This Project
This quest into my family’s heritage began with boxes of documents, letters, and photographs from both sides of my family.
After I discovered a treasure trove of old photos and documents in Montreal, I decided to focus on my Günsberger ancestors in Vas County, Hungary, the family of my mother and grandmother.
When we moved aunt Lily from Montreal to Toronto, we found boxes of old photos and documents. There was a very old photo album that I had never seen, which probably belonged to my grandmother. The people in the photos must have been very important to her. Unforunately, I still don’t know who they are.
Armed with genealogy software, scanner, and the assistance of my grandson Aaron, most of the documents and photos were scanned, and “relevant” data was entered.
Years later, as this project took on a life of its own, I realized that what I perceived as “relevant” left out the details that shed more light on their lives.
In the fall of 1997, my daughter and I visited Budapest. This was my first return since we left in 1948.
I was able to reconnect with Lily Bolgár (cousin Lily), the daughter of my grandmother’s younger sister, Irén, and my mother’s first cousin. She was, to my knowledge, the last survivor of that generation of Günsberger descendants. We talked about the family, the Holocaust, those who survived, and the many who didn’t. We spent just a few hours together, hours of joy and pain.
I didn’t plan to return. Yet, as I dug deeper into family history, two additional summer visits followed. Cousin Lily is the source for most of what I know about my Günsberger family.
Facts and family gossip intermingled in what became an unstructured path through her memories. She spoke in Hungarian, the pain of her reminiscences evident in her halting speech. I took notes in English. I am enormously grateful for her help.
What started as a documentary genealogy project expanded into a need to understand the context: the larger social, economic, political, and physical environment in which generations of this Günsberger family lived and died.
This website begins with the period of the occupation in Budapest. This module was, by far, the most challenging one to research and write … because I was there, because it is about my immediate family, the people who raised me, who were the closest to me.
Initially, I tried writing in the “objective” academic voice, but it didn’t sound right. I also tried writing in other voices, but none of them sounded right. Eventually, I realized that only through my own voice could I place our experiences into the larger context of history.
The next challenge awaits: how can we help others place their families, their ancestors, into the larger context of history?