(nostalgic music) (nostalgic music continues) (nostalgic music continues) - [Matthew & Maya] Anyuka.

Madre.

Mother.

- [Matthew] My mother was a survivor.

She had tremendous street smarts.

She knew how to dance terribly difficult situations.

- [Maya] What do you feel you learned from her?

- [Matthew] I learned that one should be a decent person.

Even if people are not decent to you, your reaction should be to be decent to them.

She never held grudges.

She was a loving person.

She was a striver.

I learned that from her.

You're going to be punched down sometimes by the world, but you get up and continue and you don't give up.

She was disposed to love you.

She might fight with you or disagree with you or push you to go a different route, but she was loving.

She was really considered the mother of the family, of this whole extended unit of people.

- [Maya] Things I remember about my grandmother.

I remember those epic family gatherings, (relaxed funky music) her special dishes.

We never ate until she had the first bite.

Her illegible handwriting.

She used beautiful handkerchiefs to blow her nose.

She always said grace before meals.

She would pray for me.

She asked you a million questions.

She wanted to know you and understand you.

She loved to have late night talks.

That was probably her favorite thing.

I miss those long conversations we used to have.

- [Matthew] I am Matthew Erdelyi I'm the son of Veronica Foldes Frame who was born in 1919 in Budapest, Hungary.

She had a long arc and a very full life.

- [Veronica] I was born into a somewhat unusual family in the sense that both my parents were born Jewish and it took years of real soul searching for my father to decide to become Christian.

However, the point is that my father never really renounced his Jewishness, but he was very active in the Methodist church.

(gentle flowing music) The truth is that I was a little bit perhaps embarrassed about it, particularly when I was younger, because...was I this or was I that?

(gentle music) - [Matthew] My mom was a good student, ambitious.

She went to Scotland to learn English and secretarial skills, skills that helped her get translation jobs and secretarial jobs, and which served her very well later on when she was a refugee.

She met Miklos at some party--who was to become my father.

Miklos was something of an intellectual.

Miklos' dad had a very prestigious men's shop in Budapest, Hungary.

He had some money from his parents, and also, he was usually very well-dressed on account of the men's shop.

They got married.

My mother was eager to have a child by Miklos, even though the times were not very propitious because of the war.

- [Veronica] Miklos didn't want to because he said it's irresponsible in these times.

I figured either we survive or not.

He really felt that tragedy...is looming.

(radio announcer speaking in Hungarian) - [Veronica] So the radio was on and I hear that the Jews will have to give up any professional licenses and businesses will be closed, and everything was over.

And I remember the-the-the-the fright.

I mean, how will that be?

We won't have any living.

I mean, what will remain?

And of course, in a few days there was no job.

And then came the yellow star.

You know, there are the ghettos and there are the trains come and where are they going?

And we just try to tell ourselves, well, if you can work, you will be okay.

I mean, it was just totally incomprehensible.

So, we were terrified and waiting what we'll do.

But at that point, really there wasn't even time to be terrified because one thing happened after the other.

You just tried to do something.

You didn't really have time to to think about it.

(Hungarian lullaby) - [Matthew] When I was nine months old, he was taken away by the Nazis.

(melancholy music) - [Veronica] And he got a card, just a regular card, report at the Majestic Hotel.

By the way, that's where we spent our honeymoon.

It was German headquarters.

Report in a week.

Well, what can this be?

But we thought that maybe it has to do with the labor camp.

We didn't take it very seriously, and so he went.

(suspenseful music) Some people trickled back from the concentration camp.

So after that, after three, four months, Miklos didn't come back.

I knew that he won't come back, and he was 34.

He was a very bright man.

(contemplative music) - [Maya] I've always been haunted by thoughts of my grandfather in his last months of life, how he died, where he died, how young he was, 34.

- [Matthew] I was placed in an orphanage and my mother went underground.

And that's how we survived.

- [Maya] At the age of 27, my grandmother became a widow and a single mother.

- [Veronica] They usually ask me about the child.

How did it feel to send the child away?

Well, it felt great that you could find a place to send him.

It was a different category of thinking from mothers here who would be terrified to send a 1-year-old child away.

The whole thing left scars on Matt, and I can see that, too, but-but, he lived.

(contemplative music) My sister-in-law said, "You really have to get away because the child may survive and what will happen to him?"

And I said, "Well, where should I go?"

She said, "Try your Christian friends."

It was she who said that, "Try your Christian friends."

His name was Pechtol, Janos So I went, "Could you help me?"

And he really tried.

He made many telephone calls, you know, about these houses.

But the people he called said, "No, those houses are full," and there was a tremendous downpour, you know, a real storm.

And he said, "Well, why don't you stay?

I mean, you can't go out in this weather."

And well, in a way it was true, but it was sort of grotesque that here I am running for my life and I should worry about the rain.

And he said, "Well, look here.

I was thinking about it."

He said, "Sit down.

I was thinking about it.

I know your father.

I have great respect for him.

I really can't let you go home.

I'll take you to my place tonight."

(contemplative music) And he said, "We have a big garden there and the house is in the back of the garden, and we don't even see our neighbors, so it's really not likely that anybody would come there, and I really want to take you out."

Are you going to be arrested because you don't wear the star?

Are you going to be arrested because you're out on the street?

(contemplative music) Or maybe you can get away with it.

(contemplative music) If you sit quietly in the streetcar and you have your pocketbook there, and you, you know, you had to make life and death decisions every minute.

And we get in, and this was just wonderful.

I was there until February.

(droning contemplative music) - [Matthew] Then my mother was set on leaving Hungary.

She didn't want any more of Nazism or of communism.

She just wanted to get out of there.

She wanted to go to the United States.

(contemplative music) - [Veronica] And well, after the war, well...we had our lives, but it was very difficult.

And I found it very difficult because there was tremendous polarization.

- [Matthew] But the United States had strict quota systems for East Europeans, so my mother was lucky to be accepted in Venezuela.

It was illegal for her to leave the country.

She would've been probably jailed had she been caught, but she was street smart and she figured out whom to trust and when to do it, and so we actually escaped through the Iron Curtain, which in some places, was actually dynamited.

And so we went into Austria and there, after two or three months, we managed to get to Italy through trains, immigrant trains, so as to make the trek to Venezuela by boat.

And that in itself wasn't the most luxurious experience.

- [Maya] Can you talk a little bit what you remember about crossing the border?

- [Matthew] My mother trusted me a great deal, and so she would usually tell me everything, but she didn't tell me about planning to cross the border because she thought, as a 5-year-old child, I might just possibly spill the beans, and then she would be jailed probably for that.

So she said we were going on vacations and we did go on vacations, but then when we got to the western part of Hungary, then we skipped the border.

(serene music) I do remember crossing the beautiful forested area in the border, and then being informed that we were going to leave Hungary.

I was very sad because I was going to just miss my grandfather and my grandmother, whom I loved a great deal.

And so, it was scary, of course.

(wind howls) To that point, I'd behaved in an exemplary fashion.

I was quiet and I walked and I did what I had to do, but at the successful crossing, I became very happy and I started laughing and celebrating a bit.

And suddenly the lights went on in a building that obviously was manned by Russians, so we all had to drop to the ground.

And fortunately, they must have been lazy and they didn't bother with us so we were able to continue on our trip.

Gradually, we made our way to Italy from where we took a boat to Venezuela.

It wasn't so easy.

There was some corruption and so, they had provided some meal for the immigrants, some meat, but apparently, they had gotten rotten meat, and so, of course, we couldn't eat the rotten meat.

And so, I remember a little bit of discomfort because we couldn't eat normal meals.

We got to Venezuela.

And my mother almost immediately had a job thanks to her friend Ida, who set her up for an interview with an American oil company who hired her.

Then we were in Caracas amongst the birds and fish and monkeys.

So that became my-our home for about six years.

(gentle music) My mother then applied for naturalization papers in the United States, but that was a long, drawn out process.

It would take three to five years.

In the interim, my mother met an Italian civil engineer, Emilio Falcocchio who had three children in Italy, and they decided to get married.

So, I got to be the son of Emilio Falcocchio for a couple of years and acquired two sisters and one brother.

Emilio was very handsome, a life of the party kind of person.

He would sing, he would dance, he would play the guitar, and he was smart.

Unfortunately, his lungs were shot and he was turning blue and he needed oxygen.

So, this was a very sad thing to see in a human being who had been so beautiful.

(funky music) And so, by the time my mother was able to get her naturalization papers, eventually, he came to the United States a very sick person.

He died in the United States.

(wistful music) - [Maya] In America, she remade herself.

(wistful music) (waves crash) When my grandmother was in her 40s, she went back to school and got a Master's degree in Social Work.

In pursuit of the American Dream, my grandmother and Emilio scraped all their money together to buy their first house in Forest Hills, Queens.

- [Matthew] My mother met a doctor who occasionally came over to check on my mother's father.

I remember my mother complaining that his fees were rather high.

Once she got to marry him later, she was complaining that his fees were rather low.

And my mother got to be friends with Dr. John D.Frame, who was a brilliant guy and a nice guy, which sometimes is hard to find together.

But I'm lucky that my mother found this man and they were married and lived together happily for over 40 years.

(gentle music) - [Maya] Grandpa John had three children from a previous marriage, so the family grew even larger.

- [Matthew] Well, my mother really wanted to access the United States.

She wanted to make it her own.

She had no ambivalences about the United States.

This is what she was, an American, and now she wanted to know the country, so she actually took many trips across the country to get to know her new homeland.

And so she traveled a lot with my stepfather, John D. Frame, and saw many parts of the country, which pleased her a great deal.

(upbeat rhythmic music) (upbeat rhythmic music continues) She wrote a novel, an autobiographical novel, "On Whom I Have Mercy."

The title is significant because it's a quote from the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament.

So the title of the book united her two traditions.

But after that was done, she embarked on a long, long project, which was her memoir.

She actually was trying to write the history of her family.

(gentle flowing music) - [Maya] The last time I saw her at the hospital in Princeton, New Jersey, I massaged her hands and feet.

(gentle music) While drifting into sleep and dreams, her heart slowly stopped beating.

(gentle music) It was August 4th, 2014.

She was 95.

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