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I told my husband, who didn’t know her, that we had to go to this promotion. My daughter says to that – could she have been twelve at the time? – she looked at me with horribly terrified eyes, ‘Mommy, we had a maid? My God, we were capitalists?!’ I had to explain to her that it didn’t have anything to do with capitalism – of course, I didn’t explain it exactly like it was, but she understood and then everything was all right – that these poor country girls were glad that they could come to the city and get a wage, a room and full board.
If I recall correctly, there were two kindergartens in the whole city. The kindergartens were free, but those who went there were those who weren’t well off, because the kids got board there. I was never in a kindergarten, not me, not my sister, and none of the children of my friends.
Not just my Jewish friends, nobody’s kids went. If I remember correctly, there was a private kindergarten where they only kept the children in the mornings for two or three hours. They put their kids there, if mothers, siblings, or grandmothers had to go somewhere they couldn’t take the kids along. Aside from that, there was no permanent daycare. The maid, who was always at home, looked after me.
Anyway, they had them in a lot of families, like we did, a Fraulein [governess], who came to our house, so we could learn German. My mother’s younger sister, whose husband died in World War I, had a son. My parents took in this cousin of mine, whose name was Istvan Klein. Istvan was two years older than me.
We both had a Fraulein who quit a short time later because she couldn’t take us. We always did what we weren’t supposed to. We weren’t very good children, and we never listened, and that’s why after a short year, she couldn’t stand it, and left. So we didn’t learn too much German from her. On the other hand, she learned a lot of Hungarian from us. Here in Bratislava, you didn’t have to study extra German, because it was so infectious, since half the city spoke German. That’s how we learned it. We went to German classes, to learn the orthography because that we didn’t know.
If I recall correctly, there were two kindergartens in the whole city. The kindergartens were free, but those who went there were those who weren’t well off, because the kids got board there. I was never in a kindergarten, not me, not my sister, and none of the children of my friends.
Not just my Jewish friends, nobody’s kids went. If I remember correctly, there was a private kindergarten where they only kept the children in the mornings for two or three hours. They put their kids there, if mothers, siblings, or grandmothers had to go somewhere they couldn’t take the kids along. Aside from that, there was no permanent daycare. The maid, who was always at home, looked after me.
Anyway, they had them in a lot of families, like we did, a Fraulein [governess], who came to our house, so we could learn German. My mother’s younger sister, whose husband died in World War I, had a son. My parents took in this cousin of mine, whose name was Istvan Klein. Istvan was two years older than me.
We both had a Fraulein who quit a short time later because she couldn’t take us. We always did what we weren’t supposed to. We weren’t very good children, and we never listened, and that’s why after a short year, she couldn’t stand it, and left. So we didn’t learn too much German from her. On the other hand, she learned a lot of Hungarian from us. Here in Bratislava, you didn’t have to study extra German, because it was so infectious, since half the city spoke German. That’s how we learned it. We went to German classes, to learn the orthography because that we didn’t know.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Katarina Löfflerova