The three influential Hungarians who shared a bed

Gabriel Heimler, French / German artist of Hungarian origin, now resident in Wellington New Zealand gave a fascinating talk last week about Jewish art and Jewish artists. He mentioned among many other fascinating facts that after the war a Hungarian cantor / rabbi worked on bringing the remnants of Jews from displaced persons' camps together in Berlin to form a Jewish community. In the 1930s this rabbi studied in Paris with two other poor Hungarian students and shared a room and a bed with them. They took turns at sleeping in the one bed, each sleeping for six hours at a time. The other two occupants of the solitary bed were Robert Capa, who later became the foremost war photographer,  took some of the iconic photos of the Vietnam war and was killed in Vietnam, the other was Mihaly Gyarmati, the artistic director of the Follies Bergere. The German officers loved the Follies Berger, and Gyarmati used the money he made off the Germans to fund a synagogue in Paris after the war. That bed had some amazing occupants.