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Emery Gregus
Occupation and
Liberation 1944-1945
Aftermath: The Postwar Years
Remembrances
Preface
"Verbae volant, scriptae manent"
(Words fly, the written word remains)
My father began writing his autobiography in 1996, but I believe he
has been harbouring these memoirs for a very long time. He divided his
autobiography into six sections: Childhood and Early Youth (1922-1938);
The War and My Youth (1938-1944); Occupation and Liberation -Remembrances
(1944-1945); From Liberation to Immigration (1945-1949); Aftermath I:
From Kosice to Paris and Montreal (1949-1951); Aftermath II: O Canada
(1951- ). From these six parts, three are published here.
Initially,
my father read his entire autobiography onto cassettes in Hungarian
from handwritten notes. Later, he transcribed all of them from the audio
version to print. My father spoke to me of his experiences before, but
to have such personal and historical events narrated in chronological
order, and recounted through the passion of my father’s voice made
me realize that these memoirs need to be preserved. It was obvious,
however, that tapes or manuscripts in Hungarian would have a limited
audience in my father’s "new world." I felt that this
remarkable odyssey would vanish with time, if not translated into English
and housed in a permanent collection.
My
father mentions me as the translator, but this is not quite the case.
I wish I could have met the challenge and captured the essence and strength
of the original Hungarian text, but neither my Hungarian nor my life
experience could do justice to such an account. In my mind, a Holocaust
memoir is robbed of its spirit and soul when the narrative must relinquish
the force of the mother tongue to another language. As the Holocaust
did not take place on Anglo-Saxon lands, this will always be the dilemma
of an English translation in a historical account such as this.
If
I did anything, I only championed the project and emboldened my father
to submit the memoirs for publishing. As the typist, I inadvertently
became somewhat of a "phantom translator," making an occasional
suggestion. However, my father remained very conscious of the fact that
exaggeration of prose would render the story commonplace and artificial,
and hyperbole would corrupt. He felt that the plain and simple facts
of fear and suffering spoke for themselves.
I imagine that, perhaps, my father wrote these memoirs not only for himself or for his children, but also on behalf of those he loved so dearly, and whose voices were so brutally and permanently silenced. He paid homage to their lives, their successes, and sufferings, which otherwise would have disappeared forever. In my mind, he has not forsaken their memory. On a personal level, these memoirs gave me the opportunity to know my father other than through the dimension of a child to a parent. I came to better understand his life, and through a newer awareness of his experiences, I came to better understand my life as well. After working on all these memoirs with him, I feel, that now, I have a much greater appreciation of his parents, his brothers and sisters - I feel I have now truly met them for the first time, and their voices will stay with me forever. I will be eternally grateful for that opportunity. This project has been a labour of love, and one of the greatest gifts a parent can bestow on a child.
Vivian Gregus-Sills
2001
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