When I went to Canada, I interviewed a Hungarian Roma family who fled Miskolc five years ago for safety in Canada. It wasn’t until they arrived in Canada, and their son began researching the Holocaust for a school paper that they learned that their family members had been murdered at Auschwitz.
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Video: Following the Removals /
(Scroll down for English.)
A Cocoon Miskolcon 2019. július 27-én, szombaton alkonyatkor a számozott utcákon átmenő menettel csúcsosodott ki. A lakók és a korábbi lakosok a környék különböző pontjain kezdték meg a sétát, ahol az embereket kilakoltatták, és az otthonokat lerombolták. Lámpásokkal, amelyek mindegyike egy-egy család nevét viselte.
A menet resztvevöi a 7. utcán találkoztak, és együtt mentek vegig rajta, a megszállt és kiürített otthonokon lógó nagy fekete-fehér portrék között. Aztán kerekeken gurították a Cocoon-t amit epitettek rövid távon, egy kis füves részre a Szinva folyó partján.
Az emberek a lámpákat a Cocoon belsejébe lógatták, a örökségről készített fényképek, a kilakoltatási értesítések, a kanadai elutasitott nem repülőjegyeket és a számozott utcákon a boldogabb időkről készült családi fényképek mellé.
Az elhangzott mondatok az interjukbol kiragadt részletek, amelyekben történeteket osztottak meg a költözés előtti, utáni és utáni életéről.
Cocoon Miskolc culminated with a procession through the Numbered Streets at dusk on Saturday, July 27, 2019. Residents and former residents began their walks at various spots around the neighborhood where people had been evicted and homes razed. They carried lanterns, each of which bore the name of a family now gone.
The various groups of marchers met on 7th street, and together walked down the block, between large black-and-white portraits of residents hanging from occupied and emptied homes. Then they wheeled the Cocoon they had built a short distance, to a small grass lot on the banks of the Szinva River.
People hung the lanterns inside the Cocoon, next to photographs of heirlooms, eviction notices, rejected plane tickets to Canada, and family photographs from happier times in the Numbered Streets.
The soundtrack played excerpts of their own interviews, in which they shared stories about life before, during and after the removals.
Building a Cocoon in the Numbered Streets /
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A 8. es egyben utolso utam a Szamozott utcakba 2019 juliusaban volt. Az interjuk kesz voltak es egy-egy kiemelt reszletbol hanganyagot szerkesztettem hogy a Cocoon-ban lejatszam. Eljott az ideje a szobor felepitesenek.
Elkezdtunk dolgozni az egyik haz kertjeben a 7. Utcaban. Egy utcanyira, a 9. Utcaban egy kotró a varos megbizasabol egy ujabb haz bontasat fejezte be. Elkezdtunk osszeszerelni faágakat 12 kulonbozo meretu karikává amikbol a szobor fog allni. Ez napokig tartott, majd egymasba helyzetuk oket hogy kialakuljon a szobor.
Ez egy time-lapse video az alkoto csapatrol, a kornyek osszes lakojarol.
Kovetkezo posztom egy video lesz a körmenetröl amiben a helyiek elsetalnak a hianyzo csaladok es baratok lebontott hazai mellett a Cocoon-ig, amit mi mindannyian helyeztunk ki a Szamozott utcak egyik sarkara a Szinva patak melle.
My eighth and last trip to the Numbered Streets came in July 2019. All my interviews were done and I had edited excerpts into a soundtrack to play inside the Cocoon. It was time to assemble the sculpture.
We began working in the side yard of a house on 7th street. One block over, on 9th, a backhoe hired by the city was finishing the demolition of yet another house. We began by lashing together saplings into 12 rings of various dimensions that comprise the sculpture. That took several days, then we put them together to form the Cocoon sculpture.
This is a time-lapse of the assembly by the project team, all residents of the neighborhood.
Coming next I’ll post a video of the procession that took residents past the sites of the destroyed homes of absent friends and families to the Cocoon they had built, which we all wheeled to a small site at the edge of the Numbered Streets, on the banks of the Szinva River.
Portraits From the Numbered Streets /
On our trips to the Numbered Streets, I would tape an interview with residents who wanted to participate in Cocoon and then they would pose for a portrait — we lined part of the procession route with large black-and-white prints. Many people shared their family photographs, which Eric photographed, some of which were hung inside the Cocoon.
Some of these were formal portraits of parents or grandparents or themselves, from much earlier times, or more recent portraits of children and grandchildren sent back home from far away. Others were snapshots of themselves and family and friends, many of happier, safer times in the Numbered Streets, when work was easily had in the steel plants, and their apartment leases weren’t threatened by city officials.
“I Miss Everything About Hungary” /
To emigrate is always to dismantle the center of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments. — John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
A partial view of the abandoned Diósgyőr steelworks, once the economic engine of Miskolc and even the country. Beyond, the houses and apartment buildings on the western edge of the the city and the Bükk Mountains.
A mother talks about leaving Hungary forever
I lived forty years in Hungary.
I gave birth to four children over there.
My parents passed away over there.
We are seven of us, brothers and sisters.
I miss them very much all my sisters and brothers who are in Hungary.
I cannot go to the cemetery to see my parents,
and I miss that a lot too,
and I miss everything about Hungary.
But over here I can keep my children safe,
and over here I see a future for us.
So over here my children can become somebody, and they are not going to be treated differently because of the race difference.
Nobody’s going to hurt them. We can have a calm normal life.
So I know my children are going to be safe over here as long as I live.
7th Street in the Numbered Streets
We were sitting in her Toronto kitchen eating the chocolate palacsinta (Hungarian crepes) she had just made when she said this. She and her family fled the Numbered Streets as the evictions and demolitions began. They moved to another neighborhood in Miskolc, to evade city inspectors and the risk their children would be taken away by authorities. Then they sold their furniture and other items to buy plane tickets to Canada, where they recently received their permanent residency status.
Looking east on Vasgyári út, Iron Foundry Street, the central street in the neighborhood. July 23, 2019, just after 5:30PM.
Photographs and video by Eric Etheridge.