Originally published in 1954, Wrong Passport is reissued now for the first time by Blue Danube. With extensive notes bringing the context and historic background to life and tracing the subsequent fortunes of Brewster and his friends.
‘This country is like a little island, where the people live so happily, as if nothing was wrong with the world...’ When Ralph Brewster wrote those lines, in the summer of 1943, Hungary’s involvement in WWII was still barely felt in Budapest. Less than a year later the Nazis took over. Born an American but given Italian nationality as a child (the ‘Wrong Passport’ of the title) Brewster refused to return ‘home’ to Italy to fight for Mussolini. Instead, he went into hiding in Budapest and his story of life in a country at war, resorting to ever more desperate measures to dodge detection, makes fascinating reading. As Fascists tighten their grip and the Soviets begin their advance, the once-carefree city of coffee houses, concert halls and thermal baths is torn apart and Brewster’s world disintegrates, together with that of his extraordinary cast of characters: the Archimandrite, the art-dealer spy, the cinema impresario, the Jewish philosophy student who refuses to wear the yellow star and the real-life ‘English Patient’.Originally published in 1954, Wrong Passport is reissued now for the first time by Blue Danube. With extensive notes bringing the context and historic background to life and tracing the subsequent fortunes of Brewster and his friends.
‘This country is like a little island, where the people live so happily, as if nothing was wrong with the world...’ When Ralph Brewster wrote those lines, in the summer of 1943, Hungary’s involvement in WWII was still barely felt in Budapest. Less than a year later the Nazis took over. Born an American but given Italian nationality as a child (the ‘Wrong Passport’ of the title) Brewster refused to return ‘home’ to Italy to fight for Mussolini. Instead, he went into hiding in Budapest and his story of life in a country at war, resorting to ever more desperate measures to dodge detection, makes fascinating reading. As Fascists tighten their grip and the Soviets begin their advance, the once-carefree city of coffee houses, concert halls and thermal baths is torn apart and Brewster’s world disintegrates, together with that of his extraordinary cast of characters: the Archimandrite, the art-dealer spy, the cinema impresario, the Jewish philosophy student who refuses to wear the yellow star and the real-life ‘English Patient’.
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Overview
Originally published in 1954, Wrong Passport is reissued now for the first time by Blue Danube. With extensive notes bringing the context and historic background to life and tracing the subsequent fortunes of Brewster and his friends.
‘This country is like a little island, where the people live so happily, as if nothing was wrong with the world...’ When Ralph Brewster wrote those lines, in the summer of 1943, Hungary’s involvement in WWII was still barely felt in Budapest. Less than a year later the Nazis took over. Born an American but given Italian nationality as a child (the ‘Wrong Passport’ of the title) Brewster refused to return ‘home’ to Italy to fight for Mussolini. Instead, he went into hiding in Budapest and his story of life in a country at war, resorting to ever more desperate measures to dodge detection, makes fascinating reading. As Fascists tighten their grip and the Soviets begin their advance, the once-carefree city of coffee houses, concert halls and thermal baths is torn apart and Brewster’s world disintegrates, together with that of his extraordinary cast of characters: the Archimandrite, the art-dealer spy, the cinema impresario, the Jewish philosophy student who refuses to wear the yellow star and the real-life ‘English Patient’.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781905131921 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blue Guides Limited of London |
| Publication date: | 09/13/2022 |
| Pages: | 408 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.60(w) x 6.90(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Annabel Barber, co-author of Blue Guide Rome, is the Blue Guides editor-in-chief.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER I BETWEEN TWO COUNTRIES Slowly the train began moving out of the station. I sank back into the soft upholstery of my corner seat and inhaled the twilight air as it came blowing in through the open window. The detective opposite me went on reading his newspaper with such interest that, for a moment, I thought of slipping out into the corridor and jumping from the train before it gained speed. But having rebelled all day long at the outrageous treatment inflicted upon me, I now felt no longer angry and accepted my situation with resignation. I realized that it meant a break with my ordinary comfortable life in Budapest, and that a new chapter was beginning which would be dangerous but at all events highly interesting.
So, I sat and watched the dark outlines of suburban buildings glide by faster and faster against a deep green sky. Soon I could smell the scent of grass and summer flowers. Budapest was drifting away. By dawn we would reach the frontier town. Being deported was a new experience; but I had at least been allowed to choose my frontier and knew I was not going to be handed over to Nazis or Fascists. As long as I could manage to get onto Slovakian territory, I had nothing to fear, Slovakia being at that time the only country in Central Europe besides Hungary which was still officially independent of German rule. I had friends in Slovakia, living in a fascinating old castle where I could turn up at any time unexpectedly, knowing I would always be welcome. It was a castle in which I felt quite at home, having lived there already on various occasions. I knew all the quaint rooms and passages; the various cats and the library, which contained the largest collection of ghost stories and crime fiction I had ever come across anywhere. In winter I had spent three weeks in one of the old towers with a grand piano and a warm stove, while thick flakes of snow were falling on the garden lawns. But I knew the castle in summer too, and could well imagine what it would be like now, with the dark little streams gushing along the border of the park into the swift cool river, where the melted snow of the great Tatra mountains flowed swiftly down towards the distant Danube. The Slovakia I had known until then was a country of mountains and steep green hillsides. The real Slovaks were primitive, healthy peasants, while the nobility and most of the cultured families were Magyars, speaking Hungarian amongst themselves, in spite of being Slovak subjects since the Treaty of Trianon*.
It would be nice, I reflected, to see my friends at Radvan again. The only trouble was that I had no Slovak visa and without one it was doubtful whether the frontier officials would let me in. I tried not to think any more about this point; it was the one which had infuriated me most all day long, and nothing more could be done about it. My Italian passport* One of the peace treaties that followed WWI. Signed in 1920 and aimed at promoting ethnic self-government in Central Europe, it awarded large tracts of Greater Hungary to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, was still valid and nobody knew I had an American birth certificate which I kept hidden between astrological papers in my suitcase. But the police official in Budapest who had ordered my deportation, knowing the Slovak consulate was open only in the mornings, had prevented me from getting a visa by keeping me in his office until noon, and then refusing to let me postpone my departure until the following morning. It was just one of the many absurd situations in which anyone could be involved living on the Continent during the war. In fact, given my name and origin, it was surprising in a way that I had not had any similar trouble until then, although there were quite a number of British and American subjects at large in Hungary who were never interned during the whole course of the war.
It had grown quite dark by now. The last glow on the horizon had faded and the cornfields were bathed in the silvery light of the full moon. It was the end of May, the loveliest season of the year. And here was I being carried off by a detective. There were moments when I doubted whether this was all real; but I was used to strange happenings in my life. As the train rattled on towards the Slovak frontier, innumerable faces began flashing before me in dreamlike glimpses—faces of people I had known during my recent life in Hungary. Indeed, my second spring here had been exceptionally interesting. Budapest in 1942 was still a gay town, with nothing to remind you that a war in Europe had been on for nearly three years. Hungary herself had been at war with Russia since the previous June, but there were no blackouts, no bombs, no real shortage of food. People flocked to Budapest from other countries. It was the last great city in Europe where life went on as in peacetime. To be wrenched away from it just when I had made so many new friends and was beginning to speak enough Hungarian to be able to talk to anybody, was maddening. I even reached the stage of reproaching myself for not having kept an eye on my horoscope of late, for the planets alone could have foretold me the trouble I was heading for. Had I realized the danger in time, I might have avoided it to some extent. Actually, the turning-point in my fate had been the day before, when my best Hungarian friend had suddenly been called up to a Jewish working-camp, whence he was to be sent on to the Russian front to collect mines or do some other dirty work. I was so concerned about his hard luck that I failed to grasp the significance of this event in my own life until the next day, when it was too late. In astrology I had learned that bad luck, as well as good luck, usually comes in streaks. I realized now that Gyuri’s departure had been more than a separation; it marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life in Central Europe. I had been accustomed to meeting him practically every day. We used to go to the Opera together, and often wandered for hours on the Buda mountains, talking about books or music or people. Gyuri was so full of unusual ideas and charming qualities that I could never feel bored in his company. Now I knew that his departure and my deportation, though seemingly disconnected, were caused by the same ‘planetary influences’. No wonder the police official I had called on that morning, in order to obtain the usual prolongation of my permit to stay in Hungary, had been in a bad temper and had had me arrested on the spot with orders that I was to be sent off to the frontier—any frontier—that very same evening. Whether or not I had a visa for the country I was being pushed into simply did not interest him. Evidently somebody must have written an anonymous letter to the police accusing me of anti-Nazi sentiments or of being a spy. I was not aware of having any enemies in Hungary, but misunderstandings could often lead to ridiculous situations. I remembered having found myself once at a dull luncheon party sitting opposite a Hungarian baron in uniform, who mentioned that he had just returned from active service on the Carpathian front. For the sake of polite conversation, I remarked that it must have been awfully hot up there, as we were then in the middle of August. He did not reply, and I gathered he was not the talkative kind of baron. Having no idea what he was interested in, I ventured to ask him whether the landscape at least was pleasant in the Carpathian Mountains. Again, he did not reply. Afterwards I heard in a roundabout way that he had remonstrated with my host, warning him that I was a dangerous spy who had most tactlessly been trying to question him about strategic positions on the Carpathian front!
No doubt somebody like this tiresome baron had played me a dirty trick. Perhaps it was Heinrich Berg, the comic-operaspy and art dealer from Essen*, who for months had tried to lure me into working for the German Secret Service, while I tactfully refused, doing my best not to put his back up. When he finally realized that he could not make any use of me he gave inviting me to dinner, which I thought a great pity as he was one of the funniest men I had ever come across anywhere. But now that I started thinking about him, I remembered his saying to me once: ‘You know, you cannot expect to be allowed to go on living peacefully in Hungary right through the war, without doing something for us!’ It was rather a sinister remark, at which I just laughed. Although he continued to pay frequent visits to Budapest, nearly a year had elapsed since our last meeting, when we had gone to a performance of Aida. Was this, after all, a belated act of vengeance on his part, because I had refused to do any spying for him?
Or was I being deported by order of a pro-Axis Count in the Foreign Office, with whose Italian wife—a friend from the days of my childhood—I used to go swimming on Margaret Island, until one day she wrote me a cold little note to say she could not see me again, and would explain her reasons only if we met abroad after the war was over?* Was the Count jealous, or was it because they were both fervent Fascists and knew how I felt about the war? I had given her a piece of my mind one day when we were in the swimming-pool. Probably they now thought I was a spy. It was extraordinary how many people had a spy complex. My pro-Nazi acquaintances usually believed that I belonged to the British Intelligence Service, while quite a number of those who were pro-Ally took me for a German spy, simply because I could speak German and had had German friends and was fond of Beethoven and Bach! I used to laugh about it all. But now all of a sudden it had ceased to be a joke and I wished I knew for certain the identity of my secret enemy. I watched my detective. He seemed to have gone off to sleep. The other people in the compartment were also dozing. I might easily have taken my suitcase and jumped off the train at the next station. But my disappearance would have been reported to police headquarters and they would have started hunting me all over the country, convinced of my being a spy. It was undoubtedly wiser to let the detective see I was leaving Hungary. Actually, he was quite a decent detective; at dinner he had told me there was nothing to prevent my returning to Hungary as soon as I had procured myself a new visa in Slovakia. That would give me another four weeks, as Hungarian visas were usually issued for a month and until they expired no permit was required from the Budapest police. But the difficulty I still foresaw was how to get over the frontier without a Slovak visa. International crooks and spies were always well equipped with passports and visas, while a happy-go-lucky American like me was obliged to dodge about Central Europe on a silly Italian passport because my father, in days when you could travel anywhere without a passport, had failed to reside in the United States and was thus deprived of his American citizenship during the First World War, in spite of the fact that his ancestors had lived for ten generations in New England.
When I went to Washington myself to claim my citizenship, I was told that I would have to leave the country and re-enter as an immigrant, and only after a residence of five years would I be entitled to claim a USA passport. I was indignant at being treated like an ordinary immigrant when I was in possession of a proper American birth certificate proving that I had been registered at the consulate in Florence as the son of an American citizen and could boast of a direct ancestor known in history to all Americans as William Brewster the Elder. There are not many American families with a history that long; and to be treated as an outcast and abandoned by America simply because I happened to have been born on Italian soil filled me with disgust. What, indeed, has one’s birthplace to do with one’s real nationality? Not having a drop of Italian blood in me, I felt I might just as well have had a Spanish or a Portuguese passport. My father was born by chance in Austria, where his parents had spent one summer, never having been there before or after. Yet what had he to do with Austria? Nothing at all. In the same way I was traveling on an Italian passport until I could get a better one; but I felt no patriotic feelings whatsoever towards Italy. If anything, I felt much nearer to the Austrian people than to the Italians because of my passion for Mozart, Schubert and Bruckner, whose music seemed to be vibrating always around me.
It was dawn when I awoke. We had reached the outskirts of the frontier town. My detective was lying flat on the seat opposite me, snoring violently under his newspaper. The other passengers in the compartment had disappeared.
The train stopped with a jerk at the station of Losonc*, where my detective’s mission ended. When we got out onto the platform, it was still far too early to find any breakfast. So we went into a dismal empty waiting-room and tried to sleep on the hard wooden benches. Later, when the warm sun was well above the horizon, we adjourned to an inn, where the detective wanted to enjoy a final good meal at my expense before returning to Budapest. So I treated him to beer and roast pork, after which he handed me over to the frontier officials with instructions to put me on the next train bound for Slovakia.
There were a couple of hours to wait until the arrival of a funny little slow train, into which I was ushered. The only other people crossing the frontier were a few peasants. We passed through some rich cornfields and pasture-lands. In less than ten minutes we reached the little Slovak frontier station. Two officials in bright uniforms jumped into my compartment to examine passports. Not knowing a word of their language, I explained in Hungarian that I had not had time to procure myself a visa, and asked them if I could get one here at the frontier, as my passport was valid and they could see for themselves that I had already been in Slovakia with it three times. I told him I was going to the castle of Radvan, my friends being a very well-known family in Upper Slovakia. They understood what I was saying, but did not appear to be in an obliging mood, perhaps because my friends were Magyars. Every little nation in Central Europe had a grudge against its neighbors. In 1938 Slovakia had had to give back to Hungary an importantand much disputed strip of country that included the town of Losonc. Hitler and Mussolini had decided the matter in Hungary’s favour in order to win her gratitude and predispose her to join up with the Axis Powers. Slovakia had had to put up with the loss, but it had naturally increased her hatred of Hungary.
So at the first Slovak station I had to get out, and was told I would have to return to Hungary with the afternoon train. I enquired whether they could not give me a visa here at the frontier, but they said it was out of the question; I could only get one in Budapest.
The station was a tiny little one-storied building, standing all by itself in the midst of fields. A few hundred yards from it were some scattered peasant houses forming a miserable village. Nowhere was there anything like a restaurant or a café to be seen. So, I sat on a bench and waited until the passport officials had gone home for lunch. Then, under a scorching sun, I made my way into the village in search of the post office. I found it open and asked the telephone girl to get me a line through to the castle of Radvan as quickly as possible. This was my last hope. If I could speak to my friends, they would surely arrange matters for me and get me a visa.
I seemed to be the only customer in the post office. The girls were having a chat and I listened to their prattle. During two summers spent in Dalmatia I had started learning a bit of Croat. But Slovak, although similar, was Greek to me. The only word I could understand in this conversation was zmrzlina, which means ice-cream.
Soon the telephone bell rang, and I could hear the old butler of Radvan castle at the other end of the line. He had bad news. My friends were away in the Upper Tatra and were not expected to return before the end of the week. The planets were definitely against me. I was in for a tough struggle. Hungary would not have me. Slovakia would not have me. Here I was, between two countries, neither of which would let me in again without a visa. It was an absurd situation. The castle would have been an ideal place for a hideout but it was a long way off and, without knowing a word of Slovak except ‘ice-cream’, it would have been very difficult to get there surreptitiously. To hide in Hungary, where I had many friends and already knew enough of the language to make myself understood, would be less difficult. Perhaps if I sent my passport to Budapest I could after all get a visa permitting me to re-enter Slovakia legally.
I wandered back to the station amid stray pigs and geese.There was asleepy atmosphere in the squalid village lanes. The heat seemed quite abnormal for May. At the station I lay in the shade on a wooden bench and tried to sleep. But presently I heard shrill voices and a dozen little village girls came and sat with their needlework on the bench opposite me. Others actually sat on my bench. They did not seem to be waiting for any train. The station was their sewing-club. They prattled and prattled for hours. It was impossible to get a wink of sleep. I was feeling hungry too, but there was no question of finding lunch anywhere.
Towards four or five, the afternoon train from the north arrived and suddenly the passport officials in their bright uniforms were there again. I was put into a third-class compartment and in another ten minutes found myself back in Hungary. Two men in plain clothes on the platform began laughing when they saw me; they were the Hungarian passport officials who had sent me off in the morning. I told them exactly what had happened and, not wanting to spend the rest of the war being shunted up and down between two countries, I asked them to let me stay in Losonc for a couple of days while I sent my passport to Budapest for a Slovak visa. They were decent chaps and agreed, allowing me to put up in the meantime at the hotel opposite the station. I carried my suitcase over and asked for a room.
It seemed unbelievable to be no longer chained to a detective or to a passport official. I wondered to what extent I was actually free, and felt like going for a walk to explore the town. But first I wrote a long letter to a friend in Budapest, explaining why I was sending him my passport and telling him to ask one of the travel agencies to get me a Slovak visa. Then I sallied forth towards the post office, glancing back over my shoulder every now and again to see whether I was being followed by some detective or not, but there was nobody. I really was free.
The long alley leading to the main street was shaded by horse-chestnut trees in blossom. Most of the houses were one-storied, as in all the small provincial towns of Hungary. On the way to the post office I met some cats and small children but very few grown-ups. Having mailed my passport to Budapest, I began strolling up and down the main street, looking at the shop windows. It was just a street like so many others in the provincial towns of Hungary. At one end it gave onto a sort of wide cross street, or square, with a church in the middle. Architecturally, there did not seem to be anything striking in Losonc. The buildings were neither particularly ugly nor beautiful. Most of them were evidently built around the middle or end of the last century. A few were quite modern. I was not surprised to find Losonc such a dull-looking place as I knew Hungary to be a country with one gigantic capital city and a number of small provincial towns looking like overgrown villages. In Austria small towns have a distinguished and picturesque character, reminding you, with their palaces and old churches, that they are cities and that they have a history. But nowhere in the provinces of Hungary had I found this fine old-world atmosphere except in Sopron, which is in the west on the Austrian border line and is really an Austrian town . The charm of Hungary does not lie in the atmosphere of its provincial towns.
On the following morning the sun was shining as usual in a cloudless sky. I decided to explore another part of the town, and walked along the main street in the opposite direction to that of the church. Houses became scantier the further I went, and soon it looked as if the street would dwindle into the country fields. But then on my left I perceived a lot of big bushy trees and found a gate which led into what appeared to be the public gardens. Walking straight through them I came upon a pretty little stream, which I followed up until I reached a place where it formed a lovely pool above a dam. Some boys were playing with the trunk of an old tree, pushing it about in the water and riding on it or sliding over it. The unexpected charm of this spot made me forget my troubles, and I plunged into the clear, fresh water. In between swims I lay on the grass in the sun and watched the leaves of a huge, 24 MAY 1942 thick poplar tree rustle in the breeze. There was something fascinating in the flicker of those silver leaves against the blue sky. Nothing except hunger would have dragged me away from that pool. But my empty stomach made me walk back all the way through the hot dusty streets to get some lunch at the hotel. In the evening I returned to the pool.
Thus I spent three days in Losonc. Three times I telephoned to my friend in Budapest. He had bad news for me. The Slovak consul had refused a visa, having been notified already by the Slovak frontier officials that I had tried to enter the country without one and was therefore a suspicious individual. There was nothing more to be done, and Bondy was sending me my passport back to Losonc.
On the fourth day, as I was walking through the hot dusty streets, I bumped into the two plain-clothes passport officials.
‘What? Are you still here?’ one of them exclaimed in German, evidently very surprised at my not having escaped from Losonc. ‘But you must disappear immediately! Don’t you realize that you do not exist anymore officially? The authorities in Budapest don’t know you are in Hungary. They believe you have left the country.’
I explained that I was still waiting for my passport and asked where they suggested I should go.
‘That is your affair,’ they replied, ‘but you must disappear quickly. Don’t you understand? Disappear quickly!’
I wished them good morning and ran off towards my hotel, where I collected my luggage and took the first train back to Budapest.