THE MEMORIAL BOOK OF PÁPA JEWRY - JewishGen

At about the same time I was invited by Elazar Bass (Laci) – may he rest in peace – to a
meeting for youth of my age. He said that somebody had come from Szombathely and wanted to
talk to us. We went to the meeting wearing pressed Charleston pants and ties, as it behooved
young gentlemen from good homes. To our great surprise, the guest was a handsome blond
young man with blue eyes, only 2 or 3 years older than we, wearing the Scouts' uniform! A
Jewish scout? It made a great impression on us. (We had no chance to be accepted by the Scouts)
We had not seen such a thing before and what he said was also brand new for us. He talked about
the life of Jewish Scouts in Szombathely, about their social life, meetings, talks, games, lectures,
trips and summer camps! He talked about Palestine, the land of our fathers, about the chalutzim
who immigrate to Israel in order to redeem the land, about the swamps, about malaria, about
farmers and Jewish villages. His words were absorbed into our souls yearning for the idea of
redemption, with youthful enthusiasm.
And it was only the beginning. Most of us came from orthodox families and we stayed
observant for a long time. The following story is a good example to illustrate the beginnings.
Once we had a meeting to talk with a shaliach from the leadership in Budapest . When it was the
time to pray Minchah, we asked the shaliach to stop talking so that we could pray in minyan. He
concealed his surprise but of course fulfilled our request. One of us – Dénes Zommer, of blessed
memory – not only did not know how to pray, but was talking and laughing and wanted to make
us laugh in the middle of the shmone-esreh. The rascal put us to shame in the company of the
shaliach, and after the prayer we said we were sorry and asked the shaliach to forgive him for his
behaviour. It was not his fault, his secular parents had not taught him to pray, but we would
"educate him".
There is another story about our ardent Hungarian patriotism, while being orthodox.
Shortly before the ken initiation and our solemn admission into the national movement of
hashomer hatzair,we received a circular from the top leadership together with the 10
commandments of the movement.
The draft of the commandments coincided exactly with the Hungarian scouts ' 10
commandments, with the exception of the third one, which said: "Hashomer is loyal to his
country, language and homeland, to Eretz Yisrael." We organized a series of talks about each
commandment – only he who belonged to the shomers knows what it was like. Eventually we
came to a decision, which was drafted together with an explanation for our decision, included in a
long letter and sent to the top leadership: "We have discussed the 10 commandments seriously
and we accept everything in them according to the letter and the spirit, with the exception of the
third commandment. Since our country is Hungary, our language is Hungarian, and our homeland
is Magyarország forever."
This is how it was in the beginning. It was an unforgettable experience for us when the
first agricultural hachshara reached our town. "hachalutzim" materialized. Until then we had
only heard stories about them and pictured them to ourselves with the help of our imagination.
They were young people the age of our elder brothers and sisters, most of them had already
passed the matriculation exam. Instead of going to university to study medicine or law (the
accepted professions among Jewish youth from well-to-do families) they put on work clothes and
learnt how to work. Moreover, it was the work most despised by our fathers: tilling the land.
They lived in a dilapidated house at the corner of Korona and Irhás Streets. We saw them starting
off to work with a shovel and a hoe on their back in a dignified manner, singing. We had an
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