The Choice

draped an Oriental rug across the railing. She’s not cleaning; she’s
celebrating. Admiral Miklós Horthy, His Serene Highness the Regent
of the Kingdom of Hungary, arrives today to formally welcome our
town into Hungary. I understand my parents’ excitement and pride.
We belong! Today I, too, welcome Horthy. I perform a dance. I wear a
Hungarian costume: bold Ęoral embroidery on a bright wool vest and
skirt, billowing white-sleeved blouse, ribbons, lace, red boots. When I
do the high kick by the river, Horthy applauds. He embraces the
dancers. He embraces me.
“Dicuka, I wish we were blond like Klara,” Magda whispers at
bedtime.
We are still years away from curfews and discriminatory laws, but
Horthy’s parade is the starting point of all that will come. Hungarian
citizenship has brought belonging in one sense but exclusion in
another. We are so happy to speak our native tongue, to be accepted as
Hungarians—but that acceptance depends on our assimilation.
Neighbors argue that only ethnic Hungarians who are not Jewish
should be allowed to wear the traditional garments.
“It’s best not to let on you’re Jewish,” my sister Magda warns me.
“It will just make other people want to take away your beautiful
things.”
Magda is the ĕrstborn; she reports the world to me. She brings me
details, oen troubling things, to study and ponder. In 1939, the year
that Nazi Germany invades Poland, the Hungarian Nazis—the
nyilas—occupy the apartment below ours in Andrássy Palace. ey
spit at Magda. ey evict us. We move to a new apartment, at Kossuth
Lajos Utca #6, on a side street instead of the main road, less
convenient for my father’s business. e apartment is available
because its former occupants, another Jewish family, have le for
South America. We know of other Jewish families leaving Hungary.
My father’s sister Matilda has been gone for years already. She lives in