Julius Weisz at work

In the photograph you can see my grandfather Julius Weisz, on the left, in front of a threshing machine. The picture was taken in 1939 on the farm in Kokosova. My grandparents on my mother's side were named Julius and Hedviga Weisz. I knew my grandfather, as he survived the Holocaust. He married my grandmother in Vienna, I think she was named Hedviga. My grandmother's maiden name was Quittner. He died in Bratislava in 1954, where he's also buried. I was 14 years old when he died. Grandpa was a great person, everyone liked him. He used to tell me that he had been a painter by trade. He didn't like it at all, and so he later studied to be a master distiller. He never actually worked in his trades, because he became the superintendent of a farm in Kokosova. After their wedding, Grandpa and Grandma Weisz settled down in Vienna. My mother was also born there. My mother had one sister, Hedviga, who died in a concentration camp. Still during the time of Austro-Hungary they moved to Slovakia, that wasn't a problem. They settled on a farm in Kokosova. Kokosova was part of the municipality of Tesare. Like most women back then, my grandmother was a housewife. I've personally never been on that farm. My grandparents certainly belonged among the more well to do class of the population. During the First Republic, being a farm superintendent was like being a head doctor at a hospital. It was something at about the same level. My grandfather also knew how to speak Gypsy. When we lived in Mocenok, Gypsy women would often come begging at our door, and he'd normally be able to talk to them. He knew Hungarian and German, and my father even spoke Serbian and Croatian. During the time of Austro-Hungary it was necessary. I don't know which language my grandfather considered to be his native one. My father and grandfather spoke German with each other so that I wouldn't understand them, but his Slovak was absolutely without fault. It was perfect. My mother's father probably wasn't Orthodox. I don't know about before the war, but after the concentration camp he definitely wasn't Orthodox. He didn't pray every day with a tefillin anymore, like my father. I don't know whether he'd done it before and then stopped, we didn't discuss this subject matter very much. I only know what I saw. I don't know how often Grandpa used to go to the prayer hall. It's impossible for me to remember prewar times, and after the war in Mocenok, they took the prayer hall away from us.