Janka Bauer

This is Janka Bauer [nee Schwartz], my stepmother. The picture was taken in Budapest before 1919.

My real mother, Ilona Kellermann, married at a very young age, at age 18.

My father's situation wasn't easy, because my mother had been taken ill with tuberculosis before I was born, and the doctors predicted her three months.

Sparing no money and time, my father left no stone unturned to prolong her life, and he succeeded for four years. She died in 1912.

My father's parents didn't leave him alone: they wanted him to get married, because they had no patience to look after us; we were a burden to them, so my father got married quite early. I think that this second marriage was arranged.

My stepmother wasn't even 18 yet when she married our father. She probably wasn't in love with my father, but valued him, because he was a diligent and good-looking man, with a furnished apartment, though with two children, but my stepmother took it upon herself, because she wanted to escape misery.

About this second wedding I do have memories; it was in 1914.

There is no picture of this wedding either, but I remember what my stepmother looked like as a bride, because at that time I was already five years old and my brother was seven.

We ran away to my step-grandmother's - we lived close to her place - because the wedding was there and we wanted to see the bride.

When they noticed that we were there, they took us from there of course, because we shouldn't have been there. It was a normal wedding - the bride wore a veil - in the synagogue.