Miklos Molnar

This is my father, Miklos Molnar, in 1958 in Sydney. In 1949 we had an unsuccessful attempt to immigrate to Australia. They didn't make a big deal out of this. In 1950, after the second attemp to immigrate, my father got 4 years and 8 months of prison. My father was appointed to the Prefabricated Building Blocks Factory to run the canteen. This Prefabricated Building Blocks Factory was a prison in fact, where the prisoners worked for free. It wasn't a very strictly guarded place, there weren't murderers there. They let off 1 year for my father, so he was in the prison for 3 years and 6 months. When he came out he was appointed obligatorily to the METRO building site. In 1956 he immigrated to Australia. My father wasn't happy even for one minute in Australia. He was like a fish taken out of water. My father is a café gentleman. There aren't such people today anymore. He was a man of the city, a cultured man. In Australia first of all there wasn't a café. Secondly, it was awfully hot. He was always hot. He hated this humid air. Then he got into a void, because everyone was busy, everyone was working. He could only meet even Jancsi Reich once a week at most. Here in Hungary, he had been someone, a wealthy gentleman. He immigrated to Australia and he became a nobody there. He didn't speak the language, he didn't have money, and he had a job, which he didn't like. Besides that he didn't have company. The people he met were all people like this Kaufmann. In my opinion they hadn't even gone to elementary school. They didn't have any common topics. Moreover, he tried to fit in with them, because still the family and the grandchildren were there.