Ernő Szép (1884–1953)

Ernő Szép was the pen name of Ezékiel Schön, born to a Jewish family in the multi-ethnic town of Huszt, Hungary (present-day Khust, Ukraine), one of nine children of Sámuel Schön, a schoolteacher, and his wife Matild Lőwenstein, a seamstress. He began writing poetry at a very early age. He became a journalist, first in Debrecen, where the family had moved, and later in Budapest. He published his first volume of poetry Első csokor (First Bouquet) at age 18 in 1902. He also was a prolific writer of short stories, plays, and novels. His works included Elalvó hattyú (Drowsing Swan, 1924), a collection of poems; the plays Patika (Pharmacy, 1918), Lila akác (Wisteria, 1921) and A vőlegény (The Bridegroom, 1922), now classics of the Hungarian stage; and novels such as Valentine (1927) and Dali-dali-dal (1934). His stories often dealt with ordinary people and artists from the lower middle class, who had not previously appeared in Hungarian literature, and celebrated nostalgic longings. His last important book was Emberszag (The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary), first published in 1945. In it, Szép relates the ordeal he endured in October 1944, during a reign of terror by Hungarian fascists, when he and hundreds of other Jews were taken on a forced march to a village near Budapest, where they were made to dig trenches as a last line of defense against the approaching Red Army. He lived the final years of his life in poverty.