1993, április 17
1993-ban a még élő 6 unokája Endre Zsigmondnak elhatározta, hogy nagyszülei emlékére egy családi emlékművet állítanak Szentkúton, házasságuk 100.-ik, a nagyszabású és örökemlékű „Aranyla-kodalom” 50.-ik évfordulójára, 1993 szeptember 3.-án. Az unokák közül Szappanos Pista volt ennek a kezdeményezője és Tamás öccsével kivitelezője, a többi négy unoka, Hegyeshalmy-Fischerné Endre Mária, Endre Zsiga, Versényiné Geréby Zsuzsi és Geréby Jancsi lelkes közreműködésével. Az emlék-művet Pista tervei alapján a kiskunfélegyházai sírkőfaragó mester Bozóki István (Bozóki Testvérek Kft.) készítette és állította fel a pálosszentkúti kegyhely plébánosának külön engedélyével, az ottani templom sírkertjében, az 1944 őszén itt elesett magyar katonák elhagyatott és már feledésbe menő sírhelyei mellett, méltó környezetben. Az emlékmű költségét a 6 unoka egyenlően viselte.
Az emlékmű megvalósításáról szóló értesítést és annak felavatásához való meghívót ugyancsak Pista küldte szét a világon szétszórt 17 dédunokának. Ezek: Endre Laci és Jella Argentínában, Hegyes-halmy-Fischer István, Kinga és Anita Ausztráliában, Versényi Zsuzsi, Jutka és Kati, Geréby Zsuzsi, Hanna, Sári, Klári és Garet, Szappanos Kati, Laci, Gyuri és Anikó az USA-ban. Angol nyelvterületre az alábbi levél ment ki, míg a délamerikaiak ennek spanyol változatát kapták. Nem magyarul, hanem az ottani nyelven, hogy a dédunokák nem-magyar házastársai is kellően meg tudják érteni mi is törté-nik.
Ám, a level:
“Szentkút. Holy Well, or Holy Fountain. Legend has it, from as far back as the Turkish occupation in the XV-th century, that there has always been a marvelous spring here, gushing forth clear cool water in the middle of the Nagyalföld, where such things are otherwise unknown. Legend says that, the faithful of those times had used the underwater cavity of this spring to hide the Holy Sepulcher, saving it from plunder and destruction by the marauding Turks. Later, in the IXX-th century people said to have seen the Virgin Mary blessing the waters of this spring. Since then, this place has become a goal of pilgrimage for many. Healings of all kinds are said to have occurred. The pilgrimage, Búcsújárás, continues today.
Every year at Pentecost, tens of thousands of faithful come by foot, on busses and all other available conveyances. The little church, which was rcbuilt a hundred years ago on the ruins of the one believed to have been built during Szent István's time, holds only one hundred people. During the mass the rest stand outside under the shades of the ancient trees of the park surrounding it. The once freely flowing spring is just a well today - its water being pumped up to basins from where people can drink or fill their containers...
Kedves Dédunokák!
Why am I telling you all this? Because my grandparents, your great-grandparents, Endre Zsigmond and his wife Imike, lived most of their married life on their country estate, right next to this holy place, called Szentkút. Your father/mother and I, and the other grandchildren spent many memorable and lovely summers and Christmases there. I am sure you too have heard nostalgic stories and memories about this place from him/her. Come September 3rd of this year, it will be the 50th anniversary of the most memorable event in our family's history: the Aranylakodalom, or the Golden Wedding Anniversary of Endre Zsigmond and his wife.
The six still living grandchildren, your father/mother among them, have decided to commemorate this event, and celebrate in the new fresh air and freedom and to remember the past, by erecting a memorial to our grandparents and his family in the holy garden of Szentkút. Those of us who can, will gather there from the four comers of this earth to pay homage to our ancestors and to leave a permanent historical reminder of the tragedy that caused this and thousands of other families to leave this homeland and scatter all over the world.
We will bring mementos, a piece of earth, a flower from the graves of those who have passed on in faraway lands. They will be interred at the foot of the memorial.
You are one of the 17 great-grandchildren living in Australia, Argentina, Canada or the USA. Each one of your parents have their roots in this homeland. Their rich heritage, their soul were both born and formed there. You have inherited part of this heritage, this soul. You are part of this family and this celebration is your celebration as well, whether you are able to join us or be with us in spirit only.
On this day in 1943, over a hundred family members and guests gathered at the Endre mansion in Szentkút. Nagypapa, dressed in the traditional attire of nobility, the díszmagyar, and Nagymama were driven
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the short distance from the estate mansion to the little church of Szentkút in the grand carriage, hintó, drawn by four snow white Lippizaner horses. The rest of the guests, similarly dressed in traditional attires, followed in their carriages or autos. It was a sight I can still vividly recall. A high mass was said by Ákos Páter, the senior friar of the then resident Order of Paulus, or Pálos Rend. Afterwards, all the guests gathered at the mansion where a great feast was served, in keeping with the best national tradition. Food of all kinds, the best of wines, and of course gypsy music, until morning.
This celebration was a high point in the social life at Szentkút, where many guests have enjoyed the Endre hospitality over the years. Nagypapa enjoyed having guests and his own wines and dinner parties were famous in the country. In the early years, with five young beautiful daughters, the country’s eligible young men came. Later the families and their children. And the country's notable personages. If the Szentkút guest book were still in existence today, we could find such names as Jenő and Ernő Huszka, popular composers of the day, György Oláh, one of the top joumalists in the country, Gyula Gömbös, prime minister of Hungary, István Horthy, the Regent's brother, Archduke Joseph von Habsburg, and many others.
Nagypapa was a feudal patriarch in the noblest sense of the word, a remnant of the last century. He treated everybody with paternalistic fairness, but his scorn could be great if someone crossed him. Nagymama, the grand lady, a saintly figure of kindness and goodness ruled over the family and the household. There was not a person on this earth who didn't love and revere her.
In 1944, almost exactly a year after the Aranylakodalom, this life, this world ceased to exist forever.
Bombs from thousands of American planes devastated the cities. The queen of the Danube, Budapest was Iaid to ruin. The retreating Germans blew up all the beautiful bridges. And on Christmas of 1944 the Communist Russian hordes have taken the Capital. The ensuing 45 years have obliterated all traces of the once great spiritual nobility of the nation.
My, and every other family with an Endre member in it, left their homes, their homeland, along with thousands of their countrymen. You may wonder why it was such a seemingly foregone conclusion that leave we must. History was repeating itself with a vengeance. After the First World War, as Communism came to life, our people have tasted the terrors and cruelty of this system when this pestilence first swept over the country in 1918 and 1919. Among many others, Nagypapa had been taken and kept hostage for weeks - his life being threatened if certain demands were not met. Yes, everyone in the country, with property or social or official position knew with certainty what was coming. That their life as they knew it will have ended with the renewed conquest of Communism.
We all know what ensued. The majority of the educated class had left the country to scatter to the four comers of the world. Our family first fled to western Hungary. Most of us, along with Nagypapa and Nagymama stayed at a quaint little village near Kőszeg, named Velem. Nagypapa was in ill health. He was witnessing the second coming of the pestilence, and this time his intelligence told him it was not going to go away. Szentkút, his home and his life was overrun by the hordes, the country was lost, and an age, a social order has come to an end. On Oct 12th, 1944, in an apple orchard in that little village he took his own life. In his well known steady, deliberate handwriting he wrote his last letter to Nagymama, his wife. Read this and feel the nobility of this patriarch from an age past:
"Édes jó Anyukám! Vesebántalmaim mostanában éjjelenként oly erősen jelentkeznek, hogy csak az operátio segíthetne, de mivel ilyen háborús időben 80 éves koromban én magamat operáimnak alá nem vethetem, bocsásson meg hogy fegyverhez kellett nyúlnom.
Egy becsülettel eltöltött ilyen hosszú élet után Isten nevében szeretettel búcsúzom mindnyájuktól azzal hogy szolgáljon vigasztalásul hogy ezen napokban már nagy tehertétel vagyok, mert exponált múltam miatt a Maguk tovább menekülését is igen nagyon megnehezítettem volna.
Most pedig arra kérem teljesítse azon utolsó kívánságomat hogy egyszerű fakoporsóba itt Velemben temessenek el....
Én már sem hazámnak, sem családomnak segítségére lenni nem tudok. Semmi célja életemnek. - Isten áldása kísérje minden lépésüket.
Mindnyájukat igaz nagy szeretettel csókolja
Édes atyjuk -- Endre Zs. --- 1944 okt. II. Velem. "
His grave is unmarked, only some of the old local folks who admired and revered him remember which great pine tree shades and protects this great man as he rests. A man, who was a great patriot and who proved this in his private and public life. He served his country not only with sword as a volunteer member of the militia that fought for the last bit of territory to be lost to the treaty of Trianon, but also with words and deeds as the people's elected representative and later senator of the country's Parliament. He could not bear to leave this country, and he had no choice.
A month later the clan fled across the Austrian border from Velem, from Csorna, from wherever they were awaiting this last act. In cars, and trucks, and tractors pulling wagons, with as much earthly possessions as could be saved. By the time each of us reached the relative safety of western Germany, most of the possessions got left behind.
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We arrived on foot and with only as much as he or she could carry. What was saved was sometimes bizarre and tragicomical. A ball gown, a birdcage, keys to gates and storerooms of onetime homes.
The years of early exile in Germany were sad and merciless. Even the faint hope of being able to return home was fading year by year. In the late forties and early fifties most of the Endre clan left Germany. Laci Bácsi's son, Endre Zsiga and his young wife and baby daughter, sailed for Argentina. Soon afterward they brought Nagymama to Argentina also. She was over 80 herself by this time and took the traumatic transplantation very hard.
Soon after arrival, she died and was buried in the small cemetery in Tigre, Argentina, not far from Buenos Aires.
Zsiga has two children, a son László, who in tum has four sons - the only remaining ones carrying on the félegyházi Endre name - and a daughter Jella. Jella has three children and lives in Argentina as well. Zsiga retumed to Germany, after his divorce. Laci Bácsi's daughter, Endre Mária, Babci to all of us in the family, returned to Hungary for a brief period in the late forties. She married Hegyeshalmy-Fischer Elemér there, fled again to Germany, then later emigrated to Australia. She has three children and several grandchildren all living in Australia. Geréby Imréné, Ilonka Néni and the Geréby clan emigrated to the USA. Ilonka Néni died in New York, leaving behind two of her children Jancsi and Zsuzsi. Together they have eight daughters and numerous grandchildren. All living in the USA. Várdai Istvánná, Etus Néni had no children. She and her husband never left Germany, and died there in the fifties. She is buried in Raubling.
Újhelyi Tiborné, Marika Néni had no living children at this time. She and Tibor Bácsi came to live in the USA and both died there. They are both buried in Cleveland, Ohio. Szidi Néni, our dearest aunt, who never married because polio in her childhood made her physically handicapped, remained in Germany. In soul and spirit, she is the grandest person to every one of us who know her. She is in her nineties now, living very quietly in a nursing home in Bad Tölz, Germany. Szappanos Istvánné, Márta Néni, is my mother. We left Germany in 1949 for the USA. We have lived here ever since. I have four children and one granddaughter. My brother, Tamás has never married, and, after retiring from the US Air Force as a lieut. colonel, has repatriated to Hungary two years ago and makes his living there as a high school English teacher. My mother is in her nineties now, widowed for 7 years.
On these few pages I have tried to convey to you a piece of family history which, at the same time is a small part of the history of our motherland as well. I hope I have given you a sense and a feel for our roots even though this family, as thousands of others, lives scattered across this globe. The Lord has allowed some of us still living, to see the yoke of communism lifted from our onetime homeland. The reason to be in exile has ceased, and yet we can't return home again. Because, now home is where our children are, where our parents are buried, and where we have lived most of our lives. What we can do, however, is to nourish those roots, to hold each other's hands across the wide oceans.
This gathering at Szentkút, this celebration is meant to commemorate our determination that by honoring our ancestors we keep alive the brotherhood of the family. This memorial is to be the touchstone to which all of us can return to from time to time, to touch and to feel the reality of those roots that no one should have to live without.
Long after we have left home, to be scattered, we had lost faith that one day we would complete this journey - that we could somehow close the circle. With this memorial, we mean to anchor the fínal pillar of that time-bridge that began soaring into the vast unknown void 50 years ago.
We will gather once more on the now crumbling and neglected great veranda of the Szentkút mansion, to pay homage to our ancestors and to revisit old memories - to look for the old trees of the once beautiful park, for the smells and sounds of years gone by, it is gone now, gone with the wind...
If you cannot be with us that day in Szentkút, as I know for most of you it is impossible, may I ask this: help us get to know each other by writing a bit of history about yourself, your family and your parents, with pictures, and your views on all of this. Send it to me in time so it can be shared by all those who gather in Szentkút in September.
I will try to collect all these, as well as all memorabilia and pictures from the gathering, in an album and copy it somehow so everyone may receive a full set.
Atyafiságos szeretettel Pista bácsi.
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Érkezés a pálosszentkúti kegyhelyhez. B-j: Záhonyi Botond (családi barát), Szappanos Gyuri (fiam), Endre Zsiga, Szappanos Laci (fiam), Szappanos László (unokaöcsém
Kecskemétről), Szappanosné Zsuzsa, Geréby János.
A bejáratnál. B-j: Szappanos István (én), Szappanos Laci (fiam), Záhonyi Botond (családi barát), Szappanos László (Kecskemét), Királyné Beretvás Katalin
(unokanővérem, Kecskemét), Endre Zsiga, Geréby János
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A templomban. B-j: Dr. Tomaschek László, mellette két fia, Tomaschek barát (,), Tomaschekné Geréby Zsuzsi, mellette kisfia, Geréby János, Endre Zsiga.
A templomból visszük nagyanyánk maradványait. B-j: Tomaschek Laci, Szappanos Laciű (fiam), Szappanos Tamás (öcsém), Endre Zsiga, Geréby
János, Szappanos István (én)
Endre Zsigmondné, Gulner Mária nagyanyánk sírkeresztje a kripta lábánál. B-j: Szappanos Laci és Gyuri (fiaim) és
én.
Ünnepi üzenetek, levelek felolvasása: Endre Zsiga és Szappanosné Zsuzsa.
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Szappanos Tamás és a kis 7 éves Tomaschek István, aki viseli azt a fehér bocskai ruhát amit Tamás viselt 50 évvel
ezelőt az Aranylakoldalmon.
A négy unoka a szentkúti kúria nagy verandájának lépcsőjén.
B-j: Szappanos Tamás, Szappanos István, Geréby János, Endre Zsiga
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A szentkúti kúria veranda lépcsőjén az jelenlévő családtagok. Hátul állók: én, Endre Zsiga, Szappanos Laci (fiam), piros ingben Tomaschek Endre, alul állók b-j: Szappanosné Zsuzsa, Tomaschekné Geréby Zsuzsa, előtte Tomaschek István, Dr. Tomaschek László, Tomaschek Laci jr., Geréby János, Geréby Hanna, Szappanos Tamás, Tomaschek Attila.
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A Geréby Kúriában díszes asztal várja a vacsorázó vendégeket. A cigány már húzza.
Unokanővéremmel Királyné Beretvás Katicával
Geréby János lányával Hannával
Szappanos László, Endre Zsiga és én
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Szappanos Tamás bemutatja, hogy mulat a „magyar úr”. Azaz amikor kicsit boros hangulatban cigány kísérettel elénekeljük kedvenc
dalainkat. Laci fiam tanul.
Gyuri fiam két szép lánnyal : Geréby Hanna és Szappanos Edit
113 Cleveland, 1993, okt. 11.
1993 szeptember 3. Az ENDRE emlékmű felállítása.
Kedves Zsuzsi, Zsiga, Jancsi, Tamás!
Ez egy levél, amit Babcinak írtam, és úgy gondoltam, ha már egyszer a múzsa megszállt, és a compute-rem is képes a szöveget egy kicsit átmasszírozni, hát küldök Neked is egy példányt erről a megemlékezésről, hogy újra átélhessed azt a pár napot amit őseink tiszteletének és családunk emlékének megrögzítésével együtt töltöttünk.
No de kezdjem az elején. Zsigának feltett szándéka az volt, hogy úgy Nagymama, mint Nagypapa ham-vai Szentkútra kerüljenek. Jancsinak, Zsuzsinak és nekem bizonyosfokú lelkiismereti aggályaink voltak avval kapcsolatban, hogy milyen módon lehet Nagymama maradványait, ami temetőben koporsóban van eltemetve, exhumálni és Magyarországra transzporálni Argentínából, úgy hogy az az annak illő tisztességgel és méltósággal történjen. Mert elhamvasztásról, ismervén Nagymama vallási felfogását, szó sem lehet. Ugyancsak Nagypapa sírja Velemben jelöletlen és csak az ottani öregek emlékezete szerint lehet körülbelül tudni, hogy hol is lehet.
Ha találnánk is csontmaradványokat, biztos az hogy Nagypapáé?
Ezen aggályainkat meg is írtam Zsigának, míg Argentínában volt. Ő mégis úgy határozott, hogy Nagy-mama sirját exhumálja. Nyomós ok erre az volt, hogy a sírhely fenntartása évente bizonyos összeg letétele elle-nében lehető, különben felszámolják. Eddig ezt Zsiga fedezte, de tartott attól, hogy halála után Laci és Jella nem
Ezen aggályainkat meg is írtam Zsigának, míg Argentínában volt. Ő mégis úgy határozott, hogy Nagy-mama sirját exhumálja. Nyomós ok erre az volt, hogy a sírhely fenntartása évente bizonyos összeg letétele elle-nében lehető, különben felszámolják. Eddig ezt Zsiga fedezte, de tartott attól, hogy halála után Laci és Jella nem