Mária Földes

Mária Földes (5 September 1925 – 21 August 1976) was a

Hebrew

(1975).

Early life and education

Mária Földes was born to a

Jewish Hungarian family in Arad, Romania on 5 September 1925. She grew up speaking Hungarian, Romanian, and German. From the age of ten, she studied at the Notre Dame de Sion nunnery in Satu Mare

, where she studied in French. In 1940, she was forced to enlist in the newly established Jewish gymnasium in Cluj due to the numerus clausus against Jewish students in all other schools.

In May 1944, after graduating from the gymnasium, Földes at the age of 18 was interned in the

concentration camps, such as Krakow-Plosow, Wiesau, and Langenbialau, where they were liberated by the Russians.^[1]^{[page needed}

] They both survived and returned home in May 1945.

Career

After the war, Földes returned to

Cluj

. Soon thereafter she began writing plays.

Földes wrote and published several plays, including:

Weekdays
The Demoiselle in the Barracks
The Accident on Street Number Nine
The Seventh is the Traitor
The Inheritance
Short is the Summer

With the exception of Short is the Summer, her plays were collected and published in a 1968 book titled “The Seventh is the Traitor”. In 1974, Földes published her memoir, “The Stroll”, in Hungarian in

Cluj at Criterion Publishing House. That same year Földes left Romania as a dissident and rejoined both her children who lived in Israel

.

Földes published a few short stories in various Israeli newspapers. In 1975, her memoir The Stroll was published in a

Hebrew in Tel Aviv at the Habima Theatre, and a short tour in the United States

.

Marriage, family, and death

After the war, Földes married her school sweetheart

Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj. She and her husband had a daughter, Agnes Földes

.

Suffering from long-term depression, Földes committed suicide in 1976. Her daughter Agnes Lev worked with the actress Baatsheva to adapt her mother's memoir for the stage. They wrote a one-woman show, starring Baatsheva, which was produced at the Habima National Theater. She received the Kinor David (David's Harp Prize for her performance.

The play toured in Yiddish and English productions. It was performed in the United States in 1977 or 1978. Földes' memoir was adapted in Hungary as a radio dramatization, produced in Budapest around 1985.

References

^ Mária Földes, The Stroll

[1] Mária Földes, The Stroll

[1]