Clairette Schuller with her first child, Lea

In this picture you can see me with my mother, Clairette Schuller. The photo was taken in 1916. I was born in Budapest, the family was Hungarian, a Hungarian Jewish family. I had two siblings: a brother, Istvan, born in 1917, and a sister, Zsuzsa, born in 1925. My earliest memory is that they handed me in over a train window, and I sat on the lap of a soldier in a train. This must have been soon after World War I broke out. We traveled many times at that time to the grandparents' in Wuppertal, this must have been on a journey like that. My father got a job in Germany, in Hanover at the Hanomag factory, and then he moved there with his wife and I, because I was already born at that time. My mother was very beautiful and very strict and I adored her. I adored her unconditionally. Otherwise she must have been a playful young girl, she put on my grandmother's stage costumes - at that time it was customary that not the theater provided the costumes, but the soloists had to bring their own costumes, and my mother took a liking to them and put on my grandmother's costumes.