This photo was taken in Zilina in 1935. It shows my mom, Helena Pollakova, nee Paszternak, sitting in our living room. The picture was taken by my dad. My mom was born in 1896 in a small village near Kosice called Buzita. She had a secondary school education, probably with a focus on commerce. My mom was a nice, pretty woman. She was a housewife. She did the shopping and cooking, as dad came home for lunch. She always had a maid to help her out. In the afternoons she would knit, crochet and make covers, which she enjoyed doing. She also enjoyed having company, visiting friends and going to cafes with dad. My mom used to read a lot. We didn't have Hungarian books, so mom would borrow one from time to time, but mostly she read in German, especially Werfel, Mann and Zweig. She didn't read many books in Czech, but she liked Capek and 'Golet in the Valley'. My dad read much less. In one room we had a library with the kind of literature and collected works that people from the better families were 'supposed to have'. Because of my dad's job we moved house many times when I was a child. We moved from Kosice when I was still a baby. We went through Martin and Trnava, but I was too young to remember much about it. The apartments in which we lived were set aside for the heads of revenue offices, so they were all very nice.
