Scoutmaster Europe Journal 2002

Report # 2

7/15/2002

Hello Everyone,

This is my second installment; I'm in Hungary now. I drove from Munich through Austria in one day, a long day.  I stopped to see the concentration camp in Mauthausen.  The Nazis set it up as a slave labor camp for prisoners almost immediately after the anschluss.  Mauthausen has a stone quarry where prisoners worked under incredible conditions.  There are pictures and relics showing how prisoners carried stone blocks on wooden pack frames.  These frames look like little seats, and each one had one stone on it. The pictures show hundreds of prisoners bent over carrying these stones out of the quarry like an army on the march.  The guards often pushed people off the top of the quarry to their deaths 500 feet below.  It was described as a sadistic game.

I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted at Mauthausen because of the weather.  It started to rain then hail and thunder.  So it was difficult to walk around outside.  I didn't like the feel of being pelted with ice marbles!  Also, I broke my only pair of reading glasses, and needed to get them repaired or purchase a new pair so I could read the map.  It was Saturday afternoon.  I made it into an optical shop just before it closed.  They were

all out of reading glasses.  I figured I would suffer until Monday, because nothing is open on Sunday.  For a person who had pilot's eyesight, needing reading glasses is a pain.

I drove on, thinking I might check a rest stop on the highway.  Who knows, maybe they have reading glasses or glue to fix my broken pair.  My thought was to stop someplace near Vienna and go into Hungary on Sunday.  At the rest stop, a Hungarian man walked up to me as I got out of the car, and asked for a ride to Hungary.  How he knew I spoke Hungarian, I don't know.  I explained about the glasses and he joined me on a search to repair them.  We didn't have any luck with glue, and there were no new glasses to purchase.  I normally don't pick up hitchhikers, but I made an exception to have someone help read the map!  It was a good decision.  The fellow, Laszlo Augustine, worked for BMW.  He is an IT professional and works on integrated business software systems using something called SAP.  I told him that my son was in the IT field, and Laszlo spent the entire trip trying to convince me to get Jeff to license some of his proprietary software.  Well at least he got me to Hungary.  I dropped him off across the border so he could find another ride to Budapest.

I camped in Sopron, a very nice town just across the border from Austria. The campground was excellent, and the weather was excellent too.  A 22 year old landscape architect student from California told me all about his studies in Europe and travels.  I now have added a few more places to go to my list. It's a long list.

In the morning, I drove halfway across Hungary to Tokaj, where my father's family had lived.  Got there in the early evening and found a terrific place to stay, the home of a vintner, wine making family.  The woman who rented me the room, first took me into the wine cellar to sample their wines.  I bought four bottles in addition to the half bottle she gave me to take to the room.  The wine from Tokaj is famous; it's very expensive in America, $50/bottle and up.  Here, it's $10/bottle.  That's up about $3.00 from three years ago.

This morning I went to see my friend, Lowy Lajos (aka Luis Levy in English).  He took me to the synagogue where my great-grandfather and my grandfather had their Bar Mitzvah.  The synagogue was gutted by a fire, but in the building next door, Lowy is building a small prayer room, a kosher kitchen, and a small Jewish library.  He told me that only two Jews live in Tokaj now, but on holy days people come from all the small towns around to hold prayer services.  He also gave me the name of another person to contact back in America who knows about the history of the Jews of Tokaj.  Progress comes in small steps.

I left my friend Lowy, and headed down the road to Balsa, tiny farming village about 25 km from Tokaj.  My great-grandmother was born here.  I went into the one and only store, a coop, and asked a few questions, but there are no records, and no one knew anything about the former Jewish community.  The people I spoke to were very nice, and seemed really interested.

My destination for the night was Kisvarda, where my mother's family came from.  I got a bungalow in the same campground where I stayed three years ago.  I have a lot to tell you about Kisvarda, but it will be in my next email.  They are closing the library in a few minutes and I have to leave the computer.

Philip Sternberg