Interview with sr. Hermine

“She was an extra-ordinary woman!”  Thus began my conversation about Blessed Sara Salkahazi with Sr. Hermine Jaschko, a member of the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart.  I learned of her from one of their novices whom I had met at a vocation fair the day before.  I had a picture of Blessed Sara on display and the novice who is Hungarian saw it and told me that one of their sisters knew Sr. Sara.  She suggested that I call Sr. Hermine and gave me the phone number of their Motherhouse where she could be reached.  When I called, Sr. Hermine answered, and when asked if she would be willing to be interviewed about Bl. Sara, she responded that she would be most happy to talk with me.  We spoke briefly about Bl. Sara and then set a day and time to meet.

On the day of the interview, Sr. Hermine opened the door and greeted me warmly with a big hug.  She invited me in and showed me around the house.  A couple of the sisters came by and also greeted me warmly.  Sr. Hermine invited me into their chapel to sit for a while and to begin our time together with prayer.  She pointed out two pictures near the tabernacle, one of a priest who used to say mass for them and who had passed away.  The other picture was of a woman who had helped the sisters to escape from Communist Hungary and get to the United States.  She had passed away just recently.  We joined together in prayer, reciting the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and invoking the prayers of Sr. Ida (their foundress), and Blessed Sara.

We moved into the living room where she had cups for coffee and cookies set out.  The feeling was very homey and welcoming.  She asked me to fetch the coffee from the kitchen.  We had hardly sat down when she looked at me intently and asked about the Sara play.  I had mentioned to her in our initial phone conversation that the Sisters of Social Service had produced a play on Blessed Sara, written at the request of one of our Associates. She was curious and wanted to hear more about it.  I told her how the play had come to be written, and told her a little about the play itself, mentioning that I had played the part of Sr. Sara.  She was very happy to hear about it.  I explained to her that I had done much research on her when I was preparing for the performance, and that I had been especially touched by her journals, some of which I had read. 

She launched almost immediately into recollections of Sr. Sara, with me writing madly to keep up.  She said that when you were with Sr. Sara even a short time, “her brightness came through”.  One of Sr. Hermine’s priest brothers went back to Slovakia recently.  He sent her a calendar that has a different picture of Bl. Sara for each month.  She had brought it to share it with me.  She placed it on the coffee table between us.  In my journal there was a holy card of Bl. Sara which I took and placed on the coffee table next to the calendar.  She leaned over and looked at the card and the picture on the front of the calendar, and she exclaimed pointing at the pictures, “That is her smile, that is how I remember her!”  She placed a hand over her heart and uttered a brief exclamation, then said, “Oh, when I look at her I can hear her voice, her laughter!”  I asked what she was like, and she responded that she was “very vivid and alive”.

At that point, she talked about our sisters and how she knew them.  Her family lived on the same street as the Sisters of Social Service house, Regina Pacis.  They went there to mass.  When Sr. Hermine was 17 years old she was in a Catholic girl’s club, and Sr. Sara was, in her words, “the heart of it”.  She prepared them for life.  The SSS had a large property, which Sr. Hermine’s family could approach.  There was a large bell in the front of the house, which was suspended in a stand that had a peaked cover on it.  When the priest, Fr. Bartha arrived on Sundays the sisters would ring the bell to signal the neighbors to come.  When he began to hear confessions before mass they would ring the bell again, and they rang it a third time when mass began.  Sr. Hermine added during our second interview that at times the confessions could get a little long, so the sisters rang the bell after a set amount of time to signal that the time for the confession was over.  Her little brother who was 10 years old at the time would take up the collection during mass.  The sisters rented rooms at their house to the elderly at a nominal cost, and with the money that they earned they would support their ministries and pay for the upkeep of the property.  One of the sisters worked at the bishop’s office and another edited a Catholic monthly.  They were very involved with this work.  The sisters also worked much with young girls and girls’ camps.  Sr. Hermine went to camp as a camper later on.  Sr. Sara didn’t work with camp, but did other things.

I asked Sr. Hermine what kind of voice Sr. Sara had and her response was astounding!  She responded, “Not high, but loud, loud, happy and joyful!”  She threw her arms open and her face was transformed.  Her eyes became wide and bright, she had a big smile on her face, and it seemed that in that instant I saw Bl. Sara sitting before me.  Sr. Hermine continued, “Immediately, you knew that she was your friend.  When you came in through the door, she would welcome you like an old friend.  She asked you about your life and immediately there was communication.  She asked questions and allowed you to answer.  She was loud; you could hear her everywhere.  She had that way with everyone.  She knew everyone personally.  She would ask about parents, work, hobbies, etc.  She got everyone into a conversation.  She was very active – very good.  When you saw her she was a personal advocate for her community.  I wanted to belong to that community.  She made all the girls want to join the community.  She was so loving and caring.  Years later when she was helping the Jews, I’m sure that she used a lot of self control, showing a public face toward the Nazis and her private face to the Jews.  She could have a public face and control her emotions.  The Communists would search our own (Sacred Heart Sisters’) houses at night and you had to have a poker face, so she must have been very good at this, because she saved so many Jews.  She had women who helped her in her working women’s hostels and she had to trust them.”  I mentioned that one of Sr. Sara’s employees turned her in to the Arrow Cross and another died with her (Vilma Bernovits).  At one point Sr. Hermine said that there were times when Sr. Sara was surrounded by enemies and in danger, but it didn’t stop her.

Sr. Hermine mentioned that she read in a book about Bl. Sara that she had some difficult times in her community, but she wanted to stay, and Sr. Hermine felt that the difficult times prepared her for her death years later.  I asked her if she knew the nature of the difficulties, but she said that she didn’t; she only read of them in the book.  Sr. Hermine mentioned that it was very interesting that Sr. Sara never shared her problems.  She told me that she and her mother and godmother were aware that Sr. Sara was unhappy and experiencing some problems with her community life, but neither Sr. Hermine nor her family knew anything about what was happening.  More importantly, Sr. Sara never brought her problems or hurts into the girls’ club meetings, but kept them to herself.  The girls received only peace, brightness and the love of God from her.  Sr. Sara went through a lot and was sensitive to the goodness in others, so she tended to blame herself for whatever happened. 

I told her of a new book that was written about her with many pictures, and I told her that I would try to get a copy for her.  Sr. Hermine told me of a priest in Hungary named Fr. Blaise who has prayed every day for Sr. Ida and Sr. Sara that they would be beatified.  He refers to Sr. Sara by her nickname, “Sari”, which is a term of endearment.  Sister added that, “there are so many people who loved Sr. Sara, both and in and out of the country.  Many people were attracted to her, and through her many people were attracted to the community, so she didn’t draw people just for herself, but for the community.  You meet so many people who knew her!”  She added that Sr. Sara loved everybody and everybody loved her.  Sr. Hermine closed her eyes and said of her, “She loved being a sister!” 

I told Sr. Hermine about the two occasions in which Bl. Sara’s prayers were invoked: one is a woman who was diagnosed with cancer, and then after prayer with Bl. Sara no cancer was found. The other is about a young man who had abused alcohol and drugs and was estranged from his family.  He had a bad night in which he said hateful things to his parents and grandparents, then jumped in his car and left.  His grandparents had been given holy cards of Bl. Sara and they took them out and asked for her prayers and protection for their grandson.  After prayer with Bl. Sara he came back to his family, contrite and ready to continue his alcohol treatment program.  I told her that I emailed the two stories to Sr. Franciska, the General Moderator in Hungary.  Sr. Hermine told me that their community is also collecting miracle stories for Sr. Ida’s beatification. 

At this point Sr. Hermine glanced down at a picture of Sr. Sara on an old pamphlet that I had handed to her and again mentioned her beautiful smile and said that that is how she remembers her – with that smile.  I mentioned her eyes and asked about the color.  She said that she had dark eyes, but she had very fair skin.

I gave Sr. Hermine some gifts that I had brought for her.  She was very grateful.  I gave her a copy of Sr. Sara’s prayer of offering in Hungarian.  She mentioned that it’s easy to be peaceful and to pray when all is well and you feel connected to God, but with all of the enemies around her, it was very special that Sr. Sara was able to calmly pray and offer her life, and it was especially wonderful in that she had offered it for the community.  Sr. Hermine said that the prayer was very special.  She told me that the more materials on Bl. Sara that we have the better, because we can reach different kinds of people with them. 

Sr. Hermine mentioned that Sr. Sara worked in a book bindery before she entered the community.  Sr. Hermine told me that she went back there to see it years later, because she wanted to see where she had worked before she became a sister.  It has changed over the years, of course.  She found Sr. Sara’s experience of working there interesting, because she herself did printing in her community when they were in Canada.  I asked if book binding is hard work, and she said that it is.  Sr. Hermine knew that Sr. Sara was a writer and had read some of her short stories, adding that her stories were beautiful.  She went on to say that Sr. Sara wrote in a genuine style.  She wrote about life as it was.  She didn’t make things all nice and sweet, but real, and there was such a humanist approach in her writing – a child could identify with it.  Her stories were very nice.  She knew Sr. Sara around the year 1936.  She was a teenager at the time (17 years of age).  One day Sr. Sara called Hermine and asked if she and some friends could come to her house and help her to pack. Sr. Sara told her that she was going on mission to South America.  She had a trunk and wanted to put her things for mission in there so they wouldn’t be in her way.  She didn’t have her visa yet and it was very hard to wait, but she had to be totally prepared for that apostolate.  Of course, it never happened.

In 1941 when she was studying at the university in Budapest, Sr. Hermine stayed in one of Sr. Sara’s working girls’ homes for two days.  She could see the physical benefits that she and the sisters offered for those girls.  They could go to work and had a home to return to at the end of the day.  They were teenage working girls. The sisters gave the girls more possibilities. They had 8 in a bedroom, which wasn’t bad.  It was very clean.  They had room and board there.  In the evening the sisters did talks preparing the girls for life.  The sisters didn’t distinguish between those who were religious and those who weren’t, but would slowly bring those along who lacked a religious foundation.

I asked her what kind of speaker Sr. Sara was and she said that she was beautiful and very alive.  She was a vivid and dynamic speaker who could carry through on a topic that she started.  She put good stories in here and there to bring life to the message and keep it interesting, and then she would come back to her original thought.  She was very good!  Hermine’s mother sometimes went to the working girls’ meetings and the sisters had her talk about what the girls were to expect if they wanted to get married, and how to live a single life and work.  The sisters provided all of this for the girls.  From the way she lived her life you could see that Sr. Sara was searching for social justice, and when the Papal documents came out, she read them tried to apply the teachings immediately with the girls.  She traveled around to many Hungarian speaking towns in the southern part of Czechoslovakia doing talks.  She was working in connection with Baroness Esterhazy who was very much into social justice.  Sr. Hermine worked with the Baroness for a short time in 1938-1939 when she was a girl scout.  She invited the Baroness to come to camp to do some talks for the Girl Scout leadership group.  The Baroness and her brother John Esterhazy felt that that part of Czechoslovakia would soon be returned to Hungary, and they wanted to prepare Hungarians for the change.  They spoke to many different groups, including the Scouts.  When they were in camp they really roughed it, sleeping on straw mats and the Baroness shared the accommodations with the scouts.  Sr. Hermine mentioned that she was a wonderful person. The Baroness really helped her later when the Communists began creating their own youth groups.  Sr. Hermine’s mother was invited to go and do a talk for the Communist Youth Group.  The title “Christ Barabbas” upset and puzzled her.  She asked for a copy of the talk so she could study it, and Sr. Hermine got it from her mother and gave it to the Baroness.  She read it and advised Hermine  to do an educational program about the Communist way of thinking that would assist the young people in distinguishing fact from fiction.  She had a very clear mind!  The Baroness also worked with Msgr. Nicholas Pfeiffer, Sr. Sara and other Sisters of Social Service.  The Baroness and Sr. Sara went to three university cities in Czechosloviakia: Bratislava, Prague, and Brno.  Sr. Sara was willing to go to many villages.  The spirit of what they did was not segregation, but building the Hungarian Catholic spirit.  They went to the Hungarian minorities, but didn’t want to separate out the different ethnic groups.  They wanted to build communities in which all were together as one. 

Sr. Sara had roots in a strong Hungarian family.  They were very famous in Kassa.  The hotel that they ran was also famous.  It was known by their name: Schalkhaz.  Sr. Hermine didn’t know growing up that the name of the hotel was a family name.  The school dances took place there once a year.  When she met Sr. Sara she was surprised when she found out that she was the same Schalkhaz as the hotel family.  However, she didn’t play the role of being a Schalkhaz.  By this, Sr. Hermine meant that Sr. Sara didn’t take advantage of the notoriety that her family enjoyed.  At this point the hotel was owned and operated by a corporation which had as one of its heads a woman who was the mother of one of the girl scouts.  This woman was always very good to the student organizations and the sisters.  The corporation gave a room to the boy scouts for meetings, because there was no room for them elsewhere.  They welcomed all groups who came there, whether they were Catholic or not, as long as there was goodness in what they did, or a Catholic spirit.  The co-educational Hungarian high school was the only one in Kassa and it included all nationalities and religions. It was very open.  

After a pause Sr. Hermine mentioned that Vilma Bernovits who worked with Sr. Sara at the working women’s house was a distant relation of hers.  When he was elderly Vilma’s father lived with Sr. Hermine’s family.  He was a genius.  It is not known, but he was the person who invented the typewriter. In the United States when the typewriter came into use, his name was not mentioned.  As she described it, one of the scientists here took credit and Mr. Bernovits’ name was taken off the invention.  Sr. Hermine’s mother knew Vilma’s mother, but Sr. Hermine didn’t know her.  Sr. Sara’s two nephews also boarded with Sr. Hermine’s family when they were in high school.  They were twins.  Sr. Hermine was already at the university.  The boys came through Sr. Sara who knew Sr. Hermine’s mother, and knew that she took in boarders.  It was very difficult to get by as a Hungarian in those days.  Sr. Hermine’s father had a bookstore that stocked mostly Hungarian books, and when the area of the country was annexed to Czechoslovakia in 1919 the books lost their value and her mother took in boarders to help bring in more money.  They had up to ten boarders at a time.  With twenty people in the house to feed and shelter she had to be well organized, and it is easy to see why Sr. Sara would ask her to do talks with the young girls about how to run a household.

Sr. Hermine brought a large book on Kosice and we looked through it together.  I showed her a picture of Kosice that I had found in an old National Geographic.  She informed me that the large building in the middle was a national theatre.  Her father’s bookstore was across the street.  The two roads on either side of the theatre were once water and the land on which the theater stood was an island.  When the roads were put in there was a streetcar that ran on both of the streets.  Her father would take the streetcar to work.  Later, the streetcars were removed because the shaking of the cars was causing damage to the old buildings.  The section of Kosice that we were looking at is now the old city.  The new city is to the side of the old.  The cathedral is near the theatre.  It was built in the 12^th century.  Sr. Sara was baptized at the cathedral, and later her office was located close by.  Sr. Hermine showed me a picture of the Ursuline school where Sr. Sara was educated.

We went back to talking of Regina Pacis.  Sr. Hermine repeated the fact that her family lived on the same street.  I told her that the house is still there and the sisters have kept Sr. Sara’s room intact.  There is a picture of her on the wall of the room, which is now used for guests.  Sr. Hermine went back to Slovakia ten years ago to see the house, and she told me that the street is not the same as it was.  Where her family house was there is now a huge building.  The sisters’ land around Regina Pacis house was taken and there is another big building built there.  It’s an educational building of some sort.  There is now only the house and a little bit of land around it.  Sr. Hermine was born in 1919 and was nine or ten years old when she first met Sr. Sara.  The sisters were doing a little play with the children and Sr. Hermine was in the play along with 4 other children in her family.  The play was part of a fundraiser day that the sisters were putting together.  The sisters also prepared children for first communion. Sr. Sara was not working with children at that time.  Later, in 1943 Sr. Hermine took a group of 6 to 8 children (her brothers and some relatives) and helped the sisters to prepare them for their first communion.  The Sisters of Social Service worked with children, teenagers, camp, and adults.  They worked with all ages and so did Sr. Sara.  She was multi-talented and could work with anyone.  I asked Sr. Hermine which other Sisters of Social Service she knew and she told me that she knew Sr. Edna, Sr. Olga, Sr. Anitta the superior, Sr. Helga, and Sr. Izuska who ran the kitchen.  She pointed out their pictures that were in a book on Bl. Sara that I had brought to share with her.  There was another sister in the pictures that she knew, but she couldn’t remember her name. 

I mentioned that Sr. Sara was “big”, meaning “larger than life”, but Sr. Hermine thought that I meant that she was physically big.  She said that she wasn’t big, but was on the heavy side.  She wasn’t heavy from eating, although she enjoyed food and liked to eat.  Sr. Hermine preferred to describe her as “big boned”.  Sr. Hermine described her as moderately built and well proportioned.  Her temperament and body movements were “big” and she was a high energy person.  We established that she was 5’4” or 5’5” in height.  Sr. Hermine mentioned that she wasn’t overly tall or overly fat.  She didn’t stand out physically, and didn’t want to stand out.  She wanted to just be one of the sisters and not be singled out. 

I asked her what Bl. Sara might be thinking about all of this beatification excitement and she looked me straight in the eye and said, “She would say if it helps you, okay!  She would go along with her community.  She wouldn’t do anything for herself, but if it would save people… girls…that would be okay.”  Sr. Hermine added that sometimes Sr. Sara would say, “Oh, cut it out” when people made too much of her.  Sr. Hermine made a dismissive hand gesture when she said “Cut it out” and she repeated it several times.  Sr. Sara didn’t allow the girls to place her on a pedestal.  She was able to lift the girls up to her level, almost as if they were friends.  Because of this the girls didn’t worship her.

Sr. Sara got along well with everyone, even the priests.  She was comfortable with everyone.  However, she could stand her ground on an issue and fight for the truth and for what she believed.  She was from a wealthy family and because of that could advocate for the poor.  Someone else from a poor family might be shy about seeking help for the poor, because it would seem like begging.  Because she had worked in a book bindery Sara knew what the workers went through.  They rose early in the morning to go to work and had to do a perfect job or they would lose their position.  As Hungarians they had little or no personal value, and all they received were derogative remarks.  As a book binder Sara could prove her worth as an artisan, not as a Hungarian or Slovak.  Sr. Hermine mentioned that she would imagine that even though she might be shaking inside, Sr. Sara was able to face the soldiers in the firing squad on the night that she was executed.  We discussed her death and how she turned toward the firing squad at the last moment.  I told her that some people see her action as a sign of rebellion, but I felt that it was rather an act of love and self-offering to God.  Sr. Hermine agreed and added that her actions were never done for show, but were something that rose up from within her.  She felt that her actions that night were most likely an expression of her relationship with God and a sign of her acceptance of what she saw as God’s will for her.  She had an inner strength that allowed her to willingly make this offering of her life.

After speaking of her death it just seemed to both of us that we were finished.  We said nothing about being done, but there was a silent understanding between us and we both started picking up our things.  As I left I told her that if I could get a copy of the book I would call her and make an appointment to bring it by for her.  She seemed honestly happy for the opportunity to speak about her friend of so many years ago, and I left feeling grateful and humbled by the encounter.

At our second meeting I brought along with me a copy of the book that I was attempting to get for her, so that she could look at the pictures.  When she saw pictures of Sr. Sara’s journal pages she mentioned that she was a handwriting analyst.  She took out a magnifying glass and took a good look at the handwriting and did a brief, on-the-spot analysis of Sr. Sara’s character.  I mentioned that Sr. Sara’s handwriting was small, and Sr. Hermine pointed out that small handwriting is an indicator of great concentration, which Sr. Sara had.  According to her handwriting Sr. Sara was a practical person and she liked to finish whatever she started.  She could work alone and wasn’t unhappy to do so.  She had a lot of initiative and was very intuitive.  She was very loyal.  She was very present to what she was doing and valued time very much.  She knew ahead of time what she wanted to do and didn’t need to plan in advance.  Sr. Hermine explained to me that to be completely accurate in her analysis she would need to see the original writing, because  the amount of pressure with which the person was writing is an important component in assessing the person’s personality.

Sr. Hermine’s sister was studying to be a teacher when she contracted pneumonia and died.  The sisters at Regina Pacis would eat dinner in silence and one of them would do spiritual reading.  Sr. Hemine’s mother entered the dining room one evening during the reading and the whole room fell silent.  They told her that instead of the usual sacred reading, they were reading a letter that Sr. Hermine’s sister had written to them.  Her mother’s entrance at that precise moment was a stunning coincidence.  In Budapest there was a woman who could “see things” (she was psychic).  One of Sr. Hermine’s brothers went to her in an attempt to get information about his sister, and the woman told him that of all the tributes that were brought to her funeral, his sister was most happy with the gray wreath that the Sisters of Social Service had put on her grave.  She told him that if she had lived his sister would have entered the Sisters of Social Service.  Sr. Hermine’s contact with our community was a very deep one!  At the end of the interview I asked her to tell me her vocation story and I discovered that she didn’t enter our community because she felt the call to be a teacher.  Our sisters were doing social work and, although she loved our community very much, she didn’t feel called to enter it. She instead entered the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart which concentrates on catechetical ministry.

We brought our second interview to an end and I left Sr. Hermine filled with gratitude to God for the amazing providence which had brought us together.  She is such a blessing for our community; a living history book filled with treasures which will enrich our community deeply.  I ask God to shower both of our communities with many blessings, and invoke the prayers of Sr. Ida and Blessed Sara.  May we who remain continue in their good works.