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The Terrible Sojourn

by
October 2001, no. 235

Two Prayers to One God: A Journey towards Identity and Belonging by George Szego

Hardie Grant Books, $26.95 pb, 358 pp

The Terrible Sojourn

by
October 2001, no. 235

In March 1944, George Szego, a sixteen-year-old student in a provincial town, watched apprehensively as German troops replaced its Hungarian army posts. The massive deportations that ended in the near annihilation of Hungarian Jewry in the extermination camps and slave gangs of Eastern Europe were not long in coming. Szego had been christened a Roman Catholic. His Jewish parents converted in the 1920s at the height of anti-Semitic sentiment and prohibitions, mainly by reason of prudence and ambition, but also because of the genuine admiration that gifted and educated Jews often conceived for the great cultures that have – if only grudgingly – harboured them, an admiration that found uncustomary expression in Szego senior’s pride in his military exploits and his desire to be a ‘Christian gentleman’.

Tamas Pataki reviews 'Two Prayers to One God: A Journey towards Identity and Belonging' by George Szego

Two Prayers to One God: A Journey towards Identity and Belonging

by George Szego

Hardie Grant Books, $26.95 pb, 358 pp

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