Burning Horses: A Hungarian Life Turned Upside Down [Hardcover]

Agatha Hoff has written an "autobiography" of her mother, based upon her mother's stories and recollections, and written from the point of view of Eva Leopold. It is not so much a Holocaust story, as it is an engrossing story of how the Holocaust affected the lives of one family, turned upside down and inside out by the horrors of war and bigotry. Highly recommended.

Last night I picked up a copy of Agatha Hoffs book "Burning Horses" a hungarian life turned upside down It was one of the most powerful and profound books I have ever read.I started reading it last night and did not put it down until 6am this morning. Few books are as memorable and poignant as this one. A must read for all.

Mary R-Nielsen Seattle Wa.

Burning Horses: A Hungarian Life Turned Upside Down, by Agatha Hoff (Sweet Earth Flying Press, 2010) is the riveting and well-written personal story of Eva Leopold Badics' life, as transformed by the trauma of World War II and the Holocaust.

It was written by Eva Badics' younger daughter Agatha Hoff, who immigrated to the U.S. when she was 13, based in some part on notes her mother left. Told in the first person, the story is chillingly real, and humanizes the general trauma of those days to the life of one Hungarian woman and her family. It presents a view of the Holocaust seldom considered, that of a person who was raised Catholic from birth and was thoroughly acculturated into upper middle class Hungarian society, but was of Jewish ancestry, and therefore targeted by the Nazis, who were allies of Hungary.

Eva's childhood and early adulthood is a story of the economic and cultural abundance of the pre-war Hungarian intelligentsia. Because Eva's parents had converted from Judaism to Catholicism before she was even born, she was completely assimilated and mainstream in Christian Budapest, although her practicing Jewish grandfather toasted her baptism with "L'chaim". But so privileged, pampered, and even spoiled was the young Eva that she could not identify with minorities or the oppressed, and even taunted her Jewish classmates.

At first the anti-Semitism of Germany, Hungary's ally, seemed to have nothing to do with her life. But because her Hungarian identity documents traced her Jewish ancestry, she had to face her own vulnerability to the Nazi horror soon after her own parents were forced into the Budapest ghetto.

The history of the war in Hungary, and Eva's own physical deprivations, humiliation, and terror at the hands of Nazi troops occupying Budapest, is told through the filter of her own prejudices, intelligence, vulnerabilities, love for her two daughters, and shock that "it can't happen here" turns into the Holocaust happening in Hungary.

She was forced into hiding from the Nazis and then later escaping from the Russian invaders.

So insular was her pre-war life that within the space of a single traumatic hour she goes from resenting the imposition of a Jewish cousin who asks her for a very risky favor which can save his life, to expecting Jews standing in line to avoid their own deaths to rescue her from a Nazi officer's cruel torment.

During the war years Eva, her beloved husband, and two young children endured living without a water supply or heat, and later any home at all, hiding in underground caves during close bombing, scrounging for food, and the daily terrors of both bombings and annihilation for having Jewish ancestry. These hardships led to both emotional numbing and courageous acts to meet previously-unimaginable challenges.

The honesty of this book is its greatest strength. It is hard to put down. The images it conveys and the psychological portrait of Eva will enter your dreams and forever give the reader a vivid slice of the Holocaust not often presented. It is highly readable, very impactful, and an important segment of history well worth preserving.

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