Csön-csön gyűrű

Csön-csön gyűrű / Chime-chime ring – Hungarian children’s song

How do you find someone who does not want to be found, when every circumstance is against it? Someone who does not want to be found leaves very few traces.

In the film Éva A-5116 (1963, directed by László Nádasy), we see Éva Kroz, a medical student at the University of Krakow. She speaks Polish, a language she learned from her foster parents, and she does not know her biological parents. She was two or three years old when she was adopted in the village of Auschwitz, unaware of her own name and unable to remember her parents. The only thing revealed by the number tattooed on her arm is that she arrived at the concentration camp on a transport from Hungary. Like everyone else, she wants to know who her parents were, whether they are still alive. For this reason, she turns to the Hungarian authorities to search for any surviving relatives. Newspaper advertisements appear in Hungary, and dozens of people come forward, believing they recognize in Éva their daughter, sister, niece, or relative. Éva travels to Hungary to undergo the necessary examinations. The documentary Örök Éva (Hungarian, 2006, directed by László Nádasy Jr.) tells the story of her attempt to uncover her “ancestry” using the new DNA technology.

The final scene of Örök Éva was the starting point for my work. We see Éva Kroz sitting on a couch, holding a letter. An official decision: the DNA test did not detect any familial relationship. She did not find her blood relatives. Éva recounts that she had not really hoped for a result, and then tells how, during the filming, a young girl gave her a ring that she had received from her own mother, to bring her luck. Upon returning home, Éva felt guilty, questioning whether it was right to accept the gift, since it had value for the girl. She wanted to reciprocate, and then remembered: she herself had a ring, brought from Auschwitz as a small child. She sent this ring to the girl in Hungary in exchange.

Éva’s ring has been in the possession of a 19-year-old girl in 2006, who is now 31, somewhere in Pilis. It is in a house with a stone, vaulted cellar entrance in its yard, and across the street are two wooden crosses turned sideways, with a coat of arms. The inscription on the coat of arms is illegible. These were the only clues to locate the girl.

I began my search for Éva’s ring a month ago. I relied on multiple sources. From an interview with the director, I learned that the ring is with a woman who most likely lived in Pilisvörösvár—at least at the time of the ring’s handover, she still resided there. The director provided me with the film footage, showing the girl receiving the ring, though her name does not appear. Students from Kossuth Zsuzsa High School participated in the filming both in 1964 and in 2006. The girl was 19 during the filming of the second part. However, the school merged with Raul Wallenberg High School in 2009, and its archival documents were lost during multiple relocations. Former teachers now barely remember their former students.

Meanwhile, I began planning what I would create using the motif of the ring and the hand: an open pair of hands, showing the owner’s handprint (positive form) with the ring inside, modeled after the ring Éva had given. The ring in the hand is divided into two parts as a casting mold: one half engraved in the left hand, the other in the right. The ring becomes whole, actualized, only when the hands are joined. In this way, the ring exists, but it is not visible.

I want to reflect on the obscurity and hidden existence of memory—on the times when people could not publicly claim their cultural identity and could only preserve it secretly, amid doubt. The story of the ring is also important, how through touch it carries the fate of the people who hold it.

After a long and unsuccessful search, I made a final attempt by taking a virtual walk through Pilisvörösvár on Google Maps, hoping to spot the sideways crosses somewhere. I hesitated to visit the town in person, and gradually realized that I no longer wanted to find her. If this monument is about the existence of a ring, which Éva preserved for years and then gave to this girl, and if this ring serves as a memento pointing to the secrets and doubts that characterized Jewish communities in Hungary in the 1960s, then the ring must remain unfound.

The search is therefore concluded, but the thread of memory has not been severed—it has been turned inward. The monument’s impersonality reflects the historical period it processes. It represents the era’s anonymous witnesses, faceless keepers of secrets. Indeed, the “Jewish question” existed, only in a more concealed form than before or after. The handing over of the ring occurred, and the memory lives on. Let this monument be dedicated to the act of giving, for the essence lies in the continuity of memory—not tied to a single person or case, but to all who share in it, regardless of their individual life stories.

This work was realized as part of the Enyészpontok 3.0 project curated by Tamás Don. More information can be found at the following link:

https://enyeszpontok.hu/2021/10/30/szabo-nora-cson-cson-gyuru-hungarian-childrens-song/