Written by Petra Borbély, student at the Richter János Music Highschool in Győr
Based on an interview with Gabriella Polgár
Jackals are scavenging and omnivorous mammals belonging to the dog family, which, like hyenas, search for prey by emitting sharp cries. This definition may be familiar when reinterpreted in a historical context, with a large pack of golden jackals chasing an even larger herd of gazelles.
Many Hungarian gazelles emigrated early with the help of Zionist rabbis, one of whom was Emil Róth from Győr. Gabriella was also born in Palestine, where they were safe from the gathering jackal army for a while, and there, far beyond the Hungarian border, they hardly sensed the impending doom. After a few years, they had a good life, a nice house and stable jobs, but their existence in the hot country of the East was surrounded by constant tension. Her mother heard the jackals howling at night and was terrified. She had no idea that one day she would find herself face to face with these terrifying predators in human form. Her fear grew, so she took her only daughter and ‘fled’ to Hungary, where this howling menace was not native. At that time, anti-Semitism was still only a faint murmur, like the hum of a refrigerator at night, and it passed unnoticed by the otherwise alert ears of the gazelles. The father had no choice but to also flee and seek refuge in the ‘safety’ of his motherland.
They ended up in Győr because his father got a job in this city, which had once been partly built by Jewish hands. The neologue group of gazelles attended prayers at the Synagogue in Győr-Újváros, at that time still in large numbers. Gabriella was unable to attend university because the jackals had infiltrated public life: ‘Jews are not allowed to pursue higher education.’ Shortly afterwards, the gazelles were rounded up and taken to Győr-Sziget, where they were forced to live in dilapidated apartments. They had no food or security, and the jackals came out at night. After the curfew, everyone on the streets was devoured.
The starving people were transported to Auschwitz in cattle cars, unworthy of humans, let alone gazelles. Upon their arrival in Auschwitz, the jackals made the prisoners play Ravel’s Bolero to ‘calm’ the new arrivals. It is a resounding music, pure but at the same time clashing, which frightens gazelles with its unusual dissonance. Here, life was a constant struggle, full of bare brutality with just a glimmer of hope. Inhuman, gazelle-less.
Where you’ve fallen, you will stay. In the whole universe this one and only place is the sole place which you have made your very own. The country runs away from you. House, mill, poplar – every thing is struggling with you here, as if in nothingness mutating. But now it’s you who won’t give up. Did we fleece you? You’ve grown rich. Did we blind you? You watch us still. You bear witness without speech.
This is how Pilinszky writes in his poem ‘On the Wall of a KZ Lager’ x). The females, who in Jewish-Arab culture are metaphors for beauty, crouched on the latrine, their hair shorn, while the males toiled with broken horns, obeying the howling pack of jackals.
Gabriella was transferred to another camp, where she awaited liberation with many of her fellow prisoners. In 1945, the ragged gazelles were finally freed. Then came more than three years of silence, patience and freedom. The surviving gazelle families reunited in Budapest, Győr and all over the world.
A pack of jackals can never catch up with a herd of gazelles; when they tire, they give up their tasty prey. The gazelles are still with us today, but will the jackals ever fall silent?
x) English version by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri
See also
Edited and English translation by Peter Krausz