“I’ve never told you the full story, but it’s time you all learn what our people went through. Not from a book or from people who weren’t there, but from us. It was 1944,” Elek said and his family instantly fell silent. Even the teenagers put down their phones. “The Nazis invaded Hungary. Jews were killed on the street and those who weren’t murdered were rounded up and marched almost three hundred kilometers to Auschwitz. They were starved, whipped, and murdered along the way. Around four hundred and fifty thousand Hungarian Jews were killed. Murdered.”
Sandor looked as if he were far away when he spoke. “A family friend gave my father forged papers and told us to run. My father went to the family gallery where we were living and ripped paintings from their frames. He took all he could carry and then we went looking for Elek.”
Elek continued the narrative. “I was part of a forced labor team. That day we were beaten and worked within an inch of our lives, but then they started shooting us. Hundreds of us, just murdered and kicked into the river. I ran. I threw away my coat and walked with a group of teenagers. That’s where our father and mother found me. We used those forged papers to make it to the Austrian border. Then we slipped into the countryside at night.”
“We lasted nine days,” Sandor said before both brothers fell silent.
Finally Elek took a deep breath. “We tried to pass off the papers when we were caught, but it didn’t work this time. We were thrown on a train for Auschwitz.”
Tinsley saw both brothers absently rub on their arms where the tattoos were.
“I still see it in my nightmares,” Sandor said as if he were back there. His voice was small, thin, and barely above a whisper now as he relived the terror. “They took our parents away. I can still hear my mother’s screams. We never saw them again. Our heads were shaved, our shoes taken, our clothes taken . . .”
“We were young and strong so they sent us to a work camp,” Elek said, his voice also barely above a whisper. “Death might have been better.” He stopped, then straightened his shoulders and looked to his family. “We fought for you before you even existed. You’re the reason we fought, the reason we lived.”
“We were near starvation when the Americans and Allied forces arrived,” Sandor said, his voice growing stronger. “They brought us blankets. They gave us the clothes off their backs and food from their pockets. But we weren’t free yet. We went back to Budapest, thinking we could go home.”
“Only there was no home left. All of our friends and family had been murdered either there on the street, on the death marches, or in the camps. We were all that was left. Even the buildings were rubble,” Elek told them. “Gellert and his wife were dead. The Nazis had murdered him when they found he’d helped over a thousand Jews escape, including trying to help us. His teenage son was alive, though, and we lived with him in what had been a shed on his property filled with old papers and discarded furniture. His house had been burned down by the Nazis after they shot his father and mother in front of him.”
“For three years we lived like that,” Sandor said, picking up the story. “Until Israel became a state. The rest is the history you know. We came here with nothing. We worked hard, saved, and started buying art again in honor of our father. We met the loves of our lives and were blessed with our families. But every night, every day, I remember. I remember my father’s vow to restore the family’s collection, and I remember being torn from our mother’s arms at Auschwitz. I remember the hunger, the cold, the degradation.”
Elek squeezed Tinsley’s hand. “This woman has brought back our family legacy and fulfilled my father’s vow. This is the Alder Collection stolen from us by the Nazis. That Vermeer was ripped from my father in Austria. That Manet was hidden in my mother’s dress and was found at Auschwitz. How?” Elek simply asked her.
Tinsley looked up from the brothers to the tear-soaked faces of their family and couldn’t find the words.
“I’m not just Tinsley’s fiancé. I’m an FBI agent specializing in art crimes. Tinsley is an art expert as well as an artist in her own right. She owns a gallery and one of the paintings came through her door as part of a drug deal between a gang in the United States and the Argentinian mafia,” Paxton answered for her before telling them of the case and then what they did to bring the collection together and back to the Alder family.
Tinsley was so grateful he was able to tell them because she didn’t know if she could speak with all the emotions going through her. So, she simply sat on the floor holding Elek’s and Sandor’s hands as Paxton told them how they had ended up in Israel today.
“Rozsa,” Elek said, motioning to a woman who must be his daughter. “Bring me the Manet.”
The woman headed straight for it and lifted it from the wall. “Here you go, Papa.”
Elek gestured to Tinsley. “This is for you. A wedding gift. There are no words that can express what we are feeling right now. But when there are no words, there is art.”
Sandor nodded as his niece turned to hand the painting to Paxton.
“Mr. Alder,” Tinsley finally gasped. “We can’t take that. It’s too much. It belongs to you, to your family.”
“We wouldn’t have seen it or any of these paintings if it hadn’t been for you. It’s not nearly
