Transylvanians in the South of France

It started out back in the US, where I ran into a Hungarian Protestant organization, called the Calvin Synod, which was looking for people to sponsor the education of Hungarian students in Transylvania, Romania.

For many centuries Transylvania used to be part of Hungary, but it was awarded to Romania after the First Word War. Even now there are over 2 million Hungarians living there, under difficult conditions, as a barely tolerated minority. Under the Communist rule Hungarian schools were taken over or closed, and only now, after decades of applying, were some schools given back to the former owners, mostly the Hungarian churches in Transylvania. The Calvin Synod was sponsoring one of these, the Hungarian Reformed College of Kolozsvár.

Being the father of two girls, I chose to sponsor girls, because I felt it was hard to be a Hungarian, and especially a girl to get ahead in Romania. In the last 15 years I sponsored over a dozen girls. They all wrote me nice thank you notes, but there was one who's letter impressed me most. Shehe was first in her class, spoke 4 languages and showed great intelligence in her articulate letters. So, as a graduation present I invited her to spend her vacation with us in the South of France. She asked if she could bring her brother (the parents were probably wondering what does this old guy want from our daughter). So both of them arrived, and the moment they set foot in my house, they started working, helping with the household and cleaning up the garden. I was impressed by their diligence, they never wanted to stop, so I asked Robert, Antonia's brother, how much money he would make for this kind of work at home. It turned out to be one quarter of the French minimum wage, so I told him, if he would like to work in France, I could get him plenty of work. After the vacation, he came back and he was an instant success, with his hard work, honesty, and charming personality.

A year later he brought his girlfriend, who also won the heart of my friends and they told us that they are going to get married and invited us and some other, mostly British people for whom they worked, to their wedding. We, and two other couples accepted the invitation, and arrived to their charming, pure Hungarian village. With Anne we stayed in Robert's parent's house.Next day the preparation for the wedding started. More than 200 guests were invited, so ther was a lot of work. Practically the whole village helped.

Next day the ceremony started at Robert's house.

And from there we all marched to the Mayor s office and after that to the church.

After that there was a large feast and dancing till dawn.


After this I invited several other young men from the village. They were all extremely nice people, and we took them into the family and celebrated holidays like Christmas at my home.


This was a charity that turned out better than I ever expected. Not only are the Transylvanians happy, but all the friends of mine, where they worked are thankful to me for the excellent help they gave them.