There was a family in the house who put up a Sukkah on Sukkot in the end of the outside corridor, they decorated it and we sang Hebrew songs. I remember that we played with the spinning top, too, I don’t know on which holiday [Editor’s note: at Chanukkah], but I remember that we played for peanuts.
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Displaying 47941 - 47970 of 50402 results
Gyorgyike Hasko
My mother also used to go to balls. There were many goldsmiths and they had a serious social life, and there was a goblet ball every year. The goldsmiths’ club and a big ballroom were in the big corner house across from the Dohany Street synagogue. They held the goblet dinner there every year. In fact, the first ball of my life was a goblet ball right after the war. I don’t know who sewed my dress, perhaps my mother did, it was a checked gored skirt, with checked waistcoat, and with a short sleeved red silk blouse. I remember that it had heavy glass buttons. That kind could be found. But my mom had beautiful evening dresses, and my father had a tuxedo. And when they got dressed for an occasion like this, we children liked it very much, because the tuxedo shirt is firm in the front, we called it ‘drumbelly’, and my father wore a cat-tie [bow-tie] with it. My parents had a busy social life, as my father had many friends.
The theatre was in the Goldmark Room, these were sceneryless performances, like a concert, and we went to these, we had a subscription. My mom took us regularly, that’s how I saw Fidelio [Beethoven], or heard it, to be more exact, so that’s how my mother got us used to classical music.
Besides that we went to hike to the Buda Mountains, to Pilis or to Borzsony every Sunday. We didn’t care if it rained or if it was windy, we went to hike in boots and warm stockings. We went with the family, and we went in groups, too. At that time there was an active tourist life, the goldsmiths also had a sports club, and we went every Sunday, 50-60 of us, or even more. I think everyone was Jewish, and I’m sure there were others, too. I don’t know, but there were many of us. There were many children, too, and we got along vert well. The restaurant in Budakeszi, where we ate bean soup or stock many times, and which was called Mocsnek at that time, I don’t know what it is called today, still exists. There were hostels, the Kevelynyereg hostel, for example, which I liked very much, unfortunately that doesn’t exist anymore. The hostels were made by tourists carrying the bricks up with their own hands and building them. The administrator of the Nagykevely lived there, so when Northern Hungary [First Vienna Dictate]5 was reannexed, my mom went with that group, the administrator was the guide, and they toured the part of the Carpathian Mountains, which is Subcarpathia now. It is difficult to imagine that generation, the many things they had the time for and the many things they did. My father used to go to hike in the Tatras, he also skied, and he taught us to ski when we were still very young. We skated and skied. There was a rink at Sziget Street, where there was a tennis court in the summer, and in the winter we skated there.
We, the children, used to go on holiday in the summer. Dad didn’t, because he worked, and my mother worked, too, because when Dad equipped the lab, he taught my mother and she worked with the chemical balance. But, when we were young, Mom took us to my grandmother’s in Miskolc. She didn’t take us to the Balaton. We weren't allowed to go there because she said it was the hotbed of polio. I learned to swim at the bath of the Electric Works in Miskolc. My brother also learned to swim in Miskolc, but he learned on Varoshaz Square in a swimming bath. He learned to swim so that there was a pole, there was a rope on it, and on the rope there was a strap, they put the child in it and shouted at him to swim. I didn’t learn this way because I learned somewhat later and in a somewhat more modern time. They taught us so that the coach threw a lot of teaspoons into the water, and we had to get them out. That way, he made us get used to swimming with open eyes, and then somehow we learned to swim. Later we went swimming many times. One time, I think when I was eight years old, when the Tungsram swimming-pool was brand new, I got terrible sunstroke there. I had a fever and they even had to take me to the hospital.
When we were older we spent the summer in Romhany. Our maid was from Romhany, and my mother sent us there with her. Her father didn’t live, but her mother did, and they had a house on the main street of Romhany. It was a farmhouse with big trashing-floor and stacks. They were farmers; she had several siblings, so it was a nice big family. We didn’t go barefoot, our sole didn’t endure it, but we wore sandals, though everyone else in the village went barefoot, except when they went to church on Sundays. But after a while we could also go barefoot on the stubble. It was strictly forbidden to play in the stacks, because it was dangerous, but we still ran up and down between the stacks. Our maid wore many skirts, everyone in the village wore skirts, they had a very nice national dress. On Sundays the girls, who had braids with a long ribbon at the end, walked along the street arm-in-arm, singing, and the boys walked behind them in boots and black trousers. When my mother was also there she wore national costume from there, and we did, too. I had a national costume Romhany, I also had an aigrette, and when I was a little girl at the end of the school year, on the 15th March we wore national costumes. We spent three or four summers in Romhany, but then the maid got married and we didn’t go anymore. The maids always got married after working for us.
When we were older we spent the summer in Romhany. Our maid was from Romhany, and my mother sent us there with her. Her father didn’t live, but her mother did, and they had a house on the main street of Romhany. It was a farmhouse with big trashing-floor and stacks. They were farmers; she had several siblings, so it was a nice big family. We didn’t go barefoot, our sole didn’t endure it, but we wore sandals, though everyone else in the village went barefoot, except when they went to church on Sundays. But after a while we could also go barefoot on the stubble. It was strictly forbidden to play in the stacks, because it was dangerous, but we still ran up and down between the stacks. Our maid wore many skirts, everyone in the village wore skirts, they had a very nice national dress. On Sundays the girls, who had braids with a long ribbon at the end, walked along the street arm-in-arm, singing, and the boys walked behind them in boots and black trousers. When my mother was also there she wore national costume from there, and we did, too. I had a national costume Romhany, I also had an aigrette, and when I was a little girl at the end of the school year, on the 15th March we wore national costumes. We spent three or four summers in Romhany, but then the maid got married and we didn’t go anymore. The maids always got married after working for us.
When we were older we spent a couple summers with my mother in Nagymaros, because Dad sent Mom on vacation from the lab, and we rented a room there. My mom cooked there, and we hiked in Borzsony and Pilis, we always went on trips with my mom, sometimes there was even a guest child with us. We used to go to the Danube, to the beach, and sometimes my father came there for the weekend. Later I spent the summer at my grandmother’s in Miskolc, but my brother didn’t come anymore, because he was a big boy already, and he went to Fodor. Fodor had a sports school on the Svab Hills, where the boys also lived in and fenced there, and did all kinds of sports you can imagine. And my brother often spent the summer there, until he became a member of the Vorosmarty Scout Troop, which took up all his free time.
My brother and I completed the four classes of elementary school on Szent Istvan Square. I hated the teacher very much, she even beat us. She got angry with one of the girls, and she hit her so hard that her nose started bleeding. We also went to Jewish religion classes, everyone had religion class. After elementary school both of us went to high school. My brother went to Kolcsei High School, which was a boys’ high school, girls couldn’t go there. They made a Jewish class of 30-40 people, and there was a separate Christian class.
When I started high school, I could only enroll in the Jewish high school on Abonyi Street.
When I started high school, I could only enroll in the Jewish high school on Abonyi Street.
I have just heard it after so many years, that this rescue was organized by the police superintendent of the 8th district. I didn’t even know that it wasn’t an accident. A policeman took us to Pest across Margit Bridge, and he told us to tell him where to escort us. At the beginning of Pozsonyi Avenue, at the bridge head, an Arrow Cross kid in a cloak and with a machine-gun stopped us and started to get annoyed. He was annoyed because there was an Arrow Cross house on Szent Istvan Boulevard and they tormented and killed many people there. But this policeman told him to go to hell, because he had to escort this company and he should leave him alone. He let us go, and the policeman started to see us home. And there were fewer and fewer of us as people went into the houses.
My mother had not come home when the Arrow Cross man appeared and told us that the house was going to be a Swiss protected house, and those who didn’t have a Swiss Schutzpass had to leave. My father showed them our Swiss Schutzpass, but they said that it was fake and tore it. I have to add that when my father had seen the Arrow Cross take us a couple of days earlier, he had hurried off to the Swedish embassy, or wherever they issued the Swedish Schutzpasses, so that there would be a Schutzpass on our name, too, not only theirs.
But then we had to leave. We stood there with my brother on Katona Jozsef Street in front of some shop window blinds which were down. We had packs and there was a duvet or a comforter in them, and waited for my father to come and tell us where to go. It was quite unpleasant to stand there. Then he came for us and we went to Katona Jozsef Street 10/a, which became a Swedish protected house. We got a bedroom on the 4th floor, in the apartment of a lawyer. People lived in the other rooms. In this house there were beautiful luxurious apartments, real middle-class apartments, and this apartment was also very nice. The kitchen door and the outdoor balcony overlooked the Vig Theater, and their big dining room and the living rooms partly overlooked Katona Jozsef Street. The lawyer and his family were on telakh. They were hiding with fake papers and we never met them. Their personal belongings were jammed into the dining room. And to our luck, the pantry was full with jam, with orange jam for example, because they were wealthy people. It was also a novelty for me that one could go into the bedroom through the bathroom, too, and the entrance of the bathroom wasn’t divided with a curtain, but with a sliding door.
We had been there for quite a while, when one day my mother turned up. They were being driven outwards on Becsi Avenue. My mother was a very cool, athletic woman. She was 38 years old, and as they drove them outwards [see Death marches to Hegyeshalom]15, mom wanted to flee already at Almasfuzito. She exchanged her boots for a pair of high heel shoes, or I don’t know what, and she wanted to run away, but she was caught. They didn’t shoot her, because they usually shot those who fell out of line or couldn’t walk, but they drove her back, and she walked for another couple kilometers. They arrived at a watchman’s house. Unfortunately I don’t know the name of the woman, so I can’t recommend her to Yad Vashem [to be named a Righteous Among the Nations]. I think she was called Mariska. She was a young woman, her husband was a railwayman, and she saw when my mom and two others fell out of line. And this Mariska hid them from sight as quick as lightning. She took them down to a cellar. Her husband didn’t even know that she was hiding three people. When her husband went to work she brought them food and I don’t know what else. They were there for two or three weeks, I don’t know for how long, when Mariska collected some clothes and papers from her relatives in the surrounding Swabian villages. And Mariska stopped a German truck, and my mother and the other two came home to Pest on the back of that truck. They didn’t get caught. They arrived to Pest, my mother went to Hollan Street. She was told we weren't there, and that were on where she was told Katona Jozsef Street. Mom came there, and I never saw my father cry before or after that, but he cried when mom turned up. I must add, that this Mariska used to come to our place to Pest for years, and my mom gave her everything she could. They were simple, honest people. I only know about them that they lived in a watchman’s house at [Almas] Fuzito. I don’t know anything else.
Sometime in the middle of January the Soviet troops liberated the international ghetto. I have just read that there was a Swedish [protected] house, from where they took the people to the banks of the Danube. At that time, I thought that all the Swedish houses survivied. We knew that there was a Swiss house [Editor’s note: The activity of the Swiss diplomats to save Jews was organized around the embassy. The Swiss consul in Budapest was Carl Lutz in 1944-1945. The Schutzbrief, the safe conduct for the Jewish refugees from Budapest was his idea. He saved 10000 Jewish children, whom they sent to Palestine, with these safe-conducts. He issued more than 50000 safe-conducts without a permission. Besides this he played a role in establishing the 76 so called protected houses in Budapest. Jewish refugee agencies estimate the number of Jews saved by him at 50000. Consul Lutz’s temporary agent in Budapest, dr. Peter Zurcher prevented the SS from exterminating the 70000 inhabitants of the ghetto before the Soviet occupation.], and Spanish house from where they took the people to the banks of the Danube and shot them into the Danube, but they didn’t take us. [Editor’s note: Angel Sans Briz, who was a Spanish ambassador in Budapest in 1944 issued 500-700 safe-conducts and approved the establishing of several dozens of Spanish houses in Budapest. By the end of the war more than 3000 Jews escaped with the papers of the Spanish embassy.] We escaped. We were liberated.
Budapest starved, literally. These were very difficult times.
Then, when Gyula Hevesi came home from the Soviet Union, he employed Dad at the Patent Office in 1948, and dad got away from the penalty that he couldn’t be an employee as the member of the Chamber of Engineers.
My brother and I went to school. My brother went back to the Kolcsey and he graduated high school there in 1947. Piroska Lazar’s school didn’t exist anymore, and one of the high schools from Buda moved to Veres Palne Street, where there was also a school. My parents enrolled me there at first, but then the Maria Terezia Girls’ High School was opened on Andrassy Avenue, and my mom transferred me there, because that was much closer.
At that time they called the Bat Mitzvah for Jewish girls a Confirmation. Ours was so that on the first floor of the Dohany Street synagogue there were a lot of girls of my age, we had our Bat Mitzvah together, and the synagogue was decorated. For this festive occasion I got a golden bracelet from my father. My brother naturally had a Bar Mitzvah during the war, also at the Dohany Street synagogue.
I became a scout after the war. I was thirteen years old already, my brother had started scouting at the age of ten already. Most of the children started even earlier, because there were ‘cubs’ from the 1st grade of elementary school. [Editor’s note: The scouts between 8-12 years old were called cubs.] We went on a trip every week, we tested different skills - making fire, pitching, and other things, and when we took the test we got different badges on our shirt. I was a leader for a long time, too. Discipline was important in the scouting movement and scout life was a very good thing. Our troop was a Jewish troop, called ‘Vorosmarty 311.' It was a member of the Scouting Association. I was a scout until the movement ended, until the winter of 1948.
I went to the Maria Terezia Girls’ High School until the 5th grade, I completed the 5th grade there, but I didn’t want to graduate at a high school. I applied to a commercial school and to the chemistry technical school. 500 of us applied to the technical school, they enrolled 90, and 29 of us graduated in 1951. But it wasn’t easy to find a job at that time either. At that time they still directed us, they knew it from somewhere that this and this company needed such and such a worker, and they directed us. They filled out our service certificate at school, and they wrote in mine Plastic Industry Research Institute. I went there, and they asked me why I went. I told them that that’s what they wrote in my service certificate. They said ‘no, thanks’. Then my father, who was known in the trade, talked with someone at the Ministry of Heavy Industry, where the chemical industry belonged, and that’s how I got to the Conserve, Meat, Refrigerating Industry Research Institute after graduation as a young technician, to the experimental station.
In the meantime I got married in July. I met my husband in the scout troop. I wasn’t sixteen yet, and he was nineteen. We got married in July 1951. The wedding was in the 6th district town hall. My mother got hold of two kinds of material from somewhere, one was pink with white squares or something like that in it, the other one was navy blue with some floral pattern. There was an excellent seamstress in the house, and elderly woman, who worked very slowly but beautifully, and she sewed both dresses, and I got married in the pink one. I didn’t have white sandals so we went to Csepel, because the Weiss Manfred [Editor’s note: At that time it was called Rakosi Matyas Works after the first secretary of the party.] was there, the working class was there, and because of this they stocked the shops there better, and there I could buy a pair of white sandals. After all, it was summer and hot and I couldn’t go barefoot to the wedding.
After the war most of the Jews joined the communist party. We did, too. My father was a communist originally, my mother was a social democrat, because her father was also a social democrat. We knew the International already in our childhood, even though it was forbidden. So my mother was specifically a leftist, and my father was a 1919 communist, that’s why he had had to emigrate at the time. I was a member of the communist party already at the age of sixteen. I am not ashamed of it. My husband was also a communist.
At the end of 1944 my future husband became a Red Cross courier.
My husband became very soon the foreman of the sound department. They did the sound at the muster parades, the 1st May events, and other similar events. In the meantime, already during our marriage, he graduated high school and the Polytechnic University. He became a weak current electrical engineer. Then they transferred him to the ministry, to the inspectorial authority, and he was a head of department there. It was in the building on Moszkva Square, that big post office.
At that time we didn’t live on Liszt Ferenc Square anymore, because that was a very tiny apartment, but we managed to exchange it for a two-bedroom apartment with modern conveniences on Kertesz Street. Looking at it now, it was quite a badly equipped apartment, we struggled a lot, because we heated with coal, and there was a stove in the bathroom too, we had to heat there, too.
They shot and robbed everything. They robbed everything - it’s not true that they didn’t rob. There was a man who could hardly walk because he had put so many coats on, I watched him from the window. But it is also true that a truck stopped at the corner with dead geese and they gave them away. But it wasn’t as people now tell all kinds of things. There were decent, nice, good-intentioned people, and there was a lot of riff-raff. A boy with a civic guard armband came up to visit us, he had a gun, and asked us how we were doing, because he was my husband’s colleague, but he wasn’t a counter-revolutionist at all. But this didn’t affect me, it didn’t affect anyone in my family. What does a survivor and her husband do? The first thing was that we checked how much food we had at home, and for how many days that was enough. When there was a lot of shooting, we moved the two children to the cellar to sleep there, and we pulled our bed out in the hall, because that’s safer, and we slept there, not in the room.
My husband had a tape recorder at home from his workplace, it was as big as a suitcase. We had a radio, and Orion, I think, it was a radio with a tuning eye, which picked up a lot of waves. We could hear the taxis on the radio, and if the machines of war transmitted on a band, we could hear that, too. My husband recorded the more interesting things on a tape, and he still has them. One time, when my husband wiggled the tuner we heard, a military plane was flying above Budapest, that the pilot, the voice of a young man, screamed: ‘Oh my God, what do I see?’ And he said in despair that they were throwing living people out of the window on Koztarsasag Square. Simply they threw them in the street. But they also murdered the regular soldiers on duty. [Editor’s note: The attack against the Koztarsasag Square hall of the Hungarian Democrat Party on the 30th October 1956 is still one of the most controversial and partly unveiled events of the 1956 revolution. The revolters supposed that the building was the anti revolutionary center of the broken up AVH and the party apparatus. One of their groups tried to deliver the rebels caught by the AVH, and they opened fire at them from the building, when the rebels started to assault the building. Nobody controlled the assault, the insurgent groups fought with the AVH men and the armed party functionaries in a spontaneous way. They occupied the building and the raging multitude lynched many defenders. (Gosztonyi Peter: A Koztarsasag teri ostrom és a kazamatak mitosza. „Budapesti Negyed”, 1994. 5. sz.; Ripp Zoltán: 1956. Forradalom és szabadsagharc Magyarorszagon. Budapest, 2002; Horvath Miklos: 1956 hadikronikaja, Budapest, 2003).]
My parents got hold of a loaf of bread, I don’t know from where, but and they came and brought it over. We fed the children, we were in the hall, the kitchen overlooked the courtyard, we heated it as much as we could. Combat cars patrolled the main roads, and if we went out we waited until the combat car left, and quickly crossed the street on the Korut. One time we really wanted to get some fresh air with the children. We had a motorcycle with a sidecar, and we went until the corner of Kertesz and Dohany Street, but there was a barricade there, so we came back. My husband went once to see what was going on on Ulloi Avenue, and he came back saying that Ulloi Avenue was in ruins, and the human remains were treaded in as the caterpillars went by. There was a combat car on the corner of Kertesz Street, it was there for quite a while. But there was one on the corner of the Korut and Jozsef Street, too, and when we already went to work, when life started again, but there were no streetcars or buses yet, a truck stood on the corner of the Korut and Jozsef Street, next to the gun-barrel of the combat car, we climbed on its plateau, and that’s how they took us to work.
My husband had a tape recorder at home from his workplace, it was as big as a suitcase. We had a radio, and Orion, I think, it was a radio with a tuning eye, which picked up a lot of waves. We could hear the taxis on the radio, and if the machines of war transmitted on a band, we could hear that, too. My husband recorded the more interesting things on a tape, and he still has them. One time, when my husband wiggled the tuner we heard, a military plane was flying above Budapest, that the pilot, the voice of a young man, screamed: ‘Oh my God, what do I see?’ And he said in despair that they were throwing living people out of the window on Koztarsasag Square. Simply they threw them in the street. But they also murdered the regular soldiers on duty. [Editor’s note: The attack against the Koztarsasag Square hall of the Hungarian Democrat Party on the 30th October 1956 is still one of the most controversial and partly unveiled events of the 1956 revolution. The revolters supposed that the building was the anti revolutionary center of the broken up AVH and the party apparatus. One of their groups tried to deliver the rebels caught by the AVH, and they opened fire at them from the building, when the rebels started to assault the building. Nobody controlled the assault, the insurgent groups fought with the AVH men and the armed party functionaries in a spontaneous way. They occupied the building and the raging multitude lynched many defenders. (Gosztonyi Peter: A Koztarsasag teri ostrom és a kazamatak mitosza. „Budapesti Negyed”, 1994. 5. sz.; Ripp Zoltán: 1956. Forradalom és szabadsagharc Magyarorszagon. Budapest, 2002; Horvath Miklos: 1956 hadikronikaja, Budapest, 2003).]
My parents got hold of a loaf of bread, I don’t know from where, but and they came and brought it over. We fed the children, we were in the hall, the kitchen overlooked the courtyard, we heated it as much as we could. Combat cars patrolled the main roads, and if we went out we waited until the combat car left, and quickly crossed the street on the Korut. One time we really wanted to get some fresh air with the children. We had a motorcycle with a sidecar, and we went until the corner of Kertesz and Dohany Street, but there was a barricade there, so we came back. My husband went once to see what was going on on Ulloi Avenue, and he came back saying that Ulloi Avenue was in ruins, and the human remains were treaded in as the caterpillars went by. There was a combat car on the corner of Kertesz Street, it was there for quite a while. But there was one on the corner of the Korut and Jozsef Street, too, and when we already went to work, when life started again, but there were no streetcars or buses yet, a truck stood on the corner of the Korut and Jozsef Street, next to the gun-barrel of the combat car, we climbed on its plateau, and that’s how they took us to work.
I brought him the letter, and so I got to the Metallurgical Research Institute in 1958, which belonged to a big trust with many factories. I got a job at the chemistry department as a technician, a compound analyst, and basically I spent there my entire life.
In 1960 I had about enough of it and I officially divorced my husband. I thought that life was ahead of me, and while I was married there was nothing to be said. The norms were different at that time, because nobody cares about anything today, about papers or anything, but at that time it didn’t go like this. I started divorce proceedings, my father had a second cousin, a lawyer, and he handled it.
We went on holiday with vouchers as long as it was possible. We got vouchers at my workplace, and we went to Sopron, to the Balaton, to Matrahaza, Matrafured, and Galyateto. Usually I went alone, and my daughter regularly went with my parents. My father had a PhD – he was pensioned off at the age of 77, he was entitled to the summer resort of the academy, they always took my daughter along, and sometimes I also went with them. My mother liked Abbazia [at that time called Opatija already, Yugoslavia] very much, there was a Yugoslavian-Hungarian fraternity on Bajza Street after the war, from where they organized trips, and she did go once again from there.
My daughter went in Dunabogdany, too, once or twice a year. She told me when she was already an adult that she hated it so much, but I didn’t know that at that time. And when she was about eight or nine years old, from then on we spent the holiday on a holiday resort in Tata. My son also came with us there every summer. My old scout friends and I joined together and we took our children down there for the summer. That holiday resort still exists. Apparently it became very cultured. At that time it was a meant for camping, very romantic, and had many lakes, but you couldn't swim in all of them. We moved down there, there were very simple wood-houses there, with some flickering light and a bunk-bed. We rented one of there, pitched tents around it and we were down there. There was a buffet inside, where we could eat, so we didn’t cook. When we weren’t on holiday, we went on trips at the weekends and during vacations, too. We took the children to the Bukk, to Borzsony, Pilis, Vertes, and everywhere.
I went abroad many times, with trade union holiday vouchers, too, and with 70 dollars too. I went on a trip with IBUSZ [Hungarian socialist travel agency] in the GDR, several times in Austria, in German- speaking Switzerland, in Prague [today Czech Republic], in Krakow [today Poland]. I was in France, in the Federal Republic of Germany, in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland. When the Soviet Union and the trade unions voucher trips still existed I went across the Ural Mountain in Asia, in Leningrad [today St. Petersburg, Russia], several times in Moscow [today Russia], in Kiev [today Ukraine], in Minsk [today Belarus], Tallin [today Estonia], with different organizations. These weren’t expensive trips, because I couldn’t have afforded anything expensive, but they were good trips.
My daughter went in Dunabogdany, too, once or twice a year. She told me when she was already an adult that she hated it so much, but I didn’t know that at that time. And when she was about eight or nine years old, from then on we spent the holiday on a holiday resort in Tata. My son also came with us there every summer. My old scout friends and I joined together and we took our children down there for the summer. That holiday resort still exists. Apparently it became very cultured. At that time it was a meant for camping, very romantic, and had many lakes, but you couldn't swim in all of them. We moved down there, there were very simple wood-houses there, with some flickering light and a bunk-bed. We rented one of there, pitched tents around it and we were down there. There was a buffet inside, where we could eat, so we didn’t cook. When we weren’t on holiday, we went on trips at the weekends and during vacations, too. We took the children to the Bukk, to Borzsony, Pilis, Vertes, and everywhere.
I went abroad many times, with trade union holiday vouchers, too, and with 70 dollars too. I went on a trip with IBUSZ [Hungarian socialist travel agency] in the GDR, several times in Austria, in German- speaking Switzerland, in Prague [today Czech Republic], in Krakow [today Poland]. I was in France, in the Federal Republic of Germany, in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland. When the Soviet Union and the trade unions voucher trips still existed I went across the Ural Mountain in Asia, in Leningrad [today St. Petersburg, Russia], several times in Moscow [today Russia], in Kiev [today Ukraine], in Minsk [today Belarus], Tallin [today Estonia], with different organizations. These weren’t expensive trips, because I couldn’t have afforded anything expensive, but they were good trips.
Since my father was deaf, he couldn’t go to the theatre, because he didn’t hear it. But my mother loved classical music and theatre, and in those years when I couldn’t take my daughter because she was small, my mother and I had a subscription. For long years. I had opera subscription, concert subscription and theatre subscription, I went out three or four times a week in an evening dress. I had very nice evening dresses. Dinner gowns, full evening dresses, all kinds. And like a normal young woman, I had spike-heeled shoes, black, drab, brown, all kinds, and purses to go with them, bijou, jewelry, normal jewelry. I went out a lot. Richter was perhaps for the first time in Hungary when he had a solo concert at the Academy of Music, and somehow it happened that I was there, and I knew it at once that I was hearing an unparalleled musician.
We went to the synagogue every Saturday morning. We went to the big synagogue on Dohany Street. [see Dohany Street synagogue]6. We also used to go there during elementary school. The high school boys went to the Rumbach. [Editor’s note: The Rumbach Street synagogue was midway between the strict Orthodoxy and the Neolog conception.]. We had a young rabbi, I don’t know his real name, we only called him Lobele. He married one of the girls who graduated at that time, which intrigued us, as little girls, very much. He taught Ivrit [modern Hebrew]. We also knew biblical Hebrew, so we could translate the prayers.
At home we had separate German classe. First our teacher was a tante [German for aunt], then a fräulein [German for young woman]. The tante wasn’t very young anymore and she didn’t speak Hungarian. She was at our place every day and spoke German with us. I was still a kindergartner, and I learned German before I could read. She brought story books with illustrations, she pointed at the illustrations, and that’s how I learned the words. And when the tante left a girl came, I don’t remember her name anymore, only that we called her fräulein, ‘Frajli’. She was a young Austrian woman, she was at our place for one or two years, and like every child, we were quite cheeky with her, because we answered her in Hungarian. She didn’t speak any Hungarian either, but we still learned German well.