I Kiss Your Hands Many Times - Hearts, Souls and Wars in Hungary (Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, 2013)

Author's parents and grandparents came through difficult times in WWII Hungary.  Author, growing up with extended family in NY, had limited understanding of family background until she arranges translation of stacks of letters after her parents died.

I've read lots of WWII stuff - but the story that she frames is one of the most interesting and unique of all.  Partly because it is centered in Hungary - relatively safely away from the fighting until the last year of the war (which I had never thought about).  And Hitler had enough other things keeping him busy such that he didn't put the hammer down on this semi-reliable ally until late in the game.

"I kiss your hands" - a traditional Hungarian departure gesture, also used in the closing of letters.  Aladar - typically guarded in his communications - expressed a bit stronger feelings toward Hanna by adding "many times" in closing letters to her.  Nice.

A few of the threads running through this:

1.  Author's father - Aladar - rising political star in Hungary, from a Christian family.  Encounters Hitler in a couple settings while on government business.  Pretty outspoken against Nazis - which naturally enough didn't help him at certain points in the story.

2.  Author's mother - Hanna - belongs to a Jewish family - incredibly successful business operators, supposedly their operations constituted about 10% of Hungary's GDP (hard to believe).  Wealthy, aristocratic, assimilated, some converted to Christianity - but still, Jews.

3.  As Aladar and Hanna fall in love, anti-Semitic legislation makes the match nigh-impossible.  Hungarian government goes slow on attacking Jews; Nazis finally force the process in 1943 or 1944; too many Hungarians were way too glad to assist.  The Nazi Jew-killing machine was in top condition at this point, and - with plenty of local assistance - murders of Jews in Hungary were accomplished with incredible efficiency.

4.  As the Nazis advance and then, in short order, the Russians start to attack - Aladar ends up in Dachau.  A political prisoner of the Nazis.  Awful experience; he's there when the U.S. army arrives.  Budapest itself badly wrecked, including blowing up beautiful-historic Danube bridges.  The war finally hit home in Hungary with full force.

5.  Prior to Aladar being taken away:  Hanna's family is bargaining with a Nazi - in a deal that was approved by Himmler himself - family members already in camps are released and with most of the rest are allowed to emigrate to Portugal.  In exchange for most of their assets.  Though with a few hostages left behind to make sure the rest behave once outside Hungary.  Aladar not aware of how this is turning out.  (Author explains why Nazis didn't just steal the assets, something to the effect that they were still putting up a show of limited interference with their allies.)

6.  Very touching story in the immediate postwar era - Aladar and Hanna reconnect.  Married in the wreckage of Budapest.

7.  Pretty much immediately after the war, Aladar (still highly thought of) is appointed by the new government to be ambassador to the U.S. - so he and Hanna move to DC.  Hopes for democracy.  Hopes for U.S. intervention.  But the Communists take over Hungarian government in their typical 1940s-thug-style as applied throughout Eastern Europe.  And the U.S. had other priorities - Hungary pretty clearly a lost cause in terms of Soviet domination.  So Aladar is out of a job.  And returning to Hungary is not possible.  But his in-laws start showing up, and they still had both money, and business smarts.  So no danger of missing meals.

8.  Aladar - something of a nervous personality - didn't thrive in the wake of all this.  Not surprisingly.  Did work for Radio Free Europe and Voice of America in relation to Hungary.  It was effective that the author didn't sugarcoat his problems.

9.  The quoted correspondence is pretty amazing throughout.  Hard to imagine educated, articulate folks writing to each other in these circumstances.  Quite wonderful to read.

Author didn't realize until it was too late:  but her parents had quite a love story under truly extraordinary circumstances.

The above doesn't do justice to the book.  I dog-eared dozens and dozens of pages - lots of ideas about history, and just plain nice moments, that I want to keep track of.