Disciplines

Jewish Studies

Abstract

George Acs was born in Hungary and was brought, as a three year old, to the United States in 1957, after his parents fled the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. His mother’s cousin, who survived Auschwitz with her, had an apartment in the Bronx and they moved in with her upon arriving in the United States. Eventually they would live on 174th Street and Southern Boulevard, which was a Jewish area but in the process of transitioning by the time they moved there in 1957 until they left in 1964 and moved to Lydig Avenue off Pelham Parkway, which was Jewish and Italian.

Acs remembers the stores and restaurants of the neighborhoods, playing on the streets and in the school yard. His father owned a dental lab that his mother would eventually work in after Acs got older. Neither of his parents could get any higher education in Hungary because of anti-Jewish discrimination. Acs would attend yeshiva, where he said he received a quality education and, like almost half his class, he would go on to the Bronx High School of Science. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was no longer a predominantly Jewish school but Acs describes Science as having a good mix of students. In the Pelham Parkway area, he remembers Italian kids using racial or anti-semitic epithets, but then they would all be the best of friends the next day.

Acs’ family spoke Hungarian at home and attended synagogue on the High Holidays, practicing other major holidays at home and not keeping kosher. Acs would go on to attend Fordham University, helping to found the Jewish Student Union there, convincing the university that there were far more Jews than there actually were on the campus. He left the Bronx to attend dental school in Boston in 1976, though he returned often and was aware of the arson and crime going on in the city. Acs says he would move back to the Bronx today, now that his children are out of the house, and likes the idea of being back in the Bronx with all of its parks and history.

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