Painted Pebbles: A Hungarian Family Chronicle

by Peter Stangl

In 1983 librarian Peter Stangl took his teenaged son and daughter to Budapest, to show them the city and the land where he had grown up. He wrote an account of that trip, which he titled "Pebbles," because a surprise encounter with some stones his mother had painted stirred up such strong memories of his boyhood. In time, Mr. Stangl expanded his memoir into a saga of memories of world-shaking events that he had witnessed as a boy and young man in the rise of Naziism, the violence of World War II, the subsequent Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Interspersed with these accounts of history in the making, the author gives a fond anecdotal chronicle of his family. After his hair-raising escape from Hungary, Peter Stangl landed in New York, via Vienna. The story ends with his assimilation into Yale University and a reunion with family in Paris.

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 3, 2015

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Painted Pebbles: A Hungarian Memoir didn't come from the usual intention to publish a book: it was written as a gift to the author's son and daughter as a family history, and took on a life of its own in seeing publication in a book that will now reach a wider audience.

The story begins with a description of the author's early childhood during World War II, as he recalls air raids, being Jewish in an increasingly Nazi world, and becoming trapped in Budapest's ghetto until the Soviets arrived in 1945, there to experience a different kind of totalitarian rule under their hand until he escaped to the West during the 1956 October uprising.

Political and cultural survival techniques, insights, and experiences mark a journey that led to his eventual success as a Yale student in a new world. Anyone interested in accounts of European history will find this memoir an engrossing story of survival.

[Debby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading Peter's memoire, partly because it was so similar to my husband's experience growing up on Romania under the communists, finding a way to leave, and first impressions of America. Peter, however is 10 years older than my husband, so he also had experience under the Nazis. The resourcefulness of Peter's father to survive in all different situations is impressive.