Erika Izsak's class picture from 1943

This is class IV A of the Girls' High School of the Pest Israelite Community in 1943. In am the seventh from right in the third row. There were 54 of us in the class, in the previous and in the next years there wasn't as many of us, but by this time all the other high schools had been closed for Jews. From school year 1942/1943 our building was used by the state as a military hospital, and the high school moved to the Jewish middle school on Wesselenyi Street. Because of the lack of rooms we went to school in two shifts, the classes were shorter. The social differences were quite big in the class. The tuition was determined based on the parents' income. There were some, who didn't have to pay anything, and there was a tuition of 32 pengoes, too. We didn't have any very poor classmates, but there were some, who lived scantily. Some lived in elegant villas in Buda or big apartments in Ujlipotvaros. The general situation of the Jewry overshadowed these differences. The groups of friends were formed by girls with about the same financial background, but there weren't impassable boundaries. There were social differences, which could be felt, but there weren't any conflicts. Of the 54 girls about five or six fell victim to the Shoah. Some of them lived in a town in the surrounding of Budapest, they got to Auschwitz. Some were deported from the capital, we all came back but one of us. After the liberation many didn't continue their studies at the Jewish High School, so we don't know how many of our classmates we lost.