Forever Guilty

Living since the mid-eighteenth century for several generations in the southeastern part of Austria-Hungary, surrounded by neighbors whose family names were Hungarian, Slavic, or, in increasing numbers, German, my French family name was a rarity, if not a curio, that was most often badly pronounced, especially by my teasing friends in high school. Before the war, I asked my father to explain, but he always refused, declaring, "Since we had been kicked out from France, we shall never return." However, having found each other after the war, in 1948, refugees from the communist takeover our properties. And upon learning that my brother, André, had perished, he relented. Bit by bit, he revealed to me the following story, which his father had passed on to him.