By Kirstin Wiegmann, Forecast Public Art

Olga Zoltai is a Twin Cities resident who originally emigrated from Hungary after World War II. Olga’s story, excerpted below, is one of 58 that will be installed as part of the Speaking of Home-St. Paul public art installation, a project by Nancy Ann Coyne.

“Right before the Second World War ended, we fled Hungary. We only took one backpack. My father was planning to return but the news was so horrible that we decided to stay in Austria.  This photograph—it reminds me of the suffering back then in Austria and why we left to begin a new life because we could not return to Hungary. In 1949, our family became initially, sugar beet farmers in Alberta, Canada.  Then, in 1959, we came to Minnesota where my husband had got a job at the University of Minnesota teaching. I grew up with this sense of statelessness and I was so bitter as a teenager because I did not have a country. Once, we became citizens, and participated politically, we felt it was our home, home away from home. We wanted to be active members of the society we were living in—that’s a responsibility.”

Stories like Olga’s offer us an opportunity to explore the ways that the immigrant story has shaped our local and national landscape. Olga has been in the Twin Cities for decades putting her experiences to work counseling refugees and earning her the title of “area immigrants’ patron saint” and an award honoring her as an “Immigrant of Distinction” by the state of Minnesota.

Olga’s daughter, Kitty Gogins, captures her mother’s story in a book called My Flag Grew Stars. The book provides an inspiring story on adapting to major upheaval, something many face in these challenging economic times.