Returns (25 images)

Q: Granduncle, which is a better and more humane society, one under a communist or a capitalist regime?

A: What matters, is not the ideology, but the individual human being and his goodness.

I asked this and many other questions to 87-year old Julius, my granduncle, the last communist in the village on the Danube River, in southern Slovakia near the border with Hungary. He lives alone, or rather he waits to join his recently departed wife, my grandaunt, Gizka. They...
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Q: Granduncle, which is a better and more humane society, one under a communist or a capitalist regime?

A: What matters, is not the ideology, but the individual human being and his goodness.

I asked this and many other questions to 87-year old Julius, my granduncle, the last communist in the village on the Danube River, in southern Slovakia near the border with Hungary. He lives alone, or rather he waits to join his recently departed wife, my grandaunt, Gizka. They spent over 60 years as a married couple, childless, living for each other. After her passing, his life as a fire marshal, an ardent communist, and a person actively engaged in the political and cultural life of his village and country - was reduced to self-entombment in a tiny kitchen and bedroom. There is no radio, no newspaper, no TV. The only presence other than the palpable spirit of Gizka, is his neighbor who shaves him and my mother, who feeds and baths him. My visit were brief sojourns into the past: the past of the war, of the self, of the world.

Julius survived World War II, lived through the establishment and the breakup of Czechoslovakia, witnessed the rise and the fall of communism, and most recently experienced the tumultuous spread of capitalism. After his departure, much of the oral history of these dramatic and painful times will be lost.

This selection of images is but a small chapter of a story about Julius, Gizka, my parents and the changes in their village, in my country. I plan to create a multimedia piece to tell a story about life and death (metaphorical and physical) of a country and a person. I intend to weave the past with the present and to offer more complex understanding of love, commitment, and dying. Love for an ideology, love for a woman. Commitment to a party, the commitment to build a new society. Dying, not from an illness, but from losing the will to live.

I am an outside observer with an intimate access, and this essay is a loving homage to Julius.
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