community, but not one of them showed the strength of character of this peasant woman. Of what value was their faith, their education, their social position, if it aroused neither conscience nor compassion?

It was a simple and devout Christian woman who saved her town’s honor.

Our turn came on Tuesday, May 16. “All Jews out!” the gendarmes screamed, and we found ourselves in the street. There was another heat wave. My little sister was thirsty, and my grandmother too. They didn’t complain, but I did, not openly, but it amounted to the same thing. I felt queasy, ill. I was suffering, but didn’t know from what. I was ineffably sad. As in the presence of death, I didn’t dare raise my voice. This was where my childhood and my adolescence, my prayers, studies,