Conflicting Views on Belonging
László Tóth:
Because they do not want us here.
Erzsébet Tóth:
Of course Attila wants us here.
László Tóth:
Not Attila.
Erzsébet Tóth:
Then who do you mean?
László Tóth:
The people here, they do not want us here. Audrey, Attila's Catholic wife, does not want us here! She does not want us here! We are nothing. We are worse than nothing.
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Reflections on Resilience and Memory in Architecture
László Tóth:
Nothing is of its own explanation. Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction? There was a war on. And yet it is my understanding that many of the sites of my projects have survived. They remain there still in the city. When the terrible recollections of what happened in Europe cease to humiliate us, I expect for them to serve instead as a political stimulus, sparking the upheavals that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood. I already anticipate a communal rhetoric of anger and fear. A whole river of such frivolities may flow undammed. But my buildings were devised to endure such erosion of the Danube's shoreline.
Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.:
What a poetic reply.
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Confrontation Over Dark Family Secrets
Erzsébet Tóth:
Your father is a rapist.
Harry Lee Van Buren:
Excuse me - whatever this is supposed to be, I don't like it. I'm calling your husband to come and fetch you.
Erzsébet Tóth:
Your father is an evil rapist.
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The Legacy of a Principled Artist
Older Zsofia:
My uncle is, above all, a principled artist. His lifelong ambition was not only to define an epoch but to transcend all time. In his memoirs, he described his designs as machines with no superfluous parts, that at their best, at his best, possessed an immoveable core; a "Hard Core of Beauty." A way of directing their inhabitant's perception to the world as it is. The inherent laws of concrete things such as mountains and rock define them. They indicate nothing. They tell nothing. They simply are. Born in 1911 in a small fishing village in Austria-Hungary, László Toth looked out upon the Adriatic Sea. He was a boy with eyes wide open, full of yearning. New borders would eventually rip this expanse of sea away from him but never did he cease to try and fill its void. Forty years later, he survived the camps at Buchenwald, as did his late wife, and myself, in Dachau. His first American masterpiece, the Van Buren institute outside of Philadelphia, remained unfinished until 1973. The building referenced his time at Buchenwald as well as the deeply felt absence of his wife, my Aunt Erzsébet. For this project, he re-imagined the camp's claustrophobic interior cells with precisely the same dimensions as his own place of imprisonment, save for one electrifying exception; when visitors looked 20 meters upwards, the dramatic heights of the glass above them invited free thought; freedom of identity. He further re-imagined Buchenwald and his wife's venue of imprisonment in Dachau on the same grounds, connected by a myriad of secret corridors re-writing their history and transcending space and time so that he and Erzsébet would never be apart again. Uncle, you and Aunt Erzsébet once spoke for me, I speak for you now, and I am honored. "Don't let anyone fool you, Zsófia" he would say to me as a struggling young mother raising my daughter during our first years in Jerusalem, "no matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey." Thank you.
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Acceptance of Others' Presence
Harry Lee Van Buren:
We tolerate you.
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Self-Perception and Societal Responsibility
Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.:
What have you done to yourself? It's a shame seeing how your people treat themselves. If you resent your persecution, why then do you make of yourself such an easy target? If you act as a loafer living off handouts, a societal leech, how can you rightfully expect a different result?
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Cultural Stereotypes in Business Perspectives
Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.:
This is why I never do business with Italians. The spics of Europe.
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The Nature of Betrayal and Mercy
Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.:
When dogs get sick, they often bite the hand of those who fed them, until someone mercifully puts them down.
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Persuasive and Stimulating Conversation Acknowledged
Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.:
I've found our conversation persuasive and intellectually stimulating.
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The Profound Impact of Maternal Loss
Erzsébet Tóth:
Losing a mother, it's an unfathomable loss. To lose one's birth mother is to lose the very foundation on which we stand. The mind may not know its loss, but the heart does.
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Meeting God and His Permission
Erzsébet Tóth:
Last night I met God. He gave me permission to call Him by His name.
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Critique of Decay in Society
Erzsébet Tóth:
This place is rotten. The landscape, the food we eat. This whole country is rotten.
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Devotion Beyond Death
László Tóth:
I will follow you until I die.
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