This is (with a “Restore” filter from Ancestry) part of a scan of a print out of pictures that I received long ago. I believe that the unlabeled boy is (by secular name, as with the rest) George Nagy Trudnak (ז״ל. He died when he was under a year old.). John would eventually go on to marry Lillie Czarnecki, and the other boys had their own histories as well. Their dad, the maternal grandfather of my paternal grandfather, was Mihály Nagy, born “illegitimate” to hidden Jews Mihály Trudnyák (son of Jakab and Mária Krempaszka Trudnyák) and Mária Nagy (daughter of József Lázár and Mária Pretzelmayer Nagy). His two sisters were also “illegitimate”, with the older one being born at 39 Dohány Street. Even though his parents had to move off of Dohány Street, they made sure to never move out of Erzsébetváros.
Eventually, teenaged Mihály Nagy had to move, take his father’s name, and immigrate with his father to the United States. Freedom was a joke in Budapest, and conscription was a very-real threat for especially Jewish boys (regardless of whether they were openly Jewish, and regardless of what they individually believed). His sisters never were able to take their father’s name, and the Dohány-born one (Aranka Zsuzsanna) married the equally-“illegitimate” Rezső Antal Pardutz (son of Anna Pardutz and Jakab Fuchs). I don’t know what happened to either sister after 1904, although I’m sure that everyone would’ve been thrilled to see Viktor Orbán gone. I know that they didn’t like the Habsburgs, as my great-grandmother celebrated her birthday on July 28th, the secular day on which World War I began in the year after she was born (Her mother was similarly oppressed to her father, being the Lőcse-born and orphaned preteen Anna Munka—daughter of Sámuel and Rosalia Korsch Munka. She had to pass as a sister whom had been forcibly baptized before and died, and she emigrated from Újpest to immigrate to join Mihály Trudnyák in 1899.).
Great-Grandma (Mary Nagy Trudnak) herself was born on July 29, 1913, and she would marry Lillie’s cousin and John’s in-law cousin Tony (whom himself made the conscious decision to not celebrate his birthday on October 23rd, as he was born exactly on the secular date of the Kaniv Pogrom). One of my regrets is that I never thought to ask Great-Grandma any questions while she was alive. I just hope that she would be thrilled to know that her relatives whom had to remain in Budapest and vicinity, and anywhere else in Europe are never again having to live under the oppression of Viktor Orbán and/or the effects thereof.
לילה טוב, ויהי הונגריה להיות חופשית.
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