Gypsy Music Street

Book excerpt: It's 1937, the eve of World War II. At twenty-six years old, Rezsi Lehrer leaves Munkacs, a small charming city located deep within a remote corner of the Carpathian mountains and travels alone to the United States. War breaks out and Eastern European borders are sealed. Rezsi's family is trapped in Czechoslovakia and the packages she sends home are returned unopened. When the war ends, Rezsi discovers her parents, two brothers and scores of relatives perished in the Holocaust. Gypsy Music Street is the story of one woman's endless sorrow and guilt she suffers at the loss of her family, the family she left behind "to die alone." Yet she still yearns to return to her town, "the little Paris of the East," to see it just one more time. But after the war, countries borders are redrawn and Mukacevo is no longer located in Czechoslovakia. It becomes completely closed off within the iron grip of the Soviet Union and the political climate is one of Cold War. Mukacevo is off limits for travel. As the years pass, Rezsi reminisces, sharing her longing and grief about the past with her daughter Bobbie. And when she dies an old woman, her dream unfulfilled, Bobbie is driven by her own loss and grief to make this journey home for her mother, and for herself. Adventures in Budapest, Ukraine and Israel make Gypsy Music Street an enthralling memoir of love and loss. Yet, it is also a story of the overwhelming joy a daughter experiences when she travels back in time and discovers her own torn roots.