The Grün family

This photo shows part of our family at the beginning of the 1930s, in the courtyard of my grandfather Emil Grün's house. The adults sitting down below from left to right: my mother's sister Maria Ehrenreich, neé Grün, beside her my mother. Back then she was named Erna Milch, neé Grün, my grandmother, Róza Grün, my grandfather Emil Grün, more of my mother's sisters: Margit Reich, neé Grün and Piroshka Wollitzer, neé Grün. The children from left to right: Rudolf Ehrenreich, Ivan Wollitzer and Zuzana Ehrenreich. All of them were murdered during the Holocaust. Standing up above from left to right: Rudolf Ehrenreich, Ladislav Grün, Uncle Wollitzer, Aunt Irena Singer, neé Grün. The Grüns? oldest son Hugo. I don?t recognize the lady beside Hugo. Next is my oldest cousin, Katka Reich. The last three I don?t recognize either. Of the people that I?ve identified in this family photograph, only two survived the Holocaust. My mother Erna, and her sister Margit Reich. I knew my mother's parents very well, they died in a concentration camp in 1944. They deported them. Those that returned told me that they had actually died of hunger. My grandfather's name was Emil Grün, and he was a very courageous, just, and sociable person who loved learning, and who ruled his eleven children with an iron hand. He provided them with what he could. Three of the five boys attended university, and of the other two, one graduated from business academy, and the second apprenticed as a shop assistant in the textile industry. The girls only attended council school, and my mother had business school. Grandfather Grün tried to make sure that his children would have good jobs. My grandmother, Róza, was the so-called ?executive shadow.? She cooked, did the laundry, organized the household and took care of the children. I remember that Grandma had wire-frame glasses. She kept a kosher household. On Saturday, she'd always pull out a prayer book and read. When my sister and I would come over, she'd run across the street to the corner store, and would buy us candy that was sold by weight in a paper cone. She was very kind and extremely frugal. She deposited all the money she got into a savings account. She loved her children very much. They didn't speak Hungarian in the Grün family, because my grandfather didn't like Hungarian. It apparently stemmed from the fact that before they moved to Trnava, they'd lived in Horná Poruba, which is close to Ilava, where Slovak was spoken. They knew Slovak to such a degree, that when my mother began attending school, Grandpa hired a teacher who tutored the children in Hungarian.