Finding Maria: A Young Man’s Search for His Grandmother, and Himself

This short memoir poignantly pictures the relationship between a young American adult and his immigrant grandmother as he seeks to unearth his family history. It is both a story of the narrator’s coming of age and of his sudden attachment to a reticent yet loving grandparent. The inexplicable derivation of his family name, found in both Jewish and non-Jewish families, helps reveal the history of the travails visited on persecuted minorities in Hungary. Bit by bit as his grandmother’s apartment is stripped following her death, these bits and pieces from her past painstakingly disclose the memories of her life. During their adult meetings at museums, films, parks, and talks over filling lunches, the grandson attempts to learn about her life in Budapest during the second World War and after the communist take-over. While she is reticent to recount her experiences, he researches the archives from the history of the Hungarian holocaust, of the Jewish ghettoes, of the religious converts seeking tolerance from those in power. This is a touching story linking together two diverse generations where the hidden strength and historical background of the matriarchal survivor serves as the loving moral model for the author.