Vera Farkas with her friends in a youth club

Zrinyi High School had a history teacher. His name was Szentirmay.

He gathered around himself not only Jews but progressive and liberal people, and a lot of girls went there too. We came together every week and he held literary nights with the youth.

I went to his place when I was between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. I went there with a girlfriend of mine.

It was an ugly trick of fate, perhaps, that this absolutely liberal man underwent a sudden and complete conversion, joined the Arrow Cross Party [the Hungarian fascist party] and became a fascist.

When we were deported, several of us lived in barracks, and in the evenings we tried to recite the poems, the ones we'd learnt there. We had a small notebook, in which we wrote them.

There were occasions when we remembered only one line, and then we just wrote that down, and continued if more came to our minds later.

Photos from this interviewee