THE MEMORIAL BOOK OF PÁPA JEWRY - JewishGen

REMEMBERING PÁPA
by Sándor Lőwenstein
It was like a dream. Or was it a dream really? They were standing by the entrance, it was
a relatively good camp, they were wearing a mixture of work clothes and their Sunday best, with
open trench coats, expecting new arrivals with the usual excitement of looking forward to
something new: to get updated by the newcomers and to go, or rather to fly to their support.
Rumour had it for some time – spread by kitchen staff and those in charge of slicing bread
– that somebody was supposed to arrive from our town. They were restlessly milling around, oldtimers
humbly pulling together their fully grown wings, while greenhorns fluttering their
miniature wings which had hardly started to grow. They were not nervous. At last they did not
have to be afraid of a husky voice saying "I have been watching you for a long time!"
They had no feelings of fear or revenge, they were free from vanity. The only ambition
left in them was not an earthly drive to get to better housing or camp "where the spoon is stuck in
the mush": it was a purely disinterested longing for the higher spheres, to approach absolute
purity.
An angel on duty was approaching with a drone like a Stuka. The letter shin on his
armband identified from a distance his belonging to the guards. Haberdasher Henrik Steiner, who
was a pure soul already on earth, called out to him:
"Where are you going, Comrade-in-Joy?" "I am bringing you someone from Pápa. I am in
a hurry, I have to go", he shouted down to him and disappeared in the purple clouds.
"I told you it was no rumour", said Tibor Német. Although Tibi was a newcomer, he was
immediately accommodated in the barracks of the purified and was told the news even before the
archangels. The tension was growing. At noon Sanyi Vértes angrily slammed down the gold
mess-tins in the kitchen, because only a few had come for lunch, due to the excitement and the
fast.
The company got together only between mincha and maariv on the gravelled yard of the
temple. There was hardly anybody on the benches, despite the fact that their favourites were
supposed to give lectures in the weekly program called Pele Yoetz: the names of rabbis Róth,
Link, Pressburger, Eckstein, Gottlieb, and Haberfeld possessed no attraction for them that day.
The situation in the Bet Hamidrash was not any better: rabbis Áron Pressburger, Dirnfeld, and
Rapoport were the lecturers there.
Before the appearance of the three stars, Samuel Bodánszky – called Shmuel the Long up
in heaven – flew rustling his wings through the trellis gate of the temple yard. Even the saints in
the highest circles knew that he had spent his last years and his fortune in support of Polish,
Slovak and Austrian refugees. "They will arrive in a second", said he, rushing to the temple to
reassure Uncle Stein, who was quite nervous.
109