Ladislaus Löb, Hungarian-born professor of German Studies in England and translator of Béla Zsolt's Nine Suitcases, described in a book his way from Hungary through Bergen-Belsen to Switzerland in 1944. György Vári talks to the author about Nine Suitcases, the disappearance of family history and the debate around his rescuer, Rezső Kasztner.
The boy awkwardly tried to catch hold of the leg, all the time thinking he can’t let the tears out, he can’t, because then he’ll never be a man. Anyone who feels sorry for the hog will never grow into a man. He remembered what his father always said: if you like sausage, then you’d better like this, too. And he did like sausage.
This year's Chamisso Prize, named after the poet and researcher Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838), was awarded to Terézia Mora, born in Sopron, Hungary.
The piece translated here turns out to hinge loosely on King Matthias Corvinus, the most important and influential of Hungary’s rulers, and that other Matthias: Mátyás Rákosi, the leader whose misrule was the direct cause of the 1956 Revolution.
