From Prince to Pauper

On October 30th of 1944 my grandmother celebrated her 40th birthday surrounded by close relatives. Although everyone would have preferred to stay together all evening, due to the citywide curfew, everyone had to leave before 5pm. The following day my grandfather was paid a visit by a sergeant friend who reported that the Gestapo had arrested Lt. General Janos Kiss and Major Vilmos Tartsay who were officers that my grandfather often met with. Due to the fact that he consorted with these men, it was a very plausible threat that my grandfather would also be persecuted by the Gestapo.

Immediately after the meeting with the sergeant, my father and his family once again started to pack up their belongings. While traveling by car was becoming more and more difficult for Hungarians due to the puppet government's denial to provide the populace with gasoline, my family was fortunate enough to have their chauffeur obtain 50 liters of gas from the black market. During the early morning hours of November 1, 1944 they were able to make their way out of Budapest to a remote country village called Nagybatony. The town was small, quiet, and did not have immediate access to a highway or a railroad which allowed it to stay under the radar of the Nazis and and away from military confrontation. My father and his family settled in this town and made an earnest attempt to feel safe once again.

One month later, the Soviet Red Army arrived in Budapest and on Christmas Eve the fighting began. Turmoil and destruction were to be found on every street and the Royal Palace was heavily damaged. This battle lasted until February 13th, and the knowledge that their home city was being destroyed lay heavily on my family's hearts. It was a gutwrenching holiday season for them. Luckily, they managed to stay in their small village until May 10th, 1945. At that point the family wanted to go to Pusztamonostor to survey the situation there. As they had lost their car in the interim, they had to travel by horse and buggy. When they arrived at their home in Pusztamonostor they found that it had been completely destroyed and ransacked. The retreating German Army had burned down their barns and silos and stolen all of their livestock, furniture and silverware. Beautiful portrait paintings of their ancestors were destroyed at the tip of bayonets, and antique Persian rugs had been pulled out and used underneath army vehicles by soldiers making oil changes and repairs. Anything else that the Germans had left behind was confiscated by the Soviets. They even so much as trampled and flattened out the lush botanical gardens on my family's property. Nothing was left unscathed.

As their home was no longer standing, my father and his family spent the night at their butler's house. The next morning they woke early to walk to the train station in order to return to Budapest. Once back in the city they discovered that their home there was being squatted in by a Communist apparatchik and they were unable to move back in. On their way to his aunt's house, my father remembers seeing his beautiful city broken and destroyed beyond recognition. All of the bridges across the Danube River had been blown up and the Royal Palace was just a ghost of its former glorious self.

Despite all of this, the schools in Budapest re-opened and my father completed the 5th grade and moved on to the 6th grade with high scores and grades. As the family had lost virtually everything, my grandfather started working as a truck driver and my aunt as a French and German teacher in order to make ends meet. The family went from generations of nobility to poverty in what seemed to be just the blink of an eye. The unimaginable had happened.

How the World Went Silent Overnight....

As if living with the fear that life as they knew it would soon be over was not enough, on Christmas Eve of 1938 my father and his family were dealt a tremendous, personal blow.

It all started off innocently enough...the Makay family had gathered at their home in Pusztamonostor for the holidays. My father was 9 years old. It was December 24th and they were enjoying a family dinner while the children excitedly anticipated the arrival of their gifts from Little Jesus. After dinner they were led by their butler to the green salon as the custom in Hungary was that the children were not allowed to view the Christmas tree until later in the evening, and the tree was holding state in the red salon. At 7:30 that evening, a handbell was rung and the children were allowed to enter the red salon and were greeted by a beautifully, candle-lit Christmas tree. The family gathered around and sang caroles and recited poems while my father and his sister opened and played with their new toys. The atmosphere was warm, cheerful and inviting...there was not a hint of what was about to turn their bright holiday so dark. At 10pm everyone said their good-nights and the children went to bed.

Shortly before midnight, my father remembers waking up in a panic. He was having difficulty breathing, and felt an increasing amount of pain with every breath he took. He was unable to make a sound when he tried to shout out for help. As if by divine providence, his sister walked into the room to check on him and saw that my father's face was turning a dark shade of blue and that he was starting to suffocate. She ran, horrified, to her parent's chambers and told them that Laszlo couldn't breathe. The adults, including their Uncle Miklos, ran to see what was wrong and realized that my father was near death, struggling to take a breath and losing consciousness. Within a second, Uncle Miklos had taken a nearby pair of scissors and clipped off one of my grandmother's fingernails and had her shove her finger down my father's throat in order to open his airways by force. My father then was able to regain his ability to breathe. Uncle Miklos suspected that the swelling in my father's throat was being caused by the onset of diphteria.

While my father lay in his bed with his mother and sister by his side, my grandfather called for a doctor to come to their home right away. As their local doctor was away for Christmas, they had to call in a medic from a neighboring town who rushed in and gave my father a diphteria vaccine. By 2:30 in the morning my father started to feel better and was able to fall asleep and everyone retired to their rooms. At 10:00 the next morning which was Christmas Day, my father awoke to see his mother standing by his bedside. He sat up and stared at her blankly not understanding why she was moving her mouth but he couldn't hear any words. He asked her "Mama, why are you speaking so softly?" and at that point she knew something more was wrong with her son. As she started to run in terror to find her husband, he happened to walk in and also spoke with my father who, again, could not hear anything that was being said to him. My grandfather decided that they would leave at once and head back to Budapest. Their butler packed all of their belongings in a rush and the chauffeur was called to have the car ready immediately. When their family limousine pulled up, four mounted policemen also joined them in order to escort them as they rushed to the city.

At the Royal Officer's Hospital in Budapest, all of the on-duty army doctors and nurses were waiting for my father's arrival and immediately checked his ears, nose, throat and eyes. They discovered that his left ear had lost all sense of hearing and that his right ear had suffered a 75% hearing loss. They determined that this loss would be irreversible. Up until this point in my father's life, he had had normal hearing, so this news came as a terrible shock to my father and his family and they were left stunned. The following day my father was taken to see the best ear specialist in the city and it was discovered that my father had had an adverse vaccine reaction that caused him severe nerve damage and rendered him profoundly deaf. There was speculation as to whether my father was injected with a spoiled vial of vaccine serum, but whether the vaccine serum was spoiled or not, there was nothing that could be done to reverse the damage done other than to simply move on with life and learn to live it in a new way. That is exactly what my father did.

My father continued to see different hearing and ENT specialists over the course of the next year, and was able to learn how to lip-read. He says he remembers that it took about a year for him to "get used" to his new and silent life. He went back to school, and then after the school day was over he would have to come home and re-do his lessons in order to make sure that due to his deafness he wasn't missing out on any information that was given during lectures. His sister, Eva, his mother, and the nannies all helped him to keep up with his studies and learn as if not at all disabled. Thanks to his strong will, discipline, determination and the love and support of his family and staff he was able to maintain his status as an excellent student and excell at all that he put his mind to....and continues to do so to this very day. A feat that all too many people without a single disability never accomplish. My father, gentleman to the core, yet with the valiance of a warrior.