Katarína Löfflerová and Jozef Vidor
This is a picture of me and my father, Jozef Vidor. I was six years old at the time. The photo was taken in the studio of Johanna Waihtrager in Bratislava in 1916.
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.
When I was six, World War I began, and my father was drafted to the Hungarian army, Honved No. 13. My father was among the first to make it to the eastern front, namely to Poland. And I have to say that a number of my classmates' fathers never came back from the war. But my father did. Afterwards he stayed in Bratislava.
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.