Ocseny

5. Őcsény Őcsény is a village in Tolna County, near Szekszárd, not far from the Danube. Őcsény, Decs, and Sárpilis form a region that is called Sárköz (Mud Passage). It is a wine district. The farmers there were relatively rich and most of them intentionally had only one child to keep the wealth together. Women wore many colorful skirts one on top of the other. The number of skirts worn showed the relative wealth of the family.

Tolna County

The more skirts you have the better girl you are! They look like they wear petticoats but these are real skirts on top of each other. The people of Őcsény were unsophisticated peasants. After the daily work in their fields they liked to relax, sitting on benches in front of their houses. When some neighbors walked by, they started a “conversation” with their sitting brethren by asking them in the region’s characteristic dialect: “Kiűtek?” (Sitting out?) The answer was even simpler: “Ki!” (Out!) Ignátz Deutsch (1870-1942) was originally a furrier but he could only make fur caps, vests, and gloves. He could not master the art of making fur coats. He made his living mostly as an innkeeper and grocer on Templom Street. He also traded wheat and distilled pálinka (brandy). He was a strong man and, therefore, very popular in Őcsény. He was on good terms even with Bérárdi, the famous betyár (outlaw). If the young men who brought sacks of wheat for sale were drunk and spilled the wheat before they reached the granary, he The shadoof well (like an oil derrick) simply slapped their faces and is a typical landmark in many kicked them out. Hungarian villages 2

He was also an expert on wines. He never drank any, just turned it over in his mouth and spat it out. He liked to eat fish. The bones came out from below his mustache without the help of his hands. He married Mária Glantz when he was only 19. Mária had an extended family. One of her nephews was Ödön, a very pleasant man, whose wife’s name was Olga (Olly). Mária’s sister, Fáni, was a very outspoken lady. She had two children, Teréz and Mihály (Miska). Miska became director of a bank and a rowing champion. Teréz was a woman of exceptional beauty. She already had two children when she divorced her husband. Divorce at that time carried a stigma well characterized by the following story. After her divorce, Teréz met a dashing young man, Pál (Pali) Kellner, who fell in love with the 26 year-old woman and went to Fáni to ask for the hand of her daughter. Fáni replied: “Are you crazy? You want to marry an old divorced woman with two children?” (After all, she agreed. Teréz and Pali lived a long life happily ever after.) I had a chance to personally know them, even Aunt Fáni who was still alive after World War II. Ignátz bought a small house opposite his own and converted it to serve as a synagogue. According to the Jewish tradition, some prayers are valid only if at least ten adult males pray together. (What a wise rule! It strengthens the community.) There were a little more then ten Jews in Őcsény, so the synagogue could function according to this rule. Ignátz’s favorite horse was called Dongó. When Ignátz went to the Gemenc Forest for wood, the horse knew how to get there. Ignátz just sat on the driver’s seat of his carriage and soon fell asleep. He woke up when the horse stopped. Dongó knew where to stop. Ignátz’s sister was called Margit. She lived in Budapest with her husband, a military officer. They did not have any children. Jakab was Ignátz’s younger brother. He was a dressmaker who specialized in fashionable women’s dresses and became rich. He had his shop in Veres Pálné Street, in the middle of Budapest. He had two daughters. The older one, the second Margit Deutsch, was an exceptional beauty. She married a senior police officer. The younger sister, Janka, married a doctor. Ödön was another brother of Ignátz. He lived in Vienna, then came back to Hungary and soon died. Ignátz and Mária’s first child died in early childhood, but they had five other children. 3

Margit (April 23, 1891- March 17,1933) was next; a beautiful girl, and the third but most important Margit Deutsch from the point of view of this story. Mihály (Móric) (May 19, 1893 - 1944) was the strongest lad in the entire region. When the older lads from the nearby mountains came to the tavern to play cards and started to reach for their knives to settle some argument, the mere sight of the 14-year-old Móric was enough to return them to normal behavior. “We were just joking, Uncle Móric,” they said to him. Once a traveling circus came to the village. An acrobat held a 110-pound weight in his teeth and walked a full circle in the circus ring. The ringmaster offered 50 korona (a lot of money!) to anyone who could do the same. Móric took the weight with his teeth, walked around three full circles, and refused to take the money. He was called to service when the First World War broke out. After training, in 1915 he was sent to the Italian front, where he fought bravely. Once he alone held the enemy back with a machine gun while his battalion retreated, for which he was promoted to sergeant. He was also quite unpredictable. When he was bored of the war, he just mounted his horse and rode home for an unauthorized vacation, after which he was demoted to private. According to some witnesses, he repeated that stunt several times. At Isonzo he was wounded by a shell splinter in his heel and taken prisoner by the Italians. He was assigned to work at the estate of a countess, who fell in love with the handsome, strong young man. At the end of the war she begged him to stay with her, but Móric came back and married Szidónia (Szidi) Wigizer (January 28, 1895 - 1944). They settled down in Decs and started to produce and sell soda water in siphon bottles. They had two children, Ilonka (1920) and Zoltán (Zoli, December 7, 1922). We will meet them later. Sándor, Ignátz and Mária’s next child, served in the First World War, too. When Móric was called to service in 1914, Sándor joined him as a volunteer. He lied that he was already 19 years old, so they let him in. However, he was sent to the Eastern front. He was captured by the Russians at Przemysl and spent several years as a POW among Tartars. They taught him everything they knew about horses. When he came back, he started to buy useless butacsirás (crazy) horses that nobody could train. He beat them with a stick until they “improved” so much that Sándor no longer needed any lashes. The horses understood and obeyed his verbal commands. He could 4

also cure kehes (broken-winded) horses. He hated the Russians, but when he was angry he always swore in Russian. He married Rozi Boros, a beautiful Roman Catholic peasant girl. He became a peasant himself, and most people did not even know that he was Jewish. Their oldest son, Sándor, was an excellent swimmer who drowned in three-foot deep water because of an apparent heart attack at the age of 16. The remaining children: László (Laci), Mariska (1930), Olga, and Ferenc (Feri, 1935) were all trained to handle horses from very young age. Their house was in a street that had been destroyed by fire, so it was called Égett (Burnt) Street. Etel (1899-1944) was a very beautiful girl. Once Kohn, an old friend of Ignátz from nearby Fadd, came to ask her hand for a friend. Etel married Bernáth (Berci) Wigizer (1893-1944), a horse trader and brother of Szidi. This is an example of the inbreeding of Jewish families. In Őcsény and Decs every Jew was a relative of every other Jew. Berci was well known all over the country in the horse trade. He was a handsome man with a mustache who smoked a pipe. He had another sister, Janka, who became the wife of Dezső Filler. Etel and Berci had two beautiful daughters, Mária (1920-1944) and Erzsébet (1928-1944). Ödön, the youngest (1901-1951) became a furrier. He was successful because he figured out that the lining of fur caps can be made from waste fur. Later he managed to make even the outside of hats from little pieces. He first sewed together the pieces and created large fur “tablets.” The caps were then made from these tablets. Later he started to sell his caps to village furriers, so his workshop was like a factory. Mária, their mother, was diabetic. She was in her late forties when her condition demanded the amputation of her legs. She refused and died in 1919. Ignátz ran his inn with the help of his children. There was, however, another inn in the village. It was owned by a widow who had two daughters, Fáni and Mári. Ignátz married Fáni Frankfurter (1874-1944) in 1920.

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