This is a picture of me, my second husband, Ladislav Loffler, and my daughter Anna (nee Lofflerova). The photo was taken in Prague in 1960.
The village where my second husband was born was called Studienka. It wasn't far from Malacky. He went to grammar school in Malacka, and then came to Bratislava; they came after World War I. His father had died in the meantime, he lived with his widowed mother and his older sister and brother-in-law. They were Jewish, but likewise not religious. He came here to the Academy of Commerce, he matriculated here in Bratislava. After that he was in Vienna for some one-year - they call it today a 'bakalar' [first university graduate level] in exporting. He came back, and then got a position at Schenker. It was the biggest forwarding agency in Europe. They had a few thousand employees all across Europe. They sent him to Prague, too. He stayed there for a while. When the Germans occupied Prague, he immediately returned, but in the meantime, here the Slovak State had been formed. He stayed in Bratislava and lived through the war here, too, with false papers. He was really handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes. His mother tongue was Slovakian.
I was 38 when my daughter Anna was born. But I was able to live to have a granddaughter.
Katarína Löfflerová with her husband Ladislav and daughter Anna
The Centropa Collection at USHMM
The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.
Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC".
Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).