Péter Kutas: When Clouds Wept Blood... - Memories of a little boy from the Budapest ghetto
Methodological guidance for teachers on the possible uses of Péter Kutas' When Clouds Wept Blood... - Memories of a little boy from the Budapest ghetto
prepared by Lajos Oláh
BASIC METHODOLOGY PRINCIPLES
Diary is recollection, recollection is personal history: a precious historical source. The narrative is based on the writer’s personal experience, and this quality defines several aspects of the methodology of its historical processing. On one hand, this is exactly what makes it valuable: history is assembled from human stories whose participants are living human beings the same as the students and teachers at class. Processing the source however requires comparatively more work from both teachers and students. These recollections are by their nature incapable of fathoming the historic background of the events in question, and a special effort is thus required for its processing. This brings the students excitement in the form of discovery and research, through their activities rather than as passive recipients. Treating these recollections as purely historical sources does give rise to difficulty. The story of the Holocaust, undoubtedly the twentieth century’s greatest debacle, poses essential questions toward our concepts of humanity and inhumanity. These questions are difficult enough to voice, let alone even attempt to answer, whilst facing a scale much too vast to comprehend. The fate of 5-6 million anonymous victims defies empathy. A person with a face and a name is much easier to relate to. This definitive aspect should be kept in mind throughout the processing, as well as the advantages one can and should utilize. This of course expands the possibilities of interpretation beyond the scope of source analysis. Core educational issues may be addressed during the diary's processing. These two approaches are conjoined,forming the two aspects of a single process rather than two separate directions. This duplicity calls for adequate historical background knowledge, compassionate attention, human and moral sensitivity from students and teachers alike. The following material aims to assist this complex task.
RECOMMENDED AGE GROUP
Processing the full text of the memoir in the fields described below is recommended for high schools. Selected excerpts of the text may be used in middle school classes (7th-8th grade).
Sociohistorical analysis
Through his recollections Péter Kutas takes us back to his childhood. He turned seven on the 15th of October 1944, the exact day of the Arrowcross Party’s rise to power. In the first part of his remembrances he relates some episodes of his family life, an orthodox Jewish family living in Budapest in the late 1940’s. The figure of „Papa” (the grandfather) appears, who is a mesgiah, that is the community’s kosher meat supervisor. „Mama” had worn a wig all her life in accordance to the orthodox religious code. (Married orthodox Jewish women do not appear with bear heads, but wear a wig, headscarf or hat.) The author also describes the process gradually gaining ground among the Jews of Budapest at the beginning of the 20th Century: „This family was like the hundreds or thousands of Jewish families where the elder parents would keep to even the strictest religious regulations while their children lived the more liberal modern lifestyle of the 20th Century.” These few words unfold the process of social integration. Péter Kutas makes another comment that can be interpreted in such a context: „though the Papa himself wasn’t quite ’that way’ anymore.” He is referring to a change in dress and hairstyle that directs our attention to the integration process’ elements of mentality shift and fashion whereby the grandfather no longer wears a traditional kaftan and is without sideburns, but still retains the tzitzit. We may compare this to the same process taking place in a rural Jewish setting in the memoirs of Ágnes Bartha, where she describes the loosening of Kashrut regulations and the introduction of mixed marriages in connection to the story of a Jewish family in the Hungarian village of Dunaföldvár.(http://www.emlekezem.hu/text/
We may observe that mixed marriage appears in the family of Péter Kutas’ father: „There were several mixed marriages on my father’s side of the family. One of his sisters married a Christian master carpenter.” Apparently the author’s family already lived according to the Reformist ethic. We may make similar comparisons between the changes of lifestyle in Jewish families in Budapest and in the countryside in the ’30s and ’40s in relation to the racially discriminating laws passed and enforced at the time. We may examine how families face dwindling opportunities and how they try to adapt to their changing situation. At first an increasingly difficult livelihood, then life itself is at risk. Especially valuable are the individual inventories following the fate of each member of the Fülöp family. This can be used to make a close view analysis to better contextualize the sociohistorical demographic data accounting the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews. Let us follow through the process of the family’s demise. They are decimated by a series of individual tragedies, let’s identify the deceased person in every case accounted for. „In the beginning of 1944, the Fülöp family still had twentytwo members. In late January 1945, there were eleven of us remaining: three Fülöp-girls, the husband of one and six grandchildren,” writes Péter Kutas. Compare this with the headcount after the war: „The family, though scattered, lives on. The Fülöp grandchildren are now grandparents themselves, and have brought the family to attainment. Together with their spouses, children and grandchildren, we number 59, 17 of us at home, 16 in the united States and 26 in Israel.” More relevant demographic and sociohistorical processes can be gleaned from this data as well: demographic regeneration as well as migratory trends. Let us point out how the family history was brutally altered by the Second World War. We gain important additives of mentality history relating society’s majority attitudes and conduct. Some (a scarce minority) were of help. One example is Uncle Gyurka. Let’s discuss him, why he acts differently from most. He is related to the Jewish family, and has exact knowledge of their way of life. Rather than being merely aware of their existance, he is actually acquainted with them. He therefore does not respond according to the political norm and the current social morale. His actions enforce general norms of human ethics. Another example is that of Hungarian soldiers guarding the ghetto. They despise the Arrowcross crew „whose main concerns were robbery and murder, and looting of course.” Through this example we can detect distorted forms of group formation peculiar to wartime: how persecutors and persecuted are grouped together, how temporary fate and sympathy communities are formed. Hungarian soldiers weren’t assigned to preserve the life of ghetto dwellers, yet some of them sided with the persecuted rather than the Arrowcross. To discuss the issues we recomment the questions and assignments marked Tt.
History and historical background of the Holocaust
As a textual source, the remembrance provides valuable data pertaining to the story of Jews in Budapest during the Second World War. Special attention must be payed to how this suggestively voiced account is not in a chronologic order, so chronology has to be established by us researchers. Even so, we can detect the typical process whereby the discriminative laws first endanger their welfare to an increasing degree when they lose their jobs. From 1942 the labour service takes its toll on the male family members. Let’s clarify the circumstances of how labour service was introduced, how its circumstances became increasingly difficult: article II of 1939 prescribes the service to men deemed unfit for military service, without discriminating Jews and non-Jews. Discriminatory practices up to 1941 were gradually enforced by internal regulations at the Ministry of Defense. The legal basis of discrimination was laid down in Government Regulation 2870/1940 whereby Jews were excluded from armed military service. We can diverge to the fate of the tenthousands at labour service in the Hungarian Second Army corps, as several family members remembered were killed on the Russian front. (More details: László Karsai: Holokauszt. Budapest, 2001, Pannonica Kiadó pp.219-226 and the works listed in our Bibliography: http://www.emlekezem.hu/text/
bibliografiatortenetimunkakdokumentumok.html.)
In these remembrances the events of the siege of Budapest are boldly outlined. The singular situation of the „great ghetto” is represented by a house in the ghetto, a family, the fate of the little girl who lost her mother. The story’s layering provides for a unique perspective of approach, as the fate and portrayal of the individual within the flow of history gradually becomes more distinct and detailed. The special role of the „great ghetto” can be presented. Let’s discuss when and to what end it was established, how it became at once an asylum and a site of inhumane atrocities. Elaborate on the role of the „international ghetto”, the protected houses and foreign safe-conducts. Péter Kutas specifically highlights the operation of the Glasshouse. In this regard we can present the rescue activities of Carl Lutz especially. (See also: Tschuy, Theo: Becsület és bátorság. Carl Lutz és a budapesti zsidók. Budapest 2002, Well-Press Kiadó, and documents well suited for school use in Szabolcs Szita (ed.): A humánum példái. Dokumentumok, emlékezések a magyarországi embermentő akciók 1944-1945. évi történetéhez. Budapest, 1998, Magyar Auschwitz Alapítvány – Holocaust Dokumentációs Központ. See also our bibliography: http://www.emlekezem.hu/text/
Embermentesdiplomatakvoroskeresztesekantifasisztak.html.)
For discussion we reccomend the questions and assignments marked H, Th.
Discussing moral and human issues
„I was a child,” says Péter Kutas at the start of his account. He is pointing out the distinct childhood perspective inherent in his recollections even with the voluminous life experiences and historical knowledge his own tragic childhood is reflected in. We can try and highlight this tragic childhood fate. If we succeed, even really young students will gain an understanding of the events of Budapest in December-January 1944. A five-year-old child losing first his father, then his mother. (In a cruel twist of fate, the mother dies on January 18th, a war casualty on the final day of the siege of Budapest.) A small child sensing the first signs of impending danger in the ever-shrinking portions of food on the table. His mind proceeds to open and he grows gradually conscious of the events taking place around him. Meanwhile, he grows uncertain: is he a little child after all, or does he count as an adult? When inquiring why the grown-ups turn more weary every day, they tell him, you are still little. At other times he sees his younger relations are more privileged than he, and grown-ups justify their partiality by telling him, you’re old enough. Discuss the events and impressions surrounding Péter Kutas at his time of birth. Empathize with his years of coming to consciousness, up to the first retainable memories of age four or so. Compare and discuss the memories of children today and of our own childhood. Elaborate the difficulties of basing one’s life on wartime memories such as those remembered by the author. Another feature of this text that we can use to digest and discuss its content is that the various individual destinies, behavioural patterns and acts are often connected to specific people in the recollections. Victims, murderers and rescuers line up one after the other. The persecutors are given a face and name in the figure of the house commander „a certain Molnár”. What motivations led him in his acts? Representing the other side is György Zoltán or Uncle Gyurka as he is known, a Christian related through marriage to the persecuted family. Discuss whether what he had done was self-evident or not. Compare his conduct with that of Ágnes Bartha’s husband. (http://www.emlekezem.hu/text/bartaagietten.html) Elaborate the role of the rescuers, the importance of their moral example, the critical decisions and their circumstances of crisis. Discuss the issue of human vulnerability. What do the survivors owe their lives to? Did they have any real choices, could the persecuted control their lives and fate, or was it up to merciless historical processes and pure chance? We can see several examples in the text that may be useful to these issues’ discussion. One such exaple is that of the third Fülöp boy, who was in hiding until December 1944 when he was captured and executed by Arrowcross militia. Or the story of Márton Steinkohl who was executed when he happened to have three day’s home leave from his labor service. Was he in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was it something else? Péter Kutas also mentions the activities of the Haluc youth resistance. Discuss who they were and why their example is significant. (See: Cohen, Asher A Haluc ellenállás Magyarországon 1942-1944 Balassi Kiadó 2002.) We may elaborate on the difficult question of how hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were abducted without putting up significant resistance. What factors led up to their civil obediance which put them at the mercy of the forces plotting their destruction when their homeland, its apparatus and a majority of its society had turned against them. What is a 21st Century citizen’s situation in this respect? Have we drawn conclusions from the Holocaust? Many sensitive and crucial core issues. Their discussion requires great sensitivity and empathy, so we must be careful while elaborating the issues not to taint the memories of the innocent victims. For preparation and for the discussion itself we reccommmend you use the questions marked E.
Closing
These suggestions were of course only meant as incitement, as helpful ideas. The aspects can be combined freely.The possibilities dealt with for the source analyses can be used outside history classes as well. These aspects can facilitate a Holocaust-themed discussion or debate in homeroom or other classes too. And viceversa, the history class also needs to consider moral and human aspects and interpretation, and not restrict itself to become a mere inventory of the facts.