Escape
By the time I turned nine, I had a sister and brother, and my dad took me with him to Hungary for a quick trip.
I’d been in awe of so much luxury… Color TV, ample amounts of food in every grocery store, with things I couldn’t even identify. People wearing modern clothes, speaking so politely and being amazingly welcoming and happy. I felt like the rainbow had painted the world with so many new shades in Budapest. There was nothing that compared to the third world living that I knew back home, except for the shared language.
Women shortly past the age of thirty-five would start wearing darker clothing, covering themselves. There was always a rush to the only store in town when new goods came in, with lines down the street in the dawn hours, everyone hoping to get a small portion that could be theirs of meat or whatever they had that was considerably sub-par. People afraid to speak honestly about anything of significance, knowing that if they did, it would put even their family members in danger. The spies were always listening. It could be your own family.
After an exceptionally delicious treat a café, I turned to my father and made a child’s request.
“Dad, let’s go get mom and the rest of our family, and we can live here.”
He couldn’t look me in the eye. He had been requesting visas for our family to leave Romania for years. I, of course, had no idea.
The next course of action for him and my mom was for only the two of them to get those traveling visas, leave us kids with my grandmother, and try to send for us after they escape. This was exactly what they did after they sought refuge in Austria.
The Romanians refused to cooperate. “You left your kids. You must no longer want them.” That was not the smartest thing to say to someone who has very little to lose. My father wrote a letter to the radio station ‘Free Europe’ describing in detail the hardships we had been through as Hungarians living in Romania, of which there had been many that were heart wrenching.
Everything from losing a baby in the hospital because there wasn’t immediate attention given, other hospital visits for the rest of us kids because of powder milk poisoning that was issued by the government, and so on. The list was long.
He also included mention of some government state secrets he knew (which he still won’t talk about with me). What he didn’t count on? The radio station to read his letter live, over the air.
The Romanians sent him a message, “Stop talking. We’ll send you your kids. You’re not to step foot back on our soil.”
It took six long months, but us kids, we flew to Austria. I was able to tell my dad that I kept his secret. He told me only before they left that they would not be returning, but that they would take us to a better place.
Another six months later (on the exact date they arrived in Austria) we flew from Vienna to Northern California… It wasn’t Hungary. But it was definitely a better place.