Word: budapester
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Much of Bott's own unorthodox youth was spent avoiding educational systems that emphasized rote learning. Born in Budapest on September 24, 1923, to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, he lived the first 16 years of his life in the Hungarian part of Slovakia. His parents divorced soon after he was born, but Bott nonetheless led a childhood of affluence, since his new stepfather was a high-ranking manager in a sugar factory...
What came next is the thing his daughters call "what Dad doesn't talk about." The rest of the world calls it World War II. Grove won't discuss his life in Budapest during the war. And though he travels the world, he hasn't returned to the city and swears he has "no interest in going back." He recently ran into billionaire George Soros, who was also a Jew living in Budapest in 1941. Soros has called the years the most important of his life. Grove calls Soros "totally different from me in that respect." The time, he insists...
...father disappeared in 1941--just vanished after being drafted into a work brigade. What had happened? No one knew, but they did know that Jewish men around Eastern Europe were disappearing like a morning fog. Then in March 1944, the Germans occupied Budapest and, Grove says, "they began rounding us up. Not us, actually, because my mother and I were in hiding, but Jews. Jews they were rounding up." He blinks and sips at his Scotch...
...opera. Seduced by Carmen's "Toreador March" as a youngster, Grove dreamed of becoming an opera singer. He took lessons and sang around school. And in the weeks before he fled Hungary, Grove and a handful of classmates sang the first, murderously lovely scene of Don Giovanni in a Budapest recital. Grove can't remember if he took the part of the footman Leporello (who beseeches, "Potessi almeno di qua partir!" [I wish I could escape!]) or the blackguard Don Giovanni (who bellows, "Misiero! attendi se vuio morir!" [Wretch, stay if you would die!]) in the performance. He took...
When the Soviets entered Budapest, Grove knew that was the time to leave. "There were growing rumors of people being rounded up on the street," he recalls. "I said, 'I could sit on my ass here and go out for a loaf of bread one day, and you'll never see me again. Or I can get out.' In today's terminology, one had an upside and the other didn't." Grove, not for the last time, bet his ass on the upside...