March 6, 2022.
Ukrainians are fleeing their country to escape the Russian bombing of their cities in this unprovoked war. Over a million Ukrainians have fled to date. Estimates range up to five million refugees by the time this war ends.
To leave your home, your community, your friends, and your job is an existential decision. By leaving your country, you enter another country, with an unfamiliar language, with a different culture. You have to reestablish yourself and adapt to the other country’s way of life. You may have to go back to school and relearn skills.
A decision to leave your country and emigrate is a life-altering decision with high risks for success: a lot of effort may have to be spent to get back to an equivalent position to what you left behind. It may take years. Some people may never make it: they may not have the skill to learn a foreign language or they do not need their skills in the adopted country.
My father was in his forties when he left Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Having succeeded professionally as a medical doctor and director of a regional hospital, he had no reason to leave. He was a proud Hungarian: proud of the people and accomplishments of a thousand years of history in the country.
My mother’s family lost everything. The communist government confiscated (nationalized) all of their property: a summer home on the Danube river and vineyards on the mountain behind. She had no reason to stay in Hungary.
Under the communist regime, the children of the proletariat, of the blue-collar workers, were admitted to a university. They considered a professional a “bourgeois” and were not part of the proletariat. A university graduate was, by definition, a “bourgeois”, and even though my father came from a farm, his education put him into the bourgeois category.
The communist government owned and directed all economic activity. The government hired and assigned people to specific locations where their skills were required. One of my cousins graduated from dental school and married a fellow dental student; when they finished university, they were assigned to two different cities where dentists were needed.
My parents did not think their children had a future in Hungary; I think that was the reason they left the country. So when during the Hungarian Revolution the border was unguarded–the guards did not know what to do during the 1956 upheaval – father and mother decided to leave the county. For the future of their children. And leave before the Russians returned and closed the border.
The day mother found out that the border was open, she collected my brother Peter, age 18, and myself, after school. I was 16 years of age. She packed some food into a backpack; gave us the name of someone living in Vienna and told us to walk to Vienna. Arriving there, we were to look up the person whose name she gave us. The situation was unreal for Peter and me, and not understanding what was going on, we got on the highway leading to Austria. Hoping that we would get to Vienna somehow. Mother did not know if she, father, and my younger brother John, eight years old, would see us again.
But Peter and I walked and walked and walked. The highway was like an exodus, with people filling up the road. Nobody talked. We hurried, not knowing how long the border would stay open.
The Austrians welcomed us with open arms and put us up in an army camp outside Vienna. After a day, they helped us to contact the person whose name mother gave us. He was a Jesuit priest, and he came in a few days and helped us to settle in Vienna. It turned out that the priest was a friend of one of my uncles from university days. The Jesuit helped Peter enter medical school, and he placed me in a dormitory of a high school.
When the large Russian army returned to Hungary in November, my parents decided it was time to escape from Hungary. Otherwise, they may never see their two older children. One of my father’s patients, the Mayor of the City of Sopron where we lived, helped them. He drove the family across the “iron curtain” in his official, government-owned car. The family reunited in Vienna and pondered the next step.
Right after you make an existential decision to emigrate, you have another life-altering decision to make: where to? You think the entire world is your choice. But to be pragmatic, you consider your trade, profession, and language skills and try to find someplace where you could use these skills.
Another constraint is your financial resources; you have nothing with you except what you wore during your escape and a backpack. With limited resources, you cannot travel too far. (Father had sold some assets and used the cash to buy collectors’ stamps, thinking the stamps took no space in his pocket and could sell them. Unfortunately, the stamps he had were worthless.)
A potential opportunity is a relative abroad who could help you get established. Or, friends in the diaspora of your country. And that is usually the first choice. Mother contacted her brother living in Manchester, UK, and asked for help to move there. We stayed in Manchester for a couple of months evaluating the possibilities in England, then my parents moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 1957, where my mother had a sister, a public health nurse. Canada appeared to have great potential to start a new life.
Father had to redo his studies and pass the Canadian medical exams, which he did in two years. It was difficult to do so at his age, but he persevered. And then he was a “resident” in St. Paul’s hospital for a couple of years, often with twenty-four-hour shifts. Not a peaceful life when you are in your mid-forties. Mother took a job as a dishwasher to help with money; she had never worked outside the house, being born into a privileged family in Hungary. But my parents had grit. And the children attended university; the youngest one was in high school.
Reading the news, I empathize with the Ukrainians; I have been through what they are going through now. Many Ukrainians send their family out, hoping to join them later or perhaps hoping to have them return should the Ukrainians win this war. Not a likely possibility; the Russians have much more military power and Putin’s vision appears to be the political order of decades ago.
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