This is my father with my brother on the balcony of our apartment in Zuglo.
My brother Gabor was like my tutor. He taught me everything. With him I learned to skate, to ski, to swim. He threw me in the middle of the pool, I floundered out, he threw me back in again, and then in time, I learned to swim. The same thing happened with skating. He brought me to the middle, left me there, I cried, stayed there for a while, toddled out, and he brought me back. An hour later I was skating happily. Those were hard winters. Here at the corner of Columbus Street was a skating area. I’m sure he would have liked to go off with his friends more, but my mother used to always call after him, ‘go and take your sister with you.’ I loved this. I’m not sure he did.
As I got older, I could not go to any school any longer. So Gabor became my teacher. He told me not to worry. He got out his textbooks and we started to study, just as if I had been in school. I received my entire early education from him, and after the war, when I entered a regular school, it was clear how much he had taught me.
Gabor was taken to Buchenwald at the age of 16. They tied him up and turned a hose on him, just to watch him freeze into ice.
