At the Kleins in Ujpest

This picture was taken in 1927 at the Ujpest house. From left to right: My mother, Rozsa Kauders, Antonia Singer nee Goldstein, on her arm is my older sister, Klari at age two, and finally Ilonka Goldstein at age sixteen. Sitting in front is Erzsike Klein.

My aunt Giza lived in a very good marriage to Samuel Klein, who had two sons from his first marriage, Andor and Bela, and they had a daughter, Erzsi. They were so poor that my Aunt Giza cut up bed linens, to sew shirts and dresses for the children. Samuel Klein was a factory worker in the Ujpest [An industrial suburb north of Pest] tanning factory of Wolfner. His son Bela was also a factory worker there, and stayed a worker to the end of his life, by the end becoming a kind of shift boss. He survived the Holocaust, got married, had two children, but after my mother's death we lost contact with them. Andor was an junk dealer. He worked on Teleki Square. In 1944, he married a gypsy [Roma] girl, they had a son who became the most exceptional Jazz drummer in Hungary. We didn't get together with their family, only Andor came to visit until my mother's death. Erzsi Klein married Gyorgy Steiner, from whom she had a son. Then all of them, Giza, Erzsi and the little boy were executed in Auschwitz.

Aunt Toni [Antonia], my other aunt, married Marton Singer, who was also a widower. It was a terrible marriage, they had no children. Antonia also died in Auschwitz.

Miksa Goldstein was a leather craftsman. He took a well-to-do girl as his wife in Jaszbereny. Her name was Fanni Donath and she was some relation to that Donath family one of whose members was that politician Ferenc Donath, and his son, Laszlo became a Protestant minister. They had two children, Ilonka and Laci [from Laszlo = Leslie], in 1911 and 1912. During the First World War, they went bankrupt and moved up to Ujpest. Laci Goldstein died as a work serviceman, Ilonka survived the Holocaust. She never had children. Her first husband died during the First World War, then she married again, to a widower from the country, whose wife and child never came back from deportation. Ilonka died in 1981, she's buried in a Jewish cemetery.