Tag #115239 - Interview #78642 (Ferenc Leicht)

My father was in the 4th grade of high school in Csurgo – at the school which was famous because Csokonai [Editor’s note: Mihaly Csokonai Vitez (1773 - 1805), Hungarian poet, was born in Debrecen. Csokonai was a genial and original poet, and wrote a mock-heroic poem called Dorottya or the Triumph of the Ladies at the Carnival, two or three comedies or farces, and a number of love-poems.] had taught there – when he was sent down from the high school because once he didn’t greet the Catholic priest on the street.

When they called him for account he said that the Christian students didn’t greet his father either. Namely there wasn’t a rabbi in Csurgo, the shammash was the head of the Jewish community, which was my grandfather, and they didn’t greet him either. Then my father became a merchant apprentice. He realized very soon that he didn’t have any talent for that, and then he became a baker’s apprentice. He served his apprenticeship in 1923, at the age of 18, then he got on a bike and went to look for a job. 

I know that he went from Somogycsurgo to Nagykanizsa by bike, which is about 26 kilometers. And in 1923 he became a baker’s man in the bakery of my maternal grandfather. But there was another assistant there, Terezia Herczfeld. She was my mother, who was the third, the biggest and strongest Herczfeld girl.