An Expatriate Education

I remember certain things from about the time I was in the seventh grade. Bits and pieces. I remember my teacher, Ms. Williams, a nice lady with long, dark hair. I remember learning how important coal mining was to the economy of Birmingham, England—a strange, random factoid to stick in an American boy’s brain. I remember watching Fess Parker play Davy Crockett on our black and white TV. And I remember watching Russian tanks rolling down the streets of Budapest.

Three decades later I would meet a woman whose father was caught up in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Sarah was one of our neurology residents at Virginia Commonwealth University and I was an assistant professor. She mentioned her Hungarian heritage from time to time and I knew she had grown up in Virginia but been educated in Hungary. She finished her residency and I eventually left the faculty. 

After another thirty years, we became colleagues when I joined her private practice group as my part time retirement job. We renewed acquaintances and I finally learned the whole story—why those Russian tanks were rolling, what had happened to her father, why Sarah had gone to school in Budapest and why Sarah’s father had encouraged her to go to college in Hungary despite his horrendous experiences there.

Prior to WWII, Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and fought as a German ally in WWI. In WWII, it again fought with Germany. After WWII, Hungary technically became a democracy, but Communist influences eventually prevailed and by 1949 a tyrannical Soviet puppet regime had seized power, brutally suppressing any opposition. In 1956, the Hungarians rebelled. Students started the revolution but it quickly spread.  

Sarah had told me parts of the story before. I knew she had gone to college and medical school at Semmelweis University in Budapest, that her father had been caught up in the revolution, imprisoned and tortured, but despite this had still encouraged her to go back to Hungary to complete her education. Over lunch one day at an upscale seafood restaurant, we talked again about this fascinating story.

The waiter appeared, offering three kinds of delicious bread, a house specialty, and took our orders. As Sarah decided which slice of bread to try first, I said, “The story about 1956 and what happened to your Dad, and that despite all of that he still wanted you to go to school in Hungary is astonishing. Seems Hungary would be the last place on earth he would want you to go.” 

“No,” Sarah said, “It makes perfect sense. There’s a Hungarian word called honfiság.  Hungarian and English don’t translate well here because Hungarian meanings are multilayered, but in its simplest translation it means patriotism. But on a deeper level, Hungarians are Hungarian to the core. They really are. This pitiful, little country has been the doormat for everything that has ever happened in Central Europe. Always on the wrong side. The Turks were there for 300 years. It’s a very Hungarian honfiság thing for him to encourage his child to go back.” 

“You were born in this country?”

“Yes, in 1958. And getting back to the whole honfiság thing, my father was imprisoned and tortured repeatedly, for love of his country. He didn’t blame Hungary. This was the regime, the circumstances of the time. By the time we became old enough to travel with my sister and my mother, we went home regularly. I say home because that was home to us. Hungary was not just some 23 and Me or Ancestry.com abstraction, this was where the rest of our family still lived. My mother’s parents, my mother’s siblings, everybody else was still back there.”

“So, you have extended family in Hungary?” I asked.

“I have a large extended family who went through all of these experiences. Now my father never went back. He felt positive that if he went back, they would throw him in jail. But this wasn’t because he didn’t love Hungary. Didn’t love this country where he grew up, where his ancestors were from. His family was landed gentry; he would have been targeted anyway. Even had he not been a revolutionary trying to overthrow the government.” 

“So, was he involved in the revolution?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sarah said. “That’s why they ultimately fled, because he’d gotten word they had another warrant out for his arrest because of his activities with the revolution.”

“Was he one of the students?”

“No, he was not a student. He was in his late 20’s by then and already working but he was one of the organizers of the student movement. I can’t tell you a lot of specifics, because he would shut down every single time.” 

“He never talked about what he went through?”

“He never discussed any details. He found it too painful, even years later. Visiting Hungary once, I went to a place called the Terror House. The bottom level was the interrogation rooms. Floor slanted, drain in the middle. I don’t believe in ju-ju and ghosts and such, but I have to tell you, a feeling came over me when I walked through there. I am positive he was tortured in that room.” 

Selecting another slice of bread, she continued, “But, ultimately, he loved his country. This was why he risked the things he did, to do what he could to free it and ensure a better future for everybody.” 

“So,” I asked, “How did he talk you into going back there to college? I’m envisioning a headstrong American teenager being told she needs to go to Hungary to college.”

“I wasn’t told,” Sarah said.

“How did you make that decision?”

“It was my idea. It was important for my parents that we maintain our Hungarian identity. We spoke Hungarian at home. We attended a refugee group meeting once a month. My father would stand up and recite from famous Hungarian poets. They would sing and dance. The wives would make Hungarian food. And we went home throughout my childhood. I would go every couple of years and stay all summer long. I had people there I cared a lot about. 

“You also have to understand, I went to high school at St. Anne’s, an all girl’s Catholic school. The girls were all the same. They all came from upper middle-class backgrounds; they were all Catholic; they all thought the same things; they all walked the walk; they all talked the talk and I stood out like six sore thumbs. I was not the typical Virginia girl. Most of these people had no idea Hungary was even a country, much less in what part of the globe.”

“l can imagine.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sarah said. “I got used to morning announcements consisting of ‘In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and Sarah go to the office please’. Because I was a bit of a hell raiser. I did not fit that mold. So, it came to: am I going to have this life forced on me?”

“You thought college would just be more of St. Anne’s?”

“Well, pretty much. I played piano and my teacher encouraged me to apply for a music scholarship to Catholic University. So, I did and they offered me a scholarship. And I thought, damn I don’t want to do this. I also applied to the University of Virginia. And damn, UVA accepted me too. And then it’s the whole jeans and pearls thing and they’re talking about the sororities and what they’re gonna rush and everything and I’m feeling viscerally sick. You’ve got to understand, I don’t fit that mold. No. I had enough self-realization. Not a society girl.”

“So, you looked at other places. You didn’t just pick Semmelweis, you considered alternatives.”

“I did,” Sarah said. “I had friends in high school, but their dreams were like everybody else’s dreams. My dreams were so alien I didn’t even share them.”

“What do you mean, your dreams were so alien?”

“What I wanted to do with my life was so alien.”

“You had dreams of a career, something more than domestic life?”

“Yes, exactly. They dreamed so little. They were going to stay in Virginia. They thought I was totally weird that I wasn’t playing sports year-round, being on travel teams. ‘You’re never around in the summer. You’re not on summer swim team.’ Well, that’s because I’m in Europe. I’m thinking, you haven’t even crossed state lines, man. You’ve never read Tolstoy.” 

Sarah’s father never would talk about his experiences in 1956. He told his wife early in their marriage that when it was time for him to go, he would tell her about it. Then when he was in hospice, on his deathbed, Sarah’s mother finally brought it up and he looked up and said “Please don’t torture me. Let me go in peace.”