We came to Canada in 1956, and five years later I was a Canadian.
Though I knew parents were different from my friends' parents,
there was barely a reference to my father's Jewish heritage, nor
to the circumstances surrounding his leaving Hungary.
No doubt, my father was profoundly changed by his experience of
exile and war, but he spoke to us of neither.
Where do I fit culturally? My Hungarian heritage is as alien to me
now as it was when I was a child. And, although the British
sensibility is familiar to me because I was born in England and
lived there until I was six, I certainly don't belong there.
Perhaps it is this confusion in identifying my culture that
clearly stamps me as Canadian. Where else is cultural confusion
considered an enviable state? The feeling I have that my roots
here are tentative and shallow, however, is perhaps my father's
unintentional legacy. I wonder if this is common among children of
refugees?
When my father, like most of the 3-Troop commandos, put the past
firmly behind him after the war, it was surely with a feeling of
loosing the fetters at last. Still so young, most of these men
looked forward to opportunity, not backward to their war-torn
homes.
During the war, 20 3-Troopers were killed in action, 22 wounded or
disabled. In Aberdovey in 1999, 22 stood and saluted the monument
commemorating all 86 members of their troop, as it was unveiled.
Maybe my roots are in Aberdovey, where my father embraced a new
life.
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
