Bloodlines by Bruce Ducker

Author:Bruce Ducker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504009799
Publisher: The Permanent Press

The story you have waited for. You have a strong ass, my friend. You should consider running for National Assembly. That is what is needed, a wooden ass and a wooden heart.

In the 1930’s, before the signs of this country’s capitulation were visible, Budapest attracted a great many young people. She was a city of new trams and undergrounds, new music and poetry, boulevards sparkling with electric lights. To that city of 1938, a young Swiss music student adventures. He comes to study harmony at the conservatory, but too for the bohemian life, the life of the coffee houses.

This man is your uncle Hermann, the brother of your father. I met Hermann when I also was a young university student. Idealistic? Of course. Unrealistic? To a fault. Who else is there to be idealistic?

As Hermann arrived in Budapest, the Hungarian Duma passed a law restricting Jewish businesses. A year later, no trade licenses to Jews, no employment in newspapers. No entry into the professions. Hungarians did this. You thought persecution was the invention of Goebbels?

In other parts of Europe, things were worse. In Austria and Germany there had been imposed the Reichsfluchsteuer, a tax to leave the Reich. To go one must pay a large portion of his assets. At the same time, the Nazis made staying for some intolerable, and to the word intolerable they gave new meaning. It is a good business. These were not people with money. What they owned they ate from or wore on their backs. How to convert that to cash?

Still many fled. Budapest represented one of the routes out. Down the Danube, the Bosporous to Lebanon, and there to wait, to wait and hope that somehow one might gain entry to Palestine. The British, who controlled Palestine, signed treaties with Nazi Germany requiring that people be authorized to leave. The cattle must request permission of the abattoir to flee.

The greater the pressure the Nazis brought, the higher the traffic through Budapest. The higher the traffic, the greater the price of a ticket. An active commerce in misfortune breaks out. Assets must be converted to cash. Relatives must send funds. Permits must be bought. Refugee organizations raise money to buy ships, negotiate leases, single passages, the moving of whole families, villages. This is the industry of poverty and suffering. The victims remain victimized. We have a saying, drop a stone on an egg, woe for the egg. But drop an egg on a stone, woe for the egg.

I have been scribbling, scribbling, and my words have been noticed by some involved in these efforts. They seek me out. I am a young man, without funds. What could I do? I had only a pen, some paper, some friends. Aha, I said to myself. I have a friend, from the coffeehouses. He is Swiss. His brother is a banker. He himself has no interest in this, he is interested in Bach and women. My friend Hermann is what I could do.

And so I bring him to meet the world.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.