Chapter 3

Things do not happen without a cause,
nor are things left to chance alone.
When the Almighty plans the destiny of humanity
or the destiny of one man,
He plans it well.
But when one man, or many, plan the destiny
of one man or many—Beware!
Beware!

It was 1934, a beautiful day in the month of September, “Erev” Yom Kippur, the day before Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It is a tradition that before you begin the fast for Yom Kippur, you go to the synagogue or to the Beth Hamidrash to pray. You return home, have a good meal, and return to the synagogue for Kol Nidre services.

Kol Nidre is a prayer for people not free to make their own decisions, for people forced to make statements about what they believe is untrue and what they know is not their own thoughts. By saying Kol Nidre the Jewish person, and the whole Jewish community, identifies with those pains and injustices of previous generations who had to say yes when they meant no. Kol Nidre is a form of confession. Every person, every community, transgresses. Man is separated from the Creator more than he is united. Everyone needs a time to heal within, a time to be forgiven, and a time to forgive. This is the time to balance one’s life between what was achieved, what should have been achieved, and what was left undone. This is a time for reconciliation not just in oneself but in the community, but above all between oneself and the Almighty. We seek to be forgiven for rash actions, for words spoken in haste, and for unkept promises. It is a time to seek forgiveness for insincere utterings and for indecisions when decisions should have been made. For forgiveness and reconciliation, I and the community of Jews throughout the world go to the synagogues to pray on Kol Nidre.

There is but one truth to the day of Yom Kippur: any transgression committed by anyone against the Almighty is atoned on Yom Kippur. But for a transgression of one human being against another, the day of atonement does not begin until each person has made peace with the other. This happens through forgiveness and justice, and sometimes it is accompanied with love—a rare occurrence.

Too many hearts remain burdened with the heavy load they carry, even into the grave. There is always a whisper in the wind of memories of saints and sinners alike. No one can escape the sounds that echo in the wind of memories. The greatest destructive force in the human spirit is the unwillingness to forgive, be it for oneself or another human being.

Yom Kippur teaches us all that the act of forgiveness is a spiritual cleansing that helps perfect the human spirit by promoting health and overall well being of all concerned. To heal the body or mind, one must heal the spirit. Forgiveness can achieve this. Yom Kippur reaffirms that health of the spirit, mind, and body depends on attitude—one’s willingness to forgive not just in words or thoughts but within one’s feelings every day. Yom Kippur teaches that forgiveness demands conscious effort; it is the effort that liberates and transforms the need to repay a wrongful act or lay blame on others. The effort of forgiveness frees the spirit so that one no longer sees oneself as a perpetual victim. The person becomes a Bal’ Teshuva, one who has returned to a higher state of being, born as a new person. This liberation causes miracles to take place.

As I walked toward the synagogue to pray in preparation for fasting, two csendörs, policemen, with bayonets fixed on their Winchester rifles stopped everyone who passed. That is, they stopped everyone who was Jewish, including me. The two gendarmes wore khaki uniforms with long coats. They had heavy boots and hats, dirbilike, which sported pheasant feathers on the right side. The plumes waved in the wind as the csendörs moved. Two leather straps crisscrossed their chests, and their waists were decorated with bullet cartridge containers. On their left shoulders they carried chains and a sword.

One of the csendörs asked me, “What is your occupation?”

“I am a student,” I replied

“What is your name?” came the next question.

I wondered why they wanted to know my name, since these two men were born in my same small town. They had seen me a thousand times and had talked to me several times. Nevertheless I replied, “Sandor Zsigmond.”

“Do you pay taxes?”

“My father does,” was my quick response.

“Where was your father born?”

“Erdély, Transylvania— Romania since the Trianon Treaty of June 1920.”

“Roman?” came the comment in return.

The other said to me, “You can go.”

I took off my hat and said, “Thank you,” and followed with the words, “Yo napot,” meaning good day; then I continued on my way.

The episode troubled me. This never happened to me before. Why this day? Why did they stop me? Why did they stop only the Jewish men and boys? “Something bad is happening,” I said out loud to myself. No answer came back. In my mind there was only silence.

I felt empty. I continued to walk toward the synagogue. A heaviness settled deep in the pit of my stomach. When I arrived, many of the Jewish community were there praying. Some were not aware of what was happening on the main street. But those who had been stopped were very much aware. I didn’t have time to dwell on it as I prayed.

When I returned home, I told my parents what had happened that afternoon. I had my meal, and then we went back to the synagogue together. I wore no shoes but slippers, as one is not allowed to wear leather on Yom Kippur. The synagogue’s floor was covered with straw to keep our feet from getting cold. My father wore a white robe, a kitll, which is given to a man by his bride before marriage. This garment is worn on the eve of Pesach, Passover, for the seder. It is also worn on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur. At the time of death, this garment becomes a shroud.

When services were about to begin, the holy ark was opened and the congregation rose. The cantor said the hinneni prayer, a prayer on behalf of the community. The prayer went like this: “Riboni Shel Olom, Lord of the Universe, in awe and humility I stand before you to beseech you on behalf of your people Israel. In your great mercy have compassion on all of us and me. Strengthen our faith and purify our thoughts. Let your love draw a veil over our failures. May our prayers ascend and be received before your presence.”

The ark was closed and all of us were seated. The congregation entered into a silent meditation. Then we were asked to rise again and the ark was opened as the scrolls of the Torah were taken out. Now the Kol Nidre was recited. It says, “Let all our vows and oaths, all promises we make, obligations we incur to you O God, be null and void, should we after an honest effort find ourselves unable to fulfill them, then be absolved of them.” The scrolls were returned to the ark. The cantor said the barcha, “Praised be God.” The congregation responded, “Praised be God to whom all praise is due.” Then we were seated. Later the rabbi gave a sermon and the service ended.

Some of the congregation stayed all night praying, but most went home, as I did with my parents. The holy days passed, and the family resumed its normal activities. My father went about his business as usual and my sister Sara, now twelve years old, went to school. I studied at the Yeshiva.

A couple of months later, on the last Thursday of November, my father and I concluded the evening prayers at five o’clock. My entire family was in the kitchen—father, mother, sister, and me. It was cold, and my father put some wood in the stove. Then there was a loud knock at the door. It grew louder and more persistent. My mother said to me, “See who it is.”

I looked through the small white curtain that hung on the window of the door. I saw two gendarmes. I said, “Két csendör.”

“Open the door,” said my father. I did.

A gendarme who had three silver stars behind a silver patch on the collar of his uniform asked, “Is Sandor Zsigmond here?”

I replied, “Here I am.”

“You and your family are ordered by the government of Hungary to leave town on the eleven o’clock train to Budapest to be taken to the Toloncz Ház and to be deported from the country.”

I stared in stunned silence. The Toloncz Ház was a detention prison for political prisoners, and the person who had delivered this bombshell was someone who knew me. The gendarme shifted nervously and added, “I’m sorry. It is my job, you know.”

My mother and father were in shock. They came to the door. My father said, “This must be a mistake. My son is but a young child. He has no family. I am Lajos Zsigmond, the head of the family.”

The gendarme replied, “The head of the family is listed as Sandor.”

“A mistake, a dreadful mistake,” my father countered.

My sister started to cry, but my mother hid her pain well. She said to my father, “Lajos, what shall be done? What do we take with us?”

The sergeant, Orméster, said to my mother, “Only what you can carry in your hand. You carry nothing else.” They turned and left.

The people of the town knew our plight long before we did. Hours before they came for us, the csendör commander let word slip that they were coming for us. The news traveled fast. The townspeople arrived at our house and took whatever they could, giving us in exchange a few pengös for our worldly goods. One of our neighbors offered a fair price for my pet goat. For my birthday a few years earlier, my father had carried the young goat home in his arms for my birthday. I named her Mucky and raised her myself. She grew to be very strong. Her coat was light brown and her underbelly was white. I used to put a basket with a couple of fillers inside it around her neck and send her across the street to the grocery store. She would return with the basket filled with oats. I took the basket off her neck, gave her the oats, and watched her consume them with great delight. Now I reluctantly gave her up, but I knew that Mucky would have a good home and that the money we received would come in handy in the future.

During this tumultuous evening I remembered my teacher’s words, gamzu le’tovah—all of this is for the best. This is so even if, and especially when, you cannot find a reason for something. I had to search for all that was good in every person, in every condition, and in every experience. I had to excuse the evil in the person or in the event. My teacher had drilled these thoughts into my mind over years of study: “For all of the people who bring evil on others are the same in the eyes of the Creator, as much as all those who presume to do good. Death does not come to the evil person alone but also to the good, to the high and low alike. In the world of the Almighty all things are set right, but in the world of man—seldom!” I must forgive the gendarmes and all those who uprooted us from our home, from our community, from our life. I must accept the experience and learn to find the hidden meaning it held for my family and for me. Wisdom and understanding do not grow in tears.

Mother said to us, “Let us not lose our heads. The present moment is what we have to deal with. There is no time to shed tears. We need our sanity to be with us.” We went to work gathering what my mother thought would be essential to our future.

I ran as fast as I could to see my teacher, Samuel Markowitz, and then in great haste to my godfather, the Grand Rabbi. He was the one people came to for advice. He was the man to whom the people of the town and surrounding communities came for consolation, Jews and Christians alike.

When I arrived, the Grand Rabbi was about to begin the evening prayers. Many of the community were present, including the head of the Yeshiva, Hayem Mira. I did not like Hayem Mira. I had lost respect for him when he did not reprimand his son Moshe for placing a rope around the neck of a young man and dragging him through the main street for a trumped-up religious violation. Moshe had humiliated the man and caused pain to his mind and body, and his father’s silence angered me. When I said goodbye to my godfather, I just nodded my head slightly to Hayem Mira, respecting him as a rabbi but not as a man. It is good to remember in order to heal but not to forget. No human being should be ever humiliated by another.

I ran home. We had little time to pack and were allowed to take little.

My mind raced. Why did they name me as head of the family? I was definitely not the head. Yet my name was on the order. When the csendörs had first stopped me on the way to the temple before Yom Kippur, I had told them that I was a student. I had no means of supporting someone. They knew how old I was. They knew everything about us. The roots of my mother were deep in this town. Her two mothers were buried here, as was her surrogate father, Shandy Bátchy. My sister and I were born here. We were by birth Hungarian, but we were not recognized as such. We were Jewish—was this our crime? We had been singled out, but my father and mother never figured out the official reason for taking us from our home and imprisoning us. We were the first Jewish family in Hungary to be put into prison like this.

I do not remember if we walked to the station or went in a wagon. No matter; we arrived. It was cold that evening. There was only a small waiting room and a room for the station master. The train arrived on time, at eleven o’clock. We were ushered into the third-class section which had wooden benches to sit on. The journey from Bodrogkeresztur to Budapest took about seven hours. During the trip no one slept. My father and mother wondered what would become of us. My sister cried.

My family was encountering a challenge that would test our faith in the Almighty to the core of our being. Others had faced similar tests, and many more would have their faiths tested after us. Our test was in the disintegration of our standing in the community, in losing our home, in losing our means of supporting ourselves, and in my parents’ loss of self-respect. Luckily, it did not cause a crisis of faith. My parents could have asked, “Why, O God?” I did not hear these words. I heard only, “God will help.”

Such an event shattered our spirits like a devastating earthquake. But while the ground under our feet falls away, the heart must look to God. We must look not to what is happening nor why but only to the moment, to accept the event and see where life will lead. I knew our physical destiny, but the destiny of our spirit depended on how we accepted or rejected the test we were given.

A battle of emotions raged inside me, emotions of fear and joy. These were real feelings. I feared for the future of my family—and felt real joy at leaving this town. There was no future here for me or for my father. All I could look forward to was a struggle, just as my father struggled. I had no chance for education here, and without education, nothing could be achieved. In one sense I was exhilarated, secretly rejoicing in this our tragedy. It was a shameful feeling, and it had a sobering effect on me. At the same time, I felt responsible for our predicament: Had I not gone to temple for Yom Kippur prayers, this would not have happened. All kinds of thoughts were jumbled in my mind. Both questions and answers streamed through without end.

I remembered what my teacher Samuel had said: “As long as one human being questions a thing, truth will become known, regardless of how many years it may take.” I began to accept the idea that this event was not an end to our life but a beginning. The event was the movement that I was hoping would lead us toward the promised land, the America where my uncles and aunts and cousins would be waiting for us. This hope ignited my brain and kept ringing in my ears, even as I found myself awakened by the train’s whistle as it pulled into the east, Keleti, station in Budapest. The gendarmes fixed their bayonets while we were still in the compartment.

We gathered our belongings, stepped off the train, and stood on the platform, waiting for the gendarmes to lead us to our destination. They took their positions behind us and told us to move toward the exit and into the street. We began our march with a slow pace, down a long corridor in the train station.

The station’s huge clock rang six times. My eyes scanned the trains and the people who gazed out at us. It was still dark. It was winter and the air was damp. There was snow on the streets.

This was not the first time I had been to Budapest. In the summer of 1931, I was swimming in the River Bodrog with my friends. One of them pushed me under, stirring up gravel on the river’s floor. Some sand lodged in my left ear, causing an infection. Dr. Kahn urged my mother to take me to the children’s hospital, the Brody Hospital, in Budapest, for an operation. During the procedure I did not receive any anesthetic but was given something to bite on. While the doctor opened my eardrum with a knife, I held on with both hands to my chair. He put a pump in my ear and drained the pus and sand.

My thoughts were interrupted by one of the gendarmes. “Move faster,” he told me. “You are dragging your feet.” I tried to move quickly with my load of belongings.

I looked around me. It appeared that thousands of eyes were looking at us, asking questions: “Who are these people?” “Why are the bayonets fixed?” Why indeed? We were not criminals. We were not chained to each other, but we might as well have been. The csendörs treated us like criminals the moment we arrived at the station. They seemed to have forgotten that they knew us, but we had known each other since I was born; we were all from the same town; we had swum in the same river, Bodrog; we had played in the same school grounds; we had been friends at one time. Now they were the guards and we the prisoners, and the people on the streets gazed at us on this early and cold winter morning.

I turned my head to look at their faces. I saw in their eyes some ambivalence, yet they also had the stern, hard expressions of military officials. We marched to the beat of their goading, and to the cadence of humdrum noise around us. I felt out of place amid the glare of the streetlights and the noise of the cars. All I could see of my family were their backs. My mother pulled my sister close to her, comforting her. I could only imagine what my family saw and felt, but I did not have to hear what their hearts spoke. My heart did the listening on its own. I knew that I had to be strong because it was my fault that this had happened to us—so I reasoned.

After walking about twenty minutes, as the sun was beginning to rise, we arrived at Toloncz Ház. It seemed gigantic. It took about ten minutes to find the black iron gate, enormous in the wintry morning light. I saw that what I had thought was the prison was only the outside walls surrounding the main structure. The walls were tall and had wire on top.

We were ushered into the yard, some papers were signed, and the gendarmes left. We remained standing in the snow. The building behind the wall was ominous; everything was blackened. The snow on the roofs was dirty. Imprisoned men walked in a circular pattern, some blowing their hands in the frigid air, some buttoning their coats. We had never seen anything like it.

Soon some guards in blue uniforms approached. They were rendör, regular policemen. They motioned to my mother and sister to go with them. Different policemen took my father and me away to a different building. We were registered, fingerprinted, deloused, showered, and deloused again before assigned to a permanent cell. Everyone was required to go through this procedure. I soon learned that showering and delousing took place three times a week.

Once we were dressed, my father and I were taken to a building across the yard at the north end of the compound. There were buildings on all sides, but we were taken to the last building. My mother and sister were led to a different section of the same building. Our belongings were taken away, and we were told that they would be returned to us when we were set free.

There were iron bars all around the inside of the building. We walked down a long corridor to an open door, also of heavy iron. It had a small window near the top for the guard to look through. This door led to a one-room cell that held a large number of people. I had a habit of counting everything, so I counted the inmates; the number was over forty.

The cell was oblong, and in the center was a concrete bench. I noticed one small window near the ceiling that brought in some daylight. At the end of the cell was the plumbing, with one or two toilets and a large communal urinal. The stench from the urinal was so strong that I had to hold my breath when I used it. There were no beds. For sleeping there was a stack of flat-spring metal frames. There were no blankets, and we would have to sleep in our clothes. The guard gave each of us an aluminum cup and plate. My father took a place in one corner of the room, and we settled in for a long stay.

Fellow inmates approached us. They asked us where we came from and about our crime. They wondered what a boy of fourteen was doing in a political prison. Some introduced themselves and related their crimes. Mostly they were political prisoners, although there were some thieves among them and other criminals. My father said we came from Bodrogkeresztur, and that the authorities listed me, his son, as head of the family. Without a visible means of support, they took all of us as unwanted.

The prisoners were sympathetic. It became clear to me that most of the inmates were indeed political prisoners. They told us that some of them were taken from one border to another and that no country would have them. My father said to me quietly, “We are Jewish, and the Hungarian government considers us Romanian. They will do the same to us.” I was the only 14-year-old whose crime was being born in Hungary to a mother born in Hungary and a father who was a Hungarian soldier in World War I but whose birthplace was now considered Romania. On top of that, we were Jewish.

At mealtime, the bread was a roll as hard as a rock. They called it tzvibok. For breakfast they gave us some weak coffee to drink. At lunch we received some soup, a slush made of potatoes or beans. In the evening there was no food. The cell was cold. Only body heat generated by the men kept the room warm. There were a few radiators in the room, but they had little effect.

When I arrived at the prison, I was tall for my age. I was slender but strong. I was mentally alert and had a keen curiosity about the world. My hair was cut short, almost shaven, but as was the custom of Jewish children and men of Orthodox belief, I had a lock of hair on both sides in front of my ears as a sign that I followed the Nazarene tradition that no razor would touch my temples. The temples were considered a spiritual space before God.

One morning, after we had been in the prison for about a week, I became aware that my father was a broken man. His spirit had weakened. He was quiet and listened intently to the other inmates said. He walked up and down the cell with his head down, shrugging his shoulders nervously, swallowing as if he had something stuck in his throat. He was not the same person I knew. I, on the other hand, accepted my confinement as an adventure of a lifetime, a kind of challenge. I wondered where it would lead. I knew I would never go back to my birthplace again. I never wanted to go back to the past. There was nothing there for me or for my family. The first week was the hardest, I thought. From here on, it should be easier. Besides, with each day’s passing, there was less time that we would have to be locked up. Sooner or later, the doors would open and let us out.

I talked for a long time to one of the guards. I asked him about his role in the prison. I asked him about my mother and sister, and he gave me answers. These conversations continued frequently, and one day he suggested I shorten the locks over my ears so that I would not have to wear them behind my ears. I did cut them shorter, and I liked it. My father was not pleased. He told me, “You are looking like a goy.”

I had come to this Budapest prison from a town of four thousand people where most were farmers or quarry workers. We had a small view of the world and limited education. But we had the richness of a country upbringing. I had left behind my friends, both Christian and Jewish, and now had to grow up fast in a world about which I knew little. I started this education of the real world on the basis of the ideas I learned in the Torah and the Bible, my practical experience, and the impressions that my small town had left on me. All things impress each other constantly, for good or ill. When one accepts such impressions by conscious choice, they become direct inspiration. My test was to decide between what to accept and what to reject.

In Yiddish, these influences are referred to as koach kehilla, community power, and the words are used synonymously with “family.” Koach kehilla is a person’s connection to traditional beliefs that support his identity, the feeling that he belongs to a family of people—in my case, to the Jewish community and to the greater community of Bodrogkeresztur, whose members included Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Greeks, and Serbs. Koach kehilla must then become the koach neshamah, the power of the human spirit. This community power had to be converted to a personal power. I had to draw on my own strength by transferring the power that the community gave me to my inner self, regardless of how small or weak it was. There was no better time or place to start than in this prison, now.

In this cell were people who were now my teachers. It was likely that I would never see any of them again after I left this place. Each day some of our cellmates were taken away and new ones brought in. Some crossed to other countries, only to be picked up and brought back here. Some were shot on their journey. But their pains, their kindnesses, their resentments, their feelings toward their circumstances, their reasons for their feelings, the lessons they learned and the meanings they drew from them—all of these they recounted to each other and to me and my father. They were my teachers, this cell was my classroom, and the prison, the Toloncz Ház, was my schoolhouse.

I remembered my rabbi’s words: “As long as you question, you will find the truth.” The opportunity to learn was there, but what I would learn was up to me alone. Everything and everyone becomes a teacher in life, like the goat that led King David out of the mountains. I began to examine myself by asking questions. What did the community pass on to me? What did my parents pass on to me? Am I to honor those who have caused my family to be in this state? If so, I must honor myself too. If not, do I give up self-honor? How does honor affect a person’s life? These were troublesome questions, but they needed to be asked. At age fourteen, imprisoned for nonsense, I had no answers. But life answers all questions through the meanings derived from experience itself. Time and patience was needed. Patience is the best teacher, the best friend, and a great creative force; it is an ally to the human spirit.

Occasionally I was permitted to see my mother and sister. I wasn’t allowed to go into their cell, so I stood on the other side of the bars. My mother asked me, “How do you feel?”

“Fine, Mother,” I replied. I asked my sister how she was and how she felt. My mother told me that the cell was very cold but that the rendör was nice to them. I asked about the food.

“Edible,” was her reply.

I reassured my mother, telling her that all would come to an end soon and all would turn out right. I felt I was right but did not know how. We had no home to go back to, no jobs, no future, but still I felt that all was for the best. Something would happen for the good of us all. I should have felt bad inside, but I didn’t. Bearing witness to your mother and sister behind bars and your father’s wet cheeks and bloodshot eyes is terrifying for a child. I should have felt guilty for feeling good inside.

The nights in prison were long, and the cell’s light was scant. In the dark I heard the men talk. Some spoke about their imprisonment; some spoke of their wives and children; some talked about how they had exploited women. Some stories were tragic; some were explicitly amorous.

What would my mother or teacher say, I thought to myself, if they knew what I was hearing? You should put your fingers in your ears, I thought. But I did not. I was all ears. They didn’t teach these things in the Yeshiva and certainly not at home. What you hear won’t hurt you as long as you do not do it, I thought. It was time to be a man. But what disturbed me most while I tried to sleep was all the human suffering. Each person had a story to tell, a personal history that was often filled with woe. Some were bitter. Some talked about killing themselves. Others sought revenge. Some of the men cried as they fell asleep.

I often fell asleep with troubling thoughts, feelings of sadness one moment and gladness the next, hopeful and encouraged at the same time. But once I looked around the cell and saw my father curled up, weeping on the concrete floor. In my mind I saw my mother and sister doing the same. Now I blamed myself for bringing this tragedy upon them. “Why was I on the street going to the synagogue on Erev Yom Kippur? Had I not been there, this might not have happened!”

But history has its own agenda. Once it begins, its journey it does not stop until its purpose is achieved. Much more human suffering was to come into the world. These innocents were imprisoned now, but Adolf Hitler had just become chancellor, and Hungary’s Admiral Miklos Horty had become a willing ally to Germany.

In the mornings, all the cellmates were taken to the showers to be deloused. We were led to the yard and formed a circle. First we walked slowly, and then faster and faster until we ran for about twenty minutes. No one talked. We were bundled up to keep warm. In another part of the yard, the women prisoners did the same as us. They moved their bodies to the rhythm of their individual minds and hearts. This was the way, day in and day out. Some new faces, some old. There were always changes, and for some there were no changes. Time moved slow and fast at the same time.

The authorities permitted my mother to leave the prison to find help for us. She searched for someone who could determine why we had been selected for this ordeal. First she visited the Jewish community, but they were of no help. “We do not want to make waves,” was their reply. Each kehilla, or community, protects itself by denying entrance to “strangers” from outside. The saying “Kol Yisrael Chaverim,” “All Israel is one brotherhood,” was applied selectively. In this community, not every outsider was welcomed.

The leader of the Jewish community in Budapest acted to protect them from government retaliation against them. Acceptable? Yes, in light of the fact that my mother was accompanied by a policewoman whose job was to report all of mother’s activity outside the prison walls. The eyes and the ears of the government were always on everyone. This was especially true of those considered undesirable, Jews and Christians both.

My mother then discovered an organization of military veterans of Erdély, Transylvania—the army unit my father had served. The general who was in charge of the 21st Székey army command, Karoly Kratofil, was still alive. My father’s former immediate superiors were now running the country’s gendarmes, the chendörök. My mother was granted permission to see General Kratofil, and he intervened. Some months later, in March 1935, we were allowed to leave Toloncz Ház.

We were given permission to stay in Budapest on the condition that none of us could leave the city without the knowledge of the rendörök, police, and that we were to report to police headquarters on the first and fifteenth of each month. Our permit was subject to revocation and we could be deported to the Romanian border. We were out on “good behavior.” The Hungarian government asked the Romanians to accept us, but they declined. We were now officially a family without a country.