Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Aniko: The stranger who loved me Category:  Biography Publisher: Anina's Book Company ISBN-10:  1877053155 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 149 Copyright: 2003 ISBN-13: 9781877053153 Price: $4.89 (eBook) The true story of a woman who survived the unsurvivable and did the impossible, more than once.  This book won an EPPIE Award for non-fiction in 2004. Aniko survived the hell of the Second World War, risking everything to save her baby son's life. Then the man she fell in love with tore him from her, and banished him to the other side of the globe. She built a million-dollar export business behind the iron curtain, in a country where women were strongly disadvantaged. Then, for 31 years, she protected her husband's dignity while he suffered early-onset dementia. Aniko will inspire you. Excerpt Prologue Budapest, June – July 2000 I’ve always thought that ‘an aching heart’ was a cliché, a metaphor, a mere turn of phrase. But during my daily visits to my dying mother, I learn that it is an exact description. My heart is where I feel the pain of grief. Oh, I don’t cry, even in private. I haven’t cried since childhood. When I am with her, in that antique and under-equipped hospital room, I pretend to be cheerful and optimistic, pretend that of course she’ll get better. We both know that she never will. I watch the solid, muscular body of my brother as he bends over her. His ear is almost touching her lips, so he can hear the less-than whisper of her voice. He repeats whatever he thinks she has said, waiting for the nod or shake of her head before bending over again. She is giving instructions, about paying the car insurance on time, about reading the water meter. She lists the names of people to telephone because they should be able to help me with my book about her life. It’s to be my memorial to her, but, even on her deathbed, she is my research officer. The thinking part of her brain could still vie with a chess champion. Everything else is dying. Images. She has given me hundreds of images. They are her flashbacks, but I can see them. I see her as a child, cosseted in a loving family, though one rent by emotion. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, she had a holiday in Italy, attended wonderful family parties, learned to play the piano. I see her as a young woman, the mother roaming bomb-torn Budapest, risking torture and death for food, and to seek safety for her loved ones. Along devastated streets she pushed my pram, using my blond hair as a disguise. These streets were covered by snow, the rubble of fallen buildings and the gore of victims. The hated yellow star was missing off her coat, and yet a single hostile pre-war acquaintance could have been our death sentence. I know she can be hard as a mace and soft as a parachute, daring, imaginative and successful. I feel her pain, when her love deprived her of her child. I share her success against all the odds, as she built a million-dollar export business despite every handicap that prejudice, criminal action and bureaucracy could throw in her way. And I see her as an old woman, lovingly caring for the husk her husband had become. I have plaited a story from two strands, two strands from opposite sides of the globe, about two people whom circumstances have made into opposites in so many ways: woman and man, a generation apart, religious Jew and unbeliever, one firmly rooted in Europe, the other transplanted and now thoroughly Australian. And yet, in that bleak hospital room, we have come together again, for the last time, I and the stranger who loved me.

Kora
I read your book. Quite an interesting family you had there from your mother's side. I adore aunt Janka so much, I adore your grandparents. Wonderful people. The war events were elaborated in so much detail, I thought, I am part of it. It made me shiver at times. I feel sorry for the people and their losses. Unfair world we live, not then, not now, not later, but always.

Uncle Peter gave me creeps about his immoral habits. I have had problems with men like that. He lied in many ways. Maybe after my personal experiences, I am too disapproving of these people, who are just users. He did use his skills to survive the war. Maybe, Tibor couldn't do what uncle Peter had to do to survive. He was not honest to your family either about the gold. He should not have kept it.

A lot of "communist" stories happened in Albania as well. I was little but I do know that the same Soviet Union rules applied there.

My father tells a lot of stories. You had to carry a communist red card (Party membership) to advance. My father never enrolled, big mistake from his part. I guess I take a lot after him, too honest and straightforward, like Joseph :))))). Unlike us, You have been a brat. :))

One in 3 people were spies, you had to watch what to say. My mother's uncle was jailed 13 years, because he raised an argument on how the agriculture ministry should have operated. He earned that post since he finished agronomy with high results from University Luigi Bocconi in Milan, Italy, in 1937. Funny to mention that, while he was jailed, he got punished with the death sentence, "for propaganda against the Party." Later, the verdict was changed to life imprisonment, since they needed his expertise in agronomy and agriculture projects. He also translated and created an extensive literature of agriculture books, through which, the first University of Agriculture was opened in Albania. While leading agriculture projects in poor conditions, he exchanged expertise with an Hungarian engineer who also was part of the team. Since the two became friends, the Hungarian went to the People's government and appealed that the punishment to be reduced to a certain years. That's how he ended up serving 13 years instead of his entire life.

Above all, I love your mother's personality. Your mother was a tough woman and I am so glad she pursued all her dreams. Tibor may have been a good husband but did not prove his love in the war. He proved it in the ballrooms. War is the reality stage. I like it so much when she said: he was a good husband, but if I did not leave him, I was not going to find my love. That struck me. Maybe I am wrong to think such about her husband as a reader, I am getting egoist, but I am going with the woman instinct here. I am going with Aniko's heart. Your mother is an icon and philanthropist. She is an incredible lady. There are no words to describe her talent.

Your writing amazes me. When I read your style, I completely forget about the rest. I forget about myself as well. Very few write like you.

Eva Kende
I've never believed in cemeteries or headstones. I remember my deceased loved ones in odd places that I associate with their life or their achievements instead. A gay cafe for one, a clump of bushes on a street corner for another and a restored house for another serves as my way of paying my respects. Bob Rich, the author of Aniko, did one better, he erected a monument to his mother in the form of a book. A monument he invites the world to share. In reading the tale of Aniko, while one is conscious of the pain the author must feel, he skillfully pushes it out of the way to tell the story of an extraordinary woman that happened to be his mother. Aniko is a woman of strength, courage, determination with lots of soft feminine love in her heart. She uses these attributes to survive, to prosper and to the benefit of her family. Bob's writing style brings to life Aniko and the city of Budapest in an era that I know well from my personal life. I could see the places, feel the atmosphere, hear the sounds and, from time to time, I imagined that I could even smell the odors emanating from the buildings as I passed them. Not only the setting is authentic, but the problems Aniko must face and conquer are familiar. I sat on the edge of my chair throughout the book wondering how she will deal with one adversity after another.

Aniko is a riveting book, inspiring and that I recommend highly.

Michael Larocca
"This book is a tribute to a remarkable woman who managed the impossible more than once. Her story is worth the telling." These words come from Dr. Bob Rich's prologue. And he is absolutely right.

Aniko Stern was a Hungarian Jew. Through her story, we are transported to a time and place that may be no more to us than a few words in a history book. But that's only the beginning of ANIKO. The war only lasted a few years. It simply seems longer because of its aftermath.

This book contains so much more than that. Real people faced with real decisions. An intelligent, determined woman who is able to do much more than struggle to survive, and who could never be content as a simple housewife. I've met and admired such women all my life. Bob has given me one more.

When Aniko dares to love again, we see a side of single parenthood that I honestly wasn't aware existed, brought powerfully to life by the masterful writing of Dr. Bob Rich.

I've read several of Bob's short story collections, so I already knew that he was a chameleon, adopting different personas, view-points and attitudes as his stories required. But it's even more amazing to see in the course of a single book, a story spanning decades and told through the eyes of a number of different people.

Aniko's business acumen reminded me of my own mother. Very strong "people skills," which are equally useful in post-war Hungary or 1960s North Carolina. Or, in fact, anywhere at any time.

That's something I really got from this book. As I said before, real people living real life. Things you can identify with, things you can learn from, things that will inspire you to think of things that the author may have never intended. Life is like that.

In the predictable boilerplate "novel," you can only think in one direction while you read. It's the one the author leads you along by the nose. But a genuine author gives you literature. A recreation of life so real that five different readers can come from the experience with five different experiences, all equally valid.

By that standard, ANIKO is definitely literature. I am grateful that Bob chose to share his mother's story with us, and it is a story that I will read again. That's the highest praise you can get out of me.