Carillon
The history of my mother’s family is not retained only by memory but also by the Great Bell of the Calvinistic Church of her home village Gaborjan, Hungary.
She told me many times that the bell-founding had been commissioned by her family and the names of the commissioners can bee read on the bell itself. It was hard to believe her but I found eventually Ferenc Bajko, a research specialist in bell history and found our bell on the Hungarian Bells website managed by him. The bell was founded by Laszlo Szlezak in Budapest in 1925 which is exactly the same year when my mother was born. We went home in the spring and we, together with my husband climbed even the tower to see the Bell.
On one side of the bell one can read a four lines poem saying that the bell as a calling voice to the prairie invites people to come to the house of God to get their rejuvenation.
I sketched the picture based on the inscription seen on the other side of the bell. I drew the family-tree of my mother’s predecessors with the help of small bells. The bell itself was founded to make tribute to my great-great-grandparents David Sz. Gombos and his wife Rebeka Olah. The bell-founding was commissioned by three siblings. Among them was my great-grandfather Gyula Sz. Gombos (born in 1877) and his wife Zsuzsanna S. Gombos, Gyula’s brother David Sz. Gombos and his wife Roza Juhasz and also Gyula’s sister Zsuzsanna Sz. Gombos with her husband Sandor Barta. The line on the picture is closed by my children,
The inscription to be read on the picture was made onto the glass by my friend Lajos Ritok, a well-known artist.