This photograph was taken in May 1936 in Kokava nad Rimavicou. It shows my grandparents’ store. Standing on the left is my mother, Klara on the right my father, Julius Engel, with my brother, Pavel Spitzer, and standing in the middle are the Pomsteins. My grandmother and Aunt Melania are sitting down.
My grandfather in Kokava had a store with various goods, mixed goods as it was called back then. Their standard of living was relatively bearable, decent for the times. They didn’t have problems making a living.
My grandparents’ house in Kokava was one-story, and relatively large. It had a quite large commercial area. I’d say that it was around 15 by 10 meters, and of that 60 percent was a store and storage space. My grandparents’ house had four rooms. We lived in it after the war. It was their second house, because in 1911 Kokava burned down, and so my grandparents built this house between the years 1918 and 1920.
