Letter from Annie Schwartz Simansky - daughter of Edith and Leo Schwartz.
בס"ד
November 16, 2013
Dear Family,
As some of you may know, last month, David and I visited with our son, Yishai and his family who are currently on shlichut for Bnei Akiva in Vienna. While in that part of the world, we decided to make a very brief visit to Hungary, specifically to travel to Miskolc to try to find what we could of the remnants of what was once home to our family. I had the street address of my father’s childhood, and some information from Cousins Babu (Edith) Zukor and her daughter, Shoshi Zukor Schreter, that my great-grandparents, Yosef Mayer and Frumet (Blaugrund) Schwartz, ז"ל, are buried in the Jewish cemetery there. By a stroke of luck (or maybe it was “bashert”), I easily found and connected with a young man by the name of Peter Szlokovinyi, the general director or “gabai” of the Jewish community of Miskoc, who very graciously met us at the train station and spent the next three hours escorting us to the shul, the cemetery and my father’s house.
Within 5 minutes of arriving in town, we found ourselves standing inside the shul on Kazinczy Street, where our family used to daven. Not even knowing that this shul still existed, when we walked in and the lights went on, I was overcome by the deafening silence that pervaded the empty sanctuary, and all at once felt the depth of the tragedy and the immense loss of what was once a vibrant and flourishing Jewish community. The building, which was designed and built in the mid-19th century by Ludwig Forster, who also built the magnificent Dohany synagogue in Budapest, is falling apart. The pews are dusty and molding. The floorboards are caving in. Pigeons have built their nests inside the building. The beautiful frescoes on the walls and ceiling are crumbling. We had visited the Dohany synagogue earlier that same day. It is very well preserved and still fully functioning. By contrast, the Miskolc synagogue has recently been condemned, although it was used just few months ago for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Peter explained that the 194 families who make up the Jewish community of Miskolc pay for the upkeep of the synagogue and the community by themselves. There is a Beit Midrash and a mikveh. The community provides a daily kosher meal for the elderly Jews in the city, many of whom are Holocaust survivors. Peter, who spent a few years in Brooklyn at a yeshiva, teaches 5 children in the school, and takes care of everything from the plumbing to Tahara (ritual cleansing of the body before burial). He lives with his wife and daughter on the grounds of the shul. Although he has turned to outside organizations for help, apparently not much has come. By the way, Peter explained to us that many haredi Jews come to Miskolc to pray at the graves of Tzadikim in the area. Also, interestingly, Miskolc has become a major center for Kosher sh'chita in the area. Most of the meat is marketed to France, where sh'chita is apparently restricted.
From the shul, Peter drove us to the Jewish cemetery, which is a few minutes’ drive away. We drove off the main road to an unmarked dirt road along the fence. Just inside the gate is a house in which the non-Jewish caretaker, named Istvan lives with his wife, Agi. He is 63 years old, and told us he has been taking care of the cemetery since he was 18. There are 65,000 graves there, dating back from the 17th century. I told him I was looking for the graves of my great-grandfather, Yosef Meyer Schwartz, who had died somewhere around the end of World War I, and my great-grandmother, Frumet Blaugrund Schwartz, who lived into the WWII years. He looked in a thick registry book with the names of people buried there according to year, and found a few Yosef Schwartzes, but not Yosef Mayer. Babu had told me to look for a stone monument in between the two gravestones which her father, Solomon Schwartz, put up years ago with the names of all their children and their families who were killed in the Shoah. After searching for nearly an hour, Istvan suddenly remembered (incredibly) that many years ago, a short, bald man (sounds like Uncle Solomon) came to put up such a stone. We followed him directly to the graves. Thankfully, they are in good condition, as is most of the cemetery. We lit candles and said Tehilim. My thoughts, of course, were racing, focusing of course on the great losses, but also on how many descendents came from these two patriarchs, despite the terrible losses. (By the way, I have been studying the stone with the names of the family who were killed. Some of the lettering is hard to read - even incorrectly written. It occurred to me that unlike the lettering on the two tombstones, the middle stone must have been engraved by a non-Jew who didn't know Hebrew after the war, because there were probably no Jews who knew how to write Hebrew doing that kind of work after the war. Just a theory…)
Just for reference, Frumet was a Blaugrund. If I'm not mistaken, she was Ignatz Blaugrund's sister. Ignatz was my mother's grandfather. (Confusing, no?) So this couple is the source of the Blaugrund-Schwartz connection. Yosef Mayer died at a fairly young age, and all his first-born grandsons were named after him, such as JM from Eagle Pass, my Uncle Mayer and I think Herbert, may they all rest in peace.
Our last stop was at 54 Hunyadi Utca, the building that housed three main apartments: great-grandmother Frumet’s home; Uncle Solomon’s family and my grandparents’ home. This building, too, is terribly run-down. The first two apartments seemed to be abandoned. The third apartment, where my father's family lived, looked inhabited, because there were lights on inside and a dog on the front porch. No one came out to see who we were. There were some people who walked past us to the small house further inside the property, but no one said a word to us. From here, my father, three brothers and a cousin walked out the door in 1940, never to see their many of their families again.
The three hours we spent in Miskolc were a step back to a different time. Nothing can change the past and what happened to our family and our people. However, it is incumbent open each of us to try as much as possible to remember where and who we came from and pass it on to the coming generations. May Hashem grant them all a life of peace and blessing and free of hatred.
All this having been said, I would like to ask that you consider doing what you can to help the Jewish community of Miskolc. It broke my heart to see the state of the shul, but restoring it would be a major undertaking, and obviously the question comes up: for whom? In any case, perhaps a contribution to help with the upkeep of the cemetery, for example, would be in order. I asked Peter what we could do to help out, but he left the question unanswered. Peter's contact information is:
Peter Szylokovinyi
Titkar
Miskolci Autonom Orthodox Izraelita Hitkozseg
Kazinczy u. 7
3525 Miskolc
Hungary
Mobile: +36 705857616
Office: +36 46505045
With love to all of you, and hoping that you are all doing well.
Annie
