Making Amends

A mysterious request leads the Canadian-born son of a Holocaust survivor back to the old country.

By Robert Eli Rubinstein in Mosaic Magazine

“There’s someone here to see you.”

“Who is it?”

“Her name is Magda Zelenka,” replied my receptionist. “She says she has something important to discuss with you, but she doesn’t have an appointment.”

It took me a moment to recall Magda. Decades earlier, my late father Bill had hired her and her husband Ferenc as superintendents of an apartment building in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. Despite his own shattered life back in Hungary, my father was remarkably free of vindictiveness, hiring Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Croats—even Hungarians—as long as they were the best qualified candidates for a job.

The Zelenkas proved excellent employees: hard-working, courteous, beloved by tenants. After long years of service, Ferenc suffered a series of heart attacks followed by a fatal stroke. Although Magda hoped to continue managing the building on her own, the challenge had proved overwhelming. She was no youngster, and hardly in the best of health herself. Nor, in spite of her lengthy residence in Canada, had she ever really mastered the English language, which made it difficult for her to communicate. With deep regret, she submitted her resignation, asking only that she be allowed to rent an apartment in one of our buildings.

By then, my father had retired and I had come into the business. I agreed to her request without hesitation, assuming she would wish to remain in her old neighborhood among other expatriate Hungarians. To my surprise, she specifically asked for a building with a large number of Jewish residents, in a predominantly Jewish area.

And now, years later, here she was. Intrigued, I ushered her into my office and in the seldom-used language of my childhood asked after her health: “Hogy tetszik lenni?” Her eyes lit up as, in her habitually formal style of address, she prepared to answer.

“I am not doing very well, sorry to say. I just came home from a long stay at the Jewish hospital”—she meant Mount Sinai, in downtown Toronto—“where I had difficult surgery. I am only here today because the excellent Jewish doctors saved my life. I have always known that your people are not only talented and successful, but also kind-hearted. That is why I am here to see you.”

Your people—the compliment made me uncomfortable in a way she surely didn’t intend. I wondered whether I was overreacting. 

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