BOOK DESIGN

Visiting Gizi Bajor | Vendégségben Bajor Gizinél

Editor: Tamás Gajdó

Publisher: Országos Színháztörténeti Múzeum és Intézet (OSZMI), Budapest, Hungary | 2021​

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Gizi Bajor (1893–1951) was a celebrated star of her time. She appeared in films and directed, but her real success was on stage. She was a Kossuth Prize-winning Hungarian actress, Distinguished Artist and eternal member of the Hungarian National Theatre. 

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This is how she described herself: My features? I play a lot of solitaire. I am a very slow reader, deep in thought. I spend a lot of time lying on the sofa, thinking and wondering. I don't have a favourite food, I don't think dressing is important. I like to stroll in the street. When people ask me why I don't dress up, why I'm not fashionable, I say: why should I? If you can't see inside...?

She hid Jews in her villa – now the Gizi Bajor Actors' Museum – during the Second World War, and also hid her third husband, Tibor Germán, a professor of medicine. He was also the direct cause of the actress's death, at least according to the most likely theory accepted today.

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The book does not reveal any new secrets or speculate about the eventful life of the actress. None of the authors knew Gizi Bajor personally – but almost all of them spent every day with Gizi Bajor. They walk into her garden, cross her threshold, run up her stairs, open her windows. They pick up her photographs, her caricatures, read her handwriting, turn her ornamental pieces. And in the morning, when the technical equipment of the exhibition is set in motion, Gizi Bajor's newest visitors arrive.