The Kopacsi Gelberger project

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/