Thursday, September 30, 2010

Tony Curtis, RIP

News comes that Tony Curtis has passed away at the age of 85. All the obits will naturally focus on his acting career. That's fine; I enjoyed many of his old movies. His line in Spartacus, "Yonder is my father's house", which he delivered with a beer-up-your nose Brooklyn accent, just slays me every time I hear it, or even think about it.

But that's not what I think about when I hear his name, which, the obits do mention, was changed from Schwartz at the outset of his acting career. What I think about is a synagogue in Budapest.

There is a synagogue in the old part of town that has a storied history. Part of it concerns the fact that the synagogue and its grounds were used by the Nazis and their Hungarian allies to imprison a number of Jews in 1944 and early 1945. Some died there under terrible conditions and were buried on the grounds. Most of the others and many more Hungarian Jews besides were deported to Auschwitz and murdered there. The synagogue fell into disrepair after the war; in Communist times it just sat there and more or less rotted. Then, when it became possible, Tony Curtis, whose parents were immigrants from Budapest, led a group of people who paid to have it restored, and its dead properly memorialized and honored. Curtis spent well over a few million dollars of his own money on the restoration, which is beautiful to behold.

Curtis was not a religious person. He was involved in New York area youth gang wars as a kid, in which anti-Semitism played the usual leading role. When he wanted to replace Schwartz as a professional name, he picked a version of Kertesz, a Jewish family-related name from the old country. He married six times, and I think that not even one of his wives was Jewish (except maybe the last one, whose name was Deutsch). But deep down he knew who he was, and he was not ashamed or reluctant to show it.

If you're ever in Budapest, you might want to stop by the place, and sit for a few moments. I have been there: see .....



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