Ted Sears Memoir, part 5

Debrecen Train Station after June 2, 1944 aerial bombardment. a year before Ted and Mickey Sears returned to the city.

Introduction: After the War

After the SS fled, leaving Mühldorf survivors, including Ted Sears and his older brother, Mickey, on the railroad siding in Seeshaupt, the two brothers roamed through what became the American occupied zone of Germany. Gradually, as the search for food became less pressing, the need to know what had happened to their family grew more pressing and their desire to return home to Debrecen grew. Returning seemed the only way the two young teen agers could find out whether family members had survived and connect once more with them. 

Their trip in early 1945 was not easy. It involved catching rides with American trucks heading east, crossing borders, avoiding guards as they moved from freight train to freight train. But they managed somehow to make their way to Budapest. And from there they were able to catch a train to Debrecen and the home they had been forced to leave over a year earlier. The house in which the two boys grew up was intact, but changed. And Debrecen had been the site of a three week battle between Germany and its allies and rapidly advancing Russian Forces.

The return was not an easy one.

Home, by Ted Sears

We continued our travel until finally we arrived to the front of our house that we left over a year ago. With my heart racing, beating as never before, Mickey and I began to walk toward the door. We saw no activity around the house but my heart was still telling me that our family was inside the house, waiting for us. We entered the backyard. The flower garden we left behind was gone. We walked through the porch into the house. The door was wide open, creaking as the breeze was moving it back and forth slightly. It seemed like an omen, cautioning us to go away.

My mood changed considerably. "Just leave. Do not enter. Go in peace" was what I felt the door was telling us.

I disobeyed the order. "No, I am not going away" I answered with my eyes swelling rapidly. The gathering tears blurred my vision momentarily. I blinked a couple of times to brush the tears away, which by then were flowing like a raging river. When I opened my eyes, I found the room completely empty. Nobody waiting. Nobody. Nobody. My heart skipped a beat. I was stunned in disbelief. This must be a mistake, a cruel hoax, a bad dream, I kept thinking.

My whole past suddenly reappeared in front of me. Where are the tables and the chairs? Where is the alarm clock that I used to take apart and reassembled so many times when I was little? Where was the chess set (with a white pawn missing) that was always sitting on the table? And the two brass candle-sticks that Juliska use to polish weekly for the Sabbath? Where is that walnut framed oblong mirror with the ornate carving around the edges that used to hang here over the credenza ever since I can remember?” I asked. I could still see the outline of it on the wall. I remembered the times when I was too small and had to stand on my toes to be able to see myself in the mirror because it was hung too high up.

The walls were completely bare. I longed to hear the laughter of my parents when they played with us. Where is my mother's beautiful smile?

There was not a piece of furniture in the house. Everything was gone. Everything! Everything was gone. Everything!

I kept staring at the empty white walls without saying a word. I wanted to ask the walls a million questions. I was stunned when I heard the walls talking to me: "Bubika and Micuka. Bubika and Micuka. Where have you been? You look so grown up. I’ve missed you. Where are your mother and father? Where are Grandma and Gyongyike? Will they be coming home also?"

"Yes, soon. They'll be home soon" I replied to the walls sarcastically.

Mickey went in a corner of the room and sat down on the floor. He put his head on his knees and began to weep. I had never seen him like that before. I didn't talk to him. I just let him cry. I kept staring at all the emptiness in this house. This house that was once my home and that I remembered as full of life and laughter, was now dead and silent, as if it never had been any other way. The silence was unbearable.

"Come on, say something. Somebody must be here" I demanded angrily. But the defiant silence continued.  .  .  .

After a few weeks of waiting, my brother and I decided that it was no use to stick around any longer. We were pretty much convinced that no one else of our family survived.

It was not easy to pick ourselves up and leave the place where we grew up, the place we were born and knew so well. The place where we went to school, the language we speak and the place where we spent our care-free youth. But we must face the facts - our whole family perished, and it was time to leave.

“There is nothing left here for us anymore. We had enough humiliation to last a life time,” I said.

Even so, my heart was aching and my eyes were tearing. I was aware that I was saying good-bye to my whole past. To the home where I grew up, to my carefree and happy childhood, and to my whole family. The past was finished. It is over with and done.

“Nobody in this world will ever care about how my father picked all three of us children up into his arms, in one swoop, and made all of us laugh together. Nobody will ever care about the happiness my parents enjoyed when both Mickey and I came home with straight ‘A’ report cards” I lamented.  .  .  .

I felt as if stricken with amnesia. Everything in my past was gone and I felt as if my life started today. All my reference points will go back only so far - to this day, as if I was born today. There is nobody at my birthday to celebrate it, not even the parents who gave birth to me. A parent-less birth. Nobody to nurture me in the next crucial couple of developing years.

In a strange way, it felt as if I was back in Auschwitz again. Like that morning when I arrived there and heard the loud screams of "Raus, raus, du Yuden schweinhunt" as we were ordered to disembark and to leave everything behind in the cattle car. I felt that I was stranded once again, without a single possession except the clothing I had on.

I pictured myself meeting the butcher Mengele again. Would he send me to the right or the left this time, I pondered sadly. Were the men in the striped uniform with the dull hair clippers in their hands still yelling "next"? Would I survive again? I was very lucky the last time but how long would my luck continue? Every single morbid experience of the camp flashed-back momentarily; the ugly faces of the SS, the stench of burning flesh, the constant hunger, the beatings, the bitter tasting yellow soup, the bony, skeletal faces of the inmates.  .  .  .

"Well, I am not too young anymore. I sure grew up fast in just a couple of years," I thought to myself. I compared the bitter-sweet departure of a couple of years ago to my forced exile of today realizing that while fascism may have been defeated, being Jewish in Hungary hadn't changed at all.

But there was no doubt in our minds - the decision to leave was made and we were going quietly.  .  .  .

On our way to the railroad station we walked across the street to say the last good-bye to the house where we grew up. Mickey and I entered the sad and empty house, stood still and silent for a minute - as a tribute to our lost family, all-the-while remembering the happy and lively house that it once was. After spending a few more silent minutes inside the house, we felt that it was enough, exited, leaving the door wide open behind us.

“There is nothing in here that needs to be protected anymore” I said to Mickey as we were heading outside onto the street.

Once outside, our eyes still fixed on the entrance of the house, Mickey and I began to back away very slowly and ready to run back at once in case a family member would suddenly make a miraculous appearance.

“There is not going to be a miracle here today,” I said and turned around, heading straight for the railroad station while Mickey was falling behind because he continued his backward walk for a while longer. But soon, he too came to realize that no amount of wishing or hoping would change the situation, turned around and caught up with me.

With my dream of returning to Hungary as a hero totally shattered, and the elation I felt upon returning from the concentration camp now totally gone, I resigned myself to leave without any remorse.

"I am leaving as an adult and not as a child anymore. There is no time left to feel sorry for myself. There is nobody to help. It is only the two of us against all the obstacles we shall soon face. So much could happen before we reach Germany," was racing through my mind.

Walking side by side in a leisurely manner, sad but resigned to the fact that only my brother was left of my whole family, I began to wonder about the whereabouts of my father and mother. I pictured them in heaven worrying about their two little children. I could just hear them say “Poor Bubika and Micuka. Who is going to take care of them on this arduous trip? How are they going to survive?” I pictured them pleading to God, (though to me by this time, it was a useless exercise) to be allowed for them to lead us to the Promised Land and then they'll be glad to die all over again.

Deeply immersed in my thoughts, the half an hour walk to the station seemed like a few minutes. Although there was no doubt in my mind that I must and indeed I am leaving the country for good, my voice still cracked a bit when I pushed the money to the ticket agent and said "Two tickets to Budapest, please."

What really hurt a lot was the fact that I knew that I would never return - not even for a visit. Whether it was instinct or nostalgia that made me feel this way, I don't know. All I knew was that my life in Hungary was coming to an end. It is sad whenever you do something significant and you know that you are doing it for the last time. It felt as if I had only one day to live, watching the sun setting slowly on the horizon, knowing that this was the last sunset I’d ever see.

It took all the strength I had to control the tears from gushing down my face.  .  .  .