After a few years of acting 19 year old Jeno Rejto left Budapest to
travel all around Europe, from Italy to Germany. In France he joined
the Foreign Legion, from whom he escaped when he was taken to
North-Africa. During his foreign-travels he had several different jobs
like fisher, factory-worker, dancer, salesman, doc-worker, etc. When he
returned to Hungary at the age of 27 he started to write plays with
more or less success. In the 1930s he wrote novels, adventure novels,
criminal novels and his well-known legionnaire novels. He wrote his
works on Andrássy road in a coffee shop, and often paid for his coffees
with his newly written stories.
In the Second World War he was taken to a workcamp because of his
Jewish roots. By the weather and his bad physical health caused his
terrible death on the New years day of 1943. Nowadays he's one of the
most popular Hungarian writers. Thousands of people grew (and will
grow) up reading his novels.