Walking in the Shadow of Tyranny
A Memoir
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If I had been born in average times, my life would have been extremely static. I would have been reared by loving parents. I would have married and reared children of my own and faded away. But I was born in 1917 in a small town in a small country in central Europe. Hungary suffered at the end of World War I because of the terms of the Peace Treaty of Trianon, and that was complicated by the Red and White Revolutions of my youth. As a young Jewish woman, I lived in the terror created by Hitler and Stalin, and in my thirties, I suffered with my capitalist husband under the constraints of Communism. I was 39 before I found freedom in my chosen country of America. With that freedom, my husband and I were able to build a successful business from scratch, with little more than determination and integrity. There has been nothing dull about my life.
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About the Book
Alicia Kornitzer Karpati was born in Hungary. Before World War II, she and her family moved to Budapest. She studied with Dr. Tibor Haller, Professor at the Budapest Skin Clinic. She collaborated with Dr. Haller in the formulation of some of her products. After the war, she worked as doctors’ assistant in Budapest’s leading medical center. She opened her own business in Budapest two years before the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. In 1957, ten months after immigrating to America and settling in New Jersey, George and Alicia Karpati reopened Alicia Karpati Cosmetics, Inc.
About the Author
Alicia Karpati was a successful capitalist in Communist Hungary until October 1956 when the Hungarian Revolution began. Russian soldiers burst into her apartment where she and her daughter Noémi, 8, huddled with a neighbor and her two children. The men searched for anything incriminating, even poking the fireplace ashes. They found nothing. When the men returned to the street, they fired their machine guns into the apartment, blasting out an entire wall but miraculously missing the women and children. In December, the Karpatis tried to escape from Hungary. They were caught. After "Litzi" Karpati convinced a policeman not to deport the three of them to Siberia, they trudged from Buda to Pest through the cold night to return home. A week later, they tried again. They slogged through ice and snow and escaped to Austria with their lives and two saddlebags. Inside, Alicia Karpati had hidden the formulae for her skin-care products. Alicia Karpati Cosmetics Inc. received many gold and silver medals in an international competition. Ms. Karpati is also the author of Awaken Your Sleeping Beauty.