Dezso Torok

Dezso Torok

Here you can see my maternal grandfather, Dezso Torok, at the age of 28. The photo was taken in Budapest in 1897. His father was Gergely Turteltaub, his mother was Fanni Wallerstein. They lived in Nagyvarad. My grandfather was originally called David Turteltaub, he magyarized his name to Torok and used the first name Dezso. He came to Pest at the end of the 19th century, he was an assistant. He got married in 1901, and opened a shoe store with his wife on Erzsebet Boulevard. At the end of World War I they had to close, because they lost all they had on the war loan. They raised their two daughters, my mother and her sister Klari decently, they even gave them good dowry. Their new shop was opened on Andrassy Avenue in the mid 1930s. My grandfather worked hard when he had to, and he didn't only love, he also respected his wife, because she worked even harder. But grandpa liked to go out, too, to go to a cafe, to mix with society, to play cards - all these without Grandma. When his smaller grandchild, my nephew Tomi was born in 1934, Grandma and my mother were both in the sanatorium with my aunt. I was with Grandpa, we worried together. And he explained to me very nicely, in the way you do to a five and a half year old child, that my cousin was about to be born.
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