Anna Fuchs

This is my eldest sister, Anna Fuchs, nee Kaufmann, in front of the wooden shed in the back of our yard in Carei. My sister Margit took this picture in 1930.

My eldest sister, Anci, was born on 11th September 1906. She was a very decent and serious person. Once she got a terrible rash on her face, nobody knew what had caused it. Then she moved to Budapest for approximately six months. She was around 15 then, and they managed to heal her there. First she lived with one of my uncles, Erno Schongut, who was a doctor, but after a while his wife didn't allow her to stay there anymore. She was extremely jealous because my sister was on very good terms with her uncle. They had a genuine relationship as relatives. My aunt misunderstood their relationship, because Uncle Erno liked Anci very much, but just as family, not the other way; he was too decent for that. I guess it's typical for women to be concerned about their husbands. So my sister rented a room. In the meantime she learned corset-making as at that time women used to wear corsets. Then she came home and sewed corsets; she even earned some money. But then they became out-of-date, so then she made bras. She was very skillful. Her sewing-machine is still here. It's an industrial machine, made by the Neumann company. It still functions splendidly, but I don't use it anymore. We bought it on hire-purchase then. Oh, life was an agony! The sewing-machine returned its value, because she worked beautifully, and was very skillful. Women used to come to our house and my sister custom-made the orders.

Anci got married on 7th April 1935. It was an arranged marriage. Her husband was called Bertalan Fuchs, he was a railway official, originally from Szatmar. After the wedding my sister continued to work. At first they were in Nagykaroly, then they moved to Szatmarnemeti after they had bought a house there. They then moved to Krajova, because my brother-in-law was transferred there. They had a very nice life. My brother-in-law was a fair, honest and very decent person. Their daughter was born on 22nd September 1937. In 1940, when it was again the Hungarian era, they hurried back to Nagykaroly. I wish they had remained in Craiova! If they had stayed there, they wouldn't have been deported.