Journey Back

After two long flights overnight and a little nap to catch up on sleep, we awoke ready to hit the town. Our mission was to find an authentic Hungarian restaurant to feast.  After a nice stroll, we reached Restaurant Vendéglö (The Old Bridge Restaurant.)  It was a quaint restaurant with an old feel and the perfect place to indulge.  Through the course of the meal we had fried goose leg, catfish, goose liver dumplings, paprika soup, potatoes, and of course ended with our old favorite Palacsinta.  My Savta was an amazing chef and used to cook up Hungarian specialties for my family and I.  We would have Friday night Shabbat dinners of stuffed cabbage, matzah ball soup, goulash, paprika potatoes, etc.  In fact, everything was always sprinkled with paprika. Dinner at the restaurant was absolutely delicious in every way.  The flavors brought back memories of dinner at my Savta’s house.  Although, nothing will compare to her cooking (it must be the love she baked in.)

And then there’s the palacsinta. Growing up, Savta always made my brother and I palacsinta as a special treat.  We ate it for breakfast, we ate it for lunch, we ate it for dessert, we loved it!  We devoured it faster than she could whip it up.  Many years ago, we asked her for the recipe to which she told us, “you know, you put a little flour, an egg, sprinkle some sugar, pour a little milk and that’s how how you make it.”  We both decided that we needed a more precise measurement of things and stalked her one day as she was making it, measuring out her every move. Now that she is unable to make it herself, Danny and I carry on the tradition.  Even lil Sophie loves palacsinta and is starting to become an addict of her own.  Needless to say, I was beyond excited to see it on the menu.  We ordered it for dessert with chocolate and chopped nuts and while it was good, again nothing can compare to Savta’s.  Lucky for us, it seems to be on the menu of every restaurant in town so we will have to give them all a fair shot.

Between the food and hearing the language all around me, I am getting a bit nostalgic and definitely feeling right at home here.

My mom and I decided to take the train from Szeged into Budapest for the day.  We ran to catch the train at the last minute and jumped on without even thinking twice.  We got on the first car and had to walk through a few cars to get to the coach seating in back. On the way, we passed the “bicycle” room.  Really, just a big wide open car of nothing.  Mom and I quickly walked through this room and finally found a place to sit.  We looked out the window and watched the world go by.

About a half hour into the ride, after idle chit chat and conversation, we both agreed that this ride was creepy.  We both had the sinking feeling in the bicycle room that was slightly reminiscent of a cattle car and the heavy heart as we rode the train for two hours.  Train tracks that meant a day of sightseeing for us but something very different for my Savta and her family.  I sat there feeling the vibration of the train and listening

to the hum of the whistle as we crossed from village to village trying to imagine what Savta felt like all those years back.  On a train, crammed in, not knowing where she was going or what would meet her at the final destination.  We departed in Budapest and had a mission of finding the Great Synagogue.

Our trip to Budapest was a last minute decision so we found ourselves without a map or plan standing in the middle of Budapest, saying “OK, now what?” Surprisingly, very few people spoke English on the street but I was lucky to have brought my Hungarian speaking guide with me (my mom.)  She dusted off the Hungarian side of her brain and pulled out a language I haven’t heard her speak since my Saba (Grandfather) passed many years ago.   The synagogue was a bit tricky to find, especially without a map of any kind.  Being that I had a translator with me, I kept nudging my mom to ask random strangers on the street where the Great Synagogue was. I figured, it was the largest synagogue in Europe, the second largest in the world, surely people would know about it!  Interestingly enough, my mom was afraid to ask.  It was like something was engrained in her to tread lightly announcing that we were Jewish to the Hungarian people.  After a few quick stops at the Parliament, Danube River and Chain Bridge, and many friendly Hungarians later, we eventually found our way to the Dohany Street Synagogue (also known as the Great Synagogue.)

Before the 2nd World War, 750,000 Jews lived in Hungary, out of them 200,000 were living in Budapest alone.  The synagogue was built in 1854 to meet the demands of this thriving Jewish population.  It could hold 3,000 people in it at any giving time.  During WWII, the synagogue and surrounding area became the Jewish ghetto in Budapest.  Within two months, 10,000 died in the ghetto alone of the cold or starvation.  In total, 600,000 Hungarian Jews were victims of the Holocaust.  The synagogue’s adjoining area now acts as a cemetery of mass graves and a weeping willow memorial park for those lost.

We took a not so quick visit to the synagogue gift shop where our cousin’s uncle works and left a sizeable “donation” to support the synagogue. While there are still Jews living in Hungary, there is still something very eerie to me about seeing Hungarian made mezuzahs and the words “Shalom Budapest” together.

We spent some time getting to know the Hungarian culture and the city of Szeged, the third largest city in Hungary.  As part of my dad’s scientific conference, we were invited to a performance of traditional Hungarian folk dancers at the National Theatre.  We were treated to box seats in the magnificent building built in 1883.  It was really neat to see the traditional costumes of the past, as well as watch the rhythmic dances set to traditional Hungarian music.  I wondered if Savta ever danced those dances back in the  day.  We also had dinner at Szeged city hall with four Nobel Prize Laureates that were attending the conference.  Another gorgeous building steeped in history.

Growing up, my grandparents had bitter memories about Hungary from WWII.  Although they spoke Hungarian at home, they never encouraged my mom to learn the language and didn’t like her speaking it aloud.  They never went back to visit and cursed its name when spoken of.  My Savta’s sisters were the same way.  Living in Israel, only Hebrew was spoken in the home and one sister was such a  Zionist that she even changed her last name.  This mentality trickled down to me and while I consider myself very open minded, I just wasn’t sure what I would find on this visit to Hungary.

My mom and I spent a day strolling through the city of Szeged and people watching.  I always find that this is the best way to get to know a place.  I am in awe of what a beautiful country Hungary is and how sweet and friendly all of the locals are.  Again, I didn’t quite know what to expect.  I have traveled the world – everywhere from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and in between but find myself pleasantly surprised by Hungary and its people.   It’s clean, it’s calm, it’s organized and the Hungarians are a laid back, polite, and sophisticated people.   Some call Budapest the “Paris of the East,” but I wouldn’t even compare.

I find myself experiencing a mix of emotions and really enjoying myself here.  We have spent a few days now getting to know the country and its people and my mom and I agree, we have not met a sweeter, kinder or lovelier people.  We almost feel guilty enjoying ourselves so much.  I explained to my mom that this is why we are here, to heal, to make up our own minds, and not to just blindly follow.  After all, isn’t that how the world got in this whole mess to begin with? And furthermore, my Savta and her family did have a wonderful life in Hungary before the war!

We took a tour yesterday with a small group from the meeting.  It was mom and I, a German couple, an older woman from Latvia and a young Hungarian.  I’m pretty sure that someone “up there” had a bigger plan for us that day, putting all of us together like that.  Throughout the meeting, we seem to have not only found ourselves among the Hungarians but among a large German constituency as well.  Each event we attend, we are accompanied by the kindest, warmest and friendliest Germans I have ever met.  Now mind you, I don’t actually know a lot of Germans myself but maybe that is my own fault, my own fear ingrained in me from stories of the war.  I have to admit, the language alone sends shivers down my spine.  Now, he were are, on a bus, on a tour, at a concert, at dinner, on a walk with our German counterparts.

During our tour, we all got to know each other a bit.  After a few hours, our true purpose in being in Hungary came out and many questions ensued over lunch. Our Hungarian tour guide wanted to know what it was like for me to be a Jew in America.  She commented that it must be easy, not like Europe.  Not like Europe, yes, but easy? I wouldn’t necessarily say so.  She was surprised by my answer which allowed us to get into deeper conversation.  I learned that while there are traces of an anti semitic party in government, she didn’t consider Hungary as a whole anti-semitic in the least.  She told me of her best friend who was Jewish and the growing Jewish population in Budapest.  She was genuine, caring and more so than anything – curious.  Our German friends joined in on the conversation and before you know it, I found myself freely talking about Judaism and my beliefs in what I may have considered the most awkward and uncomfortable situation just a few days before.

The day ended at an organ concert in a 100 year old synagogue (more details to come) where we met another Jewish couple.  Interestingly enough? A German Jewish couple.  Over the course of a few days, all of my preconcived notions, ideas and fears have changed.  It just goes to teach you that nothing is as it seems and that people are people.  The past is history and things change.

We happened to be on a tour yesterday with the Nobel Prize Laureate from Israel and in our quick conversation, he asked us if we had been to the synagogue in Szeged yet because it was the most beautiful he had ever seen.  My mom and I were surprised to hear this as no one had mentioned this was a site to see before.   Luckily, we would be heading to the synagogue that evening for an organ concert organized by the scientific conference.

After another delicious dinner, a local led us to the synagogue for the concert.  There was a group of us walking across town, each curious asking our guide, “Is that the synagogue? Are we there yet?”  To my complete and utter surprise, our guide pointed to an illuminated dome peaking above the trees that belonged to the most beautiful building in all of the city and stated, “that’s the synagogue. ”  “THAT’S the synagogue?”  I wasn’t the only one surprised by this statement.  It looked like a magnificent Roman Cathedral. As we got closer, and eventually entered the building, my jaw dropped in awe.

Now I consider myself a fairly well traveled person. I have been all over the world and seen my share of amazing architecture.  I’ve spent weeks visiting cathedral after cathedral after cathedral after cathedral in Europe and I’ve been in many synagogues in my lifetime. Never in my life have I seen something as beautiful as this.   (Maybe I am a bit biased because anything with a star of david or menorah is beautiful in my eyes.)  I am used to visiting the “Jewish Quarters” of cities only to find their synagogues in old battered buildings hidden away in some old corner of the block.  Usually, you can’t even tell that its anything of significance or importance.  Not in Hungary!

The synagogue was built in 1903 and could hold nearly 1400 people.  The inside was made up of marble, wood from the banks of the Nile River, bronze, semi-precious stones and stained glass that was made by the same glass maker as the Cathedral nearby.   Thinking back to what this building would have cost to build in that day, I can only imagine what the Jewish population must have been like.  Thriving, wealthy, proud and religious.

As I sat there listening to the beautiful melodies of the organ, I looked up where the words “veahavta l’reyacha kamocha” (“you shall love your neighbor as yourself” in Hebrew and Hungarian were written.  How ironic.  It reminded me of how Savta’s friends and neighbors turned their back on her during the war.  How she was so angry and hurt by the Hungarians for what they did.  I learned that although at one time there were almost 8,000 Jews living in the city of Szeged, there were now only about 500 or so (and only 200-300 or so practicing, many of whom were now elderly, having survived the war in hiding as children.)  We were told that this beautiful synagogue was now mainly used as a concert hall or for weddings and that actual prayer services took place in a small humble building next door.  We also learned that during the communist era, it was used as a furniture storage warehouse.  In reality, this synagogue was in its hay day for only 40 years or so.

I looked around at the packed synagogue all there for the concert and imagined what it would feel like for all of these people to have been there in prayer.  It made me sad.  Did these people realize what a sacred place they were in? It was almost as if this was all that was left of a lost culture, a lost people.  It reminded me of how we treat places like the Colosseum or the Pyramids.  They are no longer places of brutal battles or pharoah tombs, but rather neat looking tourist attractions of a people long ago that you have to check off your list of things to see.  It seems that there are many synagogues in Hungary no longer in use, but now operating as offices, museums or theatres and such.  I found it interesting though that many of the men were wearing kippot out of respect for the building.  Maybe they did understand…

I sat there thinking to myself how the golden era of Hungarian Jewry was no more and how it really was a lost people, but then realized it didn’t have to be. It was like endangered animals who were almost extinct but those last few strong ones were surviving and determined to keep going.  They just needed a little help.

I sat there amongst the primarily Christian-going concert crowd and decided that there was no reason this beautiful synagogue should go to waste.  I prayed.  I said the mourner’s kaddish for my family.  I said the Shema.  I said Modeh Ani.  I said anything I could think of.  And mostly, I prayed that someday, this synagogue would once again see the vibrant thriving Jewish population of yesteryear.  For I really do think that in this day and age, we really can love thy neighbor, no matter what religion they are.

We spent the last two days in Budapest, running ourselves ragged around town seeing the sights.  It’s such a beautiful city and there is so much to see!  We went down our checklist of “must see” sites given to us by friends and family to ensure we didn’t miss anything.  One of the things on the list was the Shoes Holocaust Memorial downtown.  While in Szeged, we had asked our tour guide about Budapest since she frequently gives tours there as well. To our surprise, she had never heard of the shoes memorial downtown.  We then picked up a few different Budapest maps which showed all tourist attractions in large photos and could not find it on any of those either.  Finally, we asked our hotel concierge and she informed us that the memorial was at the river by the Parliament. After crossing a large 4 lane highway and then a very long walk down the river bank, we finally came upon the memorial.  It is a row of cast iron shoes from the period of the Holocaust all pointing towards the river.  During the Holocaust, Jews were brought to the river, told to take off their shoes and then shot dead at the river’s edge.  People had put flowers in some of the shoes and yarzheit candles in others.  It was a very moving and meaningful memorial to see all of those shoes – men, women and children.  I then stared into the river, thinking to myself, what happened to those bodies? Was this river essentially their graveyard?  I found myself thinking about the river in a whole new way.

I think it’s so important to have memorials like these in large cities, downtown, amidst the hustle and bustle of life.  A moment to pause and remember.  The New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston next to Quincy Market does it just right.  As we departed, I wished that they had had a plaque in English telling people what the shoes were all about. I wish that they had a crosswalk to make it easier to get to. I wished that it was on the tourist maps and on tours of the city.  Perhaps in the future…  At the very least, it’s a “step” in the right direction.

That evening, we took a river cruise with dinner and music down the Danube River.  While it was a beautiful site to see the lights of Hungary at night, I couldn’t help but to shake the morbid feeling that we were enjoying the good life amidst a river of gloom.

Budapest is filled with antique shops.  There is literally one on every street corner filled with relics of the past.  Porcelain, silver, gold, paintings galore.  Mom and I wandered into a few of these just to see what they had and were shocked by what we found.  Almost every single antique store that we went into had a huge glass case of Judaica.  Everything from menorahs to yads to dreidels to spice boxes to Seder plates to mezuzahs.  We even found a place in the Jewish Quarter that was selling old name plates with Jewish last names from people’s doors.  In America, you hardly ever find Judaica in antique stores, let alone entire sections of the store.  I asked one of the girls working if she knew where all of these items came from and she couldn’t tell me.  She only knew the country of origin and estimated date.  In fact, she didn’t even know what some of the items were!

Mom and I decided that we couldn’t let all of these beautiful items sit in these dusty old shops.  We set our eyes on a beautiful silver dreidel and went down the next morning to “save” it from the shop.  We figured with a Jewish population in Hungary of only about 50,000-100,000 (6.6 million in US, 2 million in NYC alone just to give you a comparison), who would be buying all of this beautiful Judaica? I really wonder where it all came from though.  Are they from old closed synagogues? Houses that were confiscated? Maybe some of these were from my great grandfather’s store? Or items they once owned? Long story short, they wanted $180 for the little dreidel and $600 for a mezuzah so we had to leave them there.  I just hope that someone somewhere will give them all a proper home.

My how things have changed.  We got to Miskolc early this afternoon, the city where my Saba (grandfather) grew up and where my Savta (grandmother) spent some time before and after the war.  She moved here to help her aunt raise her two children after the men were taken to forced labor camps. She was sent to the ghetto and deported to Auschwitz from here as well.  She later moved back after marrying my Saba and my uncle was born here.  The first stop on our trip was to the Synagogue in the center of town.  We entered through the gated entrance and made our way into the synagogue complex, hoping to find someone to unlock the doors and let us in.  We knocked on a door and found a young woman inside who opened the door to the synagogue and let us in.  Another beautiful synagogue, similar in looks and grandeur as the others we saw thus far; only this one was in a sad state of disrepair.  It was like stepping back in time with every squeak of the floor boards.  I imagined what it was like back in its glory, when Saba and his family attended on Shabbat mornings.  Knowing that I had stepped foot in the same place as my great ancestors had many years ago was an amazing experience.

After spending some time in the synagogue, we again knocked on a door within the complex and found a nice older woman who happily answered some questions we had about the synagogue, the surrounding area, Miskolc and Jewish life in general.  A young man who was “in charge” of the synagogue later appeared and showed us around some more.

We learned that before the war there were some 10,000 or so Jews living in the Miskolc area. It was thriving.  After the war, only about 1,600 returned alive.  Today, there were about 200-300 remaining.  We were told that anti-semitism is very prevalent in society and that there is a fear of living as a Jew in Miskolc and in much of Hungary.  The woman living in the complex described how people throw rocks through the gates and windows at night and showed us the destruction from last week as a group of youth tried to knock down the synagogue gate.  The synagogue was now only used on high holidays and there was no longer a practicing rabbi in the city.  A handful of Jews prayed in the prayerhouse with a lay leader.

The young man then asked us our family’s names.  He led us into his office where stacks of old books lay in a bookcase.  He asked us a few questions like my grandparents last name, year of marriage, etc and before we knew it, he had pulled up their marriage license in his decrepit looking book from 1945.  It had all of their information, including my Saba’s occupation as a coal miner and his signature.  He also pulled out a book of births and we found my uncle’s birth certificate from 1946.  He made a xerox copy for us and stamped it to make it official and off we left with documents in hand.  I asked if these documents lived in the city hall or any other institution and he told me that “No, they didn’t matter to them. ”  These old decrepit books in that dusty old office manned by one lone volunteer were the only records kept.  Unbelievable.

He later showed us where the old ghetto was and told us more about life in Hungary.  Apparently, anti-semitism is growing greater and greater each year. The Hungarian economy is in bad shape, unemployment is high, people are poor and there are many homeless.  People are looking for scapegoats.  I found an interesting article just published by the ADL regarding anti-semitism rates which states, “ADL poll: Anti-Semitic attitudes up slightly in Europe…In almost all cases, the changes were minor and well within the roughly 4.5 percent margin of error. One notable exception was Hungary, where the rate of anti-Semitic attitudes rose to 63 percent from 47 percent in 2009. ”  Sixty three percent!! We asked our new friends why he thought that our tour guide had told us that there was no anti-semitism in Hungary and he said that people are just naive or don’t want to admit it.  We then thought back to a comment made to us by this same tour guide who said, “you know, I wish the Jews would come back, then we would have some money in this struggling economy.”  While it may seem like a compliment, this comment too was a stereotype that tends to turn people against us.  I found another interesting article that stated, “In 1920, 46.3% of the medical doctors, 41.2% of the veterinarians, 21.4% of the pharmacists of Hungary were Jewish.”  We were looked at even then as “having too much power.”  Forgive us for being an intelligent and ambitious group. 

We took a short drive through farmland from Miskolc to Szerencs.  It took about a half hour by car through a lot of wide open space.  Szerencs is the town that my Savta (grandmother) and her family were from.  Her father owned a porcelein and glass  shop on the main road in town which was connected to a very large house with a nice courtyard in the middle.  They were very wealthy back then and their house was very large for those days.  We started the hunt** for the house…

**(While we were in Miskolc, we visited the small village of Goromboly as well where my Saba grew up and it proved to be quite a scavenger hunt.  We were given a general area to search and a photo from ten years ago and sent on our way.  The photo had a green and yellow house next to a blue house with a green fence and square sidewalk.  After driving up and down the street looking for blue houses with green fences multiple times, we almost gave up.  It was then that I spotted the unmistakable doors from the photo which also used to be a small store and we found the other missing clues.  Of course the houses had been painted from ten years ago so we learned our lesson.)**

This time, in Szerencs, we had unmistakable windows and arches from the store to go on and ignored the paint color.  We found it on the main street and went inside.  Sadly, instead of being the fine store that it used to be selling porcelein, glass and gramophones, it was now a “Chinese outlet bazar.” It was filled with mountains of cheap crap from China.  My mom (who is fluent in Hungarian) asked the woman nicely if the store used to be a glass shop just to make sure we were in the right place and we got a very rude and angry no.  Luckily, one of the older customers overheard us and told us that when she was a child, it was in fact a nice shop that sold porcelein and glass.  She spent a few minutes with us telling us how we could access the rest of the house by walking around the block and what we might find.  Before leaving the store, I took a few photos and we asked if we could access the courtyard behind the store.  Again, we were shooed away and yelled at for taking photos.  We were also then closely followed during our visit in the store with a glaring eye. While I don’t have a photo, we did manage to see the door in back that led out to the courtyard and family’s house.  I also lifted up a window blind in back and saw the old well that we had heard about, still there.  We left the store and went around the block in back where we found the house had been turned into a cafe.  We sat down and ate palacsinta (as this was my brother and I’s favorite dish that Savta used to make us day and night.)  The waiter in the cafe was a little friendlier and let us out into the courtyard.  Unfortunately, there was a wall built in between that and the store so we could only see a small section.

We were told that the large house/store complex had been broken up and sold to four different people.  Walls were built dividing them and they were each a separate entity.  The cafe had been remodeled very nicely but we could still get a sense of what the complex used to be like.  From there, we headed through town to the former main industries in town; the sugar and chocolate factories.  The sugar factory was the third largest in Europe in its time, cultivating sugar-beets.  We found a large abandoned old building that was once the sugar factory and learned that it had been closed in 1997. The chocolate factory was next door and still operating, now owned by Nestle.  We headed on to the train station.

Train tracks in Hungary tend to send shivers down my spine.  Knowing that a lot of times the train was the last time many people saw their families or breathed life was an eery feeling.  The train was also how my Savta and her sisters made it the long way home to Szerencs.  We were told that after the war, someone was sent to the train station every day to sit and wait to see if anyone they knew was coming home.  In fact, while in Auschwitz, my Savta and her sisters ran into their father and oldest brother.  He told them the fate of their mother and younger brothers and then instructed them to go home and wait for him afterwards.  The two were unfortunately killed just days before Auschwitz was liberated.  But not knowing this, the sisters waited for their father to come home on the train each day…

We drove around town a bit more looking for where the old synagogue once was (told it was now nothing more than a plaque) and the jewish cemetery.  I had read online where to find these places but nothing seemed to exist anymore, not even the aforementioned plaque.  We were told by the Jewish guy at the Miskolc synagogue that only one Jew remained in Szerencs.  I guess we know why they knocked down the synagogue…

We concluded our day in Tokaj, where the world famous wine is produced.  My saba used to love this sweet wine.  We took a tour through one of the wine cellars and did a tasting while there.  We even stumbled across an old beautiful synagogue that was now a conference center.  It was a very picturesque region of Hungary with its rolling wine hills.

On our last day, we drove to the Northern border near Slovakia and visited the town of Trizs where my mom’s great grandfather, Jozsef Selymes, and family once lived.  Her family was originally from Czechoslovakia and must have gradually made their way into Hungary throughout the years.  The town was 10.25 km² in total (6 miles) which included mostly farmland and had a population of 211 people.  It literally had one road going through it which took about two minutes to drive down.  I have been to Ikeas bigger than Trizs.

We drove up to the cemetery on the top of the hill overlooking the town and found the gravestone of Jozsef.  Interestingly, this wasn’t a Jewish cemetery but there were four very old gravestones in the front with Hebrew writing and then a lot of other newer ones behind them with crosses.  We each placed a stone on his grave and journeyed onward to find his home.  Again, we were on a photo scavenger hunt.  Many of the houses along the main road were very old and in rough condition, often having chicken coups or farms in their backyards.  We knew Jozsef was a farmer but also knew that his wife owned a local bar in town.  Through some detective work, my brother found an old water pump and drain pipe that matched the one in the photo and we discovered that Jozsef’s old house had recently been turned into the nicest building in town, the community center.  It was next to the only grocery store in town which we surmised must have been the bar.

It was a very small village so naturally the locals were all eyeing us as four strangers walked about.  As I’ve mentioned, antisemitism is abound in Hungary and the two groups that seem to be taking it all are the Jews and Gypsies.  While people may be a little more discreet about their feelings about Jews, they freely talk about their dislike of Gypsies aloud.  We had been warned to be careful in this town as it was known as a Gypsy town and expected a similar unfriendly greeting as we had received in Miskolc and Szerencs as we were clearly foreigners.

Interestingly enough, the locals came up to us and asked us if we needed help with anything.  My mom hesitantly explained a bit of the story and we were welcomed with open arms.  In fact,  one of the women we met was a local tour guide (not sure who else is visiting to give tours to) and on her tour she talked about the “Selymes” house. We were then asked if we would like to come in and sit down and meet the mayor!  While we did not take them up on their kind offer, they made us promise that we would come back and visit and told us about the summer festivals that they have.

We got back in the car and drove further north to the Aggeletek National Park, a series of large caves, each with interesting characteristics of their own.  Both my Saba and Savta’s families traveled to these caves for vacation.  In fact, one of the very last photos we have of the family before the war in 1943 (while the war was raging through the rest of Europe) is of the Reisners and Selymes together picnicking in front of the caves.  The trip was actually a shidduch to introduce one of my Savta’s aunts to a cousin of the Reisners.  The photos we have were taken in 1943 and sadly within the year, more than half of the people were killed.  On a brighter note, the other half did survive and this friendship between the Reisners and Selymes led to the marriage of my grandparents as well as the marriage of my Savta’s sister to my Saba’s brother.

We took a tour of the intricate caves and imagined what a beautiful trip it must have been even back then.