This
was an intriguing sounding choice from a list of five that I could choose from
to review. The author, Sacha Batthyany, is a journalist, born in Switzerland to
Hungarian parents. He belongs to a once aristocratic wealthy and powerful
Hungarian family who lost everything in the second world war, and the communist
takeover immediately afterwards. Like many wealthy families, his grandmother's
family chose to flee, in this case to Switzerland. Sometime before the war, his great uncle,
Count Batthyany, had married Margit Thyssen-Bornesmisza, sister of Baron
Thyssen-Bornesmisza, billionaire Swiss industrialist and famous art collector,
and they lived in the castle the family owned in Rechnitz, a town near the
Austrian-Hungary border.
Quite
by chance, around 2007, Sacha finds out that Margit was involved in a massacre
of 180 Jews that took place while she was hosting a party one night towards the
end of the war at the family castle. Amongst the guests were German aristocrats
and SS officers, as well as local officials. This is the first he has heard of
such an appalling event, naturally he must find out more, and so his journey
begins, the result of which is this memoir.
Once
I had finished reading this book, I tracked down via Google what may be the
original article that propelled Sacha into investigating and answering the
questions about his family's past. It is clear that the writer of the article,
David Litchfield, does not have a high opinion of Sacha Batthyany, but
that is another story and just as intriguing as this book. Links to the article
and the writer of it are at the bottom of this review.
After
so many years, so much death, records destroyed or altered, so many people
refusing to speak, it is very hard to know what is the truth and what isn't.
Hungary, being behind the Iron Curtain for so long too has not helped the
dissemination of information, and with virtually no-one from that time still
alive, maybe the real truth will never come out. However, this does not detract
at all from a most interesting and at times very emotional journey that the
author must take to track down what his family members did or did not do.
Sacha
has a number of sources in his search. Firstly, his father is still alive, and
as a small boy lived in the castle, although too young to remember what
happened in 1944. He is most reluctant to speak about what happened, the rumours,
any coverup. Sacha's grandmother, Maritta, kept a diary during the terrible war
years, and it is in reading this that Sacha comes across another tragic and
violent episode involving a local Jewish family. Sacha again has to question
everything he has heard about his family and what went on during those
years.
His
investigations uncover the daughter of the Jewish family, Agnes, now very
elderly and living in South America with her own daughters. She was a friend of
Sacha's grandmother and also kept a diary during the war years, survived
Auschwitz and its aftermath, but never knew what had happened to her parents or
her brother. The family very generously allow Sacha to read the diaries, and
eventually he is able to return to Agnes and tell her exactly what happened to
the rest of her family.
Secrets,
secrets and more secrets. As the years pass, the survivors of the war years are
dying. In many cases they take the secrets of what happened to them, to their
communities, betrayals, good deeds and bad, to the grave with them. It was a
truly terrible time, and who can blame them for wanting to bury it all as deep
as they can. That their children and now grandchildren are beginning their own
investigations is producing many many books of this ilk such as 'The Hare With
Amber Eyes' by Edmund de Vaal. Sacha Batthyany is clearly very troubled about
what his family did or did not do during the war, and the veil of silence he
appears to keep coming up against is difficult for him to bear.
This
book is as much about the author's journey of discovery as it is about what actually
happened. At least two trips to the town of Rechnitz, one with his elderly and
reluctant father, another to Buenos Aires, and weekly visits with his
psychoanalyst are all carefully documented. He actually struggles more with
what happened to Agnes's family than he does the massacre. This may be because
the massacre has been well documented, accurately or otherwise, but the deaths
of Agnes's parents not at all. His 'family' guilt almost consumes him, and as
annoying as I found them, the weekly sessions with Dr Strassberg have their own
reveal.
Sacha
Batthyany is just one of many thousands of descendants of people who have lived
through terrible times such as the second world war. There will be many, many
other stories such as what he has uncovered, and it is indeed good that we get
to hear of them, wondering what we would ourselves do in such situations that
aren't really all that long ago. For these reasons alone it is worth reading,
and I am putting this into my book club, because I just know it will lead to all
sorts of discussion.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/the-killer-countess-the-dark-past-of-baron-heinrich-thyssens-daughter-395976.html
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