Katarína Löfflerová

This is me, four years old. The photo was taken in the Johanna Waihtrager studio in Bratislava in 1914. I am an old Bratislava citizen. I was born in this city in 1910 and I still live here. My parents were also born in Bratislava, and so were my grandparents. I was born five years after my parents got married. They lived first on Grosslingova Street, which was lined with very nice houses. That's where I was born. Even my birth certificate says Grosslingova 15. My grandfather worked in a store selling men's clothing. At that time even girls wore blue marine dresses. It was fashionable then. And when I went to school, of course, I was dressed in blue. On holidays, I wore a white blouse and since it was a present from my grandfather, I wore it for a long time. I already started going to school when I was six years old, in 1916. And I remember that in that year, Emperor Franz Joseph died. It was a big event in Bratislava. I was attending a Jewish school on Zochova Street. It was an excellent school, there was one non-Jew in our class, and three in the class ahead of me. There were also famous Bratislava citizens who went there, like Erntal, Fojer. Our teachers were very good. We had only one female teacher, but that was common then. Her name was Ms. Hoffmanova, and, interestingly enough, in 1944 I was deported along with her. She was quite old and was killed immediately. That school I went to had four classes.