Gabor Lazar as a child

This is a photo of me from my childhood, taken in Debrecen in the 1930s. This photo was put in my passport.

After my parents got married in 1924, my father was a land-agent on a separate, large estate, then they moved to Hajdunanas in year 1925.

My brother and I were both born in Hajdunanas. My brother, Istvan Lazar was born in 1925, and I was born in 1929.

My father was demanding, so our home was very strict.

I can tell you honestly that when my father was at home, we couldn’t breathe a word. When he left, well, then we had a good time.

My mother was a very good woman, she loved us very much. I was certainly more attached to her, and she was more attached to me.

She was an excellent mother, she loved me very much. What can I say? They raised us, they made men of us.

We moved from Hajdunanas to Debrecen around 1930.

My father ran a restaurant there too, ‘Kossuth Vendeglo es Szalloda’, which I remember as a small child.

The restaurant and hotel were on the square in front of the central railway station in Debrecen.

We lived there for about three years, but homesickness brought my father home to Romania.

His parents were living there, and they lured my father to come home.

They persuaded him to buy a small area of land in a village near Szatmar, in Vetes Thus in 1933-34, when I was about four years old, we came to Romania, but with passports.

I spent my childhood in Vetes. We had 20 hectares of land, with cattle, horses, pigs and poultry.

I started school in Szatmarnemeti in 1935 and finished the second year of elementary school in the Jewish Gymnasium of Debrecen in 1937.

I then attended the local Jewish elementary school in Csenger for third and fourth grade.

After I finished elementary school, I spent the first year of grammar school at the Jewish Gymnasium of Debrecen.

We lived in Csenger until 1940, when Miklos Horthy marched in on his white horse, then we could return home.

After we came back, my father continued farming.