THE RECORD
July 02, 2003

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Miriam Trevis' article, "A Blast from the Past", (The Record, June 18) brought back a lot of memories. World War 2 played hell with the lives of hundreds of millions of people, including my family and friends.

I was 17 and in 8th gymnasium, Grade 12 of an academic high school, destined to go to the Fine Arts Academy to become a painter, or accept a scholarship from the Royal Opera House in Budapest after graduation, when the Soviet troops arrived at our suburb, in 1944. By then I had five years of compulsory military training in the cadets, was a master marksman and had reached the rank of platoon commander. When the school was closed I had two options. Either go into the Home Guard with .22 rifles, or join the army, which I did. The way I looked at it, if I had to die, I might as well do it with something better in my hands. We were brainwashed that the noblest achievement of a man's life was to die in battle and we just accepted it.

When I said goodbye to my mother, she was an attractive 38 year old. When I saw her again, 29 years later, she was an old lady, broken in spirits and health. She lived for a long time after, reaching 87, but she never got over the horror of the siege of Budapest, being gang raped by Soviet troops, and her parents dying from the effects of starvation soon after the fall of the city. Later, she was arrested four times and tortured by the secret police, to find out how I got to England and what I was doing there. She was beaten and jailed for some time, as they were very anxious to catch me and send me to an Siberian gulag for ten years. They paid for it very dearly, without knowing it, but it didn't help my poor mother.

When I left the military hospital in 1946, I went to work for the US Army at Wels, Austria. The main reason was because they were giving out old uniforms to their workers and two free meals a day. Wow! The money didn't make any difference, there was nothing to buy with it anyway, but I would have done anything for some extra, free grub and to get out of the old German uniform pieces we were wearing. It was the largest supply camp in Austria, located on a former Luftwaffe airport, that never saw a bomb falling on it, while parts of the town were heavily damaged The usual scene across Europe.

We were living in the barrack huts on the base. It was used as an SS POW camp after the war, but by then the prisoners were released and many of them were working as civilian employees. Most of them were from ethnic German communities in Eastern Europe, drafted into the SS, and having lost everything, had nowhere to go. The camp was called DP Lager 1000.

Many of the refugees were roaming between countries, looking for their families, smuggling nylons, cigarettes, people. My steady room mate was Arpad, a couple of years older than I, formerly from a teachers' college in Hungary. He was working in the Coca Cola plant for the troops and I was in the carpenter crew. We went through some very tough times in the winter, always hungry and cold. On some occasions, when we had no firewood for our stove we stole fence posts and anything we could find to burn to survive.

I was fired in April 1947 by a Major Martino, a greasy little jerk, hated by everyone. I was lying in the hospital for seven weeks with a slowly healing hole in my belly after an appendix operation that went sour. The Major wrote to me that unless I show up for work he'll fire me. I wrote back, telling him where I was. The letter was hand delivered to him by my foreman who visited me in the hospital, but the jerk fired me anyway. It was my first exposure to American justice.

I moved and got a job as a hand weaver. Arpad stayed in the camp. We saw each other form time to time and kept up the contact when I went to England in 1948. He went to the USA in 1950 on a Protestant theological scholarship and was called up into the army six months after his arrival. My wife and I were just married and were also scheduled to go to the States, with all the papers ready, but when Arpad was called up we backed off.

I could have claimed that my still very visible leg wound was bothering me, or missed the target by a country mile, but I can't lie to save my life. It was obvious that with my experience as a head hunter I'd be in Korea in no time. By then I was starting to enjoy life after six years of living in camps and barracks without a decent home, so I said, to hell with it. We stayed in England and later came to Canada. A decision we never regretted and are grateful for.

Arpad and I have kept up correspondence for some time, but then we lost contact and haven't heard from each other for about fifty years. Then, a couple of years ago I was playing around with my computer and typed in his name with the only address as "USA." His name as the "Reverend Arpad X" and phone number in St Louis, Mo, came up within two seconds. I called him and he just about fell off the chair when he heard who I was. We speak on the phone and exchange letters now and then and I hope he'll be able to come and see us one day. At 78 he still has a small parish and also works as a counselor.
I asked him if he told his congregation of the time when we had to steal to survive. A thoroughly great, honest man, he has indeed and also told them that he makes no excuses whatsoever.

Copyright (c) 2003, West's International