Love's Orphan

Ildiko Scott

Description

Born in 1947 to a family decimated by the Holocaust, Ildiko Scott's gripping memoir of life in post-war Hungary is a timeless story of hope and faith. After the divorce of her parents, young Ildiko spent most of her youth in a Jewish orphanage in Budapest, where she witnessed the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and the brutal Soviet occupation that followed. After attempting to escape the country with her father, Ildiko was eventually able to immigrate to America, where she found a new life, an enduring love, and a long and successful career in the fashion industry. LOVE’S ORPHAN puts the reader at the center of a turbulent era in European history, and shows how a young girl's faith enabled her to overcome fear and poverty and realize her dream of a new life in America.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)

Informations

• Publié par: Advanced Publishing LLC
• Date de parution: 29 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631320521
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Love’s Orphan

My Journey of Hope and Faith

Ildiko Scott










Love’s Orphan

My Journey of Hope and Faith

Ildiko Scott















Love's Orphan: My Journey of Hope and Faith
Copyright © 2016 by Ildiko Scott

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means without written
permission from the publisher and author.

Additional copies may be ordered from the publisher for
educational, business, promotional or premium use.
For information, contact ALIVE Book Publishing at:
alivebookpublishing.com, or call [phone].

Book Design by Alex Johnson

ISBN 13
Hardcover: 978-1-63132-026-2
Paperback: 978-1-63132-030-9

ISBN 10
Hardcover: 1-63132-026-4
paperback: 1-63132-030-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016930463

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available upon request.

First Edition

Published in the United States of America by
ALIVE Book Publishing and ALIVE Publishing Group,
imprints of Advanced Publishing LLC
3200 A Danville Blvd., Suite 204, Alamo, California 94507
alivebookpublishing.com

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


Contents



Foreword..........................................................................................9
Prologue..........................................................................................11
1. My Father......................................................................................152. My Mothe r ....................................................................................29
3. My Childhoo d ..............................................................................45
4. The Orphanag e .............................................................................59
5. The Revolutio n ..............................................................................73
6. The Occupatio n .............................................................................91
7. Hard Years...................................................................................101
8. Young Love..................................................................................117
9. Leaving Hungary.......................................................................125
10. America........................................................................................133
11. High School.................................................................................149
12. University Girl.............................................................................167
13. Back to Hungary.........................................................................177
14. Jud.................................................................................................185
15. True Love.....................................................................................199
16. Our Big Day................................................................................215
17. Career Years.................................................................................233
18. Our Family..................................................................................251
19. Faith and Hope...........................................................................259
Epilogue.......................................................................................273
Acknowledgments........................................................................277












































F oreword




One early spring evening, I was driving home from work just as the sun was setting behind Mount Diablo in northern California. The sky was coral-red with contrasting puffy gray clouds, and the hills were vivid green and smelling fresh from the winter rains. I couldn’t help but say a simple prayer of thanks to God for all this beauty around me. As I drove into our beautiful and peaceful neighborhood I gave thanks, as I always do, for my many blessings, for my wonderful husband, for our amazing children, for our many special friends, and for all the opportunities I have been given in this great country called the United Sates of America.
How did I get here? Where did the master plan for my life come from? I do believe there is a plan for everyone’s life and that we follow the path set out for us. While I know all this I am still in awe of the fact that I am here and in America against all odds. Though I know I will never lose my Hungarian roots, I also know that the day I became an American citizen in 1971—when I pledged allegiance to the flag of this country—America became my homeland. It was a long road, but it has been worth it every step of the way.
I have often wondered if I should write about my long journey from Hungary to America. I would think, Who wants to read another life story? Doesn’t everyone have a story to tell? Though I resisted for many years writing about my life, the supportive prompting of many of my acquaintances, my friends, and most important my husband and children, helped me decide to write my story.
Though some of this now seems so long ago, from another time and place, I still believe it is a story that will inspire people. It is a story of survival and hope. It is a story of overcoming rejection, pain, and loneliness as a child. It is a story about finding faith in God.
It is my hope that as you read this book you will find that you can also change your destiny in spite of the current circumstances you find yourself in. You can let go of the pain and forgive everyone who hurt you. You can be free to become the person God intends you to be.
I would like to thank my husband, Jud, who encouraged me for so many years to write my story. I also would like to thank our son, Nathan, and our daughter, Lauren, because they convinced me that my story would be a legacy they could pass on to their children. After all, this is their story too!

Prologue

We visited Hungary, the country of my birth, with our children the summer before my mother got sick. Nathan was six and Lauren was almost three. The first thing I wanted to do was return to the orphanage to have a picture taken at the back of the courtyard where I used to sit by the iron fence and dream of freedom; where I would look outside and wonder what life would be like if I ever got out of there.
I spent some of the loneliest times of my life at this orphanage, and my “special” spot by the fence had taken on deep significance in my memory and heart. I would sit there hoping, nearly always in vain, that my mother would come see me. I would watch families walking by, parents holding the hands of their children, laughing, smiling, and loving each other with such natural ease. Wow, I thought; what is that like?
And there I was once more, this time with my loving husband, Jud, and our beautiful family. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the turns my life would take, and that it would bring me so far from these humble, and often very sad, beginnings.
Being born in 1947, I arrived in the middle of a very tragic and difficult century for Hungary, and my childhood and early teen years seem now a mirror for the struggles of our people during that era. My life then, as with my former country, was trapped amid oppos ing forces and torn between conflicting ideologies against a backdrop of debilitating loss.
World War I had been devastating to Hungary, which had entered the conflict as part of the sturdy Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its wealth gone, economy ruined, and regional power shattered, Hungary lost more than half of its population and 70 percent of its territory. The Great Depression consequently hit the country very hard, and reliance on trade with Germany (and Italy) to stay afloat during those hardscrabble years precipitated an alliance with the Axis powers during World War II.
Hungary did its best to protect Jewish citizens from deportation during the early years of the war, but in 1944 Germany (after learning that Hungary was secretly negotiating a separate peace with the United States and Britain) occupied the country and began sending Jews to concentration camps in massive numbers. By the end of the war, in addition to the deaths of nearly one million Hungarian soldiers and citizens, more than half a million Hungarian Jews had lost their lives in the Holocaust. According to the Holocaust Memorial Center, approximately one-third of all Jews killed at Auschwitz were Hungarian. Many of my relatives lost their lives in this death camp, my father being the only one of his immediate family to survive its horrors.
Then the Soviets occupied Hungary and established a communist dictatorship. I came into the world at a time (only two years after the end of the war) of immense sadness, widespread poverty, political repression, and cultural confusion. There seemed to be tension everywhere: between Hungarians and Soviets, be