While we lived with my paternal grandparents, we had a kosher household, and the moment my paternal grandmother died, she died later [than he], under my mother we gave up keeping kosher. This doesn’t mean that we started to cook with lard but we didn’t observe the milk-meat separation rules totally. So the whole family, as far as I know, easily bent the Jewish rules. There was religion in the attitude, in honesty, in respect for others, love, charity and empathy. These are wonderful moral characteristics which I noticed everywhere in my family. These indicated religiousness, I believe, not murmuring unknown prayers or observing all kinds of regulations.
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Displaying 47821 - 47850 of 50382 results
Laszlo Galla
On the high holidays, at Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, the shop was closed. Perhaps it was closed at Pesach or Shavuot, I can’t remember exactly. But on the three big holidays, we were certainly closed, and we went to synagogue. At Yom Kippur, I started with half day fasts, so I had to fast for the first time from early evening until lunch the next day. I must have been about eight then. This half-day fast lasted two to three years and from then on I had to do a whole day [Editor’s note: Children have to fast for an entire day, like the adults, only after their bar or bat mitzvah. Until then they only fast half a day.]. This was so even when we’d already given up keeping kosher.
Since my father was a community functionary, he went to synagogue every Friday night and every Saturday, too. At these times, my mother was in the shop, and when I was bigger, I was. My father said that he knew how to pray. He had a tallit, but I never saw him in a teffilin.
My parents lived a fairly busy social life, they had quite a few close and less close friends. My father was the chairman of the Jewish community, my mother was the chair-woman of the women’s association, so they were in the middle of society things. Two or three times a week, after supper, so around 8 or 8.30 in the evening, the guests came, or they went somewhere. Their friends were 100 percent Jewish, even our doctor, who was also the district doctor, was a converted Jew.
We subscribed to the ‘Ujsag’ [‘News’: a liberally-minded political daily that started in 1903, was banned during the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, then continued that fall only to be banned again by the interior minister in 1925.] which you could call a liberal paper then. Then we subscribed to ‘Mult es Jovo’ [’ Past and Future,’ a Jewish literary and artistic journal], and when I was fairly little to ‘Remeny’ [‘Hope’: Jewish literary monthly]. And we had ‘Szinhazi Elet’ [‘Theatrical Life’: A popular weekly which appeared between 1912 and 1938, printing many colorful stories about the early theater and film world, including the text of new plays. Founded by Sandor Incze and edited with Zsolt Harsanyi.], which my mother read, and ‘Uj Idok’ [‘New Times: A literary journal. Produced for and popular with the educated middle class, it came out in many more editions than other literary journals.]. My father got ‘Magyar Vaskereskedo’ [‘Hungarian Iron Merchant’] and the National Hungarian Trade Association paper, which was a professional journal.
We lived with my grandparents. The house was in the same building as the shop, a corner building. The shop and the warehouses were in the corner part of it, and the five-bedroom apartment was on the Petofi Street side.
When I was circumcised, my father wasn’t at home yet.
My father was given leave, but a very short one, and they knew in advance when it would be, so my mother traveled down to Belgrade. They met there in the officers’ wing of the barracks – my father had joined up as an ensign officer and was a captain when discharged – and they spent a few days there, and I was made [conceived] there in February 1916.
My father got together with my mother in the following way: Aunt Maca was married in Hodmezovasarhely [at that time], and my father, as a young man, used to visit her, and met my mother there. It might have been arranged, but of course, I don’t know that.
First, Grandfather ran a grocery store in Szentes, which went better and better for him, and by the end, he became an ironmonger. So the spices and ox tongue and such that he sold at first gradually fell off and were replaced with hardware, more spare parts, like car parts, tools for blacksmiths, carpentry tools.
In Szentes there lived about 500-600 Jews, and they were all middle-of-the-road religious. Mako was 80 kilometers away, where a much more intense Jewish life went on than in Szentes. There was an Orthodox [4] synagogue and a Neolog one, and a few thousand Jews lived there. Szentes was nothing compared to that. The town was about as big as Mako and the region was also the same, but the Jewry in Szentes was fairly assimilated. There was a synagogue, it was very beautiful, today it is the town library. There was a Jewish community, my father was its vice-president, then its chairman. There was a Chevra Kaddisha too, of course, which dealt with burials – the cemetery was very beautiful. There was a Malbish Arumim Society which dealt with charitable works for the poor, and there was a Jewish Women’s Association, my mother was its chairwoman for a while. Even though everyone got along in the Jewish community, there was a fairly big battle when it came to community elections, since that’s when they decided who should be the chairman, and his people then made up the tax committee, who took less tax from its own people, its supporters. The community tax at that time was collected like ordinary taxes, you had to pay them. So there was a battle mainly because of this, and the community was divided in two over it.
Uncle Berci, who had legal training, and worked then as a freelancer for some Pest paper, was given the job. He went abroad, and was Kossuth’s secretary for three years, [Bertalan Gunst was Kossuth’s secretary from 1879-1883] and his memoirs were written in that time. He is even mentioned in the Szentes High School yearbook – since he attended this school, as did my father, and then me – as a famous old pupil, Bertalan Gunst, Lajos Kossuth’s secretary.
From then on he had his workshop and business there. Not only did he make shoes to measure, but also for the warehouse, and he sold them.
I know that my mother, after completing four years of civil school [2] went to school in Temesvar [today: Timisoara, Romania] there were higher girls’ schools [3] at that time, where they learned housekeeping and community skills. I think it was for two or three years, and my mother graduated from it.
My mother, Erzsebet Kohn, was born in 1887, in her birth certificate she appears as Orzsike and her Jewish name was Eszter.
They observed the high holidays now and then, perhaps they even ate kosher.
The change in regime [26] didn’t really affect me. I was quite old already at that time, and the way I see things, my lack of religious feeling didn’t change. Naturally, I look at manifestations of anti-Semitism, which lay dormant and has come to the surface since 1989, and tries to take up more and more space, and it affects me, but I am optimistic.
I support the formation of Israel, its survival and development with all my heart; I have done so and will continue to do so. I think it’s extraordinarily important from a global viewpoint – so not just from a global Jewish viewpoint – from a total world view, that it exists and flourishes.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
When I got married again, I got a two-room apartment in Wesselenyi Street from the Planning Office. At the time, offices and big companies had the means and it was customary to award apartments to recognized workers. My younger son was born there. And my mother and I had had enough of her living in a rented apartment, so she moved in with us. So my wife, my mother and my little boy and I lived together until 1962 when, with the help of my mother-in-law, we exchanged the two-bedroom apartment for a three-bedroom one on Damjanich Street, and we lived there until my next divorce.
She didn’t graduate from university, but became a very talented journalist. She worked for various papers and for the press service of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, for the press service of Hungaropress. Her English and German were perfect. The Hungarian Chamber of Commerce was an organ of the Foreign Commerce Ministry, and so she was often sent as Hungarian press attaché to the Hungarian section of trade fairs abroad.
During the war she went into hiding, her mother hid her in some convent.
Thirst for knowledge, reading, respect for writing, love, respect and honor – I feel these are the virtues by which I am Jewish, and not because I read the mah nishtanah or my children do. And usually, I came together with these types too.
In 1956, I met my second wife, Agnes Kovacs, on vacation. The Planning Office had a vacation resort at Revfulop, and her first husband had also worked at the Planning Office.
G. knew he was Jewish but he wasn’t circumcised. This subject was always, how shall I say, in the air, especially in the first years, when we were not far removed from it – you know, he was born in 1950 and the Holocaust lasted until 1945, but I never thought of, how shall I say, ‘holding a course’ on it. They had Christmas in their childhood. I didn’t go to synagogue, and didn’t live a religious life. Perhaps we spoke of Chanukkah, but no Chanukkah candles were lit at home, that’s for sure. So he didn’t grow up in the religious spirit. But he thinks of himself as Jewish. Perhaps more so than I do. He married a Jewish woman.
And I struggled a lot with how marriage and a child would work out. It didn’t really, because we divorced in 1953.
I first got married in 1948. We only had a civil wedding in the II District council offices. My first wife was Eva Erdos. She was four years younger than me, I believe. She was Jewish, born in Veszprem, and had studied hairdressing, but at the time we met, she was working in book distributing at Kossuth Publishers. She had a stand at the party committee office in the IV District, which was still downtown, where Kossuth Publishers, which dealt with political type books, sold books for cash or in installments. And that’s where we met each other. I was renting an apartment, she owned a studio apartment, so I moved in there.
But my real job during these events was to secure food and a normal life for us. Just like in 1945 when I never thought about not going home, in 1956 I didn’t think of defecting. I am from here, I belong here. If I look out of the tram window and spot a certain house, I know I am at the corner of Terez Ringroad. I know the natives’ language, their habits. Here I know how to think and do my thing. That’s how I feel. My father felt he had to be a merchant in Szentes, he didn’t move to Budapest, they deported him – he might have survived in Budapest. He belonged in Szentes as an iron merchant; I belong here, in Pest.
When I returned to Szentes in 1945, I had become fairly left-wing given past events, so that I immediately joined the Hungarian Communist Party [24] there in Szentes.
I did not go further up the ladder – this is probably because I hadn’t been a party member since 1956, and generally, among those qualified, they chose party members as high functionaries. But I didn’t mind, because I didn’t need to do any managerial tasks that would have taken me away from my field. For example, I didn’t have to employ or dismiss people, so I was very happy with this situation.
so at the beginning of 1953 I started working at the head office of investments of the National Planning Office and I worked there for 15 years. I started as a lecturer, and in the end I was an assistant manager, an advisor.