Journey to Vaja: Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family

304 Pages·1996·19.076 MB·English

by  Elaine Kalman Naves

Journey to Vaja
Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family
Part autobiography, part family chronicle, and part immigrant saga,
Journey to Vaja tells the story of the Weinbergers over the course
of two centuries. From settlement in a Hungarian village in the late
eighteenth century to the German occupation of Hungary in the
spring of 1944, Elaine Kalman Naves places her family's triumphs
and tribulations against the backdrop of Hungarian history.
Northeastern Hungary was full of places like the village of Vaja,
where Jews had farmed for generations. Naves's ancestors had tilled
Hungarian soil since the eighteenth century. They had married into
similar farming families and maintained a lifestyle at once agricul-
tural, orthodox, and Hungariophile. The Nyirseg, a sandy, slightly
undulating region wedged between the Great Hungarian Plain and
the foothills of the Carpathians, was the centre of their world. But
all this changed irrevocably with the Holocaust; Naves's generation
is the first in two centuries whose roots are severed from the soil
that once nurtured them.
Naves's quest for her past began with her father, one of the few
members of a vast extended family to survive the Nazi death camps.
His stories and memories of ancestors were a well-spring from which
he drew strength, and they became an obsession for Naves as she
was growing up and when she had children of her own. Journey
to Vaja is her attempt to record the lives of these ancestors and
reclaim their lives as part of her and her children's birthright. It in-
corporates myths and stories with family letters and detailed archi-
val research to provide an extraordinary look at the landscape of
memory and a testament to the redemptive power of love and family.
ELAINE KALMAN NAVES is a writer and journalist living in Montreal.
She is a literary columnist for the Montreal Gazette and has written
a radio documentary entitled "Journey to Vaja" for the CBC series
Ideas.
McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History
Donald Harman Akenson, Editor
I Irish Migrants in the Canadas 9 The People of Glengarry
A New Approach Highlanders in Transition,
Bruce S. Elliott 1745-1820
Marianne McLean
2 Critical Years in Immigration
Canada and Australia Compared 10 Vancouver's Chinatown
Freda Hawkins Racial Discourse in Canada,
(Second edition, 1991) 1875-1980
Kay J. Anderson
3 Italians in Toronto
Development of a National Identity, 11 Best Left as Indians
1875-1935 Native-White Relations in the Yukon
John E. Zucchi Territory, 1840-1973
Ken Coates
4 Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian
Folk Songs 12 Such Hardworking People
Essays in Honour of the Sesquicen- Italian Immigrants in Postwar
tennial of the Birth of Kr. Barons Toronto
Vaira Vikis-Freibergs Franca lacovetta
5 Johan Schrøder's Travels in Canada, 13 The Little Slaves of the Harp
1863 Italian Child Street Musicians in
Orm Overland Nineteenth-Century Paris, London,
and New York
6 Class, Ethnicity, and Social
John E. Zucchi
Inequality
Christopher Mc All 14 The Light of Nature and the
Law of God
7 The Victorian Interpretation of
Antislavery in Ontario, 1833-1877
Racial Conflict
Allen P. Stouffer
The Maori, the British, and the
New Zealand Wars 15 Drum Songs
James Belich Glimpses of Dene History
Kerry Abel
8 White Canada Forever
Popular Attitudes and Public Policy 16 Louis Rosenberg
toward Orientals in Canada's Jews
British Columbia Edited by Morton Weinfeld
W. Peter Ward
(Second edition, 1990)
17 A New Lease on Life 22 Resistance and Pluralism
Landlords, Tenants, and Immigrants A Cultural History of Guyana,
in Ireland and Canada 1838-1900
Catharine Anne Wilson Brian L. Moore
18 In Search of Paradise 23 Search Out the Land
The Odyssey of an Italian Family The Jews and the Growth of
Susan Gabori Equality in British Colonial
America, 1740-1867
19 Ethnicity in the Mainstream
Sheldon J. Godfrey and
Three Studies of English Canadian
Judith C. Godfrey
Culture in Ontario
Pauline Greenhill 24 The Development of Elites in
Acadian New Brunswick, 1861-1881
20 Patriots and Proletarians
Sheila M. Andrew
The Politicization of Hungarian
Immigrants in Canada, 1923-1939 25 Journey to Vaja
Carmela Patrias Reconstructing the World of a
Hungarian-Jewish Family
21 The Four Quarters of the Night
Elaine Kalman Naves
The Life-Journey of an
Emigrant Sikh
Tara Singh Bains and
Hugh Johnston
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Journey to Vaja
Reconstructing the World of a
Hungarian-Jewish Family
ELAINE KALMAN NAVES
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo
Copyright © Elaine Kalman Naves 1996
ISBN 0-7735-1511-9 cloth
ISBN 0-7735-1534-8 paper
Legal deposit fourth quarter 1996
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
McGill-Queen's University Press is grateful
to the Canada Council for support of its publishing
program.
Portions of this book, some in different form, have
appeared in Prairie Fire, the Jerusalem Post, the
Montreal Gazette, Viewpoints, and the Canadian Jewish
News.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Program
Naves, Elaine Kalman
Journey to Vaja : reconstructing the world of a
Hungarian-Jewish family
(McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7735-1511-9 (bound)
ISBN 0-7735-1534-8 (pbk.)
1. Naves, Elaine Kalman - Family.
2. Weinbergers family. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-
!945) - Personal narratives. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-
!945) - Hungary. 4. Hungary - History. I. Title.
II. Series.
DSI35.H93W45 1996 943-9'oo99 096-900559-8
In memory of my father,
for my mother,
and for Dr Philip Beck
Where I was before I came here, that place is real. It's never going
away. Even if the whole farm - every tree and grass blade of it dies.
The picture is still there - if you go and stand in the place where it
was, it will happen again; it will be there waiting for you.
Toni Morrison, Beloved
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Contents
Illustrations following pages 64 and 155
Acknowledgments xi
Author's Note xiii
Maps xv
Family Trees xvii
PART ONE
Prologue: "No Wide Estates" 3
Going Back 10
Yakab's Journey 18
A Wandering Jew Strikes Root 22
Finding the Exemplary Wife 29
Vaja 34
The Rakoczi Estate 41
Twelve Pairs of Shoes 48
Kalman Came from Kajdano 56
Honeymoon in Vaja 65
"Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother" 75
The First Lieutenant 81
Prophecy and Revolution 92
The Piricse Partners 104
To Walk Straight 116