Edith Kleinova

These are pictures of my mother, Edith Weisz. The photos are from a photo booth, but I don't know where and when they were taken. My mother was named Edith Kleinova, nee Weisz. She was born on 17th August 1911 in Vienna. I didn't get to know my mother very much, I was twelve years old when she died. My mother's Jewish name was Noemi. I'm named Ester. During the Yom Kippur prayer, we always used Ester bat Noemi, so Ester daughter of Noemi. I don't have it written down anywhere, but I remember it. My mother spoke Slovak, Hungarian and German. She didn't attend school, as she had a home tutor - Fräulein. I don't know if my mother had some sort of a trade. She didn't need it in a well-off family. Besides this, on the farm she learned how to work in the fields, with milk and so on. I know that after the war we had to make our own butter and also baked our own bread. I can't say for certain whether my mother was a devout Jewess. I only remember her from the concentration camp and the sanatorium. But her postcards are evidence that she was. When she mentioned God, she never wrote God, but only G. For me that's evidence that she was probably devout. I don't even know what my mother's character was like, as during visits a person had to look at her like at a picture, because tuberculosis was infectious. So when we came, we could only see her from a certain distance, and she also tried to not breathe in my direction, so as not to infect me. And even if someone was I don't know how wicked, if they only saw me once every two months or even less, it couldn't show itself. From photographs I'd say that my mother dressed very elegantly, but after the war during her stay at the sanatorium, she wore only flannel pajamas or sweatpants.