Márta Ehrlich was born on September 27, 1919; but since her
birth was not recorded till the following day, her birthday
would eventually be celebrated on the 28th.
It was József’s idea that he and Matild should keep a diary for
Márta, and they got a hardbound quadrille book to do their
recording in. On its title page József wrote, in
carefully-drawn block letters, the eloquent if uncharacteristic
sentiment ISTEN NEVÉBEN KEZDEM MEG: In God’s Name I Begin
This.
For the first three months of Márta’s life virtually nothing got
recorded. During the next three months, though József and
Matild would each make many Diary entries, their observations
were in no way unusual or extraordinary for new parents with a
firstborn child. “Tomorrow you will be six months old,” József
might remark. “Let’s see how much you developed since last I
wrote in this book,” and he would go on to describe what Márta
ate for lunch, or how much she enjoyed rocking herself back and
forth on all fours. Matild might mention taking the baby in her
buggy out for a walk every day, and how Márta loved going out
just like her mother: “Now all day long you say ‘bye-bye, go
bye-bye.’”
“Márta was our whole life at that time,” Matild would later
remark. “We loved her very much, and watched her grow and
develop beautifully.”
In November 1919 the Romanians withdrew from
thoroughly-plundered Budapest, and Admiral Horthy led in his
army, telling the Lord Mayor that “we shall forgive this
criminal city.”
The Budapest Spirit was the White Hungarians’s whipping boy:
Bolsheviks, organized labor, Freemasons and Jews were all
prominent on their hit list. Miklós Horthy, admiral in a
country that now lacked both navy and seaport, was named Regent
for the King who remained in exile—and Karl was forcibly kept
there too, even being shot at by Horthy’s troops when he tried
to reclaim the Hungarian throne.
For awhile, ironically, the situation in Romania was different.
Rather than agree to the Peace Treaty’s minorities clause, which
explicitly obligated Romania to recognize its Jews as citizens,
Prime Minister Bratianu resigned; but a conciliatory coalition
took power, signed the treaty and agreed to observe its
provisions.
However much the Transylvanian Jews might despise Romania and
long to be reunited with Hungary, it must have seemed—could it
be possible?—that things might actually be working out, after
all, for the best.
Then in March 1920 King Ferdinand dismissed the coalition and
had it replaced by a strong authoritarian government, one which
rejected social reform and denounced the opposition as
“Jewish-dominated leftists,” alien and pro-Communist. In
Transylvania there was no immediate change in Jewish status,
though the government and bureaucracy had undergone wholesale
Romanization. But the Transylvanian Jews, with their historic
and cultural ties to the hated Magyars, were suspected of
“irredentism”; and their lives and activities were very soon to
be restricted.
Extracts from Márta’s Diary, translated from the original
Hungarian:
1920 April 5.
Last week for one day you ran a temperature and we were worried,
but thank heaven nothing worse developed. You have a
habit, my little girl, the only way you can sleep in your little
bed is if you lay on your tummy with your face buried in the
little pillow. Sometimes we try to turn you over on your
back, but you put up a fight and start to holler, so
we have to let it go. I think, my sweet, that’s why you never
had a stomach ache… [József]
1920 April 10. Yesterday you were a naughty little girl.
Sorry I have to say such a thing of you my dear. We went for a
long walk, the three of us, and by late afternoon we got home.
As soon as we stepped into the house, you started to scream and
cried as hard as you could. Mommy picked you up and took all
your clothes off to see what’s wrong, found nothing. She tried
to feed you, but you wouldn’t take anything, so back you went in
the buggy and we had coffee and cake, and you just hollered
while we ate. So out we went for another stroll in the park,
and lo and behold our daughter stopped crying and started to
laugh and be happy. Well, wasn’t that naughty?
Tonight you put your toes in your mouth. We put you to bed, it
was time to go to sleep, but you promptly sat up and started to
cry and with your eyes full of tears looked up at me wanting to
be picked up. I am so sorry for you my little girl, you are so
much alone, but we are busy all day making a living. We have a
millinery store and small shop in front, and the apartment is in
the back. But sometimes we even forget we have a baby, you are
so good. Sometimes I see you look so sad sitting in the corner
in your little bed playing. I wish
times will get better to your Mommy could stay with you all
day. [József]
1920 May 16. It’s a long time my darling baby since we
played together. But at last I got away today so I could record
your progress. It is over a week since you started to hold onto
your crib and walk around in it. You are such a sweetheart my
baby, and you perform like that and catch us watching, you start
calling “Mama—Mama.” Your teeth started to show, but we have to
look real hard to see them. But when you eat we hear it on the
spoon. Hardly can wait to see how pretty you will look with
teeth. You are a fighter all right, fight with everyone. Today
you were at your cousin Bébi’s
house, and you slapped her face. She really loved you, but
after that she didn’t even want to look at you anymore. Lots of
time you hit Dad and me, but you think it’s just playing,
because you clap hands and laugh. So
we haven’t punished you yet for it, but are trying to correct it
some other way. [Matild]
1920 June 6. Your only tooth is out good, so we can see
it, and you can pull your bread to pieces with it. You eat
everything now except meat, and love it. You can crawl on the
floor very fast and when you reach a chair you grab hold of it
and stand up without any help from us, and can walk around it
holding on. And if we put your back to the wall you can stand
alone. It will be fun when we could take your hand and go
walking. You can say a few words already: Mama, Papa, bye-bye,
dolly, and a few others. When years later you grow up and want
to know what kind of baby you were, well, my sweet, you are just
the loveliest and most perfect little girl. You are for us, but
everyone who sees you tells the same to us…
Your hair is brown; your eyes? I can’t tell really, some time
it is blue, some time green, and at other times grey. There is
a novel by a famous Hungarian, Mór Jokai, the name is The
Lady with the Ocean-Blue Eyes.
That’s you, baby. You have a lovely cream-and-peach complexion,
and you are very well developed for your age. I am pretty sure
you will be a smart girl. It is 10 PM and you are fast asleep.
Funny how you are always sleeping on your tummy, whenever we
turn you to lay on your back, in an instant you are back face
down
and fast asleep again. Good night my Mártuka, sleep well. [József]
1920 July[?] This week we got your first spanking from
your Mother. For why? I can’t tell in this book, maybe your
husband-to-be will read this some time… Day by day you are more
darling, but more spoiled too. You slap everybody, playfully
that’s true, but just the
same it is a slap. [József]
1920 August 11. We came home from the country resort,
its name is Kolozs and it has a natural salty lake for bathing.
You are one kilo heavier, but it seems you grew rather than
gained. You are tall for your age, and developed a lot while in
the country. You understand every word spoken to you. You are
a little timid, not afraid of people but of things. For
instance you are afraid of shoes. It happened in the country
yet, you were sitting on the floor and glanced down at your
feet, when you saw the shoes on them you started crawling just
as fast as you could, then stopped to take another look and got
startled again and tried to run away from them.
There was another instance, your Mommy and I were reading and
you were playing all by yourself. All of a sudden we heard you
holler “Mama, Mama” and when we looked up, we saw you holding in
your hand far away from you a small paintbrush, you got scared
of it. You couldn’t throw it away, but started to crawl as fast
as you could holding it away. You were so comical my dear that
we both laughed at you… You can walk now for short times, as
long as you can touch objects you even try to run. I think it
won’t be long now
before you really could walk. [József]
1920 August 21.
Yes, my little daughter, now you
know how to use your legs, you really can walk. Naturally you
fall a lot yet, but get up again and start out anew. You even
can manage the stairway, only four steps up, but it is enough
for a start. When you fall down, you always sit up and spank
the floor saying “da, da,”
at least you speak some words too. [József]
“We did very well,” Matild would say of their millinery business
next door to Matthias Corvinus’s birthplace, “but the Romanian
city officials who were officiating this part of Hungary were a
mean lot and couldn’t let us alone. They thought no one who
wasn’t born in Transylvania belonged there, and the police
started to come to let us know it, hounding us until [József]
started to give them money which seemed endless blackmailing. A
large part of our earnings went to the blackmailers, for bribing
several of them just to let us live, until [József] was seeing
we couldn’t live this way much longer.”
In later years it would always be said that the Ehrlich
millinery had been “lost.”
1920 September 27. This is a very pleasant date for
us Mártuka, today is your first birthday. All that happened
with you in a year we tried to record here for us all. We are
very satisfied with your progress. You are tall and very
pretty, and mostly very bright. Once somebody asked if you were
at least two years old? although you were not even one year old
at that time.
We hope we can give you the upbringing we both wish to. It is
very hard my dear, lots of difficulty lies before us. You will
think it was impossible when you are old enough to read this
book. Hope you never will have to know the terrible things that
are going on in this world today. We had to move in with your
Aunt Fáni and Uncle János, and all we have is a bedroom, and we
have to use the kitchen together. But we are not discouraged,
we know it will be different and better some time. Mártuka, you
keep us going, and we are hoping we can keep you protected
always from unpleasant things.
I can only say nice things about you. You are sweet and good
and you understand every word we speak to you, although you
can’t talk much yet. You are taking your afternoon nap now, you
talk a lot in your sleep. After you wake up we will take you to
have your birthday picture taken at a very good photographer. [József]
The Fruchters, Fáni and Jani, were a childless couple and
treated Márta very much as their own. “They both worship you,”
József would write a couple of years later, “but especially Jani.
He is a very nervous man, when he is in a bad humor no one dares
speak to him, not even his wife Aunt Fáni. But you don’t
understand things like that, and you go to him and he just melts
away, and does your bidding. Even goes on all fours and takes
you for a ride on his back and forgets he ever was mad for some
reason… It’s every day that he sits down to play dolls with you
and does whatever you tell him to do…”
Both of the Fruchters made entries in Márta’s Diary: “I must add
to your nice remembrance,” Fáni wrote, “so when you are old
enough to read all this I am remembered also.” And Jani hoped
that “when you are grown years later, and you will read this
book, you will remember your old Uncle Jani, if not personally,
then from hearing your Dad and Mommy talk of me to you.”
Domestic help was inexpensive and the Ehrlichs hired a nursemaid
to look after Márta while Matild and József were at work.
Matild’s younger brother Jenő and at least one sister (probably
Margit, a dressmaker) had a “big ladies’s tailoring shop and
salon” at the Kun house, with twenty people working there—now
including the Ehrlichs, doing millinery.
József’s job prospects were otherwise bleak. “He couldn’t find
work because he wasn’t born in Transylvania,” Matild would
recall. “He was declared an alien and eventually would have to
leave the country where I was born.” But even were they to
return to Budapest, things were not likely to be any better.
Five days before Márta’s first birthday, the first major
anti-Semitic law in postwar Europe was adopted in Hungary: a
numerus clausus, restricting Jewish enrollment at
institutions of higher education.
[Photo: Márta in a playsuit, standing on a bench]
1920 October 12. Hope you like your picture? It
isn’t a bit posed, just as you stood he took it, very natural.
There isn’t much news to tell, you talk very little yet, but the
things you do are more grown up, and there isn’t a word you
don’t understand. When you see fresh fruit, you offer to kiss
anyone, that means you want some if it too. You love to play,
especially ring-around-the-rosy, with other children. And you
can, and like to, fight. Especially with your young Aunt Ily.
She is only six years older than you and loves you very much.
You like to pat her, then when she stoops down to kiss you, you
hit her and say “da, da.”
You like best to eat, and ask for food several times a day. You
love very much to play hide-and-seek, you think if you close
your eyes no one can see you either, then open them and say
“kukucs” [“peekaboo”] which means we find you. When you get
something new you say “pretty?” You have a new white fur coat
which you love to pat, but when you see a dog you are afraid to
touch it. You like very much to listen to stories for hours at
a time, and when I tell you the girl spanked the Teddy Bear, you
too say “da, da.” You are walking fine now. I had to buy the
third pair of shoes already. You never cry when you fall, just
reach out and spank the floor or ground saying “da, da.” And
that seems to satisfy you
for the bumps. [József]
1920 November 25. Today you got a dish from your
Uncle János and a small spoon, so now you eat all by yourself.
It seems you know too what progress you are making, you are just
as happy as can be. Aunt Fáni is teaching you to dance and you
seem to be a very good pupil. Fourteen months old, and you get
hold of your skirts with both hands and just start to dance.
Naturally you fall, but that doesn’t seem to bother you, you
start all over again. But
you don’t want to start talking yet, just a few words that you
said a month ago. [József]
1920 December 5. The last few days you spoke new [sic]
words: Daddy, Baby, Mommy, apple, and milk. I think this is the
time you’ll start talking a blue streak. If you are not
behaving, we put you in a corner which makes you a very sad
little girl. You respect me very much, I have to tell you only
once to do something and you do it promptly. If your Mommy puts
you to bed at night, you stand right up and start to cry. But
if I just look at you, you lay down and put your little face in
the pillow and I hear you are crying your little heart out. I
feel like crying with you my dear, I am so sorry for you. But
one of us has to be strict even if it hurts us both. Today your
little cousin Bébi was here, but she was naughty and
cried. You teased her and imitated her crying. [József]
1920 December 24. My darling little daughter, you
are getting sweeter every day and smarter too. Understand
everything and can make conversation with me or anyone else.
Your Aunt Fáni went to the Market and I asked her to bring us
some apples, and all morning you were trying to tell me “Aunty
bye-bye, bring baby apple.” Yes, my sweet, we could chat
together now and we both have a lovely time together. You still
like to play hide-and-seek, and when the children say “I find
you,” you say it too…
While I’m writing this you sit in Daddy’s lap, he is telling you
a story about a frog who fell into a deep well. You like
stories the best and sometimes you say something in between
too. I wonder my darling what will you say when you will first
read this book. Will
you like it? [Matild]
1920 December 28. Three new words again, your Aunt
Fáni taught you how to say them, you are so happy when you learn
new things, and always smiling when you say them. Christmas Eve
the neighbors asked you to go in and see their Christmas tree,
which you liked a lot, saying “Pretty,” and you wanted to touch
things on it, but I didn’t let you because there were real
candles on it and I was afraid you’d get burned by it. They
offered you some bonbons from a dish but you wanted them all.
When you dipped into the dish and saw the dark chocolate, you
didn’t want it, shaking your head and saying “dirty” and putting
it back too. You love sweets and the neighbors always bring you
cookies just to see how glad you are when you see them. Lots of
times my little girl embarrasses me, because anyone who
comes to the house to see us, you are asking for food or
something to eat. [Matild]
1920 December 29. It’s over three weeks since I
wrote to your book, always waiting for something important to
happen. Your vocabulary is large, every day some new words.
Today it was “raining outside.” Most of the words only Mom and
I can understand, you talk so funny. Only when you want
something to eat, or when you are mad for some reason you talk
quite plain. But still you like to fight and hit people. You
can slap real hard, your Mommy thinks it’s amusing, but you
never do it to me. Once you were crying and I imitated the way
you cried. You got mad at me and lifted your little hand to hit
me, but when you saw me looking at you, you came to kiss me
instead. Otherwise you seldom cry, when you fall and hurt
yourself you just ask us to kiss wherever is hurting, and won’t
do anything else, just a kiss, then everything is all right
again.
Still love to hide, right now you are playing with Mommy and you
are under the table waiting to be found. Next best is
ring-around-the-rosy, anybody in the room has to play it with
you, if there isn’t enough people then you take your teddy bear
too. You love your teddy bear, go to sleep with it, feed it,
and even put it on the potty. Mártuka, you are a very dear
little girl, you give us lots of pleasure and help us to forget
our troubles with your sweetness and laughter. Sometimes you do
things you shouldn’t, then I try to be serious and correct you,
but in the middle as I look at you, I start to laugh, and have
to hide my face so you can’t see it. You think I am crying and
you say “Daddy, no, no.”
I would love to make lots of pictures of you, but it is very
expensive. But next spring we will have a family picture for
you. I lift you up in my arms in front of the mirror, Mommy
stands next to you, that’s how we practice, and that is lots of
fun for you too. You dark-eyed little monkey, now your eyes
have changed to dark brown. Right now I hear you are spanking
someone, saying “da, da.” I see it is your teddy bear, it
probably hurt you someway, that’s why. Now you talk all the
time, saying “naughty doll” and running all over the house all
day. [József]
Notes
