Janos with his parents

Me and my parents.

My father was born in 1893 in Nagyvarad [today Oradea, in Romania]. My father went to high-school for four years in Nagyvarad, and then to a trade college for three years. He graduated from there. Uncle Vilmos, who wanted my father to work in the trade business, sent him to Pest for a year to learn banking, and in Marosvasarhely [today Tirgu Mures, in Romania] he sent him to work with an agent who would buy a trainload of, say, coffee or tea for the business. Uncle Vilmos had my father educated. But in the meanwhile the war began. My father was a volunteer then, with the rank of Captain.

Right after the war my father got into the Association of War Invalids, and worked there for two years. At the start of the '20s the Rico Bandage Factory was established. My father became the Assistant Director there. Then in '28 he got into the Hungaria Rubber Factory, which had 10 workers at the time. By the time of the Second World War it had 1,200 workers, and was a very modern factory. And my father was there until December 2, 1944.

My mother was a beautiful woman. She was truly beautiful. She was a closed, unusually pleasant, delicate, but very reserved somebody. She and her siblings were born in Pest. They lived in Rozsa Street, and they went to school there where the Basilica is. They only went to Gyongyos to visit their grandparents. But they always spent their childhood summers there. During those visits they learned all sorts of dirty poems, and phrases from peasant children, and the local dialect. My mother finished trade school, but just a one-year course, and before that she attended grade-school like her siblings too. My aunt Iren and my mother started to work, because they needed to. Both of them wrote beautifully, expressively, and could take shorthand. My mother got into the National Manufacturers' Alliance, before the First World War, because she wrote so well and beautifully. And she worked there until it was closed, until '47 or '48.

Photos from this interviewee