A poem to Bandi Perl
A few days ago, I received a message from Nicole Maderas, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivor Zsuzsanna Perl, writing from California. Nicole’s recently deceased mother, Eva was an avid reader of our website and sent us her family’s story for publication. Her death prevented her from attending the World Meeting in Győr (link). Nicole is organizing the papers of her grandmother. That’s how she found a poem written to her grandmother’s brother, András (his nickname: Bandi) Perl, who was killed in Auschwitz. In this poem the former playmate, András Szapudi, remembers his murdered friend, Bandi.
András Szapudi, journalist (1939-2001) lived as a small child in the neighbourhood of the Perl family, who were deported from Sövényháza, a village near Győr. He grew up with the Bandi Perl, who was a few years older than him.
Nicole’s grandmother made the following handwritten note about the Szapudi family next door (date of note unknown):
“His father, István Szapudi Laendler István (Pista) was shot dead by the Arrow Cross in an arbitrary action in January 1945. Pista was a half-Jew, but was born a Christian, a landowner and a painter (he studied at the Sorbonne).
I knew the whole family well. Pista’s widow was a Christian schoolteacher …
(Szapudi) Andris was much younger than my brother Bandi, but they played together a lot. Bandi was 13 years old when he was taken away (to Auschwitz) … This poem was written by (Szapudi) Andris in memory of our Bandi.”
The Budapest Holocaust Memorial Centre records confirm Nicole’s grandmother’s note: “István Szapudi-Laendler, as a Christian of Jewish origin, was not called up for labour service, but the consequences of the Jewish laws had already hit him and his family. In January 1945, he and his sister were deported from their home and executed on the outskirts of Mosonszentmiklós. István Szapudi-Laendler was a painter from Győr who became a landowner in Szapudpuszta. On 21 July 1945, mass graves were discovered on the outskirts of Mosonszentmiklós. In one of the pits, the bodies of István and Erna Laendler Laendler were found under the carcass of a dead colt. Their lives had been put out by the Arrow Cross.” Another source tells us that ” they hid a British pilot who crashed in an air battle over the Hanság”.
András Szapudi, the son of István Szapudi-Laendler, graduated as a teacher in 1958, as a journalist in 1964, and as a teacher of Hungarian literature and history in 1971. He worked for the Győr daily Kisalföld and later for several newspapers in Somogy County. He has published nine volumes of short stories, novels and poems. He has been awarded numerous literary prizes.
Here’s Szapudi’s disturbing testimony about Bandi murdered at the age of 13. The date and circumstances of the poem’s inception are not known. Its publication is a modest memorial to Bandi and other innocent victims. The poem has reached me in two parts, almost in fragments, and I am not aware of its earlier publication.
András Szapudi
I would have gone for you
I confess Bandi, - because I must confess -
that sometimes the most beautiful, the most harmless
clouds I can't observe,
and often, - when the wind blows smoke in my face -
silenced I'm and overcome with sadness,
like a thunderbolt hits a branch singing of buds
I confess thinking of thee
Bandi, /you are smoke and ashes in a cloud/
a wandered friend, who at the age of six
abandoned me on the sand of the playground
You were born - I know - before me
and yet now /I boast of years taken/
I am older than thou! -
Oh, because thou hast not grown wolf-black,
Thou didst not go after fair maidens
Thou didst not enlist as a soldier,
nor fought with storms of Behemoth,
Nor didst thou know how a man feels
when first you're called to labour.
I must have been six ...
A terrible thing happened...
Someone climbed into the sky
and stole heaven's shame
tearing down the sulphur star of hatred
and pinned it to your coat, Bandi
You still came over to our house...
You raised one arm above your heart
to hide your heaven-abandoned star
as if you, the little boy was
ashamed of the law-fathers
for their sins against thee...
Yet you came over to us ...
Goodbye you said going far away,
and you promised me a coloured marble
and a new horsewhip from a distant village
/And I was glad in advance/
I remember: when you left through the little gate
my grandmother wept - I didn't know why...
I wish I could have been a grown up then
a real man with a gun
who didn't seek shelter in a duvet,
a cellar shelter, while a whirlwind of abhorrence
was drunkenly dancing around his companions
who did not look on "with tears and pity"
the sheep-tame human flock sobbing
in a ring of lead of laughing shepherds
I wish I had been grown up then
a wise, clear-eyed, true man
- I want to be one day -
who does not loiter idly, - with his fist in his pocket
as a resting punch - when a moment of sin cried for help
Why was I not grown up then ...
I would have gone for you, Bandi
to the villages of strangers drowning in the mist
where wolves and jackals ate the sticks
I would have slain the seven-headed dragon
to free you from his paws
like the littlest boy does in a fairy tale
to the beautiful princess -
and now you would live, Bandi,
and the February mist
would not be heavy of your ashes,
and I would not complain to my fellows,
that sometimes the most beautiful, the most harmless
clouds I can't observe ...
Translated by Peter Krausz
Post by Peter Krausz
Special thanks to Nicole Maderas for bringing the poem to my attention and for providing me with the sources found in her mother’s and grandmother’s (Aunt Zsuzsi and Évike, good friends of my family) memoirs.
Further sources: