Eva Redei

This is Eva Redei, my second wife, at her books stand in front of the Dohany synagogue during the festival of Jewish culture in Budapest in 2001. Eva has had her stand in front of the synagogue ever since this festival was first organized a few years ago. It takes place every year at the end of the summer. In the framework of the festival you have the Jewish book days, which is similar to the book week organized each year at the beginning of the summer - this is a 50-year-old tradition in Hungary. On the Jewish book days primarily Jewish authors and books on Jewish subjects are exhibited and sold. Eva's stand is so successful that she always needs an assistant - it is usually a student of the Hebrew Studies department who speaks good Ivrit as well because there are a lot of Israeli visitors at the festival. I married Eva Redei in 1984. This was also a great love. Eva was born in 1947, she has been a bookseller since she was 18. She was already working on Pozsony Road in 1988-89 where she has a shop today, and they sold the Lang Publishers' books. The owner of the publishing company always went into the shop, to Eva, whom he only knew by sight, to ask how his books were selling. And one day Eva said to him, 'Listen here, buy me, along with the bookshop, and then everything will be easier'. The next day he came back and said, 'You had a very good idea, I will think about it and then do it.' That way Teka Company was born; it included the Lang Publishers, the Book Distributor Company as a state company, Eva, and two other employees, who got less money. It opened on 1st September 1989, and this was the first private business which included a state company as well. Since then they bought a part of the Book Distributor Company, and today Eva is a major shareholder in the store. I got to know Eva because she worked in the bookshop, and in those days I got quite a lot of books in lieu of tips, and I had two of the same, so I went to Eva to exchange them. Then when she got together with Gabor Deak, her first husband, and her tummy started to expand, she said - as she knew I was the pediatrician for everybody here - that I should be theirs, too. Her son, David, was born in 1976, and I went to their place so long until Eva divorced Gabor. It was a fairly disastrous marriage, and I can say I was sacrificed to my profession as David grew up with me in the end, with both of us. He was eight when we got married.