“Sporting detachable beards, the men drove a Humvee onto Old Town Square on Sunday, wielding fake submachine-style BB guns and waving an Islamic State flag. Accompanied by a camel and a goat, they shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ and fired guns without pellets.” – New York Times, 22 August 2016. 

Flesh off the bone, winter of yet another hot European discontent, Aunt Ems and Mother are liberated just in the nick from Auschwitz by icy Christian graybeards sporting Ruskie hammers and sickles. 

Mom hightails it to the United States, Emma back to Hungary where neighbors had expropriated their belongings including nifty Bundt cake molds. The family home had been turned into stables cum swastikas. Budapesters who prefer mostly pure fascist brands, consider Soldaten von der Osten to be invaders before all settle down silently to the town’s new reality. 

That entails utilizing the Zentralen Platz to string up Nazi collaborators, and allowing Mamma’s sister to share one co-op room with eighteen Muslims in her once own house. 

A joke Mama tells way too often goes, “The USSR offers Deutsch-occupied nations the choice of surrendering which takes twelve hours, or a blitzkrieg lasting six. 

Sooo why does fighting last half as loong as peace? Answer: part of the Kremlin’s protocol’s a tedious tirade of Kiev tanks plus dreary Welcoming Committee speeches.” 

The Soviets implement sui generis “Goulash Communism” that for unclear motives is mushier than what unluckier Warsaw Pact satellites like Czechoslovakia experience. 

Our pretty Auntie finds a slick way to escape anyway since a handsome border customs agent guarantees passage soon…in return for very certain favors now. 

M plus a cute boychick later travel to Los Angeles; we avoid talking about how come his surname’s Gröz like the official’s, but when drunk she tries to float this contorted explanation, “Vienna charged per syllable to sell visas to us kikes thus I chose a short name — which may seem weird, though if you look, Austrian outliers still remain a bit anti-Semitic today — and rich ‘cause it was never Marxist.”