How Were and/or Are You Affected By the Holocaust?

One incident that is particularly in my mind is the following:

For whatever reason, God appointed me to break through my family's bubbe meise that family had simply written for money during the Depression, and that we sent them food although we had to stop writing. I had found out that we are Jewish and started looking on YadVashem. When I saw the pictures of Vilmosz and Aron David "Dudus" Rusznak, I (so to speak) blew the cover off of what really happened. Then the story quickly changed from what Grandaunt Mary Ann hideously wrote in the 1999 family reunion letter (that is, that we stopped writing and sent food) to that Vilmosz and his in-law brother Zoli Grinfeld (z"l) wrote to us for financial help for which they never would have written otherwise.

As the convert branch and the descendants of Gyorgy "Gyorgy Kvetkovits" Rusznak, we were their absolutely-last resort. Realizing that they should've risked getting out of Europe after all (despite that, for example, they had young children with them and Vilmosz's mother had died in 1937), they wrote to us to ask for help—it was an act of piku'ach nefesh, not an act of wanting money (After all, they could've done quite well without us had they had the chance to do so. Vilmosz, e.g., owned a bakery; and he knew that the U.S. was hit harder in the Depression than Slovakian Hungary was hit, since the U.S. had been the better-off country.

When I blew that cover (and part of doing so was contating Alan Sidransky and telling him what we did), people got mad. The reason that I say "what we did", by the way, is because we're just as responsible as Great-Grandma Gaydos as long as we continue to cover up for her and lie about what she did, and what she did is out in the open now. Besides, compare Andrew Rusnak in a few years prior (He was born on November 1, 1877.):

Incidentally, this is one that I scanned in poorly from my own copy of the 1999 Reunion Book.

And in 1946 (He died on February 9, 1947. He also assumed that his brother Stef was still in Czechoslovakia—he didn't even want to know if his brother died.):



That's when that he was as complicit as his daughter became clear. G-d will punish those who hurt His people (including those among His people who hurt their mishpacha) and their descendants down to the third and fourth generations. I'm of Generation Four (from Andrew Rusnak) and Generation Three (from Mary Gaydos), and the subsequent third and fourth generations will be punished if we do not talk about it.

By the way, that Julia Fosko Rusnak died when she did is a blessing. Indeed, the righteous are taken away while nobody understands why they are! How do you think that she felt sending her sons (including Andy) to war when she damned well knew that they could become Holocaust victims? After all, a Jewish POW—whether Messianic or Non Messianic, Anusi or openly Jewish, or from the U.S. or England—held no distinction to the Germans:




To the Germans (save for the Gomerim Tzdukim), a Jew was a Jew (and not in a good way!). In fact, Great-Great-Grandma Rusnak (like so many other Jewish mothers) has to be one of the unsung heroes of the Holocaust—sending a son or daughter to fight the very enemy who could commit ethnocide against him or her is one of the ultimate acts of maternal sacrifice.

By the way, to Grandaunt Mary Ann, you don't necessarily have to be part of the Czarnecki Family Tree—in fact, your sister's dad-in-law's family wanted nothing to do with Great-Granddad Czarnecki once his parents became Anusim; so, you don't have to worry about the Czarneckis! You are responsible for covering up for your mother, though—and you are Sandor's age (and I'm sure that Sandor is in Heaven with his brother and his parents, and I fully believe that Jesus was with them as He was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego)!

The damage that your mother did and the damage that you have continued is unbelievable! All I can tell you is to remember that Jesus Himself said that what is hidden will be revealed, and that what is in the darkness will come to light—and I can only hope that you get to meet Sandor and the rest of our family in Heaven, because to do what you've done and not repent for it is not a good sign.

Perhaps you'll take Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's words to heart:

So I ask: How is it possible that so many people failed to understand the reality? The bitter and tragic truth is this: it is not that they did not see it. They did not want to see it. And why did they choose not to see the truth? Because they did not want to face the consequences of that truth.During the 1930′s, when the Nazis were gaining momentum, the influence of the trauma of the First World War was still fresh. Twenty years earlier, the people of the West experienced a terrible trench war, a war which claimed the lives of 16 million people. Therefore, the leaders of the West operated on the basis of one axiom: avoid another confrontation at any cost, and thus they laid the foundation for the most terrible war in human history. This axiom of avoiding conflict at any cost, this axiom was adopted not only by the leaders. The people themselves, primarily the educated ones, shared it too....
Month after month, year after year, more and more information was received in London, Paris and Washington regarding the capabilities and intentions of the Nazi regime. The picture was becoming clear to everybody. However, “they have eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear.”When you refuse to accept reality as it is, you can deny it. And this is precisely what the leaders of the West did. They dismissed the murderous Nazi rhetoric as internal German politics; they downplayed the seriousness of the danger of the military build-up of the Nazis, claiming that it was the result of the natural will of a proud nation, that it should be taken into consideration, that it should be accepted.The reality was clear, but it was cloaked in a bubble of illusions. This bubble was burst by the stealth attack by the Nazis on Europe. And the price of the illusion and desire was very heavy because by the time the leaders of the West finally acted, their people paid a terrible price. World War II claimed the lives not of 16 million people, the unimaginable number of victims during World War I, but of 60 million, including one third of our people, who were butchered by the Nazi beast.Citizens of Israel, my brothers and sisters,Has the world learned from the mistakes of the past? Today, we are again facing clear facts and a tangible threat.

Part Three Of My Stage32 Writer's Submission

For a lack of better termage and since someone in Brooklyn searched, I'll get one of the sensitive chapters (maybe the most-sensitive chapter) over with.

   

Brooklyn, New York arrived from google.com on "The Nicole Factor: Why the Non-Anusi Rusnaks Reached Out To the Anusi Ones" by searching for mary rusnak gaydos.

I did not find out that Great-Grandma Gaydos was a kapo until much later. I watch my Feeedjit (for Blogger) stats, by the way--so if you are who I think you are (i.e., Ally Shumack or one of the other Rusnaks in New York) and you haven't been following what I've been writing, you're in for a surprise about your cousin, or your grandaunt (if you're my great-grandaunt Agnes Rusnak Shumack's granddaughter or grandson), or whoever she (that is, Great-Grandma Gaydos) is to you--that is, in relation to you.

By the way, I may be jumping back and forth here, but this all connects--and will help you understand why my grandma Joan Czarnecki (nee Gaydos) married Jack Czarnecki. To begin, who else would marry a Crypto Jew but a Crypto Jew (with few exceptions, though--might I add--Anusim did stick together and still stick together)? Who else, also, would marry a Crypto Jew who was good at hiding secrets? I'll obviously get back to Great-Granddad Czarnecki and the Czarneckis in a minute, by the way.

Meanwhile and anyway, I'd give Dr. MaryAnn Gaydos (Grandma's surviving-oldest sister at present) credit for making up such a clever story if the situation for which it was made up wasn't as serious as it was. I have to begin with Dr. Gaydos' story because it'll show you how full of secrets and (for a lack of better termage) crap my family is.

Dr. Gaydos claimed that after the war (according to Kevin, though I've recalled during the war), relatives wrote to Great-Grandma Gaydos asking for money. Great-Grandma Gaydos, according to her daughter, then stopped writing. She, however (and as Kevin reminded me that Dr. Gaydos had stated), sent food.

To make the true story short, records on YadVashem.org (which I found while searching to see if any relatives were mentioned or noted on Yad Vashem's website)--so to speak--poke holes right in Dr. Gaydos' story. Now, is it traumatic for a 10-12-year-child to deal with her mother being a kapo? Yes. Does that excuse the cover-up for her mother years later? No, it does not.

The story (as I figured out on my own and through contacting a relative-in-law's grandnephew) is this: Great-Grandma Gaydos had Non-Messianic Jewish relatives in Kosice, Slovakia (then part of Hungary and then Czechoslovakia) who reached out to their Anusi relative as a final resort--after all, they realized that they had stayed in Europe for far too long and should have made (but regrettably did not make) aliyah or another type of exit from Europe (which, long story short, Tibor Geza Rusznyak eventually did--and after he survived the Holocaust, and by coming to Ohio and understandably never contacting our side of the family for the rest of his life).

They, like all other Orthodox P'rushi ("Rabbinate") Jews, were done with the Gyorgy Rusznak ("Gyorgy Kvetkovits"--in other words, Great-Great-Granddad Rusnak's paternal granddad)'s side of the family--with shiva having been sat for him (that is, Gyorgy "Gyorgy Kvetkovits" Rusznak) years ago. However, since Talmud Bavli states that one may break a mitzvah to save a life, they obviously broke the shiva-set boundary to save their own lives and their families' lives by reaching out to an Anusi relative.

What was at least one smuggled dollar to get Vilmosz Rusznak, Zoli Grinfeld (Vilmosz's brother in law), and their families out of Europe? What was reaching out to Jewish relatives as a (supposedly-) Jesus-believing Jew? What was helping family and exposing one's self as a Jew?

To Great-Grandma Gaydos, it was everything--and she stopped writing to Vilmosz, Zoli, and the rest of the family in Kosice--and that's how she became a kapo. By the way, I now understand the remark that Mom told me that Grandma had once made to her during a conversation about sponsoring needy children--that is, "You keep your money in your own country."

If you think that what Great-Grandma Gaydos did to Vilmosz, Zoli, and their families hit then-10-to-12-year-old MaryAnn, just imagine how it hit then 6-to-8-year-old Joan--and it must continue to hit the self-proclaimed Czechslovakian-American Catholic years later. By the way, Claims Conference Records on JewishGen.org indicate that Vilmosz survived after all. However, neither such evidence nor any other evidence indicates that Zoli and his family did--in fact, the evidences indicates the contrary. Also by the way, one of the Rusznak-Grinfeld children (Sandor) was MaryAnn's age at the time that he was murdered (The other child, Miklosz, was only 10.).