Gusztav Illes

This is my maternal grandfather. There were three boys in the Elias family, and they all became Illes. The eldest was Gusztav (1865-1945), he was my grandfather, the middle one was Imre, he was a doctor, and spent his entire career as an army doctor. The youngest was Emil, who lived in Felvidek [the part of Hungary that became Slovakia after the Trianon treaty, TN], at Eperjes[today Preson, Slovakia] and Besztercebanya [today Banska Bystrica, Slovakia]. He is buried in Bratislava. He spent more time in prison than out. After the first world war and Trianon he became the president of the Hungarian Association of Felvidek, and he liked to talk a lot. Each time he was sent to jail. Emil had a daughter who would have grown up in uncertain circumstances, her mother died in childbirth, and her father was in prison all the time. But Gusztav Illes had three daughters, and they took up Emil's daughter as their fourth. Grandfather had his Matura and was offered a job at Hoffer and Srantz's engineering firm. He worked in that company for more than forty years; when he retired, he was head of director of finance and exchange. He died in March 1945. He lived to see the end of the Arrow Cross [Hungarian Nazis] commotion.