Tag #134371 - Interview #101223 (Anna Eva Gaspar)

In 1940 we became Hungary and they introduced the numerus clausus [3] in the Ursuline also. This meant that they admitted only one Jew in a class. It was a big fuss, because the boys had the Zsidlic [the short form for Jewish high school], which was a 12 grades elementary, middle and high school. And we, the girls, were dropped out. Then the teaching staff of the boy’s high school got together and they decided that the girls will attend the high school in the afternoon. The teachers who taught us probably got a higher compensation also. But this was an unofficial thing. We took examinations with the teachers and with the headmaster also. The teachers lectured the lessons and we learnt like in a private school. And it is very interesting, that in the paper called Zsidlic - I had a few copies - they wrote that we, the Jewish girls were dropped out from the high school Although is not true, because I attended the high school there. First they put us in the kindergarten. They kept the courses there. It was very uncomfortable, because we had to sit in those small desks. I finished there the third and fourth grade of the high school. I had to tell, that once I received a slip from that young boy who sat in the same desk. ‘Answer if you want.’  We wrote to each other for years, but I didn’t even know how he looked. He put the slip in the desk and I put it also. I don’t remember his name already, and we never met, although he always suggested that to me, but I wasn’t disposed. More than twenty girls attended the high school. The Jewish girls had to choose between the Zsidlic and the Notre Dame, because there they were admitted too. Kati Deutsch, the wife of Gyuri Adam graduated there. But I don’t know how she got there. Perhaps she got into the six per cent. For example, my cousin - who died in America – got into the six percent in the Oltea Doamna, she was the top pupil in her class. She learnt and graduated in that public school.