Bonds lottery win of Peter Reisz's aunt, Ilona Breiner

This is my maternal aunt, Ilona Breiner, my grandmother, Regina Breiner, and me, in a photo taken in Budapest in the 1950s. Ilona is showing Grandma that she won a prize in the bonds lottery. She won 100,000 forints -- this was a lot of money at the time -- and I remember that she gave 15,000 forints to the children of Korea and distributed the rest among the family. We also got some of the money, and bought some furniture with it. My maternal grandfather had a sister named Julia who never married, and who lived alone in her flat. When she grew elderly and ill, my Aunt Ilona moved in with her. When Julia died, my Aunt Ilona moved back in with her mother, Grandma, and we got Julia's flat. Before the war, Ilona worked as a seamstress in the Goldberger Textile Factory, and after the war she became an administrator in the state-owned Company for River Control. She had no family because her fiancé died in WWII.

The Centropa Collection at USHMM

The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.

Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". 

Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).