The tailor's workshop of Armin Schultz,

The tailor's workshop of Armin Schultz,

There are a lot of strangers in the picture. I don't know when it was taken- sometime between 1938 and 1942. It is in Dad's tailor's workshop in the flat in Almassy Square. Dad is standing on the right. The second one form the left is the husband of my sister, Etel, Jozsef Schneller, who was Dad's partner. The one at the front in the polka dot dress is Janka Spitzer, who was the daughter of Dad's sister, Aunty Milka. She emigrated to Israel, but what she's up to now, I don't know. This little boy is the son of Janka's elder sister. As far as I know, he left for Israel, but I don't know anything more about him. At the front on the right, next to the little boy, is the daughter of my step-mother's sister. I know nothing about her either, only that she also worked in the workshop, with Dad. At the back, the fifth from the right- I don't know his name, was a very good man. He helped the Jews a lot, including our family. He was the one who tried to save from the Kisvarda Ghetto, the little boy of my natural mother's brother, Uncle Miska. He used to live in Csepel. The others were workers. This was a three-room flat; two rooms were quite large, and the third one was also big enough for a complete bedroom. There was a bathroom and separate toilet and a big hallway. There was an alcove, a servant's room. There was also a workshop too. I don't know what happened to the joint workshop. That partnership fell through. The biggest room was six meter by seven meter [18ft by 21 ft] and the workshop was there. There were many workers there. On the 26th May 1944, we - my husband, my children and I- moved to my parent's place in Almassy Square. When we moved to Almassy Square in 1944, they weren't working any more. I think they worked before that, but I don't know that for sure. Sewing work could still be done for a long while. The workshop still existed in 1944, but my father didn't get any work any more work [orders.] The workshop was standing empty. We sewed trousers. Etel arranged it, and she dealt with them. We sewed for a company, we didn't make individual trousers. I did the ironing. It wasn't easy because a tailor's iron is heavy and it had to be heated in a little oven. Etel worked by hand, and she arranged things. And there was a machine operator. When Almassy Square number 15, became a yellow-star-house, there were 18 of us living in those three rooms. My father was there, my step-mother and step-sister, my sister, with her husband and little daughter. They had lived in this flat originally. There was my also husband and I with our two children. And then another five people arrived there, because my mother-in-law came, and my two sisters-in-law, Iren and Klari, their husbands and their three kids.
Open this page