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.

On Air Raids, the Advancement of the Soviet Red Army, and the Saving of American Soldiers....

It is with vivid detail that my father tells me how on April 3, 1944 he experienced his first air raids. It was 9:30pm and even with his lack of hearing, he could feel the tremendous blasts of the falling bombs and their explosions. The family hid for hours in a shelter and waited, unable to truly breathe, for the bombing to stop. During this time, no one was able to sleep well, schools held lessons erratically, and the streetcars ran on an intermittent schedule. By the middle of May, all of the schools had to close down due to the amount of air raids Budapest was experiencing and my father continued his studies on his own. He moved with his family from Budapest back to Pusztamonostor where it was still somewhat more quiet and safe. At this time my father was 15 years old.

He remembers watching with his sister as what seemed like hundreds of American aircraft bombers flew over their country home, and even in their idyllic, quiet village, the tremors could be felt with each falling bomb. At night they would go out and watch the skies light up as explosives landed and destroyed great portions of Budapest. The death and destruction lasted the entire summer of 1944. With hope and anticipation of some sort of liberation, my father's family would gather around the radio every evening listening to stations which had become forbidden for Hungarians to listen to....the BBC and the Voice of America. It was during those newscasts, that my family discovered with sinking hearts that the Soviet Red Army would be occupying Hungary.

At the end of August, my father, his sister and parents, along with their chauffeur packed their belongings into the car and headed for what they hoped would be a safer haven. They would be driving to Nyirbator to stay with their Uncle Joszi (Jozsef). While driving through Budapest, they had to abandon their car and seek shelter from a bomb raid which lasted for over 2 hours. When they exited the shelter they found that all of the windows of their car had blasted out from the explosions, however it still was able to start up and they went on their way. After four hours of driving and seeing military plans flying overheard, they arrived at their destination and had a somewhat peaceful night at Uncle Jozsi's house.

This feeling of peace was short lived, as the next morning the household was abruptly woken by the sounds of loud motors in very close proximity. They ran outside to find out that there was an air raid taking place in nearby Debrecen and the planes were flying right over the house. They watched as one plane was hit and exploded mid-air. Within seconds they noticed four parachutists fall towards the earth and land in Uncle Jozsi's cornfields. My father, his uncle and my grandfather ran to their car and raced towards the cornfields. Four American airmen lay stunned next to their parachutes and Uncle Joszi called out to them in English, "We are your friends and want to help you. Do not worry!". My grandfather then told them that the Germans would soon be combing the area looking for them and that they must act quickly in order to not be detected. The airmen buried their parachutes in the ground and then followed my grandfather's orders to dig a large hole in the cornfield that they would lie in and hide from the Germans.

On the way back to Uncle Joszi's country manor, they stopped on the highway, got out of their car and acted as if they were looking in the opposite direction in order to misdirect the German soldiers that they saw were already on their way searching for the American airmen. When the German soldiers came up to my father, he, his uncle and my grandfather all told them excitedly that they had seen a plane fall "over there" which was of course, opposite of where the plane actually crashed. The soldiers left and my father and family members went back to the house. Upon arrival, Uncle Jozsi went to the cellar and found four farm shirts and trousers and then they returned to the cornfield to find the Americans still hiding. They removed their uniforms and dressed in the workclothes which made them look like and pass as Hungarian peasants. Their uniforms were buried in the ground. Then, they were safely transported back to the manor where they would be able to hide in the attic until they could be safely transported out of Hungary.

I will forever be touched and so proud of the selfless acts my father and his family partook in. The lives they saved....it is humbling. They did this for no other reason than that they were kindhearted, and had a sense of civic duty that was innate. Truly noble. Heaven has a special place for people like this.

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.

Shaking Hands With General Douglas MacArthur and Lunching With Prince Edward

My father's first five years of life were spent in what he recalls as being a peaceful and harmonious time. He and his sister got along well, even though she did like to dress him up in her clothes from time to time, as most big sisters are prone to do. They spent time in their homes in Budapest, Pusztamonostor, Kestzhely, and Tiszaug. Along with their parents, Eva and my father lived with three full time nannies their father had hired. He made sure that each nanny spoke a different language so that my dad and his sister would be exposed to and learn as many languages as possible. One nanny hailed from Germany, another from France, and the third was native Hungarian. On Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays the kids spoke only in Hungarian. Tuesdays and Wednesdays they spoke French, and Thursday and Friday they conversed in German. Try as he might, my grandfather could not find an English nanny, but he would have loved for his children to also become fluent in English. I can only imagine how much of a blessing learning English early on would have been for my dad. He had to learn the language after coming to the United States with over 90% of his hearing lost, yet somehow managed to master the language by spending time in the public library in downtown Los Angeles reading books and without actually being able to hear it.

One of my dad's fondest memories from his childhood occurred in 1933 when he was 4 years old. At the time he and his family were staying at the Royal Palace visiting his godfather, Colonel General Kamillo Karpathy, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Hungarian Defense. One evening, during their stay, General Douglas MacArthur came to the Royal Palace for a gala dinner. As the American General was entering the foyer, my father happened to be crossing the hall and he recalls being surprised to see someone in what he thought was such a strange uniform, one which he had never seen before. General MacArthur was surrounded by my dad's father, godfather, godmother, the American ambassador, Nicholas Roosevelt, a few Hungarian generals, and the American military attache. When General MacArthur caught sight of my father, he called out to him cheerily; "Hello, young boy!", and asked my godfather whose son he was. Kamillo answered gesturing towards my grandfather that he was Istvan Makay's son and his godson. My grandfather then waved my dad over and General MacArthur shook his chubby little hand. This made such an impression on my father, who had no way of knowing who General MacArthur was at that age, that he remembers that moment to this very day. The General's presence and persona were so commanding yet friendly that the wide-eyed little boy could not help but be starstruck.

Another exciting occasion for my dad was when the heir to the British throne, Prince Edward, visited Budapest. It was 1935 and my father was 6 years old. The British Prince came over to the Royal Palace and watched the ceremonial change of guards from a balcony in the Palace's inner court. There was much pomp and circumstance as the marching royal bodyguards, crown guards, and palace guards in their colorful uniforms made their procession, and then the Prince and my father's family gathered for lunch. Just as any of us would have a friend come over for some sandwiches or a BBQ, my dad and his family had the future King of England as a lunch guest. So normal for them....yet so far fetched for the rest of us. These were just two of the childhood memories of great individuals who he and his family spent time with. I can almost imagine....my father being a typical young boy, probably wanting to go play outside while having to display impeccable manners in front of such impressive guests. A little prince through and through.