It was an unusually warm day for the middle of October, when about a dozen people casually wandered toward the small hut on the hill of the vineyard belonging to Mr. Koncz. They arrived one by one and looked around carefully before they stepped inside, past the unlocked door. The emergency meeting began.
“The first Russian troops entered Hungary two weeks ago and the Romanians, the Finns and the Bulgarians broke ties with Hitler just within the last few weeks,” Mr. Koncz stated excitedly to the small group of people in front of him. “However,” he added, “the Arrow-Cross Party is getting much too boisterous for my liking; hold many public meetings and boast that their time is coming. I heard that they are building up a huge arsenal. Quite frankly, I’m worried about them.”
My father jumped up impatiently. “What are we waiting for then? I keep telling you that we need to get our hands on hand grenades, guns and ammunition, so we can attack the Nazis.”
“Hold your horses, Sándor.” Mihály Fekete, one of the organizers, tried to calm the hot-headed youth. “There is a bit of a difference between painting slogans on the bloody factory chimneys and attacking the whole fucking German army.”
“Fine, but doing something is better than doing nothing,” my father replied heatedly. “At least Ibolya and I have done something. Just recently we managed to cut some telephone wires to the German military headquarters at Lilafured.”
“How did you manage that?” Fekete asked.
“Well,” my father answered sheepishly, “we cut the wires by the poles, and covered them up with black tape. And every time someone passed us, the two of us started kissing. Nobody suspected a thing. I also made some caltrops during the night shifts and used them successfully a couple of nights ago. We threw a handful of them on the road during the night and, judging by the series of screeches, tire explosions and German swearing, they worked on tires like a charm. Serves them right for driving around with no headlights on during the night. Here, take a look at them. I brought a few samples with me.” He pulled out a package from his backpack. “They were used successfully during medieval times against cavalries, so I figured it would work on German trucks just as well.”
They were prickly metal devices, about ten centimetres long, approximately the size of a large man’s hand. Each had four metal points arranged so that when any three were on the ground, the fourth projected upward.
“Wonderful,” acknowledged István Oszip, wiping the perspiration off his shiny bald head. “Can you make some more?” Then he impatiently blurted out, “I heard about some sabotage attempts at the factory. Any truth in them?”
“What sabotage?” Barbai, one of the best tool and die makers asked. His advice was constantly sought, even by the engineers. He looked up and stated with an innocent face, “It must be the combination of the lack of sleep and the quantity of the food one can buy with our meagre ration tickets, but I noticed that lately it takes two or three times as much time to complete any given piece. And judging by the alarming numbers of faulty pieces, the quality of the raw material must be also be deteriorating,” he added petulantly.
My father, who was working as a draftsman, suddenly remembered, “Did I mention that a couple of weeks ago some of the blueprints and a whole bunch of order sheets disappeared overnight?” Then, after uttering a sad sigh, said, “Unfortunately, incidents like this can hold up manufacturing for at least a month.”
Sándor Nyirő butted in: “Fazekas and a couple of his co-workers were caught manufacturing armoured steel plates that were too thin. They tested them by firing at it at an obtuse angle, instead of the normally accepted ninety-degree angle, so the bullets kept bouncing off. The group was caught by a surprise inspection. But since they could not prove sabotage, instead of being shot on the spot, the perpetrators received only a five-year prison term.”
“Poor Fazekas, he wasn’t a healthy person to begin with. I sincerely hope he will survive his term,” Fekete added sadly.
“What are we going to do with Szálasi’s thugs?” Oszip reminded the group. “We can’t have the extreme right take over now that the end is so close!”
“I don’t believe they are that strong. At least we know for a fact that they don’t have strong support in Miskolc,” Apushka remarked, and all seemed to agree.
After the meeting, the twelve made their way back to town and found the streets unusually swarming with happy people; there were windows open, and radios blaring loud music. Happy people everywhere.
“What happened?” Fekete asked one man.
“Peace!”
“The Regent made an announcement on the radio…”
Strangers were hugging and laughing.
“Thank God,” an old woman cried out, “my son can finally come home. The Regent requested a cease fire.”
Fekete noticed that the streets were unusually devoid of the already familiar presence of German troops. Could it be possible to get rid of them for good? he wondered as he and his buddies made their way to the hall of the local Steel Union, where a meeting was already in progress. It was a stormy one.
”With the help of a workers’ militia, we could disarm the occupying German forces,” someone called out.
“We need at least five thousand workers,” someone else shouted.
“Take over the press and occupy city hall.”
“Don’t forget the telephone centre!”
“We need to talk to the soldiers at the local barracks.”
Some of the more cautious leaders warned, “We can’t act without the approval of the Central Committee.”
They were still in the midst of debate, when Fekete was called out from the room. Outside, his seventeen-year-old son Sándor, wearing a huge Steyer pistol on his side and a rifle on his shoulder, was waiting for him.
“Father, there’s an unusually large number of Arrow-Cross members on the streets,” he said anxiously.
“Are they stirring up trouble?”
“No, not yet, but they seem to be as busy as ants at a picnic.”
“Go back and let me know if you see anything unusual,” Fekete ordered, then went back to the room and made his report about the situation. No one took the report seriously. It was somehow inconceivable that such an extreme right wing party as the Arrow-Cross could pose any serious harm in the long run.
It was already getting dark and there were still no decisions made. Finally, Fekete and his few companions left the meeting and decided that without involving the rest of the Union, they would turn directly to the workers at the Diósgyör steel factory. They agreed to meet in the early hours of the following morning.
Just before they parted company, Fekete, feeling uneasy about the situation, stopped to mull over his concern: why would the Regent request a separate armistice with the Soviet Union while Hungary was still occupied by the German army? And why didn’t he put out a call for the all Hungarian soldiers and decent Hungarian citizens to chase the bloody Nazis from the country?
Friday, October 16, 2009
October 11, 1959
Oct. 11, 1959. We went to see my father at the Vácz penitentiary. The last time I saw him was on October 31, 1956. He wore a striped uniform that reminded me of the pyjamas he used to wear at home.
A “life sentence” also meant a fifteen minute visit at the prison twice a year.
The first time I had a chance to see my father was on October 11, 1959, almost three years to the day after he came home in a jeep to inform me that the Revolution was a success. I remember my excitement and the careful preparation for this visit. The fifteen minutes that I had to share with my mother were neither enough nor appropriate to recall any of the unpleasant incidents that had happened to me since we last saw each other. So to make my father smile, I recounted mostly innocent and charming incidents. After much brain wracking, I decided to include how our cat kept waiting for mother at the bus stop and followed her home every evening like a dog. I’d considered mentioning the neighbour’s little white terrier that constantly kept getting into our garden, killing most of our chickens, but I crossed that out, because I thought it would worry him that on account of that dog we didn’t have enough chickens left. I also decided against mentioning how the German shepherd, owned by the couple two houses away from us, had killed a doe that was captured by hunters and kept in a pen by some other neighbours. But I did include how tall the pine trees had grown since we had planted them.
I also wanted to bring up the zebras, because the only creatures that looked good in stripes and seemed to benefit from it were these animals in the Budapest Zoo. By this time, after a long search, my mother had finally found a job selling pretzels and wafer biscuits in the zoo and her stand was situated in front of the zebras, across the elephant pens. As there were approximately 20,000 political prisoners in Hungary, it was no surprise that visitors to the zoo were highly sympathetic towards the zebras' stripes. My mother became the best selling agent at the zoo. Most adults bought pretzels by the dozens to compensate the “mates,” while the children bought wafers for the elephants and for themselves.
On the day of the visit, we had to take an hour long train ride to the town of Vácz, where my father had been transferred from the Central Prison soon after his sentencing. I found myself face to face with the two hundred year old formidable building. My father was kept in the “House of Lords”, a prison within the prison, behind very thick stone walls constructed especially for “dangerous political offenders.” Our steps echoed on the cold stones as we passed through the long, dark, and wide corridors that led to the visitor’s area. The prisoners, dressed in striped uniforms were lined up behind the long rows of cages. A guard stood beside each prisoner, listening to every word and watching every move through the chicken wires that separated them from the visitors. The conversation started rather slowly. My parents looked at each other mutely, while I observed how pale and skinny my father looked in his uniform. Strangely, it wasn’t as frightening as I had imagined that it would be; it simply reminded me of the striped pyjamas he used to lounge in on those Sunday mornings at home not that long ago.
I came to my senses when I finally heard my father’s voice, “And how are you, little one?”
As I reached into my pocket, where I kept my list, I heard the guard behind him growling, “Keep your hands in front of you.” Scared, I slowly removed my hands from my pockets and reached out toward the screen, when the guard barked again, “No touching is allowed!”
Holding my list tightly between my fingers I was just standing there, sniffling.
“Do you have a cold? Surely you're not crying?” my father asked and automatically reached into his pocket to offer me a handkerchief. However, his gesture stopped in mid air when he realized that there were no pockets on his uniform and therefore he wouldn't be able to reach into one. And even if he had a pocket and a kerchief in it, he still wouldn't be allowed to pass it over to me.
“No, I'm not crying,” I said haughtily, tilting my head towards the guard behind him, then stating, "especially not in front of THEM.”
A “life sentence” also meant a fifteen minute visit at the prison twice a year.
The first time I had a chance to see my father was on October 11, 1959, almost three years to the day after he came home in a jeep to inform me that the Revolution was a success. I remember my excitement and the careful preparation for this visit. The fifteen minutes that I had to share with my mother were neither enough nor appropriate to recall any of the unpleasant incidents that had happened to me since we last saw each other. So to make my father smile, I recounted mostly innocent and charming incidents. After much brain wracking, I decided to include how our cat kept waiting for mother at the bus stop and followed her home every evening like a dog. I’d considered mentioning the neighbour’s little white terrier that constantly kept getting into our garden, killing most of our chickens, but I crossed that out, because I thought it would worry him that on account of that dog we didn’t have enough chickens left. I also decided against mentioning how the German shepherd, owned by the couple two houses away from us, had killed a doe that was captured by hunters and kept in a pen by some other neighbours. But I did include how tall the pine trees had grown since we had planted them.
I also wanted to bring up the zebras, because the only creatures that looked good in stripes and seemed to benefit from it were these animals in the Budapest Zoo. By this time, after a long search, my mother had finally found a job selling pretzels and wafer biscuits in the zoo and her stand was situated in front of the zebras, across the elephant pens. As there were approximately 20,000 political prisoners in Hungary, it was no surprise that visitors to the zoo were highly sympathetic towards the zebras' stripes. My mother became the best selling agent at the zoo. Most adults bought pretzels by the dozens to compensate the “mates,” while the children bought wafers for the elephants and for themselves.
On the day of the visit, we had to take an hour long train ride to the town of Vácz, where my father had been transferred from the Central Prison soon after his sentencing. I found myself face to face with the two hundred year old formidable building. My father was kept in the “House of Lords”, a prison within the prison, behind very thick stone walls constructed especially for “dangerous political offenders.” Our steps echoed on the cold stones as we passed through the long, dark, and wide corridors that led to the visitor’s area. The prisoners, dressed in striped uniforms were lined up behind the long rows of cages. A guard stood beside each prisoner, listening to every word and watching every move through the chicken wires that separated them from the visitors. The conversation started rather slowly. My parents looked at each other mutely, while I observed how pale and skinny my father looked in his uniform. Strangely, it wasn’t as frightening as I had imagined that it would be; it simply reminded me of the striped pyjamas he used to lounge in on those Sunday mornings at home not that long ago.
I came to my senses when I finally heard my father’s voice, “And how are you, little one?”
As I reached into my pocket, where I kept my list, I heard the guard behind him growling, “Keep your hands in front of you.” Scared, I slowly removed my hands from my pockets and reached out toward the screen, when the guard barked again, “No touching is allowed!”
Holding my list tightly between my fingers I was just standing there, sniffling.
“Do you have a cold? Surely you're not crying?” my father asked and automatically reached into his pocket to offer me a handkerchief. However, his gesture stopped in mid air when he realized that there were no pockets on his uniform and therefore he wouldn't be able to reach into one. And even if he had a pocket and a kerchief in it, he still wouldn't be allowed to pass it over to me.
“No, I'm not crying,” I said haughtily, tilting my head towards the guard behind him, then stating, "especially not in front of THEM.”
October 6, 1956
The funeral of László Rajk, the former Minister of Interior and three other high-ranking army officers took place on a cold, wet and windy day on October 6, 1956. The day was carefully chosen, as it is already marked in the Hungarian calendar to commemorate the thirteen leaders who were executed after the defeat of the War of Independence against the Austrian Empire in 1849.
My father, dressed in his uniform, left home early that day. He looked sad as he gave me his usual quick hug and a friendly pat on the back. When I returned from school, he was home again, sitting on his bed, listening to the radio on top of his night table. He was alone in the room. The door was open and I could see him, still in his uniform, his tie missing, his collar open and his shoulders hunched as if he were carrying a heavy load. The radio played mournful military funeral marches and the voice of the announcer was moderate and circumspect:
Thousands of people are marching quietly past the four plain coffins, holding the remains of the innocent victims of a terrible crime. The guards of honor change every five minutes.
There were speeches, solemn promises made over the coffins never to repeat the lies and deceptions carried out by the previous leaders. Listening to this, my father covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud. I was shocked to my core, as I had never seen an adult male crying, and certainly not my father. Not knowing what to do under the circumstances, I sat down beside him on the bed and, holding his hand, cried along with him.
My father, dressed in his uniform, left home early that day. He looked sad as he gave me his usual quick hug and a friendly pat on the back. When I returned from school, he was home again, sitting on his bed, listening to the radio on top of his night table. He was alone in the room. The door was open and I could see him, still in his uniform, his tie missing, his collar open and his shoulders hunched as if he were carrying a heavy load. The radio played mournful military funeral marches and the voice of the announcer was moderate and circumspect:
Thousands of people are marching quietly past the four plain coffins, holding the remains of the innocent victims of a terrible crime. The guards of honor change every five minutes.
There were speeches, solemn promises made over the coffins never to repeat the lies and deceptions carried out by the previous leaders. Listening to this, my father covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud. I was shocked to my core, as I had never seen an adult male crying, and certainly not my father. Not knowing what to do under the circumstances, I sat down beside him on the bed and, holding his hand, cried along with him.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
In case a stranger would ask, who is Judith and what her book is all about in more details, here is a bit more information. (People who know me and disagree with it, please package it nicely. We are talking about a sensitive author here.)
Judith Kopácsi Gelberger with her immediate family moved to Brampton, Ontario on early spring of 1976. That was the time, when they bought their first house, a semi-detached four bedroom in G section in Bramalea. Judy’s husband, Peter Gelberger, was working as a system control engineer at the Richview station of Ontario Hydro, close to the Airport, and therefore Brampton was deemed to be an ideal location to purchase their first house.
For a while Judith, in addition to bringing up two small children, kept busy decorating the house. Then she became active in the community. It was a big step for her, as she wasn’t sure how the community will regard her, a relatively new comer, with slightly broken English. As she was also a handy person, she first joined the Peel Arts and Crafts Club, and to her utter delight by 1978 she was not only a member, but also became its president. While at the whelm, she organized the first Arts and Crafts exhibit that was jointly held with the Brampton Rug Hooker association at the Chinquacousy Library and Art Gallery.
By 1980 the family moved to Heart Lake village, - then a brand new community of Brampton, - and Judith became involved first with the Loafers Lake “Ladies Take a Break program” and a year later became one of the directors of the Heart Lake Resident Association. Her energy and interest in different projects was limitless. She took several parenting courses at the Peel Family Education Centre and by 1983 she became a member of its Board of Directors, while she was also an instructor on interior decorating for the Brampton Parks and Recreation Department.
By 1985 Judith also tried to meddle with local politics, and since having two children at public school, education was very dear to her heart, she decided to run at the municipal election for the position of Trustee for the Peel Board of Education. Even though she didn’t succeed she received over 2000 votes.
One of the things Judith enjoyed about living in Brampton was its very large multi-racial and multicultural population. Judith joined the Brampton based multicultural umbrella organization called Peel Inter Community relation Association (PICRA), and within a year she became its secretary, then later first vice president. She was also involved as liaison and board member for the Multicultural Information Project in 1985. Through the years between 1983 and 1988 Judith was on many other committees, including the Peel Museum; the Peel Memorial Hospital Multicultural Advisory Board; the Brampton Writer’s Guild, and developed several multi-dimensional cross-cultural education kits, combining art, music, drama, poetry, slides and literature that she presented to groups of children as well as adults in various setting, such as Libraries, Day Camps, class rooms and community groups.
By 1988 she received a two years appointment to the Immigration and Refugee Board, where her job was to determine the legitimacy of the newly arrived people claiming refugee status at the Canadian Border. No, question about it, she was qualified for the job, as back in 1965 she herself was one of them.
Her story, titled: Heroes Don’t Cry, - written by Judith, and reading like an exciting international thriller is available the first time in English.
The book is about a young girl, who at the age of 19, in order to escape the continuous persecution she suffers in Hungary because of her father, Sándor Kopácsi, (the former Police Chief of Budapest who, disillusioned by the Soviet regime, joined the revolution in 1956 and became one of its military leaders), is forced to leave her loved ones behind in December 1965. Penniless and burdened by recurring nightmares she arrives in Canada, with a special, non-renewable visitor’s visa. In a new and sometimes hostile environment, surrounded by good intentioned relatives, who can’t even comprehend her real predicament, she must first find a way to legalize her stay in Canada, before she can begin to reunite her family. She succeeds in this against all odds.
In her book Judith recalls the stories she heard in her early childhood about her parents and paternal grandparents heroic deeds during W.W.II, about risking their lives by saving others, while fighting the fascists in Hungary. And she remembers the first ten years, when her extended family included leading politicians and intellectuals of that era, and she lived in a world bright with promise. But in 1956, the revolution in Hungary was quashed by the Soviet regime and her father was imprisoned and in a subsequent secret trial received a life sentence. Life as she knew it ended and her new world was a forbidding place where people she had called “aunt” and “uncle” ostracized her, where the only time she felt safe was when she hid beneath the old table in her home. She recalls the desperate fight for her father’s life; then the dark years of her father’s imprisonment and her mother’s heroic deeds of supporting and keeping the family together by selling pretzels at the Budapest Zoo. And she remembers how the relentless persecution from the regime drove her mother plan her and Judith’s suicide.
Judith’s story will equally appeal to a history buff to a person interested in reading a rare story about the Hungarian Revolution from the child's perspective. It is also about the triumph of the human spirit through the journey of a young woman, who finds her inner core, and consequently friends and a lover, willing to aid her to achieve this seemingly impossible task: to reunite and bring her family to safety.
While her story stands alone, but it is of interest to note that her father Sándor Kopácsi wrote a best-selling account of his experiences of 1956, focusing on the Hungarian Uprising and the following secret trial of its leaders, titled "In the Name of the Working Class". This book is currently being revised with additional material that includes Sándor Kopacsi’s notes from his prison diary. Read alone, or together, the two books are sure to satisfy the curiosity of those, who crave to learn more about the Hungarian history of 20th century.
Heroes Don’t Cry, 382 pages, published by Booksurge Publishing is already available for purchase $18.99 at http://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Dont-Cry-Judith-Kopacsi-Gelberger/
Judith Kopácsi Gelberger with her immediate family moved to Brampton, Ontario on early spring of 1976. That was the time, when they bought their first house, a semi-detached four bedroom in G section in Bramalea. Judy’s husband, Peter Gelberger, was working as a system control engineer at the Richview station of Ontario Hydro, close to the Airport, and therefore Brampton was deemed to be an ideal location to purchase their first house.
For a while Judith, in addition to bringing up two small children, kept busy decorating the house. Then she became active in the community. It was a big step for her, as she wasn’t sure how the community will regard her, a relatively new comer, with slightly broken English. As she was also a handy person, she first joined the Peel Arts and Crafts Club, and to her utter delight by 1978 she was not only a member, but also became its president. While at the whelm, she organized the first Arts and Crafts exhibit that was jointly held with the Brampton Rug Hooker association at the Chinquacousy Library and Art Gallery.
By 1980 the family moved to Heart Lake village, - then a brand new community of Brampton, - and Judith became involved first with the Loafers Lake “Ladies Take a Break program” and a year later became one of the directors of the Heart Lake Resident Association. Her energy and interest in different projects was limitless. She took several parenting courses at the Peel Family Education Centre and by 1983 she became a member of its Board of Directors, while she was also an instructor on interior decorating for the Brampton Parks and Recreation Department.
By 1985 Judith also tried to meddle with local politics, and since having two children at public school, education was very dear to her heart, she decided to run at the municipal election for the position of Trustee for the Peel Board of Education. Even though she didn’t succeed she received over 2000 votes.
One of the things Judith enjoyed about living in Brampton was its very large multi-racial and multicultural population. Judith joined the Brampton based multicultural umbrella organization called Peel Inter Community relation Association (PICRA), and within a year she became its secretary, then later first vice president. She was also involved as liaison and board member for the Multicultural Information Project in 1985. Through the years between 1983 and 1988 Judith was on many other committees, including the Peel Museum; the Peel Memorial Hospital Multicultural Advisory Board; the Brampton Writer’s Guild, and developed several multi-dimensional cross-cultural education kits, combining art, music, drama, poetry, slides and literature that she presented to groups of children as well as adults in various setting, such as Libraries, Day Camps, class rooms and community groups.
By 1988 she received a two years appointment to the Immigration and Refugee Board, where her job was to determine the legitimacy of the newly arrived people claiming refugee status at the Canadian Border. No, question about it, she was qualified for the job, as back in 1965 she herself was one of them.
Her story, titled: Heroes Don’t Cry, - written by Judith, and reading like an exciting international thriller is available the first time in English.
The book is about a young girl, who at the age of 19, in order to escape the continuous persecution she suffers in Hungary because of her father, Sándor Kopácsi, (the former Police Chief of Budapest who, disillusioned by the Soviet regime, joined the revolution in 1956 and became one of its military leaders), is forced to leave her loved ones behind in December 1965. Penniless and burdened by recurring nightmares she arrives in Canada, with a special, non-renewable visitor’s visa. In a new and sometimes hostile environment, surrounded by good intentioned relatives, who can’t even comprehend her real predicament, she must first find a way to legalize her stay in Canada, before she can begin to reunite her family. She succeeds in this against all odds.
In her book Judith recalls the stories she heard in her early childhood about her parents and paternal grandparents heroic deeds during W.W.II, about risking their lives by saving others, while fighting the fascists in Hungary. And she remembers the first ten years, when her extended family included leading politicians and intellectuals of that era, and she lived in a world bright with promise. But in 1956, the revolution in Hungary was quashed by the Soviet regime and her father was imprisoned and in a subsequent secret trial received a life sentence. Life as she knew it ended and her new world was a forbidding place where people she had called “aunt” and “uncle” ostracized her, where the only time she felt safe was when she hid beneath the old table in her home. She recalls the desperate fight for her father’s life; then the dark years of her father’s imprisonment and her mother’s heroic deeds of supporting and keeping the family together by selling pretzels at the Budapest Zoo. And she remembers how the relentless persecution from the regime drove her mother plan her and Judith’s suicide.
Judith’s story will equally appeal to a history buff to a person interested in reading a rare story about the Hungarian Revolution from the child's perspective. It is also about the triumph of the human spirit through the journey of a young woman, who finds her inner core, and consequently friends and a lover, willing to aid her to achieve this seemingly impossible task: to reunite and bring her family to safety.
While her story stands alone, but it is of interest to note that her father Sándor Kopácsi wrote a best-selling account of his experiences of 1956, focusing on the Hungarian Uprising and the following secret trial of its leaders, titled "In the Name of the Working Class". This book is currently being revised with additional material that includes Sándor Kopacsi’s notes from his prison diary. Read alone, or together, the two books are sure to satisfy the curiosity of those, who crave to learn more about the Hungarian history of 20th century.
Heroes Don’t Cry, 382 pages, published by Booksurge Publishing is already available for purchase $18.99 at http://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Dont-Cry-Judith-Kopacsi-Gelberger/
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
I just looked at the Amazon.com, and low and behold, the book is already advertised and available for sale. How about that?
http://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Dont-Cry-Judith-Kopacsi-Gelberger/
I wonder who will be the brave soul to post the first readers' review?
Anyway the retail price is USA $18.99, the date of publishing is September 30, 2009.
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
In 1973 I went to Budapest to convince my parents to join me and immigrate to Canada. My father, Sándor Kopácsi, barely escaping execution, had been condemned to life imprisonment as one of the leaders of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. An amnesty allowed him to leave prison, but he was never really free as even a wrongly phrased word could have sent him back to jail. He had applied for full parole, but was refused. When he tried to discover the reason for his parole application refusal, he learned that his files had disappeared from the archives and were in the hands of General Ichtchenko, a senior officer of the KGB. This intense KBG scrutiny could only mean that his life and freedom were still at risk. It was vital that I get my parents out of Hungary immediately!
The book deals with contemporary Hungarian History including the, until now, poorly documented story of the Mokan, an anti-Nazi resistance movement, responsible for saving many Jewish lives during World War II.
And in case the cover page is not clear enough, my friend George Jonas - the Edgar Award wiining author - was kind enough to pitch the book the following way:
...courageous father plus determined daughter divided by hard times equals an unforgattable story...
http://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Dont-Cry-Judith-Kopacsi-Gelberger/
I wonder who will be the brave soul to post the first readers' review?
Anyway the retail price is USA $18.99, the date of publishing is September 30, 2009.
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
In 1973 I went to Budapest to convince my parents to join me and immigrate to Canada. My father, Sándor Kopácsi, barely escaping execution, had been condemned to life imprisonment as one of the leaders of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. An amnesty allowed him to leave prison, but he was never really free as even a wrongly phrased word could have sent him back to jail. He had applied for full parole, but was refused. When he tried to discover the reason for his parole application refusal, he learned that his files had disappeared from the archives and were in the hands of General Ichtchenko, a senior officer of the KGB. This intense KBG scrutiny could only mean that his life and freedom were still at risk. It was vital that I get my parents out of Hungary immediately!
The book deals with contemporary Hungarian History including the, until now, poorly documented story of the Mokan, an anti-Nazi resistance movement, responsible for saving many Jewish lives during World War II.
And in case the cover page is not clear enough, my friend George Jonas - the Edgar Award wiining author - was kind enough to pitch the book the following way:
...courageous father plus determined daughter divided by hard times equals an unforgattable story...
Monday, October 5, 2009
Blog about Heroes Don't Cry
Finally:
There is a lot to celebrate and a lot to worry about.
After close to thirty years of constant rewritings the book is finally done and at a printer. It will be on the open market in possibly less than three weeks. The final and second proof is in my hands and it looks good and professional.
Why shouldn’t it look good and professional, you ask?
Because it is all done by us. The family. I wrote it, and although the writer’s group critiqued it and work-shopped it to death in the last several years, the final product was edited by Leslie the cover was designed both by Peter and I, and the format, including the pictures, the choice and size of fonts were of the common work of Leslie’s and me. And it was Peter, who turned the whole thing into a pdf file, that made the book printable by Booksurge, a Print of Demand Company, a subsidiary of Amazon.com.
But why would I choose to go this way instead of getting it published the traditional way? Wouldn’t a big publishing company be interested in my story? After all, my father’s book about the Hungarian Revolution and the following secret trial of its leaders was published by several of them, in several languages and deemed to be an important work.
True enough, but when I kept sending it out to major agents and publishing houses they kept returning it with a comment, that it is a historical event that is no longer an interest to the average North American reader and they would have difficulty finding a readership for it.
In 2006, the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution Grove publishing in New York showed interest in reprinting my father’s book, but I guess it was merely a half-hearted effort. First of all they began the process a few short months before October, the actual time of the event. Then, when they found out that the copyright changed hands and after my father’s death in 2001 I became the sole proprietor, which meant that they would have to make a new agreement with me, they decided to drop the project, even though they already advertised it’s publishing date on Amazon for the spring of 2007. The new version would have included the original forward written by George Jonas and the Translators’ Preface by Daniel and Judy Stoffman, and they graciously agreed to include my prologue that concluded my father’s life story to the very end.
I originally offered to give them a chance to update the book with some newly found material about his prison years, but they showed no interest.
I bet, they thought that they could make a cheap rerun of the book and make an easy profit without investing time and effort into it.
The joke however is still on us, as this version is still advertised on Amazon.com, with the comment that the book is no longer available. It reads: In the name of the working class: Budapest Police Chief During the Hungarian revolution Extraordinary and Terrible Story of 1956 (Paperback) by Guido Crepax,(Author) Sandor Kopacsi (Author) Daniel Stoffman (Translator).(Currently not available)
Now you can ask: who the heck is Guido Crepax? And what does he have to do with my father’s book? I took the trouble to google the dear (already departed) soul, and it turns out that Guido Crepax was one of the greatest masters of the comic strip genre, who died in July 31st 2003 in Milan, Italy. His fame came from illustrating mostly classic erotic stories.
Knowing my father’s sense of humour he might have been tickled pink about having his name associated with such distinguished artist, but somehow the connection still eludes me. Could he have anything to do with the title graphics? Since the book didn’t happen by Grove (thank God) we might never know the answer to that.
But all in all this gave me the incentive to go for the Print-On-Demand road and to begin with I’m launching my memoir, which is really the story of how the family, and of course me my father’s only child survived the good and the bad times. I consider this book an adventure story narrating the seemingly impossible task of rescuing my parents from the clutches of the evil Soviet Empire.
So, here it goes. My English book titled Heroes Don’t Cry, a much extended English version of the original Hungarian, goes to test the market. We either float or sink, but as we used to say during the Adlerian trainings: we have the courage to fail.
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