1st May procession

1st May procession

This is a festival procession on 1st May. I am on the side, directing the group because I knew the direction of the procession. The men are in white shirts and dark trousers because we were told to dress like that, the only thing we didn't wear was a tie. This is the street by the Szamos River; my father had a watchmaker store on this street way back in the 1920s. We sang worker songs in Hungarian, of course. We had a Democratic Jewish Youth Organisation march but I don't remember the words anymore. There were also other associations of young people in the procession, for instance there was the UTC [Young Communist Party], and there were the young workers from the factories. On the right side the pedestrians are walking, probably also to the stadium. We went to the stadium, where every organization had its place and we had to stand in a nice formation. At first, there was a wind ensemble playing and after that the important people of the city appeared and the leaders of the party, on a stage that had been set up for them. We put the flags that we had been carrying down and stood for hours listening to the speeches. We could hardly hear and understand them; the technological equipment was quite primitive.
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