In later years József
Ehrlich was not to speak much of his
childhood or youth. What remains is a series of glimpses and
educated guesses.
He was born on March 17, 1894, in
Győr, Hungary: a “medieval walled city on an island”
halfway between Budapest and Vienna, where the River Rába (Raab)
meets the broad blue Danube.
He was the third from youngest of
eleven children born to Mór/Móric
Ehrlich and Sarolta
Rotmann, but never knew his four oldest brothers and sisters; at
least one of them had already died before Józsi was born.
His father was a rabbi, belonging
to the moderate reform movement called Neologism that flourished
in the cities of western Hungary. Unlike Orthodox Jews, the
Neologs conducted services in Hungarian rather than Hebrew, made
use of choirs and organ music, and emphasized something of
aesthetics in their teaching[14].
To the boy Józsi, his father must have seemed fairly remote.
The only notable memory of Mór Ehrlich that Józsi would ever
mention involved not the man but his books: beautifully bound
volumes kept behind the glass doors of a fine bookcase.
Mór died circa 1905, when Józsi
was eleven. For many years Józsi would keep a small silver wine
cup that his father had used in religious ceremonies.
After the rabbi’s death, each of his surviving children had to
leave home in his or her turn because their mother Sarolta
lacked the money to feed the younger ones. At least three went
on to become teachers: Adolf, Rózsa, and waggish Sándor.
Another daughter, Margit, married a German general; but since he
was a Gentile, Sarolta would neither recognize the marriage nor
accept Margit’s two sons.
Józsi had a younger brother, Miska;
and a younger sister and playmate, Eszter “with the long blonde
hair” whom he loved dearly; but at the age of ten or so Eszter
came down with tuberculosis, and she too died.
In March 1907 Józsi turned thirteen and became, in the eyes of
his family and people, a man of duty. Not long afterward his
mother told him he was going to have to live as one. She sent
him off to Budapest, saying he must go to school there and
complete his education; and Sarolta gave him a prayer book,
telling Józsi to turn to it when things seemed hardest for him.
He departed from Győr with the equivalent of eleven cents in his
pocket, leaving behind the little enclosed world he had known.
Heading sixty miles east, he found himself in Metropolis.
Budapest had been created
as the capital of Hungary only thirty-four years earlier, but in
that single generation’s time there had risen a booming modern
city of nearly one million people. Great buildings of
ornate magnificence had gone up: the Parliament, the law courts,
the opera, many theaters and many museums. To the north
was a new industrial quarter from whose tall chimneys smoke
poured; five colossal bridges spanned the Danube, linking
ancient Buda with ambitious Pest; and through the busy streets
people were always hurrying as carriages clattered and trolley
cars clanged.
For three or four years József
lived with his aunt, Mór’s sister Hermina, whose surname would
be remembered as Greenhute;
and attended a Gymnasium or secondary school that
prepared students for admission to universities. To pay his
fees, and later to earn his keep after leaving Hermina’s house,
Józsi began to tutor other students. In exchange for this he
would get room and board, but he sometimes had so little
money-in-pocket he could not afford to buy oil for a lamp, and
so had to do his own studying by the light of the moon.
He persevered. He resolved never to be a burden to his
relatives, but always be able to make it on his own. Unhappy
things had happened in the past and might recur in the future,
they might be inevitable and unavoidable—but he would take them
as they came, find his own way around or through them.
József never did turn to Sarolta’s
prayer book. It was only much later, and by accident, that he
discovered a little cache of money his mother had hidden inside
it for him.
At first he dutifully went to temple and followed the rituals of
Judaism, because it was expected of him. But if he was offered
a meal of sausage or pork as pay for tutoring, the choice was to
eat it or go hungry; so he ate the pork or sausage, was not
struck by lightning, and little by little began to challenge the
Law. In school Józsi excelled at mathematics, where everything
was provable or disprovable; in algebra he found balance and
equilibrium, formulae that worked out and stood up to
challenge. Compared to math, religion seemed not all it was
cracked up to be; and József stopped going to temple.
For the rest of his life he would be devoted to the truth, as he
saw it. He could accept that a Creator had “wound up the
universe’s clock,” but to put faith in anything more
anthropomorphic was futility at best, and medieval superstition
at worst.
And József did not intend to be
medieval. He was going to live in the 20th Century, the
enlightened world of electric lights and motorcars and
aeroplanes and dirigibles; the rational world where modern
technology could find cures for all diseases, where science held
the promise to solve all problems. As the German proverb put
it, Jedes Warum hat seinen Darum—Every Why has a
Wherefore,
i.e. “everything has an underlying reason.”
József’s devotion to the truth was
further expressed in a determination to live up to his name.
Ehrlich is a German word meaning “honest,” but also
translatable as “fair,” “loyal,” “sincere,” and the like. As
such, it is not undesirable as a family name (merited or not)
and such usage doubtless increased in 1787 when Joseph II
decreed that all the Jews in his Austrian Empire, including the
Kingdom of Hungary, should adopt German surnames
“by which they were to be henceforth known.”
The Ehrlichs had chosen to be honest, and József saw this as a
solemn duty; yet he was also intent on acting like a gentleman.
Politeness pays; always keep your word; never argue about
religion with anybody; never try to hurt anyone’s feelings, no
matter what the cost to your own.
Even when people didn’t always treat you the way they ought to.
Even when so-called friends didn’t prove to be as fair or loyal
or sincere as they might.
Whatever else happened, children could always be relied upon.
Being children, they were still candid and open and honest, and
it was a pleasure to tutor them. A pleasant thing, too, to be
looked up to for knowledge and regarded as wise.
His relatives wanted him to be a rabbi like his father, but when
József took his Abiturium—the final exam—he deliberately
failed Hebrew, while passing everything else. József had
decided to become a teacher.
For a Jewish graduate of a Budapest Gymnasium in 1911,
there were many career opportunities. Even at this late date
the Austro-Hungarian Empire was basically a feudal regime, ruled
by great landowning families who upheld antiquated traditions;
and since the gentry refused to engage in anything so bourgeois
as trade, they encouraged the Jews to enter commerce and
industry as well as the professions, arts and sciences and
literature. Education was the key to establishing status and
security, and no one in Hungary valued education more highly
than the Jews. By 1911 they had achieved a “preponderating”
position in the nation’s economic and cultural life; nearly half
of all Hungarian lawyers, physicians, and journalists were
Jewish.
There is a Hungarian phrase, Ez jó iskola volt neki,
which can be translated as “It was an education for him,” “It
taught him a lot,” “It did him a power of good,” even “It made a
man of him.”
In 1911, at the age of nineteen, József Ehrlich cast his lot in
with education.
It was customary for teachers in
secondary schools to graduate from a university, and in later
years József would hint that he had attended one; but he more
likely went to a Budapest tanítóképző or teachers college.
There for three years he was trained as a tanító, an
elementary schoolteacher; and during the last year or two he got
to do some bona fide teaching. This was at a fasor or
“park school,” a home for half-orphans who had lost one parent
and could not be kept by the widowed one—a situation József was
certainly familiar with. There he taught math and history
on what would be a junior high level, to twelve- and
thirteen-year-olds. For this he received not only meals but a
little money, and thus was able for the first time to buy
himself such things as suits of clothes (as well as lamp oil).
József shared a room with a young
man who worked at night and slept by day, the two of them
exchanging the room’s single bed. Here Józsi had time to play
the violin and do a little reading; he’d become partial to the
works of Sándor Petőfi (1823-1849), Hungary’s
greatest lyric poet:
Elmerengek
gondolkodva gyakran, My thoughts go
wandering through space,
S nem tudom, hogy mi gondolatom van, and
I do not know what I think.
Átröpűlök hosszában hazámon,
I fly across the length of the land
Át a földön, az egész világon!—
across the earth and over the world.
Dalaim, mik ilyenkor teremnek,
My songs which are created then
Holdsugári ábrándos lelkemnek. are moonlight of my fanciful soul.
Ahelyett,
hogy ábrandoknak élek, I ought not
to live for these fancies,
Tán jobb volna élnem a jövőnek,
but work for the future perhaps,
S gondoskodnom… eh, mért gondoskodnám? take
care… but why feather my nest?
Jó az isten, majd gondot visel rám—
God is good and will provide.
Dalaim, mik ilyenkor teremnek,
My songs which are created then
Pillangói könnyelmű lelkemnek.
are butterflies of my careless soul.
Ha
szép lyánnyal van találkozásom,
Whenever I meet a lovely girl,
Gondomat még mélyebb sírba ásom, I
bury my cares in a deeper grave
S mélyen nézek a szép lyány szemébe, and
look into the depth of her eyes
Mint a csillag csendes tó vizébe— like a star in the calm of a lake.
Dalaim, mik ilyenkor teremnek,
My songs which are created then
Vadrózsái szerelmes lelkemnek.
are wild roses of my loving soul
.
And
when József laid books and violin aside and turned the lamp
down low, he may have indulged in a little thinking about
Life.
History had never been an easy subject for him, and teaching
it must have bolstered his conviction that history was
filled with lies, written to suit the rulers of the moment.
No, only science was truth, and mathematics its essence;
these for him were the subjects worth teaching.
And
to teach—to be a teacher—to be called Ehrlich úr,
“Mr. Ehrlich,” and see the youngsters stand when he entered
the classroom, and get them to understand and remember their
lessons—to help the slow learners too, teaching them simple
tasks such as how to tie their shoes or comb their hair—this
was the life for József. Teaching would be his life’s work;
he would take his college degree and teach as long as he
lived, or at least as long as they let him.
József’s ideal world would be a meritocracy, where anyone
(even a half-orphan) could become a gentleman. It was all a
manner of being properly taught: provided not only with
education but encouragement as well. A tutor in Petőfi’s
Az apostol (“The Apostle”) was the first to sympathize
with the Oliver Twistlike foundling Szilveszter, even giving
him a parting gift of money so he could continue his
studies; and Szilveszter had dedicated his life to serving
his fellow men.
Well, perhaps some of József’s pupils would go on to do
great things, and come back to visit the old school and tell
the boys how, if not for Ehrlich úr, they would never
have mastered their fractions.
And
perhaps someday he might meet his own lovely girl with eyes
like stars in the calm of a lake, and she would return his
love. They would be married and have children, a family
that would stay together; and he would come home from school
in the evenings and play with his sons and daughters, tell
them stories, watch them growing up. His children in their
turn would attend the university, become teachers or doctors
or scientists; they too would marry and have little ones,
grandchildren who would be brought to visit József and his
wife all the time, to be played with and told stories just
as their parents had been.
A
splendid dream…
And
there was really no reason why it should not come true
(assuming the right young lady came along), for the future
seemed very bright.
Even in July 1914, when war broke out between the Empire and
Serbia.
Even when, within a week, Russia and Germany and France and
Great Britain all got involved as well.
Not
to worry: Hungarian military obligation did not begin till
the age of twenty-one, and József was still only twenty. He
would certainly be able to complete his final year of
college and take his degree, since this war was supposed to
be—as wars are always supposed to be—over by Christmas.
But
the Imperial generals insisted on a bravura fighting style
that was not simply outdated, but suicidal: the elite
cavalry was sent charging into machine gun fire. An
expedition sent to punish the Serbs, “those dirty Balkan
shepherds,” lost 40,000 men; an invasion of Russian Poland
was hurled back at the same time, and by late September the
Empire’s easternmost province of Galicia had been lost,
along with 350,000 more soldiers.
So
for Austria-Hungary the first months of the war were an
appalling all-around disaster. By October its trained
officers were virtually wiped out, and the army was forced
to mobilize more men as the catastrophic Galician casualties
mounted. Exemptions were eliminated, physical requirements
lowered, and military obligation extended to those aged
eighteen to twenty-one.
And
József Ehrlich was promptly called up.
There exists a
photograph of him taken at this time.
Fastidiously dressed in suit and tie, complete with wing
collar and breast-pocketed white handkerchief, he is seated
in a chair with a magazine or newspaper held open on his
knee. His hair, blond in childhood but now brown and wavy,
is parted precisely in the middle. And on his face and in
his bright blue eyes is a pensive expression verging on the
wistful.
Since he was a Gymnasium graduate, József was sent to
a reserve officers’s training school. In peacetime his
being Jewish would probably have prevented this, but the
desperate need for officers was now overriding, and after a
reduced training period he was hastily shipped out to the
front.
In
November 1914 the Austro-Hungarians invaded Serbia again. A
month later the furious Serbian counterattack drove them
into a headlong rout, slowed only by mud and exhaustion, and
another 100,000 men were lost. Germany was openly disgusted
at the performance of their fellow Central Power: “We have
shackled ourselves to a corpse,” one German general snorted.
As
for József Ehrlich, he had been wounded—shot through the
left foot. It was going to be amputated (“That was the way
they treated wounds”) but József told them, “No you don’t!”
and with his other foot he kicked the medic across the
room. So instead they cleaned the bullet hole—by pulling a
cloth straight through it.
Along with his older brother Sándor, who had suffered
injuries from shrapnel, József was sent to convalesce at a
mineral-water summer resort that had been turned into a
hospital for officers. It was near Lake Balaton, “the
Hungarian Sea,” but this held little charm in January.
On
crutches and with his leg in a cast, József went back to
Budapest. He called on his mother, who had moved there from
Győr; and one Saturday afternoon, perhaps urged on by
Sarolta, he paid a visit to his Aunt Hermina and cousins
Ilona and Rózsa, whom he had not seen for four years. When
József arrived he found that they already had a caller that
afternoon: a strikingly attractive and elegant-looking young
lady with black hair and black eyes, who happened to be a
visitor from Transylvania.
