Me and my mother. This was a monument near Gundulicev Venac (in Belgrade), Austro-Hungarian. When they left this area, they took the monument with them. I liked to go there often. My father took this picture.
My mother Kornelia Shwartz Kornveis was born in 1892 in Murska Subota, that is in Medjumurje. Grandfather was a cantor there at some point. Then they came to Belgrade- My mother came to Belgrade as a young girl, right after my aunt, who was a seamstress there. My mother's mother tongue was Hungarian as is mine. She was a seamstress at my aunt's, her eldest sister, where she also learned the trade She was a woman of the world in every respect, and very modest type of person.
I was born on the 10th of August 1922, in Veliki Varadin, which is in Romania now and called Oraea. I moved with my parents to Belgrade when I was five, in 1927. There were no Jewish schools when I was little in Belgrade. I went to German school (Deutche Evangelische Folk School) in Belgrade on Nusiceva Street. I learned how to speak German there. We all went together to the religious classes there, we used to sing there a lot.
Then I went to Serbian school across from the botanical gardens in Belgrade. There were three Jewish girls in the grade. I remember one of them was called Gizela Kunick. After elementary school I went to the civil school, and then I got married when I was sixteen and I did not have time for more schools.
Livia Teleki and her mother Kornelija Kornveis at the 'Missing Monument'
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).