Peter Reisz and his classmates

This is a photo of my class in the Textile Technical School in Budapest. The class was mixed, half boys, half girls. The photo was taken in 1952. After I finished the eighth grade at the school on Wesselenyi Street, I attended the Textile Technical School. It was really interesting, the way I ended up with a career in textiles. I had never had anything to do with textiles, but there were so many Jewish kids whose parents were in textiles, that I went into the trade, too. My parents didn't interfere with my career choice; they were happy that I could study, because they saw the fulfillment of their desires in that. There were a lot of Jews in the Textile Technical School--I think 30% of the class was Jewish. And there were rich Jews, too, who had small factories before the War, whose kids went there. We didn't talk much about being Jews, because it wasn't a topic then. But after 1956, when we had class reunions, we found out that there were many Jews among the students and the teachers, too.