My Story

I was the last surviving member of my family who has left the country, Hungary. I was forty one years old at the time. I was forced to leave after an ongoing struggle to be accepted by my own society. It was in vain.

I had to leave in order to keep my curiosity, intellectually-driven hunger for more knowledge. I was born in a family half Jewish half Catholic, and both side used to belong to the extreme version of their own religion.

The Holocaust perished several members of my father side relatives, and the Stalinism continued to punish the survivors.

My mother as a child was given to my famous Catholic monastery director. Until the Communist Party takeover my mother was prepared to become a nun. Then all religious institutes were dissolved, and my mother joined to the cultural policy-makers, i.e. the leading figures of the Communist party. She fell in love soon in a Jewish young man, and I was born soon. My father emigrated in 1956 to the USA, my mother disappeared and later I was raised by ten different persons in five different places. In East-Central Europe, being a Jewish, being an intellectual, being ostracised because of ancestors and their origins, surely meant for the younger generation like me, to be ostracised, excluded, penalised and punished because of my origin.

The Book

This book, the Life-Dream is a monologue by a growing child, later a young woman who tries to investigate and understand her parents and grandparents lives. faith, destiny, and their failed attempts to create a "normal life". Instead, concentration camps, then Stalinist prison, then emigration.

AS the last surviving member of my family, my emigration is a mirror that offers multiple visions and perceptions our lives, our faith and our destiny.

The book first is going to be published by a publisher: www.joshuakonyvek.hu (Joshua-books Publisher). The target, three thousand Euros is needed to edit, illustrate, and print this very special book. This book is not a memoir, neither a personal account on my life. Rather an ongoing attempt to perceive, to understand and to accept our family last hundred year-long history. Hopes and failures, Tragedies and joys, emigrating and searching a real home.

As we all know, our home is ourselves. The book therefore a pray for all the immigrants, for all temporarily "lost souls" since we could find ourselves int he mirror of new environments. It does help. Nothing else, I guess.

The Rewards

1st reward - 25€: signed copy of my book
2nd reward - 50€: signed copy of my book + a page mark + a print of the cover design

The planned book cover (see above) and the two illustrations are the work of franyo aatoth

Life-dream

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