Janos’ father in the barracks

This is my father on the front in WWI.

My father was born in 1893 in Nagyvarad [today Oradea, in Romania]. My father went to high-school for four years in Nagyvarad, and then to a trade college for three years. He graduated there. Uncle Vilmos, who wanted my father to keep up the big colonial goods trade, sent him to Pest for a year to learn banking, and in Marosvasarhely [today Tirgu Mures, in Romania] he sent him to work with an agent who would buy a trainload of, say, coffee or tea for the business. Uncle Vilmos had my father educated. But in the meanwhile the War came. My father was a volunteer then, with the rank of Captain. They took him to the Russian front, and he got shot so badly in the arm in '17 that his right arm was paralyzed. That's why I didn't wear a star, and in '44 I got into the university, where I wrote that my religion was Israelite, but I was not to be considered a Jew.

Photos from this interviewee