Our Story: Saga of a Hungarian-American Family

Copyright © 2007 by Dalma Pálóczi Horváth Takács.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2007903068

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4257-6402-9

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4257-6377-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-2321-9

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Cover illustration by Judy Takács.

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CONTENTS

Story Of The Pálóczi Horváth Family

Portrait Of My Father: Pálóczi Horváth Lajos

Portrait Of My Mother:

Hevesi Halász Laura Lujza

Portrait Of Dálnoki Veress László

Dalma’s Story

Portrait Of Dukai Takács Lajos

The Rest Of Our Life:

Portrait Of Dukai

Takács Judith Éva

Portrait Of Dukai Takács

Susan Elizabeth

New Doors

A Few Words From Your Forebears

Family Pictures

Family Trees

To all the people who appear in this book.

You are all part of the fabric of our lives.

Story Of The Pálóczi Horváth Family

At some point in your lives these questions will occur to you: Where do I come from? Who were my ancestors? Do I look like them? Act like them? Do I want to be like them? Since at least half of your forebears lived across the ocean, you may want to go back to visit their homeland, or at least find out about their lives. How did they live through the violent upheavals of Europe in the twentieth century and before?

Let me introduce you to some the people without whom you would not be here. I will start with myself. I was born in Budapest, Hungary, on March 24, 1933. My maiden name is Pálóczi Horváth Dalma. You need to know one thing about Hungarian names; in Hungarian the last name goes first, just like in the telephone directory. Therefore, all the Hungarian names in this story will appear this way. The first two words are both part of my last name. My given name (first name in America) is Dalma. Actually, the Pálóczi part is a title of nobility—something like the prefix de in French or van in Dutch, combined with the name of a place, as in Ludwig van Beethoven.

In 1586 one of my ancestors, whose name was Horváth Miklós, received from king Rudolf II of Hungary the title and deed to an estate in the village of Pálócz for his services to the state. Since that time his descendants have the right to call themselves Pálóczi Horváth [Horváth of Pálócz].

My father told me that the person who recommended Horváth Miklós for the title was Dobó Ferenc, the son of Dobó István, the valiant commander of the fortress of Eger, who defended his fort against the Turks and with the help of the city’s inhabitants succeeded in forcing the enemy to abandon the siege. (When Judy and Sue were little, we read an exciting novel about the siege by Gárdonyi Géza entitled Egri Csillagok.) So in all likelihood, Horváth Miklós was also a brave soldier in the war against the Turks.

The family’s original name was Stansith or Stancsics and they lived in a place called Gradec in the county of Zagreb, Pisarovich district. After receiving the title and changing their name to Pálóczi Horváth, they lived for over three centuries in the northeast part of Hungary in and around the village of Pálócz, an area that was ruled by the princes of Transylvania. We have a vivid picture of their lives in the form of a family journal, which has survived for four hundred years and is now in the archives of the Miskolc Library. (It has also made the Internet. Just ask Google for A Pálóczi Horváth Család Naplója.) The journal covers the years between 1622 and 1790, a time when the Ottoman invasion caused a devastating rift in the country’s life. Hungary was split into three parts, and life was none too safe wherever you were. Reading the entries is like receiving letters from six generations of uncles who are trying to save their families and their country from the marauding Turks as well as the despotic Austrian emperors.

My family belonged not to the aristocracy but to the lesser nobility—something like the upper middle class today. They were landowners, busy with their farms, but most of them also had other occupations: some were municipal or state officials, or lawyers such as my grandfather Pálóczi Horváth Lajos, or engineers like my uncle Pálóczi Horváth Gábor, or writers like my father whose name was also Pálóczi Horváth Lajos. There was even a painter among them, my grandmother’s cousin Horthy Béla, whom the family tried to persuade to pursue a more practical career.

One of my ancestors was Pálóczi Horváth Ádám, who was born in 1760, before the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence, and died in 1820, five years after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. P. Horváth Ádám was a staunch Hungarian patriot; he dressed in Hungarian garb and despised the effeminate German fashions of the court of the Austrian Emperor who ruled Hungary. He also resented the oppressive policies of the Austrian rulers, who neglected the needs of the Hungarian people. He was a poet and composer of songs. His collection of folk songs entitled Ötödfélszáz Énekek (Four Hundred and Fifty Songs) also includes many of his own poems and compositions. The 18th century saw the flourishing of the Freemason movement. Many progressive Hungarian leaders saw in this organization a way to resist Hapsburg rule, and after fulfilling all the required tough tests, P. Horváth Ádám enthusiastically joined. He even wrote a novel about a young man who, after some hesitation, is convinced of the noble aims of the Freemasons, and attempts to join the brotherhood. Eventually the Emperor banned Freemasonry.

In 1814 P. Horváth Ádám ran into trouble with the Hapsburg regime when it was reported to the Emperor Francis II that in certain counties of Hungary people were singing songs attacking the government, and the author of these songs was one Pálóczi Horváth Ádám. Ádám was summoned to appear before His Majesty to answer the charges. The Emperor Francis was also King of Hungary, but he spent very little of his time in that country, which was a source of much bitterness to Hungarians. According to one story, Ádám obeyed the summons, but went looking for the king not in Vienna, but at the numerous royal residences in Hungary. When he did not find the king in any of those places, he simply returned home saying he could not find the King of Hungary anywhere. Finally his friends persuaded him to go to Vienna. According to one story, Ádám appeared before the sovereign and listened patiently to the Emperor’s severe reprimand. Then he answered in broken German, Your Majesty, I no speak German. Another version of the story has him listen to the Emperor’s tirade, and then smile and say, Your Majesty, these are innocent songs about German dances. Here, let me show you. And he danced around the audience chamber, singing a toned down version of the offending song.

Ádám was not only a tough Hungarian patriot, but also a remarkably progressive thinker for his age. He believed that the nobility had no right to regard themselves superior to the lower classes. It’s a funny thing, he wrote, that the power that makes a man like a god over his serfs can be bought for ten or twelve hundred forints (The price of a title to nobility at the time). An even more daring view he held was that women should be entitled to an education equal with men, the right to hold office, and to have representatives in parliament.

Another less colorful but notable member of my family was Pálóczi Horváth Mária (1790-1867), who gave a large endowment to the Protestant High School of Sárospatak, a revered old school that educated many of the country’s leaders. On the school grounds you will see a monument to the Pálóczi Horváth family (A Pálóczi Horváth Testvérek Emlékműve). During Communist times, Sárospatak was nationalized and turned into a state school, but now it is once more a protestant private school. When my mother visited the school in the 1930s, she saw the portrait of P. Horváth Mária there, an unadorned picture of a maiden lady with a large mole on her face. The story about her is that she was very rich and kept her money in a large chest. She had no illusions about her looks, and when men proposed marriage to her, she knew what they were after. When a suitor appeared with a proposal, she would tap her moneybox and say to it, This man wants to marry you; shall we say yes?

I have only a vague recollection of my grandfather, Pálóczi Horváth Lajos. He was an old man when I was little and died in 1938 when I was five years old. He had been a lawyer and magistrate in Beregszász, a town in the northeastern section of Hungary before World War I. He married Nagybányai Horthy Erzsébet, a young woman 18 years his junior. Her family owned a substantial estate in the northeast before World War I, and she was related to Nagybányai Horthy Miklós, Hungary’s head of state between 1919 and 1944. They had five children: Gábor, who became an engineer and worked in the county flood control department, Zoltán, a brilliant college student who died in World War I, two girls, Sarolta and Anikó, and the youngest, Lajos, who became my father.

Before World War I the family lived a peaceful life in Beregszász. Some years after he married and took up his post as magistrate, Grandfather Lajos contracted tuberculosis. My grandmother sold some of her real estate and used the money for a three-month trip for the two of them to San Remo, Italy, where her husband was treated and recovered. However, his health remained delicate, and he had to take early retirement. He lived a temperate, well-ordered life. He had a spare, trim frame; he drank no water, and only one glass of wine with his meals. He loved his children and insisted that they eat everything on their plate—a habit my father found lifesaving when he served his five-year term in a Communist jail. (Some of his cellmates practically starved because they were unable to eat the slop they were given to eat.)

After his retirement, Grandfather Lajos spent his time taking care of the family estate at Mátészalka and tending the large vineyard where he produced fine wines and prize fruit. Mother Erzsébet took care of her house and they both entertained family and friends from all over the region. When war broke out, Hungary ended up on the side of Germany and Austria, and the defeat of these major powers sealed the fate of Hungary too. According to the Treaty of Trianon, two thirds of Hungary was annexed by neighboring countries, and Beregszász became part of Czechoslovakia. The decision took the town completely by surprise. On the day in 1920, when the annexation was publicly announced, my father, an ardent young Hungarian patriot, waved a Hungarian flag from the balcony of the county building and inspired the crowd to break into singing the Hungarian national anthem.

In the years that followed, my father’s parents and friends continued to live in their homes and speak Hungarian, but now they were living in a foreign country. The official language was Czech, and the Czech authorities were strangers who had no sympathy for Hungarians. My father moved to Budapest and when he went to visit his parents, he had to get a visa. On one occasion when he and his wife and 3-year-old daughter (me) were in Beregszász for a visit, the Czech police put him in jail on charges of subversion and conspiracy. Apparently, someone had denounced him for his youthful act of patriotic demonstration back in 1920. Luckily he was released pending his trial, and all three of us managed to escape even though the authorities had confiscated his passport, which also had my mother’s and my name on it. Father stole across the border at an unguarded place. I think I remember how Mother and I fled from Beregszász in a horse-drawn carriage, Mother clutching my aunt Anikó’s passport, me hiding under a big blanket, munching a bunch of grapes that I had been given to keep me quiet. I can’t be quite sure if I am reporting my own recollection or repeating the family lore.

After World War II Beregszász became part of the USSR, and since the breakup of the Soviet Union it is now part of the Ukraine. Its name is Beregovo. If you visit the cemetery in Beregszász, you will find the tombstones of my grandmother’s two uncles, Nagybányai Horthy Pál (1833-1883) and Nagybányai Horthy László (1830-1889). Grandfather’s monument was still there in the 1990s, when Emmike’s son Szunyogh Szabolcs saw the inscription. Sadly, since then someone else is buried in his grave, and the stone has been recycled. Times are hard in the Ukraine; the new tenant’s grieving relatives had erased Grandfather’s name, turned the stone around and inscribed it with the name of the newly departed.

The old family house where my father was born has since been torn down to make way for a police station, but on the wall you will see a relief portrait of my father and a memorial tablet. There is even a street named after him.

My own memories of Beregszász go back to the period between 1938 and 1944 when for a brief time the area was returned to Hungary: to entice the Hungarians to his side, Hitler promised to redress the injustices of the Treaty of Trianon, and as a token of his good will, Beregszász and several other Hungarian areas such as parts of Transylvania were restored to Hungary. I could now spend wonderful summer months in the family home, playing in the garden, eating apricots off the tree, learning to ride my cousin Emmike’s adult bike standing up. I was only eight and could not reach the seat.

Grandfather had died in 1938, but Grandmother was still spry and busy, keeping the house and garden in order. There was a maid who did the cleaning, but Grandmother still managed to overtax her heart and had to be constantly reminded not to do any bending over. When she dropped something, we all had to be ready to pick things up for her. She was a handsome, well-educated woman who read literature in Hungarian, English and German, and she was forever looking for her glasses. We used to help her look for a while, but we usually gave up much sooner than she did. When she finally located them, she would shout (she was somewhat hard of hearing), You can stop looking; I’ve found them. By that time we were usually busy with something else. I remember her as she pottered in the garden teaching me about the habits of flowers and vegetables. I was surprised to learn from Emmike, who had spent much more time with her than I had, that Grandmother had no love for gardening and never even pulled a weed from the flower beds. If Grandmother fooled me about her feelings about gardening, she seems also to have fooled my father. As I re-read Álompákász, my father’s novel about his family, I found a passage on page 368 where he describes himself as a young boy, trying to surprise his mother with his first published story as she is busy in the garden. Mother, please read this story in this magazine, and tell me what you think of it, he says nonchalantly. Just give me a minute, dear, she replies. These poor asparagus plants are so thirsty. Let me give them some water first.

My uncle Gábor was a widower who lived with Grandmother. His older daughter Judit (Juci) was already an adult, getting ready to marry. Her fiancé Árvay György was a pharmacist. He was also the only person I knew who owned a car. There were very few cars on the street in Beregszász. To get to places we ordered a fiacre, a horse-drawn carriage that served as a taxi. There was a fiacre stand at the railway station. Uncle Gábor rode his bike to work. Once I figured out Emmike’s bike, I was allowed to ride it in the street as far as the ice-cream shop. One time I nearly ran over a street sweeper (in those days this was a man, not a machine), who was not very pleased with me, but did not press charges.

Uncle Gábor’s younger daughter Emmike (Emma) lived with his sister Sarolta and her husband in Budapest and came to spend her summers with him in Beregszász. Emmike is as near as I have ever come to having a sister. She was eight years older and sometimes she was irritated with me, especially when I copied everything she did. But I did not mind; I had great sympathy for her because she had lost her mother at the age of three. I had always been praised for being brave and felt that I could face all kinds of hardships, but I could not imagine living without my mother.

In 1943 I was preparing for my first year of gymnasium; the war was getting too near, and the opening of school was delayed. Lessons were broadcast over the radio, and my parents sent me my textbooks to study. Emmike helped me with my math. I remember one time, when she was checking a long column of figures I had added, Grandmother interrupted with some question. I was ready to blow my top, but Emmike patiently answered her and started all over again. It would be a long time before I could even try to copy her patient forbearance.

A fascinating place to visit was the family vineyard. It covered a hillside, with a row of walnut trees at the top, and rows upon rows of grapevines, each wrapped around a sturdy stake. The wine cellar was dug into the hillside, and held the wine press and the barrels where the vintage matured. In 1943, because of the war and the late start of school, I was still in Beregszász in October when the grape harvest started. For a couple of weeks the whole family moved to a cottage in the vineyard. I slept on a wrought iron chair that turned into a bed by night. Some nights it had an identity crisis, and I found myself sleeping on the floor on a collapsed bed.

On the hill the mornings were crisp and sunny, and from the cottage porch I could look down on the town, which was covered in mist; only the church spires gleamed above the clouds. Before anyone was awake, I would run out among the grape vines and pick a bunch of grapes. Each translucent globe held a world of fragrance and zest in a delicate skin that waited only for me to pierce it with my teeth.

Then the day laborers came; they clipped the bunches of juicy grapes, loaded them into flat wooden barrels strapped to their backs, and carried them to the giant press. We caught some of the grape juice in bottles to drink with our meals. If the bottles were left in the sun for a few hours, the juice started to ferment and it burst the bottles. The rest of the juice was poured into wooden barrels to ferment in the underground cellar for many months until it turned into wine. While this was happening, the cellar had to be locked to prevent accidents. The fermenting wine uses up the oxygen and anyone who entered would suffocate.

By the end of October the idyll was over, and I had to return to Budapest and the war. I remember sitting in the fiacre, waving good-by to Grandmother who was stomping her feet in the chilly evening and pulling her shawl close around her shoulder. I tried to fix the scene in my mind’s eye. I thought this was my last glimpse of her, but I was wrong. I would see Grandmother again, but it was my last glimpse of the family home in Beregszász. In 1944, as the Russians approached, the family left Beregszász to take refuge in Budapest. When the war was over in 1945, Uncle Gábor went back to his house and found a Ukranian gentleman living there. The man was quite friendly and told Gábor that he was welcome as a guest, but not as the owner. The world had changed once again.

Portrait Of My Father: Pálóczi Horváth Lajos

(February 5, 1899-March 1, 1974)

My favorite photo of my father is one taken in the late 40’s, before his imprisonment. I should not write these words in English. If he were still alive, thinking with his physical brain and feeling with his earthly heart, it would hurt him unspeakably to know that I have given up Hungarian as the language in which I write. To him anyone who left Hungary to live in another country was a lost Magyar. He thought of America as a gigantic Hungarian graveyard. He himself would never have emigrated, not even after 1956, not even if it meant going back to prison where he had spent five