Maximilian Klein and Alzbeta Kleinova

In this picture you can see my father, Maximilian Klein, and my stepmother, Alzbeta Kleinova. The photograph was taken in the 1950s in the courtyard of our house in Mocenok. After my mother's death my father had one heart attack after another, he had a disability pension of about 450 crowns. In 1952 my mother died, and in 1954 my father remarried. His second wife and my stepmother was named Alzbeta Gottreichova. There was a lot of tension between us, so when I graduated from high school, my father found me a sublet in Bratislava, with the Feldmars. I found work on my own, so from 1957 they didn't hassle me any more. I have this feeling that my stepmother came from Lucenec, but I'm not sure. One of her brothers lived in Bratislava. My father met her in Galanta, at my aunt Sidonia Hertzova's place. We used to go to my aunt's place for the high holidays, like Passover and Chanukkah, and my later stepmother used to also spend the holidays there. No one liked my stepmother. An egocentric personality. When she was off at some spa, my friend Karolina Bednikova and I snuck into her room. My stepmother had honey cakes that she'd baked there, which she used to eat on the sly. Out of spite we also drank some of her liqueur and ate some almonds. She couldn't tell on us. So that sort of person. We had pink covers on our pillows. We used to call it angin. In the morning I looked in the mirror and I was all covered in feathers. So I looked at the pillows, and they weren't ours. They were white. Ours were all pink. I said, 'But that's not ours.' Well, and she says, 'I'm cleaning here.' I said, 'My head as well?' So whatever was good... and she always said, 'Ez az enyem, ez a tietek.' [That's mine, that's yours.'] No one could like her. She was horrible. She was a seamstress and I didn't have anything to wear. Today I sew for myself, so it's not a great art. She was terribly self-centered, selfish. Her family would come over, wolf down everything we had, and didn't give us anything. I worked myself to the bone out in the garden, and she'd say, 'Meg ott van egy korte.' ['There's still one more pear there.'] So, who could like her?! As soon as I could, I got out of there, and we didn't have anything to do with each other any more. My grandfather [Julius Weisz] didn't like her either. He even went to an old-age home because of her, even though the house was his. He chose to go to an old-age home rather than put up with constant aggravation.