Géza Röhrig

Géza Röhrig was born in Budapest, Hungary. His mother left the family after he was born, and his father died when he was four, so Röhrig spent his childhood in foster care. From the age of 12 he was raised by a Jewish family. In the 1980s, he was the frontman of an underground music band called Huckleberry (also known as HuckRebelly), whose concerts were almost always interrupted by the communist authorities. At university he studied Hungarian and Polish, and after a visit to Auschwitz during a study tour in Poland, he decided to become an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, United States. He portrayed poet Attila József in a film by József Madaras. He studied filmmaking under István Szabó. He published two collections of poems on the theme of the Shoah, Hamvasztókönyv (literally "Book of Incineration", 1995) and Fogság ("Captivity", 1997). He graduated from the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest with a degree in filmmaking. Since 2000, he has lived in the Bronx borough of New York City, where he received a degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary and has been a kindergarten teacher at Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn. He is married, and has four children. He has published many collections of poetry.