When the World Was Whole: 2three Centuries of Memories

A Washington, D.C., journalist lovingly recreates the villages where his ancestors, who for 400 years were as ``rooted in the land of Hungary as an old walnut tree,'' built up a sizable estate. His stories, passed down in the family, depict a society in which certain Jews became prosperous and respected to the extent that even today many gentile survivors of the Nazis and Communists refer to the ``dear old Jews.'' At his uncle's funeral in the village of Derzs in 1988, local Catholic children read the Kaddish in the family cemetery. When WW I reduced the family's wealth, they moved to a nearby city; in WW II, the author's grandmother and other relatives perished at Auschwitz. Fenyvesi writes with warmth, sympathy, humor--and a few sentimental excesses--about his relatives, native land and the emperor Franz Josef, who had a ``tender heart'' for the Jews. Photos. 25,000 first printing; author tour. (Sept.)