ABSTRACT
I grew-up in a Jewish immigrant family residing in Washington, D.C. My parents had survived the Holocaust in Budapest, and after the war they escaped communist Hungary. Because my mother, Lilly, was born in Berlin, she received an early visa to the United States, arriving in May 1947. I was born six weeks later. My father, Laszlo (Laci), joined us in November and quickly developed his surgical practice. He was largely absent from our household, consumed by work and ambition. Lilly earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology and treated a small number of mildly neurotic (or just unhappy) patients during my childhood. Without further detail, suffice it to note that our household was marked by uncertainties: financial insecurities, marital conflict, cultural clashes and most insidiously, transmitted traumatic memories.
