HOLDALL

... read this urban legend story the other day, local version, a tale of an old lady that for decades could be seen on streets of Pécs walking around carrying her essential belongings in a bag.  Story says that once upon a time, when she was a fourteen year old girl, her family had survived Hungarian Jewish Holocaust of 1944 by digging up a shelter  that was not more than a hole in the ground in their vineyard.

They say that this experience forever made her insane, with one of the symptoms of her broken mind and craziness being  the constant awareness and irrational fear of the second coming of that moment when the world collapses - a moment that she knew could happen again at any point in time in the life that she lived after  the first time it had happened to her and she survived  - that split second that lasts usually  a couple of frantic minutes while one gathers one's essential belongings, stuffs them into a bag and runs into hiding in a hole in the ground. Or just runs for one's life.

All of the horror of experiencing such a moment is  that it can pretty much be summed up and condensed into the conscious act of never letting go of such a holdall - a bag that holds all of your life in your life's worst moment.

For the old lady from Pécs  that life container was a nameless ragged bag which at all times contained all of her life - those who knew her say inside it during her wanderings there were: a couple of warm items of clothes,  a change of underwear,  some solid food that could last, and a golden something that she probably would if needed be able to pawn in exchange for a safe passage.

Urban legends are not where you will find the more sinister aspects or the soul-wrenching truth behind "The Lady With A Bag From Pécs" story.

The cold and cruel numbers only game that tells how... according to the 1941. population census in Pécs there were

3,486 individuals identified to be of Jewish religion, and that in the wider county area there were
2,498 more. Total of
5,984 Jews in Pécs in 1941.

There were two freight transports from Pécsi picturesque train station in cattle wagons, one on July 6th 1944 that emptied the ghetto and one more two days after that of people from the county. Total of

5,623 souls on board shipped to their Auschwitz deaths from Pécs in 1944.

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A soul once buried in a hole in the ground never truly gets to get out of that hole whole again.

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( There is a small waterproof travel bag being kept in a pantry in the city I live in today. In it are essentials - original birth certificates and copies of other important documents, an envelope  containing a few business cards with additional telephone numbers and home addresses written on the back, and a pair of golden earrings that can be easily swapped for just enough  cash to get across a border or two.  Someone checks if  this bag is up-to-date once or twice a year and goes through life finding great comfort in knowing it is there always, and holds onto that notion just like the old lady from Pécs  who went through her own rest of the days after experiencing the world that went away kept holding onto the comfort of never letting go of  her holdall bag. )

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a pécsi szatyros hölgy legendája

death trains in 1944: 

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wave of sorrow

 got out of the truck  stacked  full of bottled water  confiscated from the supermarket and  food from  town  Red Cross storage , truck filled up so hard that it barely made it up the hill to the place where the policeman on duty just waved and shouted  you can set up  over there by the border crossing but one truck is not going to be enough  you girl go down to the border guards and call someone to send more.  thought he was stupid because  truck was  fullest,  to the brim.  

 closed the door. turned towards where he indicated the border  was and  looked down and froze and started crying.  heat was so intense that  a tear would dry out for the time it took for a tear to descend from the eye to the edge of the face.  the mind started to grasp what  eyes were looking at. 

 tried to see where it ended  - the human inside needed to know that this inhumanity  somewhere stopped, needed to find and hold onto  a tangible konjec  screen  to  erase away  endless suffering  creeping its way across the plain towards us. but I found no limit to the boundless horizon of pain  spreading. 

only flatland underneath, and  road straight as an arrow spearing  for miles. and miles. but  no road at all could be seen. every inch of where it was supposed to be visible  was covered with continuous  stream  of people, vehicles, cattle slowly moving. silence deafened the ears as if all sound   was somehow muted by  all the grief this trail of tears carried.

up close, every smallest speck of this map was inked over with a human being. hungry, thirsty, abused and hopeless after days on the road being bombarded, shelled, being killed.

I do not remember faces that accompanied  hands that reached out  for  food and water..

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I remember

 face of shellshocked baby   born  in the back of the bus  that never got to touch the soft lining of the cradle basket  mother had prepared.  

 face of grandfather  lifted from his deathbed  now dead and in full rigor mortis  a few cars down  after the bus with the baby.

 their dried mouths open in scorching heat, mouths alive and mouths dead alike were thirsty.

I was 18.

 that newborn baby  whom  mother  fed with water  from the palm of her hand  because there was nothing else I could give her to feed her newborn baby with  is about to turn 18. 

this week.

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link 


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