Miklos Farkas, Vera’s father photo on the registration form

Miklos Farkas, Vera’s father photo on the registration form

My father was born in 1887. In 1904 he moved to Pest, and became a merchant's apprentice, and then he was sent to school from there, and he completed some kind of commercial course.

He began with textiles; he was in Kiraly Street at some sort of a textile merchant's, then he went elsewhere. At that time, at the beginning of the 1900s, working hours were from 7 in the morning until half past ten; he was exploited.

His life in the prewar times was not a characteristically Jewish life, but rather a worker's life. He joined the Social Democratic Party.

Then, in the end, when he had been fired from everywhere because of his activities in the working class movement and in the trade union, he found employment at the 'Hangya' General Consumer's Co-operative. There he dealt with spices and such.

When I was six years old we moved to Buda and we lived in a big city building there, but we still lived in a one-and-a-half roomed apartment.

In the beginning my parents lived in quite bad financial conditions. Then, later when my father was appointed departmental manager or deputy departmental manager in the Fenyves Department Store, we were better off. But we didn't live the life of the upper middle class.

Then three identical big modern houses were built in Tisza Kalman square. And -- it was back in 1936 - parties distributed the apartments there.

Half of them were given to members and families of right-wing parties, the other half was given to the social democrats and the trade unions.

My father did some kind of a job in the Trade Union of Commercial Employees, and so he got an apartment there. That wasn't a big apartment either, but it was nice and modern, with central heating.

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