Review Article: Souls, Hearts and Heritage: Passing from the Danube to the Hudson. Szegedy-Maszák, Marianne. 2013. I Kiss Your Hands Many Times – Hearts, Souls and Wars in Hungary. New York: Spiegel & Grau, Random House. 345 pp; and Griesz, Katherine. 2012. From the Danube to the Hudson. Seattle, WA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing. 482 pp.

Abstract

How did the rich and the super-rich Hungarian Jews in Budapest fare during the 1930s, World War II and the Holocaust, and beyond? Two new books deal with their stories: Marianne Szegedy-Maszák's "I Kiss Your Hands Many Times" and Katherine Griesz's "From the Danube to the Hudson". Szegedy-Maszák was able to use her journalist's profession and skills to explore and vividly present her family's story in a work that can likewise satisfy the historians, the romantics and all those who like a “good read.” Griesz’s epic family memoir encompasses the same time period and topic as Szegedy-Maszák's book in its portrayal of a multi-generational Hungarian Jewish family's fate in the crisis -full mid-twentieth century, as seen and interpreted by its female descendant decades later.

Keywords

• Memoir, war and life writing, Hungarian Jews, World War II, Holocaust, 1956 Hungarian Revolution