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Castles Burning: A Child's Life in War
A psychoanalyst describes her childhood growing up in war-torn Hungary; her overwhelming encounter with an incomprehensible world of deprivation, separation, and loss; and her painful odyssey through the devastation and homelessness of postwar Europe.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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September 1, 2015
Dr. Magda Dénes, a Psychoanalyst and Psychotherapist practicing in NY, passed away suddenly at the end of 1996, aged 62. Her autobiographical Castles Burning was due to be published a couple of months later.
The book begins in 1939 in Budapest, as Magda’s father leaves for the US and abandons his family. They were a wealthy Jewish family of four. The narration advances fast onto March 1944 when the Nazis, who were already losing the war, occupied the city to prevent Hungary from changing sides. Castles Burning is then a story of loss and survival during the Holocaust and the postwar occupation by the Russian troops. It is told in a very direct first person manner by Magda the child (the subtitle is “A Child’s Life in War”) although Denes the adult wrote it decades later.
Hungary was late at persecuting its large Jewish population. And when it did, it sacrificed first the population living in the countryside and then those living in the city, protecting them to a certain extent. This they did by building up a wall that circumscribed them in the Jewish quarter in Pest and creating a formal ghetto. In theory the Budapest ghetto was to be more respected than similar arrangements organized in other Nazi-occupied European cities. In theory.
Another important safety center was constituted by the Swiss Consul, Carl Lutz (1895-1975) (*), in the Glass House, originally a glass factory that stood outside and far from the ghetto, closer to the river. Many Jews found shelter there. It also became the main quarters from which the resistance Jewish Youth, with a strong Zionist (and Hashomer) support, organized its courageous underground force. Magda’s brother Iván took a very active role in this resistance. Apart from providing temporary shelter, the Glass House became a factory for forging documents. Many lives were saved. But not Ivan’s own.
Visiting Budapest recently, I set out to find this Glass House. It meant a walk out of the well-trodden tourist paths. I was surprised because the building looked an abandoned warehouse. No monument has been made out of it. The detour was certainly worthwhile when I recognized later that it was there that a great part of the story of this book took place. Reading the images emerging from its pages became a great deal more real.
Here is the photo I took.
At the time, however, it was an astounding building because its bare walls and profusion of glass was seen as the epitome of modernity. This is better captured by this photo from the early 1930s.
The only vestige I could find at this site of its being a monument was this plaque, which I chose to photograph, although I did not know then the names commemorated. Imagine my surprise when browsing through my photo album I now recognize that Iván Dénes, Magda’s heroic but ill-fated brother, is listed on top of the memorial I recorded for my keeps.
The book is often compared to the Anne Frank’s Diary, as both are a child’s vision of the atrocities of the Holocaust. I read Frank’s testimony as a teenager and I cannot therefore venture deeper into a comparison, but two differences jump out immediately. Anne did not survive while Magda did. And Anna’s is a Diary and therefore contemporary to the events recorded, while Magda’s account has the vantage point and possibly distorted vision of a Memory.
Apart from the testimonial value of a period of history that we should not forget, what is most striking about this book is its total absence of sentimentality. This is the result of the very vivid voice of this five – becoming ten – year old narrator.
Little Magda comes across as a very smart, brave, outspoken and lucid child. Adversity awakens anger in her, rather than desperation. She is lucky for this. The former invites to fight and increase the chances of survival, while the latter can easily bring its own demise. It is this affirmed anger that leads her to vote not to commit suicide when the whole family considers this alternative.
The vividness and directness, created by a great deal of dialogue, gives a very agile pace to the reading but it also invites to meditate whether memories five decades old can be so crystal clear and so complete. This is certainly very different from Nabokov’s Speak, Memory in which the revived impressions are clothed in a redolent tone more suitable to the genre.
The girl Magda that Dr Denes revives is not a very likeable girl, neither then nor now. At that time her insolence and cheekiness got on peoples' already tightly strung nerves. And now, although her impertinence can be seen as constituting her charm, she also seems to be misplacing and directing her anger too much against those close to her, in particular against her mother Margit. Magda expected all the time an absolutely impeccable behavior from her mother, in particular towards Magda herself. I found this self-centeredness at times very unpleasant and unfair, and made me feel I wanted to hear Margit’s account and her own suffering as well.
It is not surprising then that this is the account of a Psychoanalyst, or that that angry and egotistical child should become such a Therapist.
-----
(*)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Lutz
June 11, 2022
Magda Denes was five years old, in 1939, when her editor father abruptly abandoned his family, transferring all his assets to the United States.
The family was left with nothing.
Persecuted and then hunted, Magda was determined not to give way to despair (as she was taken around to different places of hiding and had to hide under floorboards, in an oven, and in a cellar) . She lost her brother Ivan, who was a rescuer for the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. The Zionists rescued many Jews from the Nazis, and were the backbone of Jewish resistance to Nazism.
What results is a colourful classic of the struggle for life in dangerous and frightening days of death, written with wry humour and biting wit.
You will grow to understand, sympathize with and love Magda as you follow her story.
Today influential voices are calling for an end to the State of Israel (which was in many cases built by holocaust survivors), which would certainly lead to a second Holocaust against the Jews living there.
It is up to us to prevent a second Holocaust from occurring.
To prevent a situation where Jewish children will be murdered and hunted, by fully supporting Israel in her struggle to survive and fighting anti-Israel prejudice.
The family was left with nothing.
Persecuted and then hunted, Magda was determined not to give way to despair (as she was taken around to different places of hiding and had to hide under floorboards, in an oven, and in a cellar) . She lost her brother Ivan, who was a rescuer for the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. The Zionists rescued many Jews from the Nazis, and were the backbone of Jewish resistance to Nazism.
What results is a colourful classic of the struggle for life in dangerous and frightening days of death, written with wry humour and biting wit.
You will grow to understand, sympathize with and love Magda as you follow her story.
Today influential voices are calling for an end to the State of Israel (which was in many cases built by holocaust survivors), which would certainly lead to a second Holocaust against the Jews living there.
It is up to us to prevent a second Holocaust from occurring.
To prevent a situation where Jewish children will be murdered and hunted, by fully supporting Israel in her struggle to survive and fighting anti-Israel prejudice.
June 30, 2018
One of the reasons I like this memoir so much is that it's told in the voice of Magda Denes, the Hungarian Jewish child, as she was experiencing everything that was happening, rather than Magda Denes, the adult psychoanalyst.
And Magda doesn't seem to have been the must cherubic of children: she was, in her own words, "impossibly sarcastic, bigmouthed, insolent, and far too smart for my own good." It is this intelligent, insolent, sarcastic, and often sullen and resentful voice that tells the story, the voice of a child who doesn't always understand what's going on.
The hero of the story is Magda's older brother Ivan, a fiercely intelligent and brave teenager, a devoted big brother, a published poet at sixteen, who later became an activist in the Hashomer Jewish organization. He worked for them as a runner, carrying forged papers and running messages through the dangerous, Arrow Cross infested streets of Budapest, trusting on his cleverness and his Aryan looks to see him safe.
Magda's early childhood was spent in very wealth circumstances, with more servants than family members -- "hopelessly outnumbered by the Proletariat." All of that ended when Magda's feckless, spendthrift father, a newspaper publisher, fled abroad in style, traveling first class with a new wardrobe and all the family's savings. Magda, her brother and her mother had to move into her religious grandparents' lower-middle-class apartment.
Later, they were joined by Magda's aunt Roszi and her son Erwin. Ivan, Erwin and Magda were the best of friends despite the differences in their ages, partners in all of each other's escapades and keepers of each other's secrets.
When Magda developed tuberculosis -- often fatal in those days -- at the age of eight, her mom spent money they couldn't afford to place her in an upscale sanitorium where she was afforded the best chances of recovery. Her mother also visited every week, taking the long trip from the city to bring presents and news from home. Magda felt abandoned, and sulked the entire time she was there. She recovered, and wasn't in the least bit grateful.
The same thing happened again two years later when Magda's family was hiding in the basement of a Hashomer safe house in Budapest as the Arrow Cross ravaged the streets. Because the place was incredibly overcrowded and filthy, Magda's mother decided not to keep her there and risk causing a relapse in her tuberculosis, so Magda was sent to a relatively comfortable children's home where she was absolutely miserable with loneliness, feeling, again, as if she was a burden who had been ditched.
Eventually her mother came to get her when there was rumor that the Arrow Cross was going to attack the children's home. The book describes their harrowing stay in the Hashomer building, dreading starvation or Arrow Cross attacks, wondering from day to day whether they'd stay alive, as the Red Army was besieging the city.
In late 1944, Erwin ran away to be with his girlfriend, leaving a note for his mother, Magda's aunt, promising to be in touch. He never came back. On December 31, 1944, Ivan sneaked out to help someone and to visit his own girlfriend. He didn't return either, and their families did not learn the boys' fates for months: both had been caught and murdered.
In large part due to the cleverness and resourcefulness of Magda's mother and Aunt Roszi, the others survived this "strip-mining of lives" through the period of starvation that followed the Russian liberation of the city (although Magda's grandfather died of an infection in the spring of 1945). The story carried them -- Magda, her mother, her aunt and her grandparents -- right up to the point where they left Europe, traveling first to Cuba and then to the United States.
In a stopover in New York on the way to Cuba, twelve-year-old Magda is reunited with her father who hadn't seen her in eight years. He tells her she's a bright child but not very pleasant. She responds, "I know. Lengthy intense suffering does that at times."
And Magda doesn't seem to have been the must cherubic of children: she was, in her own words, "impossibly sarcastic, bigmouthed, insolent, and far too smart for my own good." It is this intelligent, insolent, sarcastic, and often sullen and resentful voice that tells the story, the voice of a child who doesn't always understand what's going on.
The hero of the story is Magda's older brother Ivan, a fiercely intelligent and brave teenager, a devoted big brother, a published poet at sixteen, who later became an activist in the Hashomer Jewish organization. He worked for them as a runner, carrying forged papers and running messages through the dangerous, Arrow Cross infested streets of Budapest, trusting on his cleverness and his Aryan looks to see him safe.
Magda's early childhood was spent in very wealth circumstances, with more servants than family members -- "hopelessly outnumbered by the Proletariat." All of that ended when Magda's feckless, spendthrift father, a newspaper publisher, fled abroad in style, traveling first class with a new wardrobe and all the family's savings. Magda, her brother and her mother had to move into her religious grandparents' lower-middle-class apartment.
Later, they were joined by Magda's aunt Roszi and her son Erwin. Ivan, Erwin and Magda were the best of friends despite the differences in their ages, partners in all of each other's escapades and keepers of each other's secrets.
When Magda developed tuberculosis -- often fatal in those days -- at the age of eight, her mom spent money they couldn't afford to place her in an upscale sanitorium where she was afforded the best chances of recovery. Her mother also visited every week, taking the long trip from the city to bring presents and news from home. Magda felt abandoned, and sulked the entire time she was there. She recovered, and wasn't in the least bit grateful.
The same thing happened again two years later when Magda's family was hiding in the basement of a Hashomer safe house in Budapest as the Arrow Cross ravaged the streets. Because the place was incredibly overcrowded and filthy, Magda's mother decided not to keep her there and risk causing a relapse in her tuberculosis, so Magda was sent to a relatively comfortable children's home where she was absolutely miserable with loneliness, feeling, again, as if she was a burden who had been ditched.
Eventually her mother came to get her when there was rumor that the Arrow Cross was going to attack the children's home. The book describes their harrowing stay in the Hashomer building, dreading starvation or Arrow Cross attacks, wondering from day to day whether they'd stay alive, as the Red Army was besieging the city.
In late 1944, Erwin ran away to be with his girlfriend, leaving a note for his mother, Magda's aunt, promising to be in touch. He never came back. On December 31, 1944, Ivan sneaked out to help someone and to visit his own girlfriend. He didn't return either, and their families did not learn the boys' fates for months: both had been caught and murdered.
In large part due to the cleverness and resourcefulness of Magda's mother and Aunt Roszi, the others survived this "strip-mining of lives" through the period of starvation that followed the Russian liberation of the city (although Magda's grandfather died of an infection in the spring of 1945). The story carried them -- Magda, her mother, her aunt and her grandparents -- right up to the point where they left Europe, traveling first to Cuba and then to the United States.
In a stopover in New York on the way to Cuba, twelve-year-old Magda is reunited with her father who hadn't seen her in eight years. He tells her she's a bright child but not very pleasant. She responds, "I know. Lengthy intense suffering does that at times."
October 27, 2009
Magda Denes was a Jewish child in Hungary during World War II. These are reminiscences (as opposed to a diary) of hiding in abominable quarters, hunger, escape, the kindness and cruelty of strangers and acquaintances alike, and the loss of family members. When people encourage me to attend horror movies, I suggest they read this book instead: nothing I've ever seen in a film horrifies me as much as what these people and this child suffered.
October 11, 2021
A very good book. Written from the POV of when she a child trying to make sense of the horror of the Holocaust in Hungary. Would recommend.
August 27, 2008
I found this book extremely moving and honest. The thing that really makes it stand out from other books set during the holocaust is that its such a vivid, at times even hilarious account of childhood. With the horrific and crazy events turning her family's life upside down we get a child's reaction to these events and her indignant, persistent desire to be treated like a human being and to evolve. One senses that the author avoids giving her account the tone of an adult recalling her childhood and i found that approach so refreshing. Her devastating description of loneliness towards the end of the book was such a revelation to me and the tragicomic touches during near-death experiences were unforgetable.
January 29, 2019
"It's all right to hope. In fact, it's essential. There would be no world otherwise." Just one quote from this moving, often funny, and always unforgettable memoir of a young Hungarian Jew during World War II. Magda, her mother, and brother were abandoned by her father just before war came to Budapest; left with her grandmother, aunt and cousin they must fend for themselves. This is their story, one of hiding, scrounging for food, their city devastated by both Allies and Germans, and their final attempt to escape. Loss, fear, most of all, survival, and a wonderful portrait of a mother and daughter.
August 20, 2018
A remarkable and heart rending story of a 10 year old Jewish girl in Budapest caught between the Germans and the Russians at the end of World War 2. The voice is that of a plucky, sad, angry, grieving child who defiantly refuses to give up or give in. Her rage and sharp tongue often gets her in trouble, but just as often gets her and her family out of perilous situations. Read this after a visit to Budapest and it will keep the city in my memory for years to come.
May 17, 2015
Earlier today someone reminded me of this excellent book. This memoir was written by a psychologist who perfectly captures her childhood perspective as Jewish child in Hungary during the Nazi era. The author died soon after the book's publication so it never got the publicity it deserves. I wish I could give it six stars!
December 3, 2013
The best, most descriptive and compelling book about a young child's life during Nazi occupation of Budapest, Hungary that I've ever read.
July 30, 2019
Because I've finished two books the past few days I'd like to write about them. I normally don't, but thought I might as well.
I was highly skeptical of this book, pessimistic even. Reading the cover I scowled "oh, she's not even in a concentration camp, boy how interesting." Then I read the hundreds of reviews mostly from middle aged women or art school variety 70 year old men who were "touched" and who wrote things like "I was given chills." I rolled my eyes, "boy it's a sob story" "a touching sob story, ooh wow." I secretly wished the writer and subsequently the main character dead. Then I began to read.
They said it was a funny book. I wasn't feeling funny, in fact, I was feeling mean. I was pining for destruction, a little despair, some nitty gritty, some pain. But then it was funny. Lord help me, it was funny, and Magda was likable, so was Ivan, and even the unlikables were a little likable. And the story was good, shit, I was eating my words. I was in no way touched and I had no need for a sweater (other than the fact I look great in them.) But fuck me, I was enjoying it. I held my wish for death, compartmentalizing it, tucking it away, I had read that the author died anyway in 1996. But I was into it, I read it slower than most books. I did this not because it was hard to read but because it was good. It was good to be in war torn Budapest with Magda and Anyu and Ivan. I liked it. I imagined if my fiancee and I had a daughter, that she'd be a lot like Magda. Brutal, sarcastic, smart and smart mouthed with a love for poetry and a way with words. This didn't do anything to make me wish Madga well, but it was amusing and made her more likable still. The book is well written, funny, smart, and has a way of sucking you in. You'll want to know what happens and not a single page was boring or unworthy of reading.
I don't want to give away the story. But I do urge you to read it. From the first to very last page, you'll want to read more, even if you were like me and started wanting to watch their castles burn.
I was highly skeptical of this book, pessimistic even. Reading the cover I scowled "oh, she's not even in a concentration camp, boy how interesting." Then I read the hundreds of reviews mostly from middle aged women or art school variety 70 year old men who were "touched" and who wrote things like "I was given chills." I rolled my eyes, "boy it's a sob story" "a touching sob story, ooh wow." I secretly wished the writer and subsequently the main character dead. Then I began to read.
They said it was a funny book. I wasn't feeling funny, in fact, I was feeling mean. I was pining for destruction, a little despair, some nitty gritty, some pain. But then it was funny. Lord help me, it was funny, and Magda was likable, so was Ivan, and even the unlikables were a little likable. And the story was good, shit, I was eating my words. I was in no way touched and I had no need for a sweater (other than the fact I look great in them.) But fuck me, I was enjoying it. I held my wish for death, compartmentalizing it, tucking it away, I had read that the author died anyway in 1996. But I was into it, I read it slower than most books. I did this not because it was hard to read but because it was good. It was good to be in war torn Budapest with Magda and Anyu and Ivan. I liked it. I imagined if my fiancee and I had a daughter, that she'd be a lot like Magda. Brutal, sarcastic, smart and smart mouthed with a love for poetry and a way with words. This didn't do anything to make me wish Madga well, but it was amusing and made her more likable still. The book is well written, funny, smart, and has a way of sucking you in. You'll want to know what happens and not a single page was boring or unworthy of reading.
I don't want to give away the story. But I do urge you to read it. From the first to very last page, you'll want to read more, even if you were like me and started wanting to watch their castles burn.
May 16, 2017
Este libro me recordó al Diario de Anna Frank. Magda nos cuenta las cosas que vivió durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial en Hungría como si lo estuviera escribiendo en su diario.
Las cosas que nos cuenta son muy duras, increíbles de creer que las haya vivido una niña. Varias de las situaciones en las que a veces se encontraba eran muy desesperantes, porque solamente podía permanecer sentado y esperar a que todo sucediera, sin poder hacer nada.
Hay momentos en los que el libro se vuelve un poco monótono, ya que Magda cuenta muchas anécdotas un poco triviales, sobre todo acerca de su infancia. Pero aparte de eso la historia es entretenida.
Las cosas que nos cuenta son muy duras, increíbles de creer que las haya vivido una niña. Varias de las situaciones en las que a veces se encontraba eran muy desesperantes, porque solamente podía permanecer sentado y esperar a que todo sucediera, sin poder hacer nada.
Hay momentos en los que el libro se vuelve un poco monótono, ya que Magda cuenta muchas anécdotas un poco triviales, sobre todo acerca de su infancia. Pero aparte de eso la historia es entretenida.
August 15, 2013
An amazingly readable book about a very dark time in Europe's history. Denes recounts her life as a Jewish child in Budapest in the 1940s, from the days leading up to the war to the darkest moments in hiding. She somehow manages to make the book lighthearted at points, showing that even in times of war there is still humanity and love. A truly inspirational book with lots of passages I highlighted and plan to re-read for inspiration.
April 25, 2016
Denes' book regarding her war-time adventures in Budapest could have used a good deal of editing,
but in spite of that,with a little patience one can find a fascinating tale of life under the Hungarian
and German fascists as seen through the eyes of a most precocious child.
There are many better written tales of survivors of the Nazi occupation,but this one stands out for its
treatment of the Hungarian Jews
Read
October 25, 2008I loved this book which I read to get some sense of Budapest as we were getting ready to travel there. It is a Holocaust Memorial but it is such a delightful and heartfelt perspective from a child grieving terrible losses that it made me wish the author would write a sequel.
March 1, 2011
A great literary adventure through the eyes of a precocious child, who likes to tell it like it is. I always have respect for any person who has that quality and Magda is no exception. A tale of heroism, survival, betrayal, and coping.
March 21, 2013
Excellent book with a disappointing ending. Magda ends her story with her arrival in Cuba but that is far from the end of her troubles. Getting out of Cuba and into the U.S. would seem like a better ending but we don't know what happened after she arrived in Cuba.
October 4, 2014
Wartime Hungary - an adult woman remembering her experiences as a child - and what a character she was as a girl - so clear eyed and sarcastic I had to smile even though her experiences were terrible.
August 31, 2014
This book leaped off the shelf at the library last Monday and yelled, "I'm next!" So happy for books to find me like that. This is the story of a Hungarian-Jewish girl who survives World War II, but not in a concentration camp. It is not a depressing story; it is funny in many places.
May 9, 2018
This reads as a novel, but isn't. Magda Denes' voice is humorous and sad all at the same time. Her writing draws you in and makes you feel as if you are there with her. Very, very relatable and real feelings.
I am not good with reviews. This book was wonderful.
I am not good with reviews. This book was wonderful.
January 8, 2008
Interesting and moving account of a jewish childs life in WWII.
February 26, 2008
Great memoir of a young Hungarian Jewish girl during WWII. She tells of her heartache from missing her family during various separations.
July 21, 2008
hungarian girl's experiences during WWII
June 2, 2010
insightful, sad, and revealing.
February 9, 2011
Really enjoyed this. Fascinating childhood told well.
April 3, 2011
An amazing story!
January 6, 2012
Interesting narrative but not super informative. Less on detail than on emotion.
March 22, 2012
This is my favourite book of all time.
April 7, 2014
It didn't interest me like I thought it would have.
May 20, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews