Judit Kinszki was born in 1934 in Budapest. Her father came from an upper-middle class background, and her mother a working class background. They met when both of them worked at a textile manufacturer. Judit’s father and his family were assimilated and followed no religion, and Judit’s mother was Jewish and followed some traditions. They did not get married in a synagogue. Judit’s brother Gabor was born in 1926 and he taught Judit how to skate and swim and both of them went to school. The family converted to Greek Catholicism in 1939, and Judit did not have a Jewish identity.  

During the war, Judit and her mother were placed in the ghetto, and were forced to wear the yellow star. Her father and brother were drafted into forced labour. Judit and her mother found out through people that returned to Budapest that Judit’s father was killed in a death march to Sachsenhausen and her brother was killed in Buchenwald. Judit and her mother were liberated from the Budapest ghetto and went to live on Liszt Ferenc Square, where her mother lived the rest of her life. Besides Judit and her mother, only two aunts and one uncle returned and survived the war. 

Judit went back to school and both her and her mother continued going to church. Judit never joined the communist party, and attended university for art history. That is where she met her husband, Cs. They got married and soon had a daughter, Eszter, who Judit raised by herself, as Cs. worked late. Judit taught at schools in the 8th district of Budapest. Ezster got married and had a daughter, and was divorced in 1985, and soon after Judit also got divorced from Cs. as he became distant and Judit’s cousins heard a rumour that he was an undercover man. She never saw him after the divorce, and learned he died in 1997.

Judit never learned about the Jewish religion, but classifies herself as a Hungarian Jew. She does not define herself as Greek Catholic, but sees her Judaism as something that is spiritual and sentimental, and in the classical tradition of liberal Budapest assimilated Jewry. She also heavily identifies with being Hungarian, as the language and literature has kept her here.