This photo was taken in 1906 in Liptovsky Mikulas, and shows my grandmother, Anna Polakova. It was taken by the photographer Michael Faden.
My grandma was from Namestovo, from Orava region. She died at about the age of 80 in 1940, which means that she was born around 1860.
If we were to judge my grandparents according to the times they lived in, you could classify them as Neolog Jews. Basically, they were raised in an on the whole liberal fashion, no Orthodoxy.
The language of communication in the Polak family was very interesting. Grandma Polakova belonged to Matica, a national Slovak cultural establishment with its headquarters in Martin, and also spoke Slovak with her children. Grandma spoke in very beautiful Slovak. Of course, when she and my grandfather spoke, it was in Hungarian.
