Tag #133845 - Interview #78503 (Katalin Andai)

My father graduated high-school, and I think he studied law for two years, but he got bored with it. And after that, when he was 21-years-old, he got into the postal service and became a postal official. He was the deputy chief cashier in the control cash-desk of a large post office. This was a position of trust and great responsibility, because they dealt with very large amounts of money. Kalman Mikszath Jr., son of the great Kalman Mikszath [one of the most important prose-writers of 19th century Hungarian literature] was his classmate, and he got into the postal service with his patronage, which was an unbelievable thing: for a Jew to be a postal officer.

As a worker at the post office, he was a government official with every benefit that entailed. He got a photo identity card, we could travel gratis by train, and we could receive something like twenty parcels a year, gratis. In those times the postal service had a private health-fund with private surgery, and it had a private hospital with very good doctors.