Gyula Foldes

This is a picture of me and my classmates at our 40th graduation anniversary in the Kispipa restaurant in Budapest in 1991. Many people from this class emigrated. Gyuri Szabados is the first from left, he died two years ago, he was an engineer. Next to him is Peter Polgar, unfortunately he died too, he was an excellent auditor, he had his own company. Next is Professor Sommer, who divides his life between Toronto, Canada, and Budapest. Then comes Gyuri Noszlopi who is an art historian in Birmingham, UK. His family had a bakery. They were Jewish, of course. Gyuri went to London in 1956. He became a professor in Birmingham but he didn't have a doctorate and he got it two years ago here in Budapest. The next is Gyuri Szilagyi, he lives in Sydney, Australia, he is retired and he had several businesses as far as I know. The last one is Peter Korda, he lives in Pest and he is also retired. Next to him am I, the first on the right. The high school I went to from 1943, had more than a third Jewish boys in class. Originally it had a Jewish class, and because of the anti-Jewish laws only Jewish children were taken. During the German invasion, we were in the 1st grade until April 1944, then the Jews dropped out. I still went to school with a yellow star. In the 5th year we were given the choice of learning Russian or Greek. As believers in left-wing ideas we thought that Latin was enough of classical languages, it was anyway taught in the upper years of high school, so of course we chose Russian. The class was split: the majority chose Russian as they thought they didn't need Greek as well as Latin. But there were a proportionally high number of Jews in the class, as Jews chose this language rather, and came over from other classes because of the Russian. In fact there was nothing anti-Semitic, at least not in those days. Before there had been; Mr Monoki, the gym teacher hit the Jewish class mainly, by making the children stand up and bashing their heads together. Apart from rabbi Schmeltzer I can't remember any other Jewish teachers. I didn't have a favorite teacher.

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