Tag #115950 - Interview #78642 (Ferenc Leicht)

Then I went back to the United Lamp and after work I attended the Ujpest Industrial Technical School which I graduated in 1957. First I lived in Ujpest in tenancy in a stairway. In the one-storied houses one couldn’t go to the attic from the apartment, but from a small room, like a small hall. And under the stairs there was enough room for a bed. And I rented that because I didn’t have enough money for something better. At that time my salary was about 800-900 forint, part of which was so-called peace loan and other things.[Editor’s note: The peace loan was a peculiar form of taxation introduced in Hungary in the first half of the 1950s. The government issued government bonds for ’building peace’, which it had to pay back to the citizens only after 10 years without taking  into consideration inflation. The total value of the peace loans, issued on was 6,7 billion forint. People did not really need these bonds, but they were expected by the party to buy them nonetheless.] The peace loan for a year was a month’s salary. I didn’t go home to my parents in Nagykanizsa often, but we wrote each other letters and my mother was so kind that I sent her my laundry in a box, and she sent me back my clothes washed. I didn’t have the possibility to wash. It wasn’t easy to have a wash either, when the family didn’t use the bathroom they let me in. They even let me in to the kitchen to cook sometimes.