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This is Dad and my step-mother. The picture was taken in Matyasfold, sometime in the 1940s.
Dad, Armin Schultz was born in 1888, in Balassagyarmat. Dad, I think, graduated from elementary school. He learnt his trade from some tailor in Balassagyarmat. He was a gentleman's tailor.
Dad married my step-mother in 1921. My step-mother, Margit Adam, was also from Balassagyarmat; she was born sometime in the 1890's. I think they had known each other when they were young, but how they got together in Budapest, I don't know. I called her Mom too. We had a very good step-mother. She was trained as a seamstress, doing work to-order, and she had a one-room-plus-kitchen flat, without all the modern conveniences and we moved to her place, when they got married. They were married properly, but I don't remember the wedding at all.
My step-mother was a widow when she married my Dad. She was young, around 30. To me, she was old of course, at an 'aunty' age, because I was around eight or nine years old, at that time. She wore normal, modern dresses. She dressed fashionably. Her hair was heat-curled on both sides, and together in a bun. On the street, she wore a hat, not a scarf.
My step-mother wasn't very religious. She kept high holidays, but there was no lighting of candles on Fridays. We didn't keep Chanukkah either. There was no seder and matzah. At Yom Kippur, she fasted, and when we got older we did too. I don't remember whether Dad fasted at all. At Yom Kippur, we went to the synagogue, but we didn't spend the whole day there, just for the Kol Nidre. I think she baked barkhes on Fridays, but there was no special food on Friday evening, but she didn't cook on Saturdays. We often ate cholent and we liked it. She made the cholent on Friday and heated it up on Saturday. I remember that in the Summer, she always cooked something on Friday which didn't have to be heated up on Saturday if not absolutely necessary. My Mom didn't keep a very strict kosher household, but by and large, that's what it was. This meant that the milky and meaty dishes weren't mixed; they were also kept separately in the cupboard. We didn't eat meaty and milky foods together. We never had, for example meaty soups and then Pasta with cottage cheese. We never put meat and butter on the same table together. We had a separate milk jug, because in every normal place- I think, even the Christians do it this way- it's kept separately. The dishes weren't washed up separately though, and Pork was never prepared. She often cooked with chicken and goose-fat. Mom used to buy cuts of goose and chicken at the market. She bought them from a Jew, but whether they were kosher or not, I don't know. A woman used to come and do the laundry, Mom didn't wash clothes. She did cook and clean, though. She was at home. Etel was at home too.
