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Free at last!
Gypsy finds final refuge in Israel
Ona Saloman: “A Symbol of Freedom”
by Burt Keimach
“I felt small in Hungary—
almost as if I wasn’t even a person.
Here I am free, and I must say it’s a
lot better.”
Not an unusual statement
perhaps from a refugee from
Central Europe—and to make
such a statement in Israel is still not
so unusual. But if the speaker is a
Gypsy, an actress, and a new
immigrant as well—then she has
something special to say. After all,
there aren’t too many Gypsies
living in the Jewish State.
Ona Saloman, married to a
famous Hungarian Jewish
playwright, left her native country
when her husband was blacklisted
for “political” reasons. She made
her own claim to the blacklist when
refusing to act in a Russian play
which she considered bad,
artistically and ideologically. That
was in 1974. Here in Israel for a
year now, the intervening times
were hard for her and her husband
Paul. Virtually without income,
the two had to spend their fortunes
just to get to Israel.
Ona reflects that most of her life
has been spent in putting the lie to
stereotypes about her people, and
about the Jewish people of her
husband too. She came from an
exceptional family. “My
grandfather was a Gypsy par
excellence,” she recalls.
Continuing in near perfect
Hebrew, Ona relates, “Nature and
the real world, not the laws of
men—they were what mattered for
him." Ona’s mother achieved
national fame through her opera
singing, and the name of Mogda
Varga even became popular in
Italy after performances there.
As a young Gypsy girl, Ona had
a comfortable childhood replete
with a normal Hungarian
upbringing in a large city that did
not include caravans or fortune
telling; but it was a tense time
because she never felt at home. “I
especially remember feeling like
the Jews—without a home. You
see, Hungary, and especially
Debrecen, was world famous as a
center for anti-Semitism. As a girl I
remember all the horrible stories
abut the Nazis which later turned
out to be doubly true because they
applied to the Gypsies as well.”
But Ona remembers better
stories. She relates Gypsy history
and lore as if it was a part of her
own life story! “We started out at
the bottom in life. No one is quite
sure how or when, but we were
probably a low Indian caste related
to the Dorns, the tribe of musicians
and ropemakers. The group began
wandering westward, and by 1500
or so had spread to just about
every corner in Europe.”
Like the Jews, the Gypsies at
times during their history yearned
for a homeland, but their
economic base was unsound, being
essentially a nation of small
craftsmen and wanderers. By the
late 1930s, in spite of not paying
taxes to local governments and
living mostly by suffrance, they did
manage to front a king to the world
and put their case before the
League of Nations. But King
Janusz Kiviek was fighting the tide
of Nazism. His idea to shift a
nation of jugglers, horse traders,
tinsmiths, and a few score lawyers
to an island somewhere in
Polynesia, was stillborn. Tens of
thousands of Gypsies were
exterminated by Hitler.
The few thousand who survived
Auschwitz and other German
horrors soon abandoned the idea
of a Romany state, but not their
notions of freedom and the belief
in the sanctity of nature. “I
suppose very few Gypsies have
taken the course I have chosen,
although many have found
freedom in Western Europe and
even in America,” Ona says. “But
here in Israel it’s very special. The
Israelis have a lot of understanding
but not by any means in a
patronizing way. They take things
and people purely on face value.”
Ona has been intensively
studying Hebrew since the day of
her arrival. She has reached a point
now where she will begin an acting
job, in Hebrew, this July with the
Beersheva Theater. In Hungary
she acted in Shakespeare,
Chekhov, Brecht, and Genet. Here
in Israel she will soon'be doing
much the same, but in'Hebrew.
The people in Beersheva were so
impressed that they are anxious for
her to do a series of poetry readings
and songs in both Hebrew and
Hungarian.
Israel’s former President
Ephraim Katzir recently saw a
presentation of “Peter and
Charles,” one of Paul Saloman’s
plays about an early Russian-
Swedish war that was featured on
Hungarian television before life
turned sour for the couple. “I hope
he and others in Israel like my
work as much as they like Paul's,”
Ona says. “Throughout history
Gypsies have been a symbol of
freedom,” she continue*. “I feel
that Israel is giving us back
something that Europe stole and
nearly destroyed—ourselves,”
■ *
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Pag* 9 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE July 14, 1978