Christina Gikas

Fortitude Christina Gikas

Based on the life of Judith Zatony-Vaughn and Andrew Zatony, two Hungarian-Jewish children, one preparing for a career in law, the other in engineering.

Then came the war.

They survived the atrocities of deprivation and humiliation during the Holocaust to have their possessions, aspirations and future stolen from them by the Communist regime. A revolution erupted.

Faced with the possibility of persecution or death Judit and Andor made the very difficult, heart-wrenching decision to escape. They travelled from Budapest to the outskirts of Hungary where they met two strangers whom they trusted to guide them during the dark hours of a frigid December night on a dangerous, silent, ten-hour journey by foot while carrying their two drugged children over the border into Austria.