Katarina Lofflerova at a Maccabi tennis meeting
This was in 1929, in Bratislava, at the Maccabi tennis competition. From left to right, Dr. Balog's wife, then me. Frida Vertes is standing next to me, she was a tennis player from Kosice. She got married in Bratislava. From the right, the first woman's name was Vilma. Unfortunately, I don't remember her last name, but she also played tennis. She was from Malacka. From the left, the first man is a player named Wahlman, who played in the Maccabi. He was a functionary in the Jewish sports union. From the right, the first gentleman was called Emil Freistadt. He was a well-known person in Bratislava. They had a sport shop on Sedlarska Street for more than a century. In 1939, he escaped to Palestine and fought there until the end of the war. He came back here just as Israel formed. He married here.
I started playing tennis in Maccabi when I was fourteen years old. I got along well with the others. In Bratislava, there was another tennis club, the LTK. It was a Slovak club. On the occasion of the summer dance party, we regularly invited members of the LTK, and they would invite us. They had a beautiful, elegant building, in which many kinds of events were held. So, Maccabi and LTK had an absolutely good sporting relationship.
I played tennis and went for light athletics. I swam in the SK Bar Kochba but I had more friends that were not Jewish, than Jewish ones. I was a 'Czechoslovak' until the beginning of 1938. My social circle was always comfortable. Of course, there were a few mixed marriages, too. All the way up to 1939, it was such a natural thing. Naturally, the sadhen was at my friends house, sometimes, we would even look for, let's say, some girl who had a big dowry. But those who had the big dowry, wanted a groom who had some title, at least an engineer or doctorate degree, a lawyer or a doctor. There were a few of them, naturally, but not in my circle of friends, since the greater part of them weren't Jewish. Sports brought us together. It didn't matter if I competed for the Maccabi team, if there were a lot in the Slovak sport clubs, we mutually competed.