Magdolna Palmai on a trip

Here you can see me when I was in my twenties. At the beginning of the 1940s we used to take trips in the mountains of Buda with young social democratic people. There might have been 20-30 of us. This picture was taken on the Frank mountain, where the Gazdagret Housing Estate was built. But we went on trips to the Ram precipice and to the Zsiros Mountain, too, wherever where we could go without money. I came to Pest in 1940. At first I worked at different dressmaker's shops as a seamstress. But because I was young, one of my brothers and sisters was always there with me, I was never alone. Once my younger brother was in Pest, but he was drafted into forced labor, then my older sister Fanni, who immigrated to the USA later. Then I was together with my older sister Jolan, who is still alive. I lived together with the other ones, but not with Jolan, because at that time I already lived with someone, and it wasn't possible for more of us to live in that rented room. So she lived on a different street. When I came to Pest I made many new friends. I still have a girlfriend whom I met at that time, even though that's more than 60 years ago. I lived in Budapest from 1940 until 1945. I became a member of the youth department of the Social Democratic Party here. They organized literary evenings, as well as matinees for the workers, where they invited leftist actors to hold cultural performances. I heard Hilda Gobbi and Tamas Major there, who recited poems written by Attila Jozsef and Ady. This happened in 1941-1942, when many poems by Attila Jozsef were banned, like the one entitled 'Tell me what lies in store for a man' or 'Mother.' But there were also poems by Ady or Petofi that could not be recited, because they praised the working class. The programs had to be reported, but there were always some people from the police there, and when the actors started to recite the banned poems they intervened immediately.