Erika Izsak and her cousin, Tamas Biro

This photo was taken in Budapest in 1937. I am looking out of our bedroom window, my cousin Tamas or Tomi Biro is sitting on the ladder. The ladder was always leant against the bedroom window, and the night watchman of the horticulture climbed up on it to shout in to my father how many degrees there were outside, and my father gave him orders how much to heat the greenhouse depending on that. Tomi often came to our place in the summer, together with his mother. He was five and a half years younger than me, but I enjoyed playing with him. He replaced a sibling for me. I would have liked a 'real' one, and my mother would have liked more children even more. But my father hardly wanted even one. He said that it was irresponsibility to have children in such an insecure, threatening world, because if there were children the parents were responsible for them.