Formal class portrait of Vera Farkas

End of the year class photo in the first year of elementary school.
When I was six years old we moved to Buda and we lived in a big city building there.

Next to us, next to Fehervari Street, there was for a long time a Jewish elementary school. I was enrolled there. It was a very nice and modern school, with a brand new grade teacher.

The first day we appeared in school, there wasn't a teacher yet, he was appointed then. And he taught us in an absolutely modern way. There were no special Jewish subjects. I think they taught the Hebrew alphabet (but it is a crying shame that I don't know Hebrew).

I [also] learnt German in my childhood, my parents even employed a governess for me, and she took me to walk and tried to speak in German, but she did all the talking, I didn't say a word. None of it stuck.

[At the school] there was a big courtyard, which was divided into plots between the classes and we had to plant different plants there. There weren't any lessons on Saturday, but there were on Sunday. I cried because of this many, many times.

In that particular city house, I think we were the only Jewish family, and the children always mocked at me when I was coming home from school on Sunday.

Later my father always came to pick me up in school and he took me home. And the children always mocked at me, saying " Egerberger every Jew is a scoundrel". And then my father told me, if they say that, I should tell them:

"I don't deny that I am a Jew, and what I shit out, I give you". And then I used to say that very proudly. I made friends at school. I had one or two girlfriends in the house, who were nice, but [later] the friendship with them broke up.

Photos from this interviewee