Janos in school uniform

This is me wearing the school uniform of the Lutheran high-school I attended after elementary school.

I started school in Sziv street, because it was the standard then that there should be no private school. My father wanted me to go to the Lutheran high-school in the [Varosliget Avenue], because he had good information, and it came through too. But they told my father that they would put me on the list, and I could only go if they had a place. So my father, the moment that happened, grabbed me and had me entered in the Avenue [i.e. this Lutheran high-school]. I got into high-school, in the year the Numerus Clausus came out, so there could only be 10% Jews in any class. I went to religious school there from first to eighth grade.

The Levente training [a quasi-fascist troop, modeled on the Boy Scouts] started at the end of the '30s in that school, just about the same time as the first Jewish law. It was required. I wasn't really a Boy Scout, just a little bit, in one of those Jewish Boy Scout troops. During Levente class the Leventes would practice in hats and with rifles. The Jews, depending on the school, had to practice with shovels. In the Avenue, when they told us 'specially to get shovels, I went into the principal and asked why. The principal was very kind with me because he respected my father, who was a decorated officer. He was just a lieutenant. And he said, if I need a shovel the school would buy one for me. What a shame that brings to the spirit of the Avenue school.

Photos from this interviewee