Goodbye to the Munk cousins

Nora and her mom Magda and I said a tearful goodbye today at the Krakow Glowny train station. We had a pleasant dinner at a local Krakow restaurant, trying to squeeze a lifetime’s worth of conversations into one evening.

The Munk family has been apart for more than 60 years—-Magda’s great-grandfather and my great-grandfather were twin brothers and lived in Ujpest (Budapest) in the 1900s. I assume that the two brothers were close, and I think that their offspring were close too. My grandfather Vilmos and his first cousins knew each other and may have been in business together—-some kind of shoe-making business, perhaps. World War II destroyed the fabric of the Munk family, dispersing the cousins to different fates and countries.

Nora and I are third cousins. Nora is a patient young woman who learned English by listening to American TV. She somehow managed to translate for her mother what was in my head and in my heart. We swapped family photos and genealogy files via flash drives, and then I gave Nora unsolicited marriage advice (I couldn’t help myself). Nora is getting married in the near future.

Like many Hungarian Jews of her generation (she is in her thirties), she is trying to reconnect with old traditions and rediscover Judaism. This is no small feat, given the fact that Jewish culture and religion in Hungary was nearly destroyed by the Holocaust and then by Communism. Maybe it was no coincidence that I found Nora and the rest of the Munks when I did. While I cannot offer Nora much in the way of Jewish religious traditions, I can restore a family connection that is strengthened by our relationship to Jewish culture. For example, while Magda and I struggled with language differences, we could hum the refrain of some Jewish songs, like Hava Nagila and Beir Mer Bist du Shoen.

I know that third cousins are not considered “close” family in the U.S. but any remnant of my family is like gold to me. I hope to travel to Budapest in the near future and meet the rest of the extended family. In the mean time, I thank goodness for email and Skype, technology that will allow me to keep in touch.