Thomas Molnar and Peter Molnar in Zebegeny

Holiday in Zebegeny in 1940. My brother Peter and I are playing with a papier-mache castle and tin soldiers. We went on holiday to Zebegeny twice every year. We never went to the Balaton, and we never went abroad either. I was on a holiday at some distant relative's two times. They had a very nice daughter, who played the piano well, and she had the music of all the hits of the time. The entire family perished in Auschwitz. In Zebegeny we always went to the same place, to a farmhouse. This wasn't in the village, but a kilometer away via Vac, in the middle of a beautiful forest, a ranch. We rented the entire house, the owners didn't live there. It wasn't only us, the immediate family, there. My mother's sister Rozsi was there many times, Jozsi Berger was also there a few times, and the Rona family, too. We usually spent two months there, we were there in June and July, but when Peter had tuberculosis we were there all summer. Peter caught pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of four or five, from a relative from Marcal called Muller, and the doctor said that he had maximum six months left. Then my mother took him to Zebegeny, and fed him with vegetables and all kinds of healthy food all day long. He rested a lot, my mother told him stories all the time, and somehow he got well again. In my childhood I got very many presents. For my birthday, but sometimes even when there wasn't any special occasion. I had everything. I had a Märklin, narrow-gage railway, lots of tin soldiers. Then what I liked very much was puzzles. I also got lots of books. When I was younger I got hardbacks, which could be folded out, and I built very good houses and castles out of these. But I was quite a withdrawn child.

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