Magdolna Palmai with her friends

This picture was taken in Budapest at the beginning of the 1940s. Third from right is Agnes Binet, the child psychologist who became famous later. I am sitting in the right corner. This is a picture of the university student group with whom we went to Professor Ferenc Merei and listened to the lectures. We had all been excluded from the university because of the anti-Jewish laws, and continued our studies this way. Professor Merei lived on Klotild Street 10, in the 1940s, and we went to his place for cramming courses. Literature, psychology, politics - we talked about everything. Professor Geza Hegedus was there, too. I can still remember the way we sat at Merei's, Geza Hegedus put up a blackboard and said, that if the police came we had to say that we were learning graphology, the letter 'g' in graphology - and he wrote a 'g' - and showed us how, for example, a criminal would write the letter. So this was the conspiracy. It was a wonderful period. We had to leave the apartment one by one, first we looked outside if there was a policeman there or someone else. There were 10-15 of us at these meetings. The lectures went on for two to three years, until 1942 or 1943, but in 1944 we didn't meet at Merei's anymore, that's for sure.