Now, Balas’ family has turned to Cincinnati-based Everything But The House auction company to sell off the rest of his estate — items ranging from Danish silver plate flatware and gold jewelry to Herend Porcelain figures and antique Sterling Silver serving dishes.
Sydelle and Larry Balas opened and ran The Sylar Antiques together as a team — even the name of the business was a combination of their first names. Now closed, Sydelle’s children convinced her it was time to move onto some of the items she and her husband had collected over their lives.
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She said it is hard to let pieces of her husband go — a man who see said witnessed so much pain in his life but never gave anything but love to others.
“He was not quick to judge, and he always gave the other guy a chance. He had lived through hell, literally, but taught us all to be good people,” said his wife, Sydelle Balas.
Balas was born in Cibakháza, Hungary in 1924, and soon moved with his Jewish family to Budapest. By 1943, Balas was sent to a concentration camp while facism and Nazi occupation raged throughout Europe during World War II.
He later ended in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, and was freed by the Americans in 1945.
“When they arrived at Mauthausen, the guards pulled out their rifles and said run,” said Gary Opper, his stepson. “So they did, and the guards used them as target practice. As he was running, he was holding his knapsack with both hands with his knuckles right at his shoulders, and one of the bullets entered his left hand on the knuckles and hit the buckle right by his heart and deflected.”
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He returned to the Soviet-controlled Budapest but was later given the opportunity to come to the U.S. through the Jewish Federation of Hungray. When the Hungarian Revolution began in 1956, Larry’s mother urged him to leave the country. He reluctantly escaped, bribing the guards at the Austrian border with cigarettes his brother gave him. Once safely in Austria, he opted to be relocated to America, his family told Everything But The House.
Eventually making his way to Dayton, Larry Balas met Sydelle — who was divorced with three children — and they married in the ’70s. The couple started Sylar Antiques, a business built largely around Hungarian porcelain they would hand carry from visits home.
“They want these pieces to find loving homes where people appreciate them,” Opper said. “To teach people to talk about history and get people interested in Hungary and what all went on there.”
Click here for more information on the sale. The sale ends later this week.
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