1944 A Leap Year

This book tells a rare but real story about two young boys who received their high school diploma in Szeged – Hungary after the 1943 – 44 school year which was shortened because the Germans occupied the Country on March 19, 1944. They learned what the school curriculum required, mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, literature, Latin, German, but they did not learn anything about what most Hungarians did not know either, what was happening in the real World. Hungary until the German occupation was sort of an Island in a horribly devastated world, Europe, Russia and the Far East. What these two “kids” and most of the Hungarian population did not know, and was totally unprepared for, was that the year after their graduation from high school would become the most horrible year of the twentieth century. At age eighteen they were drafted into a Labor Brigade and were exposed to horrors, forced labor, forced marches, prisons, military, tribunals, concentration camps, discrimination…But this book is not only the narration of how these two boys, one of them the writer survived what one could call the “adventures” of the “Leap Year”. It is a true chronicle of the end of World War II, of the Hungarian holocaust of good, bad and indifferent people and about the cheerful vitality which helped to survive.“Congratulations! The book was an enjoyable read. It is a strangewording to use about a novel which takes place in the Holocaust. Because it tells the story of the adventurous escape of two young boy’s and their stories, the reader sometimes can even laugh. It is also of great value to me that you show how diverse Hungary was: from the Nazi nsters to the military officers helping the boys even by writing them travel documents.Istvan Szabo, Movie Director, (Sunshine 1999)Received the OscaIr award for his 1981 movie Mephisto.