Blanka Friedmannova out for a walk

A photograph from Giraltovce from 1940. This was also one of the places I worked as a teacher.

Then I started working at a Slovak people's school in Uzhorod [a town in Subcarpathian Ruthenia – Editor's note], later in Somotor, and so on. They transferred us from place to place, wherever they needed us at the moment. When I taught in these various villages and small towns, I lived with my aunt and my Uncle Herman. She used to tell me about my mother and our family. Once on Saturday there was a day off. Her husband was working, and then went to church. To a Jewish one, of course. Well, and so my aunt says to me: "Blanka, come here. Here to the bed. We'll talk a bit." She began telling me about my mother. It's said that when my mother came from Poland, she was very beautiful. For two years she didn't wear a wig at all. She didn't even have one, as she wasn't used to anything like that from home. Her parents weren't as Orthodox as that, and didn't bring her up that way. And that apparently my mother had beautiful skin. She had a very pretty face and skin, and that it's said people used to come look and marvel at her. They wanted to know what she did to have such a pretty face. The apartment next door shared a bathroom with the apartment where my mother lived, and the neighbors used to come watch my mother comb her hair, and to see what she was putting on her face. Finally she began wearing a wig, I don't even know why. In the end my mother was the most religious of us all.