Early Life
Eszterhas was born in Csákánydoroszló, a small village in Hungary, the son of Mária (née Bíró) and István Eszterhas. Eszterhas was raised as a young child in a refugee camp in Austria. The family eventually moved to New York City, and then to poor immigrant neighborhoods in Cleveland, where Eszterhas spent most of his childhood. Eszterhas' father was a Roman Catholic newspaper editor and author. Eszterhas learned at age 45 that his father had concealed his collaboration in the Hungarian Nazi government and that he had "organized book burnings and had cranked out the vilest anti-Semitic propaganda imaginable."p.201 After this discovery, he cut his father out of his life entirely, never reconciling before his father's death.
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