Bela Erdos and his brothers Janos, Jozsef, Sandor, Gyula

This is my father with his five brothers at the gate of their late parents´ house in Felpec. From left to right in the front row are: Jozsef, the eldest brother, Sandor, and Bela, who lived in Vienna. In the front from left to right: Gyula who had stayed at home and worked on the land, Janos, the lawyer from Gyor and my father who was the youngest. Bela was an engineer at the railway. He ran away in a hurry in 1919, because the workers elected him some sort of party steward in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and as a Jew he had a presentiment that the Horthy regime wouldn't be very grateful. He lived in Vienna and ran a housing-estate management office; he undertook the management of many housing-estates. He died there peacefully [in 1936]. He had two sons whom I saw for the last time when I was 10 years old. Janos, became a very reputed lawyer in Gyor, a lawyer and military officer. Uncle Janos and his family were very strict with us. When they invited us to Gyor after Seder, we went to synagogue on each of the eight days of Pesach. Maybe they were kosher too, but I wouldn't swear on it. I know they had shel Pesach dishes, though. On such occasions they put away the others and took those ones out. Janos and his wife were burnt in Auschwitz. Their son died in forced labor service, only their daughter survived, but her husband died as well in the forced labor service. When she came home from the deportation she moved to Budapest, got married quickly, and they left for Slovakia, and from there quickly onward to Israel, together with their son.

Photos from this interviewee