Jeanette Torok

This is my maternal grandmother, Jeanette Torok, nee Gluck. The photo was taken in Vienna, Austria, in 1889. According to the birth register her first name was Janka, but she used it in the French way, she signed the postcards sent to the family this way, too. In her youth she didn't speak Hungarian well, in the Gluck family in Jolsva, in the 1870s-1880s they probably spoke German. She was 16 years old when her mother died, and shortly afterwards she went to Vienna, to her father's brother and his wife. They had several elegant shoe stores in downtown Vienna. She learned the shoe merchant trade here. It was natural that she only spoke German there. It is more surprising that on the postcards written to her father and siblings in Budapest, not only the text is German, but also the address: instead of Erzsebet Boulevard she wrote Elisabetring. It is written this way on the postcard on which she wished a Happy New Year in September 1901 with nice black letter writing. The card with German and Hebrew inscription shows the Jewish city hall in Prague and the Alt-neu Synagogue.

Photos from this interviewee