The setting is a Carpathian mountain village known today as Berezovo in the Ukraine. The time frame is in the early 20th century, most likely shortly before World War I.
My great-uncle Vasil was the eldest of my great-grandparents’ eleven children and the father of ten himself. His mother, Maria Tegze, had the money in the family. She was tightfisted with her children, but generous to the priest in Berezovo.
Vasil was married with a growing family while his youngest brothers and sisters were still at home. He went to his mother and complained that his younger brother Mikula didn't even have shoes that fit and that his own children were growing rapidly. She was giving too much to the Church when her own family needed help.
When Maria sent him packing he went to the priest to complain. The priest, not surprisingly, felt his mother was perfectly entitled to give him money, and didn't seem too concerned about the shoes. Vasil came back later, firebombed the church, and the priest left town - quickly. No one knew whether the children got new shoes.
Where to begin? First, let me say that I believe the basic elements of the story are true. I didn’t always, but I do now.
The story was told to us with considerable relish in 1992 by Vasil’s grandchildren during a visit to Slovakia and the Ukraine. Four of his children were still alive. The story of Vasil and the church was part of their family lore.
It absolutely was not part of ours. My grandfather Stephen, one of Vasil's younger brothers, died more than a decade before I was born, so all I know of his family is filtered through the stories my father and aunt told me. According to my father, my great-grandfather Ivan was a carousing alcoholic ne’er-do-well. Stephen despised him and was determined to be nothing like him. He told his children the family was well off, owned land, but that everything came from his mother’s family and that she managed the farm. He had been sent off to school, the tuition paid by his maternal grandmother. His mother’s brother, Fr. Victor Thegze (Tegze) was a priest. He had come to America years earlier.
The sense I had of Maria was a long-suffering, devout woman working hard to raise her children despite her husband and making sure her son had as many opportunities available to him as possible. While never said explicitly it seemed to me that my grandfather revered his mother.
Vasil’s family had another image of Ivan and Maria. They spoke of Vasil and Ivan going off together for days to visit other villages, of Maria as stingy and dour. They portrayed the men as carefree guys out for a good time and Maria as a killjoy. There was a glee in the idea that Vasil had routed the priest, a sense of him as the protector of his family.
I had trouble believing this was true. It seemed so foreign from the family I knew – and I use that word deliberately. I could imagine Maria supporting the church; I couldn’t imagine her letting her children go unshod. I couldn’t imagine my devout grandfather attacking his church. My own father flirted briefly with idea of becoming a priest; another cousin had. It seemed impossible that anyone in the family would do such a thing.
But as I thought about the trip, the people we had met, their lives and our lives, the stories made sense. My father’s family is the prototypical immigrant family. Ellis Island, hard work, education, better lives for the children and grandchildren – the whole shebang. The stories I heard about our family reflected that experience.
Our cousins in Europe had a very different 20th century. Wars, Stalin and the domination of the Soviet Union took their toll. The stories they told emphasized family loyalty, cunning and a lack of respect for authority. Looked at from those perspectives the different family stories made complete sense.
Our cousins in Europe had a very different 20th century. Wars, Stalin and the domination of the Soviet Union took their toll. The stories they told emphasized family loyalty, cunning and a lack of respect for authority. Looked at from those perspectives the different family stories made complete sense.
Even so, my sympathies rested with my great-grandmother Maria Tegze. Boys being boys doesn’t cut it when there are fields to be tended and children to be reared. My grandfather’s view of his father rang true. I decided the story was interesting, but probably exaggerated.
Until I read this.
The wife of Géza Thegze, a priest in Vyshni Bystryi (Felsöbisztra), was attacked with a knife, and their house set on fire by unknown arsonists four times![1]
This was written in 1939 and refers to events before 1901 in a village a little more than thirty miles by road from Berezovo. (The book was translated and published in the United States in 1990.) The author was describing a time of increased economic distress and growing turmoil in the region. Suddenly the fish tale of Uncle Vasil firebombing the church seemed more plausible. If there were other episodes of anticlerical violence then Vasil's actions, though outrageous from my modern American standards, were not unique. He, used to wandering the region with his father, would have known of this other attack. I also had no evidence of my family exaggerating any other stories or information. Indeed, there were instances of a public story and the more truthful, family version.
So I’ve set aside my sympathies and adopted the story as a way of expressing my family’s survival instincts. My squabbles with bureaucracies and life's petty annoyances do not compare in any way to my cousins' very real suffering at the hands of the Soviet Union. Still, Uncle Vasil has crossed my mind more than once when dealing with AT&T. And it's just such a good story.
One more thing – one of Uncle Vasil’s sons, Stefan, became a well known scholar and priest.
[1] Alexander Bonkáló (The Rusyns. Fairview, N.J.: [Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center], 1990), p. 136.
Submitted to the 99th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.
Submitted to the 99th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.
