Vacation in Tatranska Lomnica

This picture was taken in Tatranska Lomnica on 2nd July 1938. It’s of me, Alexander Singer.

After the school year ended, I got a vacation from the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment.

I won in a language contest, in French. They put me up in the town of Kezmarske Zlaby, and from there I used to walk to Tatranska Lomnica.

It was complicated for me to transfer from the yeshivah to high school, because I was missing a basic secular education.

My main problems were with mathematics. On the other hand, my favorite subjects were languages and history, especially the Middle Ages.

Today I can communicate in ten languages. Already from home I can speak German, Hungarian, Yiddish and Slovak. With my father and at school I studied Hebrew and Aramaic texts.

During my high school studies, and began learning French. after the war it gradually became a useless language.

In order to find some sort of a job, I had to quickly learn English. In time I also added the Romanian language, which I learned during my five-year stay in that country.

I also spoke Spanish well, but that faded away. I still more or less manage in it passively. Besides that I also know Czech, both spoken and written.

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).